Pens Drying Out

[Miles R.]

I can accept that a fountain pen that is left unused for a week or more is likely to balk when uncapped and applied to the page. I can even accept its doing that after a few days of disuse. What I cannot accept is that most of my pens will dry up when I have merely let them stand unused for a single day or, in the worst cases, even just a few hours. I wonder if there is anything that I can do about this.

 

Repeatedly flicking the pen downward sharply is hazardous: even if one replaces the cap first, so that there is no danger of hitting the nib against something or splattering ink about, one may set loose ink into the cap and on the head of the pen, staining one's fingers when one removes the cap to write. Cranking up the convertor may get the ink flowing again, but it creates the risk of spillage as well as that of excessive ink flow. In any case, it is irksome to have to struggle with one's pen when what one wants to do is simply to write something down.

 

I do not have this problem with all my pens. My Pelikan 600 has never once let me down. Though I have not done the experiment, I sometimes think that I could leave it unused for a year and be able to write with it the instant that I uncapped it. My Waterman Carène can be left unused certainly for a few days without drying up. Of course, those are (by my standards anyway) expensive luxury items: one cannot expect the same performance from a steel-nibbed Chinese-made pen costing under $20. But the odd fact is that the very cheapest fountain pen that I own, a Hero 616, has been among the best performers in this respect. I have never put it to the test of seeing how long I can leave it without its drying out, as I generally use it a few times a week, but so far, it has never failed me. Also, back in the day when I used a steel-nibbed Sheaffer, I never had to deal with its drying out as long as it was inked.

 

For dealing with this problem in my other pens, all of them steel-nibbed Chinese-made ones, I have recently tried to make it a habit to write a bit with every one of them that I have inked, every day. Even so, I find that this is not enough to keep the ink flowing with some of them. I have found the Jinhao X450, of which I have owned several, to be among the most serious offenders, though I have others that are not much better.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions, or is this just a nuisance that I have to live with?

 

By the way, I use a great variety of inks, by Herbin, Diamine, Noodler's, and Pelikan, and I have not observed that the choice of ink makes any difference to the phenomenon that I have described.

[jar]

Buy better pens and keep fewer inked.

[david1600]

I know that if you leave Waterman Cartriges in fountain pen and not use it for long time, it is hard to start them but it never happened to Parker pens I own Jotter, frontier, vac

[Miles R.]

Buy better pens and keep fewer inked.

I fear that it may come to that, the first part of your suggestion anyway—"buy better pens." The number of pens kept inked is irrelevant since, as I said, I use every one of my inked pens almost every day: my complaint is that some of that dry up even under that condition, which is a ridiculous failure of design. But the exasperating fact is that there are expensive pens that dry up and cheap pens that don't dry up. Of course, "expensive" does not mean "good" nor "cheap" "bad," but if pens can only be assessed as "good" or "bad" by whether they work after a period of disuse, then "Buy better pens" just means "Buy pens that don't dry out," which is no reply at all.

I know that if you leave Waterman Cartriges in fountain pen and not use it for long time, it is hard to start them but it never happened to Parker pens I own Jotter, frontier, vac

Perhaps I ought to have mentioned that I don't use cartridges: all my fountain pens have converters in them. But regardless of that, my Carène has not been a particularly reliable writer. It does not dry up as easily as some of the cheap pens do, but it can't be left unused for more than a few days.

[BiggieD]

Miles - That sounds really frustrating! i think there might be some truth to the first part of what Jar said. It doesnt have to do with the cost of the pen, but for new cheap pens there is a huge difference in quality. I started a similar thread today after realizing that two of my pens have been almost untouched for four and a half months and started right away.

 

A good nibmeister can definately fix this. Richard Binder has a long backlog but is excellent. Have you ever been to a pen show? There used to be one in Sommerville but they didn't have it last year, not sure if they will this year. If the problem is in the nib, Richard can fix it on the spot at any of the pen shows. If the problem is in the feed, cap, or internals of the pen, a better bet might be Mike-it-work. He takes much more time per pen at the show because he disassembles the feed and nib looking for any obstructions.

 

My rule of thumb is simple -- if I have a pen that is either scratchy or that doesn't start immediately after sitting for two weeks, I either get it fixed or toss it depending on the cost of the pen (I won't spend $25 - 40 repairing a $15 pen unless it has sentimental value.). For every pen I consider buying that costs over $100, i add an extra $30 in my mind to allow for nib work. When i buy an expensive pen I test the nib immediately, and I do a two week sit test before I use it for anything important outside the house. I would feel pretty silly carrying an expensive pen, taking it out to use it, only to have to resort to asking to borrow a ballpoint because it dried out on me!

 

If you want to keep a lot of inexpensive pens inked, the Platinum Preppy is hard to beat. You can convert them to eye dropper pens for a total cost of around $5. Otherwise the Platinum Plaisar is a great choice -- with a converter it will cost you around $30. I have some of them for my daughter and they start up immediately after a month without use.

