I just bought my second Craftsman Tip Dip pen at a flea market. This pen has exactly the same problem my first one had: the feed is constricted, possibly with dried ink or ink sludge. It will write well for a while after resting overnight nib-down. Then it slowly dries up and quits after a couple of pages. Combinations of ammonia, vibration, solvents, and strong language are of no avail. If I put really thin ink in the pen, like vintage Peacock Blue Scrip, it writes OK indefinitely. The feed chokes on anything thicker. After using the pen for several months with thin ink, the constriction has apparently washed away and the pen will digest any ink I care to use.

Is this a common problem with Tip Dip pens, or have I just been a victim of coincidence?

Paddler

Hardly exclusive to Sheaffer TipDips, nearly every type of pen I've run across has one example with this particular problem.

On some old Wearever's with Waterman feeds, the problem was that the slots on the side were obscured, so that no ink will flow into the pen while air is flowing back up the feed. Shouldn't be this exact problem on a TipDip since it has a newer feed design, but I'd guess the blockage is still in the ink feed slot. This slot is fairly small, and ink will "burb" down the air return channel if you shake the pen. This results in flooding followed by starvation, as you have noticed.

The proper cure, if using something "watery" like Skrip ink won't fix it, is to knock out the feed and clear all the slots of dired crud.

The same behavior is seen on Parker "51"s with precipitated junk in the collector. It's common for the ink feed slit to be almost completely clogged, so that ink can only enter through the air bleed in the breather.

Peter

Maybe I am missing something here. The pens I have this problem with have screw-out nib/feed units like Esties. Are they called "Addipoints"? The collar seems pretty fragile to try to disassemble with a drift.

The sole TipDip I've got runs like a mad hosepipe, so the problem isn't universal and is hopefully correctable.