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How Do You Clean Your Lever-Fillers?


Polanova

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Now that most of my vintage pens are lever-fillers, I find them awfully hard to clean!

 

How do you clean them?

 

When you change an ink color, do you heat the section every time, pull out nib & feed in order to clean them? Or do you remove the sac every time for a good flush-through & afterwards shellac the sac back on again?

I know, sounds crazy ...

 

Or do you simply use the same inks, so you at least don`t have the problem of having the new ink mixing with the vestiges of the former ink?

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That`s what I do, too. But there`s always a bit of the old ink in the section, in the feed, because one can`t flush it out.

Whenever i swap a color, it`s never pure, but slightly contaminated with the former ink.

 

Is it the only solution to always use the same ink in a lever-pen (or at least stick with the same "color family", blue tones, red and so forth?)

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I sometimes leave the nib/feed submerged just to the section in a diluted ammonium solution overnight for those hard to clean inks.

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Fill with water. Empty out the water. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

 

When I'm done with that, I usually wrap a paper towel around the nib and give it a good sling-sling-sling to get the remaining water out of the feed. I also usually don't worry about getting every faint trace of ink color out of it. It doesn't really matter that much.

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My only lever filler is an Estie, so I am most is unscrew the nib and run water in it. including nib.

Brad

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind" - Rudyard Kipling
"None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness; but we can try." - Mark Twain

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I rinse several times, then fill with water and leave it upside down for an hour or two to get at the ink in the top of the sack. Then rinse a few more times.

 

I guess I don't do the above in one fell swoop, I sort of rinse once or twice as I am walking by the pen\water\paper towel. Several walk bys and its ready to go.

 

Oh yeah, after final rinse I leave it nib down in a glass with paper towel to draw any remaining ink/water out. Not 100%, but close enough.

 

Brian

One test is worth a thousand expert opinions.

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Flush, flush, flush, flush. Very tough to remove every trace of ink. With Esties you can unscrew the nib unit and power flush it with a bulb syringe, the feed holds more ink than the sac does. Some of our more experienced guys will tell you it's a waste of water and time to try to get every drop out, I'm old enough now to see they are right. I find leftover water more detrimental to color than the old ink is.

 

Paul

"Nothing is impossible, even the word says 'I'm Possible!'" Audrey Hepburn

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There is only so much that you can do with a lever fill (or a vac fill like the Parker Vacumatic).

Except for pens like the Esterbrook Js you cannot disassemble the pen.

So, I do as others.

Rinse it a few time, shake to get the water to rinse the inside of the sac.

Put the pen nib down in a narrow cup with water up to the end of the section, to soak the feed overnight.

And repeat the process until the pen blots clean on a tissue.

 

And don't use difficult to clean inks in the pen. That will make the cleaning easier.

IOW, you have to select the ink to use in the pen with long term maintenance in mind. I put the higher maintenance inks in pens that are easy to clean (Parker 45), or where I have almost zero intention of changing the ink (desk pens). Difficult to clean pens get easy to clean inks (Waterman, Cross/Pelikan, Sheaffer, etc.)

San Francisco Pen Show - August 28-30, 2020 - Redwood City, California

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Pull the section. Remove and discard the sac. Use a bulb to flush the section and nib. Resac. Reassemble. Or just fill and drain repeatedly..

"Don't hurry, don't worry. It's better to be late at the Golden Gate than to arrive in Hell on time."
--Sign in a bar and grill, Ormond Beach, Florida, 1960.

 

 

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Besides filling and draining repeatedly, I shake the pen a little when it's full of water, in hopes of getting some of the ink hiding in crannies and nooks. It's not all coming out, though. At this point I just assume that small traces of old inks won't cause clogs, and if they eventually add up to a problem years down the line, I can do the complete teardown and sack replacement then.

"So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do."

 

- Benjamin Franklin

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I keep flushing until the water seems to come out clear. I sometimes let the water sit in the sack for a while during the flushing process to dissolve that ink that doesn't seem to want to dissolve with just the flushing with plain water . I use a pen flush followed by a flush with distilled water and then place the pen nib down on a piece of tissue overnight and that seems to draw out the remaining colored ink.

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BTW, I would pull the section only as a last resort, and NOT just for cleaning.

Because pulling the section risks damaging the pen.

San Francisco Pen Show - August 28-30, 2020 - Redwood City, California

www.SFPenShow.com

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Flush it once and flush it twice and flush it once again.

It takes a long, long time.

 

With stubborn inks I will let the nib, feed, and lower section soak for a while in tap water and/or fill the pen with water and zap feed, section and nib in an ultrasonic cleaner for a minute or so. When I "think" most of the ink is out I will give it one final flush and rinse with a pen cleaner. I have learned to avoid hard to clean inks in most of my lever fillers (including hump, crescent, matchstick, coin, & etc. fillers).

Dave Campbell
Retired Science Teacher and Active Pen Addict
Every day is a chance to reduce my level of ignorance.

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Flush a few times, the shake like an old time thermometer, sit in glass wrapped in a paper towel.

 

Most important, is not to use supersaturated inks.

 

I had ???? when I first read the thread, until I realized I never used high maintenance inks in my lever pens. I'd found them no more difficult to clean than a piston pen....using traditional inks.

In reference to P. T. Barnum; to advise for free is foolish, ........busybodies are ill liked by both factions.

 

 

The cheapest lessons are from those who learned expensive lessons. Ignorance is best for learning expensive lessons.

 

 

 

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Thank you all for your replies! It is very helpful!!

 

Thanks to this thread I also researched "High Maintenance Ink", which led me to the ink-page of Richard Binder.

 

Fortunately I use almost exclusively Diamine inks (+ Pelikan Blue) & have been paranoid enough to use my only Noodler`s ink, Bulletproof Black, only in my LAMY Safari and Lanbitou.

 

As a result of my questioning, I`ll be more scrupulous in pen-cleaning (leaving pen nib down on paper towel etc.) in the future and having no more then 2 lever-fillers inked up.

 

Thanks again :)

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Fortunately I use almost exclusively Diamine inks (+ Pelikan Blue) & have been paranoid enough to use my only Noodler`s ink, Bulletproof Black, only in my LAMY Safari and Lanbitou.

 

Noodler's Black is a staple for me, and I have used it in pens of all types, vintage and modern. However... I have discovered that Noodler's can sometimes cause latex rubber sacs to deteriorate. I now use other brands (including Diamine) in my vintage pens and other pens that have rubber sacs or bulbs.

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Flush, flush, flush. If your section is loose enough to come out with only a little encouragement, you could pull it out and squeeze the sac with your fingers, as not to wear out the pressure bar. Then re-coat it with talc before putting it back into the barrel. Otherwise, a combination of filling, shaking, and emptying until the water comes out clear, like so many above have said.

 

And I will not put Noodler's into a button or lever filler ever again.. It lead me to remove the nib and feed to give my Parker Challenger a thorough cleaning of any Heart of Darkness residue before switching over to Diamine, whereby I discovered the nib had a horizontal crack across the shaft that worsened after being pulled out. -_- So unless you have an ink clog, don't do that either. DON'T DO IT!! (Well, you can do what you need to, I'm just expressing my horror at today's sad events.)

 

I've decided to keep a specific ink in each of my lever-fillers, myself, after that madness. So now, I wouldn't be too worried about a 100% cleaning. I'll just let those molecules slide. And flush, flush, flush with water.

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