Before Flushing And Soaking

January 30, 2015

Just wondering ---- At times, as I empty a pen and get ready to flush and soak it, I hold it nib down over the sink and bring it down quickly, with force, to get the last bit of ink out before putting it in water to flush and soak. I always get more ink than one would expect to come out into the sink. I do this until very little ink comes out. ----- Is this bad --- is it hard on a pen?

Excuse me it this is a silly question.

C. S.

January 30, 2015

I think it is probably harder on your wrist and/or arm than on the pen. If you can remove the section or nib, blowing through it with your mouth or a bulb is also very effective...probably more so.

January 30, 2015

You need to make a salad spinner centrifuge. I have a powered one, but still use the one in the thread for large pens. Shaking the pen down works, but it's better to wrap a paper towel around the end of the pen to catch the ink, and less chance of whacking the nib against the side or edge of the sink. It also saves your wife's kitchen curtains - no ink dots.

January 30, 2015

Does the pen always stay firmly inside the tube in the salad spinner?

January 31, 2015

I gotta make me one of those spinner dryers.

It is so much easier and less worrying than shaking/whipping the pen to get water/ink out of the feed.

Edited January 31, 2015 by ac12

January 31, 2015

As long as it doesn't turn into sink spear it'll be OK. )

Glenn

January 31, 2015

NO, it won't harm the pen, unless your grip slips. Then, DISASTER !

There actually is not much ink in the nib / feed. What you see is quality ink, coloring a lot

of water. I would just flush well.

January 31, 2015

Does the pen always stay firmly inside the tube in the salad spinner?

Centripetal force holds the pen down in the holder - nib out of course. On V2 I wove a piece of acetate between the ribs of the basket across the end of the pen holder so that the nib would not go through the end and scrape the bowl of the salad spinner. There's an article in I think it's the October 2010 issue of Pennant where I go into detail on how to build them. That's in the PCA library. I need to scan that someday and put it on my website (authors keep copyright). The only time I've had any kind of problem was when I had a very heavy, very large pen, and that was mostly with it being unbalanced.