New Nakaya Running Dry After A Few Pages?

[lowfiwhiteguy]

Hey guys,

 

So I've been enjoying my new Nakaya Piccolo a couple days now and tonight sat down and marathoned some calculus homework. I wrote about 3-4 pages over about 2 hours when all of a sudden, the flow of the ink changed completely. It went from a dark, wet, crisp line to a pale, splotchy line, as if it were running out of ink. It never ran completely dry, it would always write when it touched the page, but it seemed very, very strange how this happened in the middle of a maths problem. I'm using Iroshizuku Tsuki Yo, which is an extremely wet ink, so I can't imagine the ink being the cause. The converter is still 5/8ths full, and there doesn't appear to be an air bubble in it...

 

The pen has never been dropped, the nib is perfectly tuned and the feed is positioned properly. The converter and nib/feed unit has been reasonably well flushed before inking with cool water.... Is this a common problem with converter pens? Although I've owned almost a dozen Pelikans, this is my first converter pen so I am unfamiliar with problems like this.

 

Any advice appreciated, thanks!
CH

[Lyander0012]

Converters sometimes fall tiny bubbles inside the ink chamber due to the ink's clinging to the walls of the chamber by means of capillarity; that's one argument in favor of piston fillers, anyway.

 

I have Tsuki-yo myself, and I agree that it's highly doubtful that the ink is the problem. It's probably the wettest ink I have, which makes it a pleasure to use with most pens. Iro inks are a bit troublesome to use with my flex pen, though, since it lays down an extremely wet patch of ink when shading, which kinda compromises the hairlines I get with drier inks.

 

Er, off topic. Sorry

Try giving the nib/feed section a thorough flushing by means of running it under a tap or filling/expelling water using the converter. Not sure how urushi would react to chemicals, though, so I'd tread with caution before trying anything other than water. That ought to clear up any tiny debris left over, if any. Priming the feed by means of working the converter to push ink into the feed is another way to restore wetness to your writing, but that's more a temporary fix than anything else,

 

Keep us updated, please! Both Nakaya pens and Iroshizuku inks are reliable standbys for the most part, so I'm fairly curious about what might be the cause of this.

 

 

Cheers!

Kevin

[lowfiwhiteguy]

I think I actually figured out a way to this fix. Warning: Engineer thought process ahead:

 

The problem (discounting a faulty nib or feed) lies predominantly in how the slim converter "traps" the ink within the cavity of the pen, preventing an adequate delivery to the paper. Once it reaches about 1/2 full from a complete filling, this is generally when the problem presents itself. The main reason for this, I suspect, is that the uppermost empty air pocket of the converter (since no converter can fill to 100% capacity) becomes negatively pressurised as its volume increases relative to the decrease in ink volume with use. The net force (gravity + surface tension + capillary action + vaccuum inside the converter) acting on the ink causes it to want to stay more or less inside of the converter rather than be drawn out of the pen body onto the page.

 

As the ink is drawn from the mostly full converter, there is a relatively small volume of air trapped above it. As more of the ink is dispensed, this volume of air increases, while its density decreases, creating a vaccuum effect. This, coupled with the significant surface tension effect of the ink clinging to the insides of the converter creates a situation where there are more forces acting to keep the ink inside of the pen than allowing it to flow out. I say significant surface tension because there is a very high ratio of ink in contact with the sides of the Platinum converter due to its slim size -- in a MontBlanc 149, on the other hand, surface tension is reduced because the ratio of ink touching the sides to the actual volume of ink in the cylindrical body is much smaller, so gravity and capillary action overcomes this.

 

So, in order to allow the ink to flow more freely, you need to do one of two things: Either you reduce the surface tension or you reduce the vaccuum. Since spraying a surfactant inside your converter sounds like a recipe for the destruction of your pen, I recommend the following procedure once your ink level drops to about 50-65% full:

 

1) Hold the pen with the nib pointing skywards (this is critical; if the nib is not facing up, you're not pushing the air out, and the problem will persist)

2) Advance the converter's piston until you can see the ink being pushed up into the tail of the feed with no air pocket above it

3) You should hear some sputtering as the air is forced from the nib. You are not "priming" the pen; don't advance the piston so much that ink starts to collect in the feed, it's not necessary. You're ready to write again.

