Venus President Adjustment

[eoutworld]

This Venus President is my first foray into vintage fountain pens and restoration. It's in excellent shape cosmetically with the lever fully functional. I removed the barrell from the section and took off the old sac and ordered a new one along with shellac and talc. But until those come in I wanted to try out the beautiful 14k nib. Just dipping in the ink I was surprised, given that the nib looked in perfect shape, to find it very scratchy and with pretty much non-existent ink flow. Adding a little flex produces actual ink, but it's still not exactly wet and easing off the flex reverts to no ink once again. I've inspected the nib closely and the tines appear well aligned with tipping material, though not as much as my modern pens (this seems to be the norm I gather?). The feed appears to be in contact with the nib and while I did soak the nib/feed/section a while today, that should not be an issue when merely dipping since ink doesn't need to travel from the sac to the nib, correct? There's a small and barely visible slit from the breather hole to just before the tipping material starts, at which point the tines appear to meet. This seems to be in line with my TWSBI 540 which writes just fine, though my Custom 74, Levenger L-tech, and Retro 51 do not appear to have any visible distance between the tines when observed from above. Any ideas on what I can do to fix the flow issue? It seems to me that the problem must lie with the nib and not the feed since I'm only able to use it dipping until I get the replacement sac, but I could be mistaken on this.

 

 

[c4bb0ose]

I would venture a guess that the ink fissures inside the feed are blocked or obstructed by dried ink, if you can soak the front section in water overnight that should unblock it, of you can do so without damaging it you could also take the nib and feed out and clean it that way.