Pen Stops

[FatherTim]

I have a intermittant problem that, like all similar problems, is annoying. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

I have a 2012 Bexley Owners club that is one of the best if not the best writer I have. It is very smooth on all kinds of paper and holds a good quantity of ink. As I get older, my hands hurt and the large diameter is easier to hold. All of this makes the pen my pen of choice as an everyday writer.

 

The problem is that, very rarely, the pen willn starve for ink. I am a long time journal keeper and can write page after page in smooth consistent relatively wet lines and then it will just write dry. It is totally unpredictable. It can be started by holding the nib upright and running the piston filler down until the feed is just barely moist with ink. Then it is good for another long time.

 

Anyone got any ideas?

 

Many thanks,

 

Tim

[Hooker56]

Tim,

 

I have several converters that have the same challenge. Oftentimes a small pellet or bead placed loose in the converter before you ink it will break the capillary vacuum that sometimes forms when your pen is stored nib up, then turned over to write with. Easy to try. Beware, though, if a BB will fit into your converter it will block the ink flow...a bb is too large to use. I usually use a glass bead from my tackle box.

 

Cheers,

 

Clayton

[FatherTim]

Thanks. I have several converters too. I tried to answer your post yesterday but I don't see the post - wonder where in cyberspace it is.

 

Anyway, I tried your suggestion and did not have any luck. Although the pen is a piston fill, the nib unscrews and I put a small stainless steel ball bearing (0.093") in the barrel. The pen wrote a clean wet line for 9 pages then wrote dry in just a few lines. Running the piston down until then feed is barely damp gets all going fine. Maybe it is the paper. This is really puzzling.

 

Clayton - many thanks for your suggestion. I wonder if a slightly larger bearing would work?

 

Tim

[Hooker56]

Thanks for your kind reply. The next thing on the list...when was the last time you gave it a good cleaning? Maybe flush it good with cold eater several times then use a shot glass filled just over the nib and leave it for several hours. here may be old ink caked in your feed that just needs to be dissolved?

 

Worth a try as it costs nothing but a few hours. also, if you have a piece of mylar (a shiny piece of potato chip bag- cleaned of course). Use this to floss the nib slit to clean any paper or other debris from the nib.

 

Good luck- let me know if it helps-

 

Clayton

[Drone]

I have flow related problem with a Bexley Intrepid. Try seriously cleaning. Unless your Bexley is something like several years old with a stubborn Schmidt nib, your Bock nib unit should unscrew and then you can pull the nib and feed out by hand. Just pay attention to how the nib and feed slide back in. i posted some pics of the whole shebang disassembled here:

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php/topic/261457-help-with-a-bum-nib/?do=findComment&comment=2907301

 

if you suspect the converter, yank it and run from a cartridge for awhile instead to see what happens. I'm still wrestling with my bloody pen. It refuses to start reliably if left for a minute or two.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Drone

[pajaro]

I have issues like this with all the modern C/C pens I have except for one type. Some kind of cleaning and nib flossing regime seems to help briefly, then it happens again. I am trying storing the pens flat.

 

The only exception is Montblanc 144, either old style from the 80s with nothing in the converter or new style with a spring in the converter. For me, these work perfectly, all the time. These are small pens, though. I should have been content with them and not bought these more modern C/C pens.

 

My temporizing solution for this is to keep a small container, a jar or even a small spray bottle, in the places where I usually write. When the pen dries up, I immerse it briefly or spray some water on the feed and nib, and it usually restarts.

Edited February 23, 2014 by pajaro

[pajaro]

One thing I have started doing with C/C pens when I want to use them is to fill them before use. Moves ink through the feed. I think it helps, but I don't write out the ink supply during the day.

[FatherTim]

Everyone,

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. I have kept experimenting and the problem seems to be with the ink and its interaction with the plastic barrel of the pen. Different inks with different surface tensions adhere to the inside of the body (where the piston is) to different degrees.

 

By changing inks, I have found that some ink will write 6 pages and others 12. It seems that the ink does not run down the chamber freely. It forms a bubble and when you exhaust the ink at the back of the feed all stops. Clayton's suggestion to use a small bead should have worked but it did not. Maybe the bead I picked was too small.

 

You can see the problem by comparing various international ink cartridges. Hold the cartridge upright and the gently turn it over with the top down. For some of them, the iks flows very smoothly with no bubbles (e.g. Diamine Sapphire Blue) while others (Private Reserve DC Showcase) the ink does not flow smoothly and you can see the bubbles form at the ends where ink gets stuck. This is what is happening with the new high tech plastic used by Bexley. Their pens are top of the line in performance but they type of ink makes a difference. Some inks interact with the surface of the plastic and do not flow while others work very well.

 

I only have a few cartridges available for testing and the pen itself is opaque so you can not see into it. (BTW the pen was completely cleaned with mile soap and water, rinsed thoroughly, dried and reassembled.)

