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I Can't Seem To Fill My Vanishing Point Converter Correctly


cambridgecafe

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I have a new Pilot Vanishing Point, and I've refilled the twist converter about 4 times, and it never seems to fill completely, even if I dip the entire nib (including the hole) in. When I use it the ink runs out in a few hours. Am I doing something wrong? Could I possibly have a defective pen?

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No, your pen isn't defective. There's a knack to filling one. I got great advice (seemed to have been copied and pasted for the newbie AKA me) over in the Pilot forum. You could probably do a search for the instructions in that forum.

"The pen is the tongue of the mind." Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Don Quixote

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No, they're hard to fill. I usually end up filling the converter directly. Now that I have a syringe, it occurs to me that now I should just pop the cart that came with it in and refill it.

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i hate them so I don't use them. I cleaned out pilot carts (don't like regular pilot ink) and I refill those with the inks of my choice. (Pilot Iroshizuku or Noodler's Violet Vote)

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I have a new Pilot Vanishing Point, and I've refilled the twist converter about 4 times, and it never seems to fill completely, even if I dip the entire nib (including the hole) in. When I use it the ink runs out in a few hours. Am I doing something wrong? Could I possibly have a defective pen?

Well you do need to dip it farther than the hole in my experience. Try doing it so you go almost all the way up to the cylindrical body of the unit (basically submerge all of the black plastic)

Pelikan m200 F nib - Noodler's Midway Blue

TWSBI Diamond 530 EF nib - Noodler's X-Feather

Pilot Decimo F nib - Noodler's North African Violet

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Normal! Dunk it as far as the black on the feed goes and that's about all you can do. Yep chances are you'll have a void and can't see the ink.

We can trust the heart of a man by his treatment of animals. - Immanual Kant

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i hate them so I don't use them. I cleaned out pilot carts (don't like regular pilot ink) and I refill those with the inks of my choice. (Pilot Iroshizuku or Noodler's Violet Vote)

 

I do the same thing. It's a lot easier and the carts have decent capacity.

~ Manisha

 

"A traveller am I and a navigator, and everyday I discover a new region of my soul." ~ Kahlil Gibran

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I use old carts too, they hold more ink and easy enough to refill using a blunt needle/ syringe combo.

 

But since the question is regarding the converter and how to fill, I'll move on to the topic at hand.

 

As has been said, you'll need to submerge the unit well past the breather hole on the nib or you're not going to get enough vacuum.

What's odd is that the original Namiki converter filling instructions clearly say to "Dip the pen in ink up to the hole in the nib" @ line #2, yet then goes on to mention wiping off any ink that's on the collar which is where the nib should be inserted to [see attached below].

 

Another thing you can try, I do this with all my converters and even my Pelikan piston fillers at times [when I'm not syringe-filling]...

  1. Once pen converter is as full as possible, hold it nib-up or rest it somewhere so nib is topmost, or you could gently finger-tap the sides to get ink to flow downward if it's being stubborn [like plucking the air out of a syringe].
  2. Allow ink to run back into converter [so any air is now at side opposite of piston gasket or closest to feed rear], gently twist filler knob until a small amount of ink is seen coming back out of the nib, this expels extra air, leave piston there.
  3. Invert and re-insert nib into ink and twist converter again to fill, check for air but by now your converter should be pretty much free of air, just about as full as it's going to get.

OK, while that works for me it's also good to keep in mind that if there's no air space in the converter there's no place for ink to flow back to when the nib is upright.

This could allow the excess ink to flow from the nib into the pen barrel, leading to inky pockets or fingers or carry case or purse or... you get the idea, inky mess basically.

A little bit of air space is a good thing, I like my pens as full as possible too but I found this out the hard way that no air at all in reservoir regardless of type often means an inky mess waiting to happen.

post-26904-0-71880200-1303067831.jpg

Edited by Inka

“I view my fountain pens & inks as an artist might view their brushes and paints.

