Filling a Hero 329

[roguehippie]

First, I've got to thank Todd Nussbaum of isellpens.com for his fast, friendly service!

 

I purchased a Hero 329 and two bottles of ink. The Hero is the first pen I've ever owned which fills from a bottle, and I have a question:

 

After reading several posts about these pens and filling them, I'm wondering, if I remove the metal body surrounding the ink bladder, and then squeeze the bladder, filling it, how full should the bladder be? After several squeezes with the nib well under the level of the ink, I seem to only get a trace of ink up into the actual bladder (past the nib and lower half of the pen). Is the lower half (the half always shrouded in plastic) filling with ink? Is that enough? I'm patient and can continue to squeeze the day away, however, I'm not sure if I need to.

 

Any advice would be appreciated!

[HenryLouis]

First, I've got to thank Todd Nussbaum of isellpens.com for his fast, friendly service!

 

I purchased a Hero 329 and two bottles of ink. The Hero is the first pen I've ever owned which fills from a bottle, and I have a question:

 

After reading several posts about these pens and filling them, I'm wondering, if I remove the metal body surrounding the ink bladder, and then squeeze the bladder, filling it, how full should the bladder be? After several squeezes with the nib well under the level of the ink, I seem to only get a trace of ink up into the actual bladder (past the nib and lower half of the pen). Is the lower half (the half always shrouded in plastic) filling with ink? Is that enough? I'm patient and can continue to squeeze the day away, however, I'm not sure if I need to.

 

Any advice would be appreciated!

 

I believe it's only the 616 in which the sleeve can be removed. I have the 330 which is similar and the sleeve can't be removed. If you do get the sleeve off, try and get it to about 3/4 full because that's how much I can get mine full.

[wallylynn]

First, I've got to thank Todd Nussbaum of isellpens.com for his fast, friendly service!

 

I purchased a Hero 329 and two bottles of ink. The Hero is the first pen I've ever owned which fills from a bottle, and I have a question:

 

After reading several posts about these pens and filling them, I'm wondering, if I remove the metal body surrounding the ink bladder, and then squeeze the bladder, filling it, how full should the bladder be? After several squeezes with the nib well under the level of the ink, I seem to only get a trace of ink up into the actual bladder (past the nib and lower half of the pen). Is the lower half (the half always shrouded in plastic) filling with ink? Is that enough? I'm patient and can continue to squeeze the day away, however, I'm not sure if I need to.

 

Any advice would be appreciated!

 

First off, my kudos to Todd as well! I just got my Hero 360s and inks on Monday in just 3 business days!

 

Since it was my first sac/bladder pen, like you I was squeezing and releasing the plate and basically nothing was happening. Some ink was sucked in to let it work, but I couldn't see any in the bladder.

 

Playing with it a bit, I did discover that my metal sleeve and plate does come off quite easily. Though be careful as it can be somewhat sharp. Now I could see the bladder clearly had no ink (I guess the section had ink enough to write though). Careful squeezing on and off for another 5 minutes made no difference, nothing got sucked in.

 

What did the trick, and is unintuitive, is to squeeze hard and release fast. (I used my index and middle finger to squeeze the entire length of the bladder) Bubbles will go into the ink, and ink will shoot up the tube inside the bladder. A couple of times and the bladder will be mostly full.

 

Practice with a cup of water first. Ink and air does come out of the pen doing this and has the chance to be messy.

[ThaIwan]

I have several Hero squeezers (329, 616, 100). I fill them by squeezing, give time to fill it up, squee again give time....do this a number of times and next I lift the pen up (nib up) and squeeze to push air out, keep it squeezed dip it in ink and let it fill further and do this a couple of times. That seems to give a good amount of ink.

[roguehippie]

Thanks to all for the info! I've managed to get the bladder nearly full . . . the "rapid" squeezing technique seemed to work best!

 

Thanks again!