Breaking In Fountain Pens

[minddance]

we buy a new fountain pen and sometimes it does not write in a way that pleases us. Apart from checking for the technical aspects (nib alignment, bad nib grind, flow) and correcting them, what else do you do?

[sandy101]

Write with it daily, for at least two weeks. Ink flow and lubrication seems to improve after two weeks of writing.

 

Also check the paper - not all nibs respond equally to all types of paper. Most of my nibs love Clairefontaine, but not all of them.

[Chrissy]

I agree, some pens just seem to suddenly improve after a couple of weeks.

[Uncial]

I don't know if it's coincidence or not but a Skippy, ink stingy, cc ink forcing 2 weeks almost always seems to happen for me with pens that have ebonite feeds. After the teething period they all write perfectly fine ever after.....so long as I behave.

[jar]

Fountain pens don't break in though fountain pen users sometimes do.

[Bo Bo Olson]

The break in of a fountain pen is a myth....it's the user getting use to the fountain pen.

 

Of course if you are really, really Ham Fisted you can bend the nib a bit....and nibs are not made to be bent permanently. The tipping lasted in days of One Man, One Pen, some 7-10 years of constant daily 8 hour use....so a few days is not going to wear the tipping to fit you.

xxxx

 

Hold your fountain pen after/behind the big index knuckle, not before like a ball point.

 

Holding it behind the index knuckle allows the nib to float and glide in a small puddle of ink...needing no pressure to do so. Holding behind the knuckle gives you more surface area of the bottom of the nib....so the pen slides easier.

Holding before the big knuckle like a ball point, you are digging a little grand canyon....the nib is delivering less ink..makes for a real tiny puddle .. .so the flow is lots less....so you have to push the nib.....which you will be doing if you hold and push like a ball point. Using a ball point is like plowing the south forty without the mule.

 

Holding behind the knuckle is like ice/roller blade skating....flowing along.

 

How light should you hold your pen.....so a passing baby can steal it out of your hand like candy.

 

 

Let the pen decide if it wants to rest at 45 degrees right after the big index knuckle or rest at 40 degrees at the start of the web of the thumb.

Trying to make a pen stay at a set angle, 45 degrees means you need to add pressure....fountain pens requires absolutely no pressure, unlike having to force a little ball to move like in a ball point.

No pressure all that is needed, just enough to touch the paper.

 

If it wants to be at 45 degrees fine.....if it wants to be at 40 degrees fine.....if it is a big long heavy pen (metal?) let it rest in the pit of your thumb at 35 degrees....that will take pressure off the tip....letting it slide on top of the paper, instead of digging into the paper.

 

Hold it very lightly like holding a baby featherless bird.

Don't make baby bird paste.

 

Writing is 1/3 nib width/flex, 1/3 paper and 1/3 ink, and in that order.

 

80g/20pound Copy paper is minimum.....90g allows shading....and you don't have to put that paper in your printer. Yes, it costs twice as much....but is 6 times the fun....good for shading ink...for you ...next week.

Do Not Use Ink Jet Paper!!!! It is designed for fast absorption so feathers with fountain pen ink.

Use laser paper......Laser&Ink Jet is a compromise paper.

 

Never ever use expensive Ink Jet ink in your pen....it's made for ink jets....not fountain pens....and it causes problems.

Edited January 21, 2018 by Bo Bo Olson

[PAKMAN]

Many times the fix is as easy as a good flush with water or 1 part ammonia to 10 parts water.

[SoulSamurai]

Fountain pens don't break in though fountain pen users sometimes do.

One of my first fountain pens was a Lilliput, and it was unuseable. Literally would just stop and start randomly as I tried to write with it. Flushing the nib did not solve the problem.

 

Then, after about a month of intermittent attempts to write with it, it just suddenly started working fine.

 

So yes, sometimes fountain pens DO "break in", or something to that effect anyway. Just because it hasn't happened to you doesn't mean that it's a myth.

[ParkerDuofold]

Hi all,

 

I'm one of the poor ignorant soul's that believe in the possibility of a "break-in" period... feeds need time to get saturated... channels and fins may have a speck or two of debris and/or oil/grease that the flush left behind... or it may be as simple as waiting for Jupiter to line-up with Venus.

 

 

- Anthony

[chromantic]

Not so much breaking in pens, I've found, as breaking in inks, the sheening ones to be specific. It may take a few days - and a little evaporation, perhaps - before the sheen begins to manifest itself, both on the page and a thin, reflective coating on the feed, subtle with some inks but quite pronounced with others (Lamy Coral)..

Edited January 22, 2018 by chromantic

[Bluey]

For me it's given a thorough flush, as always, and then plain sailing from there on with all my Japanese pens.

One of my first fountain pens was a Lilliput, and it was unuseable. Literally would just stop and start randomly as I tried to write with it. Flushing the nib did not solve the problem.

Then, after about a month of intermittent attempts to write with it, it just suddenly started working fine.