 

Good luck getting this resolved!

[Miles R.]

A good nibmeister can definately fix this. Richard Binder has a long backlog but is excellent. Have you ever been to a pen show? There used to be one in Sommerville but they didn't have it last year, not sure if they will this year. If the problem is in the nib, Richard can fix it on the spot at any of the pen shows. If the problem is in the feed, cap, or internals of the pen, a better bet might be Mike-it-work. He takes much more time per pen at the show because he disassembles the feed and nib looking for any obstructions.

I have never been to a pen show. Apparently the New England Pen Show used to convene within a couple of miles of where I live: I learned of its existence just after it ceased to exist, last year.

 

The only pens that I have that would be worth the cost of sending them to somebody to be worked on are my Pelikan 600, which does not need any work, and my Waterman Carène, which could perhaps benefit from the work but which works well enough for me at the moment. The others are too cheap for the repair costs to be worthwhile.

 

If you want to keep a lot of inexpensive pens inked, the Platinum Preppy is hard to beat. You can convert them to eye dropper pens for a total cost of around $5. Otherwise the Platinum Plaisar is a great choice -- with a converter it will cost you around $30. I have some of them for my daughter and they start up immediately after a month without use.

 

The snag for me is that I dislike lightweight pens. It causes me endless annoyance that both the best-working luxury pen and the best-working cheap pen that I have owned—the aforementioned Pelikan and Hero pens, respectively—are of the lightweight sort, weighing 20 grams or less. I use them for very brief writing tasks, like writing checks and marking up sales receipts for my records. To write a whole page even with my Pelikan is very difficult for me and gives me a kind of jitteriness of the hand. So thanks for the suggestion regarding the Platinum pens, but because of their light weight they would not do. A pen needs to have at least 30 grams of mass for me to find it completely comfortable to write with. This is one reason why I keep buying cheap Chinese fountain pens and am so reluctant to part with the ones that I have accumulated despite my repeated disappointments with their functionality: it is easy to find ones that have the sort of weight that I like (e.g., from Huashilai, Jinhao, and Duke).

Edited January 2, 2012 by Miles R.

[Miles R.]

I ought perhaps also to mention that when a pen is prone to drying out, that is not because it has insufficient ink flow. That is, the pens that dry out are not necessarily, or even usually, dry writers. So an adjustment to increase ink flow would not be likely to solve the problem but would merely leave me with a pen with excessive ink flow.

 

I am also not sure that the tendency of a pen to dry out depends on a failure the cap to seal out air. I once tried applying plastic tape around one of my balky pens at the point at which the cap fit on to the barrel, with a view to seeing if the additional seal would prevent it from drying out. The experiment yielded no effect. As Someonesdad mentioned in BiggieD's thread related to this one ("Refusing To Dry Out! Longest a pen/ink combo has stayed in your pen"—I'm not sure how I missed the thread when I started this one the same day), there doesn't seem to be any correlation between a pen's readiness to write after a period of disuse (is there a word for this? We need one!) and the tightness of the fit of the cap. But perhaps a palpable tightness does not mean an airtight fit.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Miles R.

[rdh]

There is a simple experiment you can do. Fill the cap with water. If it leaks out easily, you can see where. Sometimes it is around the area where the clip attaches or the tassie on top of the cap. I am guessing that is what you will see with your Carene. An easy fix is to seal that part of the cap from the inside. Get an unscented beeswax candle, light it and let the drops of wax fall in this area of the cap. You can clean out excess wax after it is dry, with a shish kebab skewer. Essentially, you need to make sure your nib doesn't jab into the wax when the cap is on.......

 

Some pens have breather holes in the cap. If that is the only place the water runs out, take the bottom of the unlit candle and take a bit of dry wax and fill, or partially fill the breather holes.

 

You can also seal the inside of the cap with silicone grease. For me, that is the preferred fix if you are dealing with a demonstrator.

 

Don't give up. Even the cheap pens can be easily tweaked and made to behave.

 

Dave

[Miles R.]

Dave, many thanks for the suggestions. I will try those out.

[professionaldilettante]

One thing I may suggest is to cut down on your pens that are inked to 3 or 4. I found that even if I used a pen everyday, they still would have problems from the ink drying and concentrating itself in the nib feed, since the closer the ink is to the breather hole and nib, the more the ink has access to air and the the chance to dry out. This concentrated ink would be used up and replaced with fresher ink if the pen was used for an extended amount of time, say a page or 2 of writing, but shorter than that, and that just gets the ink more and more concentrated until even my good pens have the issues you describe.

[BiggieD]

Dave, many thanks for the suggestions. I will try those out.

 

Miles, if the Somerville show happens this year, i highly recommend it. If not, it's worth the Acela ride to attend the DC show. There are usually classes on pen repair, and lots of cheap tools. It sounds like you've found a pen that feels good for you, you shouldn't have to accept that they dry out in two weeks let alone two days.

