A couple of Aero-metric "51"s came through the shop this week for refurbishment. They looked pretty good outside, but they wouldn't write. Not even a little bit. When Jim tore them down, he found that they were clogged with dried ink. Clogged full. As in really full, with ink so thick it looked like house paint. The photo here shows what one of the breather tubes looked like after Jim had chipped off the coating of dried ink from about half the tube's length. (He stopped at that point to take the photo.)



After ALL the ink was cleaned out, which involved multiple passes through the sonicator and a good soaking in ammonia for the collectors, the pens went back together prettily, and now they write very nicely.

The point here is that it's much, much better not to let things reach this point...

How long do you reckon that pen had sat with the ink drying out to get to that state?

OUCH, I have seen a couple of really clogged pens, but never that bad..... OUCH

That should encourage one to at least give a bit of flushing now and again. And you have to wonder about someone filling a pen and then setting it aside for a few years; h'mmm...

Yeah, it's pretty bad when you can't even flush a "51"!

I've had a few that I had to soak a while before I felt it was safe to remove the hood -- lots of sticky ink when filled with water.

I do try to flush mine now if I'm gonna leave them unfilled!

Peter

I was under the impression that when inks dried, they reduce themselves to a thin film or some powder, i.e. a full sac of ink will shrink to a very tiny size. If so, how is the situation that you describe possible. Or does this shrinkage only occur for modern inks?

I would imagine allowing the pen to dry out, then refilling with ink instead of flushing. Might not be real fountain pen ink, or might have been Superchrome, too (depending on age and use). Superchrome was the original "saturated" ink, and the dry ink can be difficult to re-dissolve, so it may have accumulated until the pen became too difficult to use. At that point it was tossed into a drawer and left for decades.

Peter

ugh...jolly geez!

I had a 51 a bit like that. I couldn't get the ink in the breather tube to dissolve or pulverise, and ended up drilling the breather tube out using a 0.8mm diameter twist drill in a pin chuck. Unfortunately there was about 6mm solid left in the middle where the drill couldn't get from either end, so I had to shorten the breather tube by that amount.

It works well now.

Regards

Richard.