So yes, sometimes fountain pens DO "break in", or something to that effect anyway. Just because it hasn't happened to you doesn't mean that it's a myth.

It IS a myth. There is no systematic progressive change in the nib or pen that takes place.

You must have changed something on it yourself to get it to write, otherwise why would you continue to write with a pen that doesn't work. It doesn't do it by itself.

There is no gold at the end of a rainbow.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Bluey

[SoulSamurai]

I don't have any need to 'break in' pens any more because I only buy Japanese now.

 

It IS a myth. There is no systematic progressive change in the nib or pen that takes place.

 

You must have changed something on it yourself to get it to write, otherwise why would you continue to write with a pen that doesn't work. It doesn't do it by itself.

 

There is no gold at the end of a rainbow.

 

I did not change anything. Somehow, through those first few weeks of use, something changed in the pen. Maybe a small blockage eventually dissolved or worked it's way out, maybe the constant increase and decrease of pressure on the nib from writing very slowly shifted it's position (like screws can work their way out under vibrations) into something better; I don't know why but the pen started working better after a few weeks of normal use. FULL STOP.

 

Again, just because it hasn't happened to you doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and it's frankly insulting to me to be told that something that I know to have happened "did not happen" by someone who was not there.

[jar]

 

I did not change anything. Somehow, through those first few weeks of use, something changed in the pen. Maybe a small blockage eventually dissolved or worked it's way out, maybe the constant increase and decrease of pressure on the nib from writing very slowly shifted it's position (like screws can work their way out under vibrations) into something better; I don't know why but the pen started working better after a few weeks of normal use. FULL STOP.

 

Again, just because it hasn't happened to you doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and it's frankly insulting to me to be told that something that I know to have happened "did not happen" by someone who was not there.

Sorry if you got insulted by the truth but my remarks were made based on well over a half century of using quite literally many hundreds of pens. Yes Virginia, things like dried ink or leftover manufacturing artifacts can get flushed out but that has nothing to do with "breaking in" a fountain pen.

 

Again, my apologies if the truth insults you.

[SoulSamurai]

Sorry if you got insulted by the truth but my remarks were made based on well over a half century of using quite literally many hundreds of pens. Yes Virginia, things like dried ink or leftover manufacturing artifacts can get flushed out but that has nothing to do with "breaking in" a fountain pen.

 

Again, my apologies if the truth insults you.

 

Wow. OK.

 

Let's start with the obvious: I don't know what your definition of "breaking in" is, but for me, if a pen starts off with problems, then those problems go away after a brief period of normal use (without any deliberate effort to fix those problems), I would have thought that falls under the definition of "breaking in", regardless of why it happens. Tell you what, how about we avoid the term "breaking in" since we don't seem to have the same definition of what it means, and instead call it "a change in the writing characteristics of the pen who's cause is not always clear but that arises as a result of normal use and and not as a result of a deliberate effort to change the writing characteristics of said pen"?

 

Second of all: it doesn't matter if you've been using pens for a hundred years, two hundred years, or ten thousand years: just because you haven't experienced something doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it only means you haven't experienced it. It might suggest that the phenomenon in question is rare, but it proves exactly nothing. An infinite number of negative results does not invalidate a single positiive result. Well, it's all anecdotal and not scientific anyway I guess.

 

 

I'm going to stop here because this conversation is escalating unnecessarily. I am curious about what "virginia" means though.

Edited January 22, 2018 by SoulSamurai

[mitto]

My FPs do not 'break in'. They sometimes are just slow to gear up giving the desired performance.

[LizEF]

I'm going to stop here because this conversation is escalating unnecessarily. I am curious about what "virginia" means though.

 

It's a reference to "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Clause."

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_Virginia,_there_is_a_Santa_Claus

[SoulSamurai]

 

It's a reference to "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Clause."

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_Virginia,_there_is_a_Santa_Claus

 

Huh. Thanks for explaining that. In my many, many years of listening to and speaking English I have never experienced that use of the word. And yet it turns out that it can be used that way. Interesting.

[Mech-for-i]

well, my experience is both the pen and the user would need breaking in ... and experimentation helps .. going with different ink / paper, write at least a couple fill and adjust / tune the pen as well as one's own posture / grip and the general way one writes ... even a custom made pen require that even if its custom made for that particular user ..

[ReadyFireAim]

I'm going with yes...They do break in.

 

I've had to rough up tips in order to get them to write and after awhile they become smoother and do not skip.

I've had feeds that rub due to flexing at a critical location and it changes flow enough where I have to pull it out a bit.

Nibs get wetter after becoming "seasoned".

After awhile of having to bend my right tine back on a new nib (or the left one up to meet it) I find that I don't have to do it anymore.

I don't clean my pens unless I have to and they sometimes slowly get drier as they get dirtier and all of a sudden that stops happening???

 

That's just the stuff off the top of my head.

 

As always YMMV

[Krulle]

shiny paper tends to contain titanium dioxide .... which is rather hard material .... so it can polish your tip/nib