My First Fountain Pen - The Ohto Dude

[danbuter]

[danbuter]

The pen is heavy, being made of brass. It feels great to write with, though. I am not really a fan of the included ink. I don't know what it is, but the color reminds me of pencil lead (too grayish). It dries extremely fast. I had a little bleed-through and shadowing, but the paper was just cheap 20# copy paper.

 

The pen came with two min-cartridges. The converter is a Pelikan C499 Fountain Pen Converter that I purchases separately from JetPens.

Edited February 23, 2017 by danbuter

[LizEF]

Congrats, Dan! Looks like a nice pen. For some reason, I haven't heard of / seen this pen before. Now, do you need inky enablement, or do you already have a dozen samples on the way?

[danbuter]

No inks as of yet. Something weird is going on. For a short while as I was writing, I had to press fairly hard to get a decent line. If I went lightly, I could barely see the line. I let the pen sit for a bit while I was on the internet investigating this issue, and just tried the pen again. Now it's writing fine.

Edited February 23, 2017 by danbuter

[LizEF]

No inks as of yet. Something weird is going on. For a short while as I was writing, I had to press fairly hard to get a decent line. If I went lightly, I could barely see the line. I let the pen sit for a bit while I was on the internet investigating this issue, and just tried the pen again. Now it's writing fine.

 

Were you using the supplied cartridge? How long had it been in the pen before your first writing session? It's possible that the feed wasn't sufficiently saturated with ink to keep up with you, and so it ran dry. Then, after letting it rest, the feed had time to suck in some ink, so that when you started up again after the delay, it was fine.

 

If that was the case, then filling through the nib and feed with a converter and bottle / sample of ink will resolve that problem (as filling this way saturates the feed). Otherwise, if using cartridges, you may just have to let it sit longer (either nib down (less time) or horizontal (more time)) so the feed has time to saturate.

[danbuter]

That was likely the problem. I started using the pen within a minute of putting the cartridge on. I just did a practice page of cursive, and now the ink is flowing great and is actually black, not gray.

 

I did rinse the nib with soapy water before putting the cartridge on and let it dry. Maybe there was soap gunk in the feed that had to get worked out too.

[LizEF]

That was likely the problem. I started using the pen within a minute of putting the cartridge on. I just did a practice page of cursive, and now the ink is flowing great and is actually black, not gray.

 

I did rinse the nib with soapy water before putting the cartridge on and let it dry. Maybe there was soap gunk in the feed that had to get worked out too.

 

Hopefully it was only water left in the feed, no more soap residue, but yes, that sounds very likely. So, have you picked some ink samples yet?