 

This should allow you to finish off the converter's load without any dry-outs by eliminating both the excess vaccuum force behind the ink, and also by eliminating the effect of excess surface tension by reducing the surface area it can cling to inside the converter. It's working great for me so far, three pages in and no sign of stopping. Just think of it as advancing the lead on a mechanical pencil... It beats fussing around with syringes and empty cartridges for sure.

 

 

Let me know how it goes!

Edited August 16, 2014 by lowfiwhiteguy

[MBFan]

Why not put a pellet into the converter? I know a few have such in their converters so as to break the surface tension of the ink...or is this completely wrong?

[Lyander0012]

Um, I sincerely apologise for sounding like "that guy", but that's more or less the same as priming the feed, isn't it? At least, that's how I understand the process; I'm a psychology major and not an engineering one, after all, so my understanding of the principles you'd mentioned regarding density and surface tension are limited to what you'd get from college Physics 101. One need only reduce the amount of air present between the mouth of the converter and the seal of the piston mechanism, yes? This would of course decrease the vacuum effect in play within the converter.

 

Though this could be ill-advised, I do nearly the exact same thing when I experience hard starts with my C/C fillers, save for that I saturate my pen's feed with ink with the nib up before retracting the piston, since as far as I'm aware this will sort of make it easier for the ink to flow into the feed.

 

Again, apologies if I've somehow accidentally spoken out of place. I mean only to verify what I've read, which to me appears a comprehensive explanation for a phenomenon most fountain pen enthusiasts observe but find difficult to accurately express


Cheers!

 

Kevin

[Lyander0012]

Why not put a pellet into the converter? I know a few have such in their converters so as to break the surface tension of the ink...or is this completely wrong?

 

Nope, right on the money! You might be speaking of Parker converters, yes? That's exactly what the agitator (the tiny pellet) is for: to ensure that one needn't prime their feeds in order to restore inkflow when their pens start skipping.

 

Anyway, that sounds like a great idea actually, but aside from the fact that you sacrifice a bit of capacity for that (*shrug*, not much of a loss in my opinion, since most converters have relatively small capacities), not all converters can be disassembled, and a pellet small enough to fit through the mouth of a converter might cause problems if the channels of the feed are wide enough for it to fit through, yes?

 

 

Again: just a thought

 

Kevin

[shuuemura]

Some feeds can be problematic. I owned a Namiki Yukari Royale (broad nib) which would write dry after half a page. After a five month to-and-fro with Pilot USA (which eventually involved a email to the CEO to convey my displeasure), they caved in and replaced the whole pen. All four of my Nakayas have never shown ink starvation, but I've found that their nibs needed tweaking out of the box unless I bought them from nibs.com.

[arran]

Putting a small bullet from a catridge solves the issue of the sticking of ink to the converter.

That is what I always do with all my CC pens as standard operation

[Koyote]

This pen sounds too stressful.

[dneal]

Depending on the ink formulation and the specific converter, this can happen:

 

http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/aa163/roomdog/Pens/SurfaceTension015_zps1c980d6d.jpg

 

The result is that the pen runs dry, as the ink in the feed is depleted and not being replenished from the reservoir. There are a few solutions, from cleaning to trying different inks (Caran d'Ache inks do this to me very frequently, where De Atramentis and Iroshizuku do not). As others have noted, inserting some sort of agitator to break the surface tension can also correct the issue.

 

What I find odd is that it takes you a few pages to experience this. It depends on the nib size and wetness, and it is possible that a fine or extra fine nib would indeed take a few pages to run dry; but it could be a different issue. I recommend that when you first begin to write, you remove the barrel and see if the ink is in fact "stuck" in the end of the converter as pictured above. If it's not, then that isn't your problem.

 

The way a fountain pen works is by capillary action. Ink is pulled along the bottom of the feed channel, wets the nib, and is distributed to the paper. This creates a vacuum in the reservoir, and air is drawn into the nib's breather hole and travels through the top of the feed channel back into the reservoir. If either of these functions are disrupted (usually because of an obstruction), the pen will run dry. Since this is not an inexpensive pen, I would recommend you send it to a repair person if you think this is your problem.

[JLS1]

FWIW, I keep 1-2 spare empty Platinum cartridges available to fill with the ink of my choice: their cartridges each have a ball bearing inside, which I never understood until now. Maybe it might make sense to use a Platinum cartridge rather than the converter?

[Namo]

I thought Japanese converter did have larger 'mouth"?

[Icywolfe]

I thought Japanese converter did have larger 'mouth"?

platinum converters have a smaller mouth. Pilot is just a tube.