 

I'm curious if sealing the cap solves the problem as RDH suggests. I suspect it won't since I have old Parker pens with two or three holes in the cap that don't dry out. My guess is it's either going to be aligning or spacing the tines or enlarging the feed channel that will solve your problem, but let us know as you experiment!

Edited January 3, 2012 by BiggieD

[rdh]

One other thing you can try is switching inks. Highly saturated or "dry" inks can also cause this behavior in some pens. You might try a safe ink like Waterman Florida Blue, Blue Black or Quink Washable Blue or Blue Black. If there is a high concentration of pigment in the ink, it can easily dry and clog up some of the very fine channels in the nib and feed and cause skipping or frequent drying.

 

Dave

[rwilsonedn]

+1 on sealing the cap, especially on Chinese pens. You can tell if there is an issue simply by blowing into the cap as if it were a balloon. If you don't get pretty substantial resistance to air flow, then a little candle wax should work wonders for the pen. Sealing the cap should help even the worst offenders go a week or two witout drying out.

A couple of points, though. Use only a drop or two of wax--the object is to fill the leaks (which are usually where the clip mounts to the cap) not to fill up the cap. And as an earlier poster mentioned, be careful the first time you put the cap back on the pen to make sure that there is no wax obstructing the nib. You don't want to bend the nib scooping congealed wax out of the cap. So if you encounter any resistance, have a look with a light, and scoop the excess wax out with some appropriate tool.

If a pen does dry out, by the way, generally just one dip up to the root of the nib in clean water should be sufficient to get things going again. You don't usually have to resort to violence or heavy cleaning.

ron

[Miles R.]

One thing I may suggest is to cut down on your pens that are inked to 3 or 4. I found that even if I used a pen everyday, they still would have problems from the ink drying and concentrating itself in the nib feed, since the closer the ink is to the breather hole and nib, the more the ink has access to air and the the chance to dry out. This concentrated ink would be used up and replaced with fresher ink if the pen was used for an extended amount of time, say a page or 2 of writing, but shorter than that, and that just gets the ink more and more concentrated until even my good pens have the issues you describe.

 

I have had trouble with my Jinhao pens drying out even when I was using one of them as my primary pen and writing paragraphs or pages at a time with it. So, while your proposal might take care of some instances of the problem, I don't think that it would make any difference in the stubborn cases.

 

Miles, if the Sommerville show happens this year, i highly recommend it. If not, it's worth the Acela ride to attend the DC show.

 

There was no New England Pen Show in 2011 and there has been no indication that there will be another one. The DC show seems to take place in June, so if by any chance I make a trip thither (I have a couple of friends in the area whom I would like to see again), I will try to time it to coincide with the show.

 

(By the way, there is only one "m" in "Somerville." )

 

One other thing you can try is switching inks. Highly saturated or "dry" inks can also cause this behavior in some pens. You might try a safe ink like Waterman Florida Blue, Blue Black or Quink Washable Blue or Blue Black. If there is a high concentration of pigment in the ink, it can easily dry and clog up some of the very fine channels in the nib and feed and cause skipping or frequent drying.

 

Well, as I said, I have used a great variety of inks in my pens, by Noodler's, Pelikan, Diamine, and Herbin, and none seem to alleviate the problem. If I had to use Waterman ink I would just give up: that thin, watery stuff completely destroys the pleasure of writing for me. And I dislike blue-black ink. (Sorry to be so fussy, but we're all that way about our pens and our inks, aren't we?)

 

+1 on sealing the cap, especially on Chinese pens. You can tell if there is an issue simply by blowing into the cap as if it were a balloon.

 

Ah-HAH! Thanks for the suggestion (which ought to have occurred to me before ): I was not looking forward to the whole business of immersing my pens and so forth.

 

As it happens, a bit of experimentation indicates pretty strongly that air leakage in the pen cap is NOT a cause of drying. The caps of my two best-performing pens in this respect, the Hero and the Pelikan, hiss like radiators when I blow into them! By contrast, the Jinhao and Duke pens that are prone to drying out leak, if at all, to a degree that is barely detectable. Of course, this does not address the possibility that the leakage occurs between the cap and the barrel rather than in the cap, but it does reduce the likelihood that improving the seal will solve the problem.

 

I really find it puzzling. Nobody seems to know why some fountain pens dry out and others don't!

Edited January 3, 2012 by Miles R.

[BiggieD]

 

Miles, if the Sommerville show happens this year, i highly recommend it. If not, it's worth the Acela ride to attend the DC show.

 

There was no New England Pen Show in 2011 and there has been no indication that there will be another one. The DC show seems to take place in June, so if by any chance I make a trip thither (I have a couple of friends in the area whom I would like to see again), I will try to time it to coincide with the show.

 

(By the way, there is only one "m" in "Somerville." )

 

The 2011 DC show was August 12 - 14.

 

I should have caught that, I have a relative that lives in Somerville, she's a pen nut too - typo corrected!