I have a Waterman fountain pen that I have just started reusing after several years of storage.
I use it for my diary and after a few days the ink flow slows and I have to twist the ink cartridge refill wand to resume writing. As I am a complete novice at looking after my pen I need your help and advice on how to maintain an even ink flow.

Things we have done,
1) soaked the pen nib to clean any dried ink
2) added fresh ink to the cartridge

Thanks
Siobhan

Hi Siobhan,

Welcome to FPN!

You might try using a cartridge instead of the convertor. Sometimes this will help. You could try a more free-flowing ink. Parker Quink flows well.

Cheers,
Tom

Thank you Tom,
I'll try that and see what happens.
Siobhan

In the line of cleaning, try nipping out to the drug-store and getting an ear-cleaning bulb (ask the druggist if you can't spot it). They're like a small turkey baster, and they generate a LOT more pressure in the ink channel than the converter can manage, and form a pretty good seal around the little feed tube at the back of the section. A few squirts with that will degunge amazingly well. I'd also give the 1:10 ammonia:water solution a try when using it, just because you can be sure how well the thing was cleaned when it was last put aside.

Siobhan,

Try what Ernst suggested. It usually fixes the problem you describe. If that doesn't work, use Tom's method and add a lot of patience to the procedure.

I have a pen that had a slow feed. I tried all the usual remedies and nothing seemed to help. Then I filled the pen with blue/black Quink and began to write with the pen. I would write loops and circles on scrap paper. I wrote the pen dry every day, and in a few days, the pen began to write longer and longer. When I no longer had the patience to write the pen dry, I wrote perhaps ten lines with it every two or three days, just to keep fresh ink in the feed. I refused to give up, no matter how aggravated I was with this thing. After six months, I could no longer scribble fast enough to outrun the feed and I pronounced the pen "fixed".

Paddler