Why Do Fountain Pens Skip?

[NewPenMan]

My Jinhao 159 is normally a garden hose; very wet writer. At times no ink comes ought on sheets where it flows easily.

 

Almost seems like there s a kind of resist on the paper; not put there by me. ..spoze it could be skin oil.

 

Sometimes a different pen has no trouble

in the same spot.

 

Other causes?

 

Thanks

Edited February 28, 2015 by NewPenMan

[duki92]

I've heard of issue called "baby bottom" which causes it.

[I like mango cheesecake]

yeah, I want to know too.

 

one of my pens has the odd downstroke skipping. It happens about once every two or three sentences. I protect the writing surface with another piece of paper, so it cannot be hand oils.

[NewPenMan]

So something is interrupting flow

[Randal6393]

I think duki92 may be on the right track. Every so often I have a pen that doesn't work quite right on the downstroke. Usually is fixed by a few strokes on the whetstone. Before you run out and get a new whetstone, will add that I am using italic nibs only. The standard ball nib is a much more difficult correction, IMHO. If you don't grind your own nibs and suspect baby-bottom, maybe a trip to the nibmeister is in order.

 

Best of luck,

[NewPenMan]

And what is baby bottom?

[Notgatherox]

And what is baby bottom?

 

Baby's bottom is when a nib is oversmoothed and too much tipping material ends up being removed. Since the tipping material is no longer a ball, it skips.

 

 

~Epic

[dneal]

From Richard Binder's nib-smoothing notes:

 

"Makers of expensive pens want their nibs to be extra smooth, and to this end they round the slit edges too far, creating a shape that’s called “baby’s bottom.” A nib with baby’s bottom tends to skip on starting, and it often requires excessive pres- sure to make it write at all. What is happening is that capillary action draws the ink into the tightest part of the slit, and because of the overly rounded edges, that’s too far from the paper."

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

Sometimes caused by folks holding the pen before the big index knuckle like a ball point, rather than behind the big knuckle like a fountain pen.

[torstar]

I never believed in those pens that never once skipped, even after leaving the cap off for six months.

[NewPenMan]

What about the case wherr an over smooth nib is not the fault?

[ac12]

Some times skipping is from an ink that is too dry for the pen, so the ink does not flow down the ink channel very well, and you outrun the ability of the feed to supply ink to the nib.

[Blue_Moon]

And what is baby bottom?

 

Excellent video - SBRE Brown

 

[wimg]

The way you hold a pen is also important. If you look at the baby bottom picture above, for argument's sake imagine that the rounding is such that the ink does reach the paper.

 

Now imagine tilting the pen at an angle. At a certain point, one of the tines will no longer touch the paper. In that case, no ink will reach the paper either. With a BP, since you are writing with a little round steel ball, angle tends to be less of a problem, although you have to press quite hard in order to get ink on the paper.

In order to remedy the above, you have to make sure that you write with a fountain pen always under more or less the same angle in 3 dimensions, unless you want to achieve specific effects. That means that one really needs to write with the entire arm, from the shoulder, and if you're not used to that, you may well end up with skipping occasionally, often at the beginning of the sentence part where you'd start, or towards the end.

This generally is caused by writing with one's hand only, IOW, moving one's hand only for writing, as the pen in your hand will turn and change angle in that case.

Similar things are true for downstrokes - this is most noticeable when writing very quickly, f.e., with signatures.

 

If you have been used to writing with BPs, it may take some unlearning, effectively, but all worth the trouble, as writing with a fountain pen is very beneficial, a sin, will help against the effects of RSI when done properly, whereas writing with a BP will magnify RSI problems.

 

Another cause of skipping is too much pressure. Too much pressure on a nib may lift the nib away from the feed, causing ink to stop flowing as well. Too much pressure may also cause "railroading" before it really skips, i.e., two lines parallel to each other.

 

A well tuned fountain pen effectively needs no pressure to write.

 

It could also be caused by the paper you are using. Some paper, especially the more expensive stuff, not necessarily designed for fountain pens, has a coating, to give it the luxury feel and look. This is not always beneficial to fountain pens, as it may result in skipping occasionally, especially if it gets a little thicker in some places than in others.

 

Finally, hand oils and the effect on fountain pens and writing depends a lot on the nib used as well. You'll generally have fewer problems with wetter writing pens, with sharper nibs, and with very broad nibs . The nibs in between often give the most problems, in my experience .

 

HTH, warm regards, Wim