Living With A Touchdown System

[Alex_]

How do you live with it? I only own one Sheaffer with the TD system, a Silver Imperial and it's one of my favorite pens so gets used a lot. I just cleaned and stored it after 2 months of use and I'm considering rotating it less often due to the known pain of cleaning a touchdown system.

 

Are there any tricks you use apart from always using the same ink? Every time I clean mine the ink seems to grow inside :roflmho: even when the water comes out clean the next day I try it and it writes again so my process is to keep cleaning until it stops writing.

 

Your thoughts and opinions are welcome

[terim]

As they say in the software development business .... that's not a bug, it's a feature!

 

You're experiencing a very efficient feed and collector system. The snorkel tube and sac get cleaned during flushing, but you need to flush out the feed and that is best done by soaking. We also really like Pen Flush for these clean-out endeavors.

 

TERI

[risingsun]

I find that soaking nib down in a shallow filled cup (to just submerge the nib), and repeated filling/flushing works pretty well. The secret weapon is a centrifuge, built from a salad spinner per Ron Zorn. It works awesome to get extra ink out of the sac after a soak, and make subsequent flushings more effective and clear out the pen of ink remnants quite a bit quicker. It is a flat out necessity, IMHO, if you are a frequent user of a vacumatic filler, Snorkel, or TD pen. Watch at yard sales and thrift stores for a decent salad spinner.

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=12704&hl

[jar]

Live with some leftover ink.

[mhosea]

I find that soaking nib down in a shallow filled cup (to just submerge the nib), and repeated filling/flushing works pretty well. The secret weapon is a centrifuge, built from a salad spinner per Ron Zorn. It works awesome to get extra ink out of the sac after a soak, and make subsequent flushings more effective and clear out the pen of ink remnants quite a bit quicker. It is a flat out necessity, IMHO, if you are a frequent user of a vacumatic filler, Snorkel, or TD pen. Watch at yard sales and thrift stores for a decent salad spinner.

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=12704&hl

 

That's a great idea. I'm going to have to try the salad spinner at some point. With Snorkels, and with Touchdowns in general, I mainly stick to a small selection of compatible inks that are easy to clean and would be OK mixed, but I do like to store my pens clean. Up to now I've used an ultrasonic for the going-out-of-rotation cleaning.

[ashbridg]

How clean do they need to be? I never clean my Touchdowns and they always write rich and wet. The new ink dissolves the old dried up ink. Of course I use friendly ink like Skrip. Saturated inks require more care.

[mhosea]

How clean do they need to be?

 

They don't need to be cleaned that much, IMO. My snorkel desk pen at work is for work. If I were to change inks, I'd just flush it and fill it without worrying about residual ink. It's just that inkophiles may not want to mix inks when they don't intend to mix inks, and of course some inks should not be mixed--if one wished to switch to or from an iron gall ink, for example.

Edited March 12, 2013 by mhosea

[Alex_]

I find that soaking nib down in a shallow filled cup (to just submerge the nib), and repeated filling/flushing works pretty well. The secret weapon is a centrifuge, built from a salad spinner per Ron Zorn. It works awesome to get extra ink out of the sac after a soak, and make subsequent flushings more effective and clear out the pen of ink remnants quite a bit quicker. It is a flat out necessity, IMHO, if you are a frequent user of a vacumatic filler, Snorkel, or TD pen. Watch at yard sales and thrift stores for a decent salad spinner.

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=12704&hl

 

Thats great, I'll try that, thanks for the link

 

How clean do they need to be? I never clean my Touchdowns and they always write rich and wet. The new ink dissolves the old dried up ink. Of course I use friendly ink like Skrip. Saturated inks require more care.

 

As jar said you can live perfectly well with some leftover ink, I use mostly Parker, Waterman and Sheaffer inks and they play nice with each other.

I just don't like the idea of storing pens or changing inks without a proper clean but that's probably just my OCD :ltcapd:

 

Thank you all for the ideas

Edited March 12, 2013 by Alex_

[Lou Erickson]

I'm just cleaning a snorkel myself, and it's taking a long time. This is what I get for putting Asa-Gao in it, and thinking I'd try something else. Silly me!

 

Some pens may be destined to be a single color. C/C pens clean easily and I have plenty of those to play with colors.

 

(Just noticed this was March of LAST year, not just a few days ago. I did look! The statement stands, though.)

Edited April 9, 2014 by Lou Erickson

[KBeezie]

Course if you're using the same ink all the time, *some* leftover ink isn't bad. Though in my Snorkel I am using Noodler's Black Eel, so not sure how lubricated ink deals with the cleaning process.

 

But on my Touchdown Admiral with an extra fine feather touch nib, I mainly just took a small cup of clean water, after pumping out any left over ink, I first ran the nib under the faucet to take care of the initial nib/feed collection, then just took up, and pushed out ink from the cup into the sink over and over again until it ran clear, gave it a good patting with paper towel and repeated the process with just air. That was enough to get the black eel out put in the lighter diamine imperial blue. (course worse case scenario, I can just pull the nib out and wash out any excess ink on the feed, or even more so, pull the feed out and do the same as it's a friction fit). Whether or not you want to bother with re-seating those is up to you in exchange for extra cleaning.

 

I'm just cleaning a snorkel myself, and it's taking a long time. This is what I get for putting Asa-Gao in it, and thinking I'd try something else. Silly me!

 

Some pens may be destined to be a single color. C/C pens clean easily and I have plenty of those to play with colors.

 

(Just noticed this was March of LAST year, not just a few days ago. I did look! The statement stands, though.)

 

Well... least it'll show up in search for anyone else...

Edited April 9, 2014 by KBeezie