 

My (no so scientific) results are:

Diamine - best

Pelikan - next

Waterman - next

Private Reserve - worst

 

Note that this is based in cartridges only. The point is that for best performance, the ink must chemically maatch the pen. I have had many nib mechanics say that cartridges have flow problems. My few experiments lead to the "it depends" conclusion. It is all a matater of chemistry and how the ink fluid flows in the cartridge or oen barrel.

 

Given that using cartridges costs about 6 times more than bottled ink, the bottle is much preferred. However, refilling cartridges is easy too. Does anyone know where you can buy empty international cartridges and the small beads used to seal them. I have a miniature machine shop and can easily make a tool to refill and seal the cartridges.

 

Thanks to all.

 

Tim

[FatherTim]

More on ink:

 

I have many old vintage pens with rubber sacs like Sheaffer PFM and Snorkels. Many new designer inks destroy the sacs in these pens. I don't mean to talk down to any ink brand but Private Reserve ruined a sac in my PFM two days after I replaced the sac with a new one (purchased from Richard Binder).

 

The point to this and my last post is that the ink must be matched to the pen. There are not "good fountain pen inks" and "bad fountain pen inks" (that is within the sphere of fountain pen inks - not including dipping and calligraphic ink.) The pen and ink form a team and must play well together.

 

That seems obvious and I have known it for years. I just did not realize just how sensitive some pens are to certain inks. The last couple of weeks of documented experiments have really raised my awareness.

 

Tim

[Hooker56]

I'm glad it's better. Wish it were solved. Like you, I have some pens that I love to use that deliver less than optimal results, and others that I use only because they are dependable...always a compromise, eh?

 

Blessings,

 

Clayton

[pajaro]

The converters that seem to have the least trouble for me have small springs in them rather than balls for breaking up surface tension. It's interesting that Diamine ink worked best for you. Diamine midnight, Montblanc midnight blue and Sheaffer's Skrip blue black work fairly well for me, but I'm not satisfied yet. Montblanc Racing Green works pretty well, but it is no longer made and expensive.

 

I don't see why the simple Montblanc 144 works better than other apparently similar C/C pens. There's nothing to it. Feed, nib going into a keyed section and a converter to hold the ink. There's almost nothing to any of these C/C pens. They should work with less hassle.

[pajaro]

You would think.

[FatherTim]

Interesting. I have a MB 144 that works perfectly too. It's just too thin for my sore hands. I still think it is chemistry and the inks and plastics dont play well together.

[WirsPlm]

Yeah, it's known that some converters have problems with different inks and the ink surface tension will cause problems (empirical data is always awesome though). I've only had this happen with Chinese pens, the Pilot converters don't seem to have this problem so they're probably using a better plastic (or smoothing the inside of the converters more maybe?).

 

About sacs and inks, it's absolutely not a question solely of ink (would be nice if it was as simple as that). There's many, many different issues that can cause sac problems, including manufacturing defects. We're trying to collect information on different sac failures to get some empirical data, could you help out by posting about your sac failure at https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php/topic/260800-my-first-gooeyfied-diaphragm/? Please include information about any substances or chemicals you used during the sac replacement, what kind of talc you used, the inks used in the pen immediately before the sac replacement and until the sac failure, where and when you ordered the sac and any other relevant details.

 

It would help a lot to get a public record of these things in one place so we can pick out common causes of failure. Right now it's hard to discuss it because we have barely any evidence, we know something happens, but it happens with all kinds of inks and all kinds of pens so we need to collect more data to stop it from happening.

Edited February 24, 2014 by WirsPlm

[Drone]

I have a couple of International sized converters that have glass (not plastic) ink reservoirs. These work best in my experience. I think the converters were made by Schmidt, but I'm not sure where you would buy them today. These converters unscrew and come apart for cleaning.

 

I have heard of some creative people cutting the end off of a cartridge or converter, then gluing a sac to it to make a sort of removable bulb filler. But I haven't tried it myself.

 

I have found Noodler's Eel lubricated inks to flow well in troublesome cases. I have tried the Eel Blue and Eel Turquoise inks. Both inks work fine, but they are not bullet proof at all.

[Drone]

I have flow related problem with a Bexley Intrepid. Try seriously cleaning. Unless your Bexley is something like several years old with a stubborn Schmidt nib, your Bock nib unit should unscrew and then you can pull the nib and feed out by hand. Just pay attention to how the nib and feed slide back in. i posted some pics of the whole shebang disassembled here:

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php/topic/261457-help-with-a-bum-nib/?do=findComment&comment=2907301

 

if you suspect the converter, yank it and run from a cartridge for awhile instead to see what happens. I'm still wrestling with my bloody pen. It refuses to start reliably if left for a minute or two.

 

Update on my post about my similar Bexley Nib situation...

