Newbie Looking To Troubleshoot A Pen.

[Gilraen]

Hello! I'm a newbie to fountain pens with a bit of a silly question. I'll try to give as much detail as I can. I got a Jinhao X450, a Pilot Metropolitan, and a few ink samples about a week and a half ago. The Metro seems to be working fine, but the Jinhao is giving me a bit of trouble. I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong so I can fix it. Photos are of my working with it doing some summer homework from my viola instructor. I've got no idea what the paper is. When we switched to a new kind at the office I work for, I was told I could bring the rest of the old stuff home for personal use. It's thicker than copy paper, and I used the same paper for both pens, so I don't THINK that it is an issue with the paper itself.

 

I tried De Atramentis' J.S. Bach in the Jinhao first (picture one, please forgive my messy handwriting!) Worked perfectly! Fell in love with both pen AND ink. Finished what I needed that ink for, put the rest back into the sample bottle, rinsed the pen (with RODI water) until it ran clear, and refilled it with Robert Oster's Summer Storm. That's when it started giving me a bit of trouble. It worked fine for about a page, but started getting to where the ink was getting lighter the more I wrote with it, and after a while would get light enough that I'd need to go over it to be able to read it. (pic two. Best I could get, you can definitely see it starting out dark, then getting lighter, though.) Finished the bit I needed that ink for, and did the same, putting Noodler's Kung Te-Cheng into it after I diluted the ink (three parts ink, one part RODI). Went from being able to read it pretty well when I started writing with it, to picture three (on plain copy paper), where it's nearly illegible. The lines on the side of the photo are standard school-grade mechanical pencil graphite. It's definitely not the dilution in the Noodler's ink, you can actually see a bit of the readable part in the top of picture two on another sheet of paper.

 

In total, I've written about fourteen pages between both pens, so not a lot. I have not dropped my pen, and when I looked at it, it appeared my nib was not bent/I couldn't see anything stuck in it. I was thinking that it might be that I had just rinsed the pen before I switched inks, but if that was the case, wouldn't any little bit of water left in the pen's feed have just mixed with the ink when I was filling it, and not left it so inconsistent? I think picture three was taken after I'd written about a page. It also seemed that if I capped the pen and started to write more a few minutes later that it would do the same thing, start normal, then fade out. I'm pretty sure it isn't that the ink was drying in the pen, since I didn't leave it uncapped for longer than a few seconds without actively writing, and I mixed and used the Noodler's ink today. I also grabbed the Metro out to finish a bit that I did not want to put off, and though it's been about a week since I've written with it, it didn't have any problems. Any ideas? I just took the Jinhao apart, rinsed it, and left it to dry in pieces, which I'm hoping will solve the issue, but is there a way to tell what caused it in the first place so that I don't end up having it happen again, or (especially if the rinse does not fix it) to keep it from happening in the future?

 

[Sasha Royale]

Modern manufacture uses molded plastic. The coating that prevents the formed plastic from adhering to the mold is called "mold release agent". Often there is manufacturing residue in the ink flow path. Flush. Rinse. Dry.

 

Stir five or six drops of DAWN dish detergent into three ounces of room temperature water. With the converter installed, draw the solution through the nib, into the converter. Expel. repeat eight to ten times. Rinse the same way, using clean water. Expel all water. Assemble the pen. Wrap the nib in a paper towel, and shake like a medical thermometer. Wrap the nib in dry paper and stand the pen nib down, for 20 minutes, to "wick" out residual water. Re-ink the pen.

 

I can't promise that this will solve the problem, but at least, we will know that the problem is NOT dirt.

[welch]

Further: if you are anywhere near Manhattan, come to the Big Apple Pen Club, a group that "enables" fountain pen use, acquisition, and repair. We meet the second Thursday of each month at Bard Hall, near Columbus Circle. Tim (tmenyc) and Josh (jjlax) usually announce the meeting about a week in advance.

 

This was the June meeting: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/323706-june-big-apple-pen-club-meeting/

[Gilraen]

Sadly I'm in the middle of nowhere Florida, so not near Manhattan. I will try the Dawn trick once I can get to a grocery store. Thank you for the suggestion!

[displacermoose]

It may be your pen/ink combo. Try using the Bach again and see what happens. My bottle is very well behaved, while KTC is a clog monster without the correct pen and some alchemy (I love it, but I have no illusions). I don't own Summer Storm, but a couple of the RO inks I've tried are very dry. Not all inks work well in all pens.

[SoulSamurai]

My highly uneducated guess would be that your guess was correct and there was water trapped in the feed after your first wash (which is part of what the feed is supposed to do), and that's watering down your ink. I've seen something similar myself after washing a pen and not giving it enough time to dry, though it wasn't nearly as bad as in your photos. But now I leave pens for at least 24 hours to dry after rinsing them out (at least if I can't see the feed to see if it's still wet or not), and I haven't had that problem anymore.

 

BTW you mention that you "mixed and used the Noodler's ink today"; I'm not sure what you mean by that? Are you mixing different inks together?

Edited June 23, 2017 by SoulSamurai

[Gilraen]

With the Noodler's, I have read that you can dilute it 3:1 ink to water if you'd like to use it in a pen besides the one it came with, so that is what I tried. Worked nicely for a bit, then went dead.

 

I let the pen dry out all the way, so I'll try the Bach again. I kinda hope it's not that the ink, since I really like the look of a lot of the Oster inks. If it does turn out to be that, is there a way to fix it?

[Erik Dalton]

My guess is that your problem is from mixing inks that don't play well with each other. Jinhao 450's are pretty dependable pens to write with. Sometimes the chemicals in one ink create a chemical reaction when exposed to certain other inks. It is true that some pens like certain inks better than others. It's not you, pens are picky. I have expensive Montblancs that only like Visconti Blue ink. Go figure....

 

I would suggest you remove the nib and feed. Add them along with the section and place in a bath of 1part nonsudsing amonia, 10 parts distilled water, add a few DROPS, of plain old dawn. Not the antibacterial or any other additives. Soak the parts overnight. Rinse well with water, let it dry thouroughly and reassemble. Fill it with your JS Bach or any other standard de Atramentis inks and stay with them.

Jinhao pens are pretty cheap. Pick up another for your rbt. Oster and Noodler's inks.

You might also take a look at Richardspens.com. Its pretty much our bible around here. Lots of info here. http://www.richardspens.com/index_m.html?page=ref/nibs/primer.htm

Good luck. Get back to us if you run into any more problems.

[Arkanabar]

Eh, Richard Binder has his biases like everybody else. He's top-tier when it comes to pen repair, technology, and troubleshooting, but he's sort of generalized that because use of some fountain pen inks from some brands at times correlate with certain problems in some examples of some pens, then those ink brands ought never to be used by any responsible persons, in any pens, ever.

 

Many of us disagree. I will say that you should educate yourself on the potential hazards of Noodler's Baystate inks, Waterase inks (designed for brush pens, not fountain pens), Kung te Chung, Qin She Huang, Whaleman's Sepia, and Year of the Golden Pig, before using them. But I think any of Noodler's original colors with really prosaic names (Black, Blue, Red, Purple, Green, Brown, Turquoise) ought to be fine, as would Heart of Darkness. Check out multiple reviews and images of inks, and presume that what you see is often a bit different from what you may get.

 

I'll also suggest you learn and carefully consider the potential downsides of iron gall inks, nano-pigment inks, and glitter/ shimmer/ sparkle inks, before using them.

 

I won't venture any opinions on Private Reserve, Robert Oster, or KWZ Inks, as I've never used any of them.

Edited June 24, 2017 by Arkanabar