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I've recently acquired four Optimas. They're beautiful pens and all write very nicely but I'm having a slight problem with one and was wondering if anyone else has experienced this. While all have F nibs, it seems, like Pelikans, the size varies a bit, from almost EF on one, to F on two, to almost M on the 4th. The EF one has a problem with ink starvation - after writing a couple lines, the ink starts to fade and I have to unscrew to piston knob very slightly (barely loosening it) and screw it back, then it's fine until the next go 'round. None of the others exhibits this. I have this one inked with Yama-guri but I'm using Take-sumi in another so I don't think its's an ink issue. For now, I'll try leaving it screwed down not so tightly to see if that helps

I've been into the hobby for 3 or so years and have amassed a moderate collection of pens. Yet, a single issue continues to bother me and I can't tell if this is just symptomatic of fountain pens in general or if I've simple been buying duds. Without fail, it seems that my pens' ink flow will weaken the more I write in a sitting, to the point that some of them even completely dry up and I have to push more ink into the feed to get it writing again. This would not be an issue if it was just one of my pens, but it seems all of my pens have this issue to some extent with the exception of a Pilot Custom 74 with an EF nib which, I assume, is simply because the air exchange works well on a pen with such a fine nib, as well as a similar Pilot Metropolitan (maybe Pilots are just exceptionally good pens). I have tried inks famed specifically for their wet-flowing properties (Private Reserve Tanzanite comes to mind) as well as adjusting adjusting feeds and nibs but the issue persists. It seems the moment I sit down for a long writing session the feed will eventually dry up and require some fiddling to get running again. This is not even an issue exclusive to my modern, plastic-feed based pens, as I had the same issues (leading to skipping rather than total drying out) in a Parker 51 with an ebonite feed and an Indian pen with an ebonite feed. Alongside this, I have had issues in both very fine pens that demand light ink flows and extremely wet, wide nibs. Similarly, I have had issues in both eyedropper and converter-filled pens, even after thoroughly washing them and even placing a ball inside to break up surface tension. It seems, regardless of what I do with my pens, air is simply either not exchanged fast enough for a constant flow or not exchanged at all. This is especially frustrating because it fills my writing sessions with dread as I simply have to anticipate and watch as the flow weakens, and it defeats the purpose of using high-capacity pens since I have to waste time fiddling with them anyways. Is there some issue with my writing style (I tend to write relatively fast, but nothing insane) or is this an issue inherent to fountain pens? Do people not write multiple pages in one sitting, as I see this issue very infrequently discussed as well?

Hello everyone here at FPN. In the past I shared with you a thread in which I expressed my desire to obtain Montblanc 149 since for me it had always been a pretty beautiful fountain pen that from my children I longed to obtain. The price of a new MB 149 is high, so I decided to get a used one to "save a lot of money" and to my misfortune it was the opposite. I noticed one that I found here at the fountain pen network in the USD 420 classifieds and I contacted the seller and asked him if he had the pen available and he told me that it was not and he showed me another one in the private messages and he told me that It was a condition near mint, fine point and it worked amazing, so I decided to buy it and with it the beginning of the curse and misfortune. The pen came to my house and I was completely excited but when I used it, my performance had completely disappointed me, I wrote horribly dry and cut the lines in several places. So furious I decided to start the claim via paypal to get the refund, everything was going well and I just had to send it to the country of which Poland is and then paypal gave me my money. But suddenly everything got terrible against me because of the fault of the postal service of my country since they sent the pen to the United States instead of Poland and according to them they were going to solve this problem but no, they did it again and I lost the Paypal case because of him and the guy who scammed me went unpunished. So I ran out of my money and with a defective product so I resigned myself to staying with her and decided to send her to a nibmeister to fix these problems and he told me that the nib tines were too tight and that the tip was wrong made and deformed and that is why he wrote so badly. So he told me that he gave the correct shape to the tip and increased its ink flow to write wet. The pen just arrived a few days ago after his visit with the nibmeister and indeed the nib writes quite wet but my problems are not over yet, now what happens is that the fountain pen when I just recharged writes quite wet and smooth and without any failure in the strokes but ... after a while it begins to write something drier and begins to omit strokes. Before sending the pen with the nibmeister it already presented a flow that was decreasing and terrible but I attributed it more to the nib. So now the problem is the feed? The pen suffers a lot from ink starvation after a while writing, in my opinion it is quite unacceptable even my cheapest pens do not show these symptoms. Then he sold me a pen with nib and defective feed? .. what a scammer was that guy who sold it to me. I am currently devastated I have invested this pen enough money to almost reach the price of a new MB149. I don't even know what it has if the fountain pen needs a new feed and I should send it to the Montblanc service, or if I leave it in oblivion, pure frustration has brought me, the dream turned into a nightmare !! All I wanted was for my dream pen to write as well as it looks.

One of my two Parker 51 Vacumatics is going to need to be sent out, but before I do that, I'm trying to understand better what is likely to be wrong with it. The filling mechanism appears to be fine. Measuring the amount of ink it takes in by filling from a vial, it takes in a little more than a ml. There are no apparent leaks when I carry it around. I have soaked it in water overnight a number of times, and flushed it many, many times with water. When I fill it, it will write well enough, perhaps a bit dry, for four or so journal pages, then it will just seize up and not write any more. Wetting the nib will help briefly, but then it will seize up again and refuse to be restarted. However, the ink is still in there. If I hold it over something and work the plunger at this point, a lot of ink comes out. It's similar to what you will see in a C/C pen sometimes, where there is plenty of ink left in the converter, but an air bubble or something keeps it from getting to the feed, and the pen dries up. But how would that happen with the Vacumatic mechanism? I've had this pen about a year and half. Bought it from an eBay seller who had supposedly restored it himself. The problem did not immediately become apparent, and it's a bit late now to go back to that seller. I'm thinking that he sold it in good faith, but got something wrong with the repair. Before I send this off to Danny Fudge or someone, it would be interesting to read opinions on what could have gone wrong.