 

I finally threw in the towel and decided to go all out and fix/hack the nib & feed on my bum Bexley Intrepid. I spent about two hours on the pesky thing yesterday.

 

The nib was a mess, it should have never been shipped in the condition it was in. 1. The slit is not cut straight - close but it isn't straight. 2. More importantly the tines were way too tight.

 

I had to get rather aggressive with steel shims to open up the tines to where they should be. After that, flow improved quite a bit and the major drying-out issues went away. But the feed was still having trouble keeping up (low flow). Close examination of the nib and feed revealed the nib was not making good contact with the feed near the tip of the nib. More nib massaging fixed that problem. After that the flow was much better, but still a bit too dry.

 

I ran the back of both small and medium sized Xacto blades along the lengthwise feed channel. There was a bump in the feed channel that was blocking ink flow. Hopefully this is just a bad feed and not a mold defect. I scraped the bump away and made the feed channel smooth. Voila, now the nib was flowing as it should. A final tine alignment under magnification followed by micro-mesh smoothing and polishing on mylar - and we're done. The pen is working perfectly.

 

Fighting to bend the tines in the beginning was really tough. If I messed that part up, which is easy to do, the nib would have been a lost cause. The shims really helped. If you don't have a stack of steel shims, get a stainless steel ignition feeler gauge.

 

On my next Goulet order, I'm still going to pick up one of the two-tone Goulet No. 6 nibs and swap it in just for fun. But in the long term the now-fixed original Bexley Fine nib looks like a keeper.

Edited April 20, 2014 by Drone

[shortwizard]

I am having the same problem with my brand new Nemosine Singularity. It keeps running dry and I have to remove the barrel and force ink down into the feed. There is a tiny glass bead in the converter - could it be that the bead is too small and blocking the ink flow at some point? My Jinhao X750 does the same thing. It's terribly annoying. I love the Nemosine and I would really like for it to behave!

[Mike 59]

With brand new pens and converters, this surface tension problem seems to be at it's worst, so it's worthwhile to flush the pen by using the converter to fill with water, plus a few drops of dish washing liquid mixed into it.

It's possible that there is some oilyness on the new plastic surfaces, that needs to be removed, and the detergent will help to do that.

I have repeated this, say 10 times over before even inking a new pen with it's converter, also I have left the water/detergent in the converter overnight, before trying the pen out with ink the next day.

I have one cartridge that never had this problem, an old Parker 'Penman' type, and it does seem to be made of a more rigid plastic, not polythene which the new versions appear to be made from. Not sure if that's a reason, or the fact that it has been used a great deal and cleaned many dozens of times.

With converters using ball bearing type 'agitators', I have noticed that when cleaning them with water, if the bearing moves down to the opening, it's impossible to force the water out, the bearing is blocking so well.

So I have to assume the same effect happens with ink while writing.

I had an idea that a glass bearing may float on the top of the ink, the metal bearing will sink and cause the drying up problem.

Of course a shake of the pen solves the problem as the bearing will move around.

The coiled up wire (or spring) is possibly the better answer to this issue.

Edited April 23, 2014 by Mike 59

[Drone]

I am having the same problem with my brand new Nemosine Singularity. It keeps running dry and I have to remove the barrel and force ink down into the feed. There is a tiny glass bead in the converter - could it be that the bead is too small and blocking the ink flow at some point? My Jinhao X750 does the same thing. It's terribly annoying. I love the Nemosine and I would really like for it to behave!

 

It is very unlikely the bead or spring in your converter is causing the problem. If the converter disassembles easily (some do, try unscrewing the metal collar at the back of the converter) then you can remove the ball or spring inside. But I wouldn't.

 

I agree with "Mike 59" above, your converter may be hanging on to the ink and cleaning it thoroughly may help. Really cleaning a converter is much easier if the converter disassembles. I use a Q-tip and lots of soap and water to clean a new converter. When I'm done, I apply a tiny amount of silicone grease to the "O-ring" in the converter just to smooth out the operation and guarantee a good seal; but this is optional.

 

If you want a good indicator that the converter is the problem, replace the converter with a cartridge and work with the pen for a day or two.

 

If you're still having problems with the cartridge, then it may be time to start working with the nib and/or feed.

 

I have the most problems with converters that come with Chinese pens (Hero, Jinhao. Baoer, etc.) Sometimes I just can't get the Chinese converters to flow properly, so I replace them with a better converter, or (more often) just syringe fill a cartridge.

 

I have some extra standard "International" converters I bought years ago that are great. These are glass converters, not plastic. I have never had a flow problem with these converters and they are made to come apart. I wish I could remember where I bought these converters, but I'm almost positive they were were German made. I want to say they are Schmidt branded, but that was some time ago and I may be wrong.

[shortwizard]

Thanks for your help. I will try using a cartridge first and see if that helps. I didn't think of cleaning the converter, but what you say makes a lot of sense.