They flow across paper as a brush to canvas, transforming my thoughts into words and my words into art.

There is nothing else like it; the art of writing and the painting of words!”

~Inka~ [scott]; 5 October, 2009

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I got too many inky fingers from pushing air out of my piston-converter VP, so I switched to exercising the piston fully five times, which is just as effective and much neater. The way to tell the level in that pen is to hold it horizontally.

 

Then I switched to the squeeze converter (opaque; the one that has a press bar on one side only) and never went back to the piston converter! It has almost the capacity of the cartridges. I just refill it every two or three sessions of using that pen.

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Pilot CON-50 converters (and the other ones as well) must be fitted very tightly into the pen, or you will end up just loading ink bubbles and not ink. Been there, done that... :bonk:

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This might be a spoiler, but I use a cartridge and refill it from an eyedropper to get extra writing capacity (and the refill is -much- faster!).

 

David B.

Speech recognition software is not nearly as fun as breaking out a dip pen!

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And I use a syringe to refill the converter --- take it off, refill, put it back on.

--

Glenn (love those pen posses)

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  • 8 years later...

Very easy to fill the converter using a syringe or eye dropper. Twist the converter all the way open, empty the syringe, pop the converter back in and voila! Sometimes you have to shake it down once or twice to get the ink flowing, because you've bypassed the nib. Be careful not to overfill.

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The Con-40 is notoriously difficult to fill. I have been refilling cartridges lately, but unlike others I find the process to be a bit tedious. You have to be really careful with the syringe to not overfill the cartridge (a surprisingly small amount of ink will overfill the cart.) and of course you have to carry a syringe with you. There seems to me to be some inherent "social risk" to refilling a pen this way as well--you'd no doubt get some strange looks if you were caught by a coworker refilling your pen, and you can probably imagine the bewilderment when you tell them "No, really, I'm using this to fill my pen!"

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I have a new Pilot Vanishing Point, and I've refilled the twist converter about 4 times, and it never seems to fill completely, even if I dip the entire nib (including the hole) in. When I use it the ink runs out in a few hours. Am I doing something wrong? Could I possibly have a defective pen?

Pick up a Pinider Snorkel. I can fill my Con-40 converter in two draws with one. It fits most of my other converters and generally speaking is a tidier way to fill a pen.

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Most I get into mine with a standard fill is .35g. I've tried and tried to love this pen and failed. Mine has a medium nib and gushes ink, particularly straight after a fill to the point where it feathers on all but the shiniest papers. With the tiny converter volume it hardly lasts a day's writing. The VP is one of the very few pens I regret buying.

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I usually refill a cartridge for mine. It lasts much longer, Pilot carts reseal (so refilled carts can be carried around), and I can take the silver protector thing off and actually see the ink level.

Yet another Sarah.

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  • 1 month later...

Pick up a Pinider Snorkel. I can fill my Con-40 converter in two draws with one. It fits most of my other converters and generally speaking is a tidier way to fill a pen.

I have a snorkel but haven't been able to figure out how to use it with my VP. Any chance you could post pictures? The Pineider Snorkel doesn't seem to fit with some of my pens, and when I try to pretend it does I end up with the mess I was trying to avoid by using the snorkel. :huh:

Festina lente

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

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I have a snorkel but haven't been able to figure out how to use it with my VP. Any chance you could post pictures? The Pineider Snorkel doesn't seem to fit with some of my pens, and when I try to pretend it does I end up with the mess I was trying to avoid by using the snorkel. :huh:

I can't seem to upload pictures anymore. No matter how far below the size limit I get an error message. I snapped a pic and put it up on we transfer

 

https://we.tl/t-5lbGyihbdc

 

It should last for a few days up there. Let me know if you need a re post. The rubber o-ring on the snorkel will fit inside the mouth of a con-40. It's a little snug, but it works. So I use it for my Pilot, my GVFC and my Waterman. It doesn't fit perfectly in a Waterman so I totally understand how it can be a little messy.

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