Dip Hygiene

[UDog]

A question for dip pen users—If you were to write all day, like Shelby Foote or Virginia Woolfe, doesn't your nib get caked with ink? How did they (you) keep it clean during the day or doesn't it matter?

 

Just wondering.

[dcwaites]

The caking only happens if you let the ink dry on the nib. It then becomes the patina that helps the ink wet the pen, and help the pen hold more ink. It is a Good Thing.

If you dip and write, and dip and write, and dip and write, then the layer of patina tends to stay the same.

 

If you write constantly, then a steel nib will only last a few weeks anyway, which is why they used to be sold in boxes of a gross (144).

[UDog]

Thanks, dcwaites. Shelby Foote wrote with a dip pen,and his three-volume Civil War: A Narrative was 3000 pages. That must have been a lot of nibs and ink.

[Pickwick]

When the dip pen was the only writing instrument available, at the end of a writing period the pen was wiped on a piece of waste cloth before replacing on the pen stand. Which I still do.

[AAAndrew]

I fall into the perpetual wipe category. Part is to save the nib, part is that I don’t trust the ink still on the nib not to drip off. Even with perpetual wiping, I still end up with some ink on my nibs, and as has been pointed out, that’s ok. I just use a tissue, but they used to have pen wipes made for this purpose. Often, this would be an early project as a girl learned needlepoint, she would make pen wipes for parents and friends.

[inkstainedruth]

Or you could try doing what I was taught when I took a calligraphy class in college.

Do NOT dip the nib. Refill it using an eyedropper (of course we were using cheap Speedball pens and -- mostly -- Higgins Eternal, which you do NOT want to put in a fountain pen, *ever*...).

I'll admit that I was a bit disappointed when we were told to get Speedballs. I knew someone the year before who had taken the class from a different professor, and *she* was told to get an Osmiroid....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[EMQG]

Or you could try doing what I was taught when I took a calligraphy class in college.

Do NOT dip the nib. Refill it using an eyedropper (of course we were using cheap Speedball pens and -- mostly -- Higgins Eternal, which you do NOT want to put in a fountain pen, *ever*...).

I'll admit that I was a bit disappointed when we were told to get Speedballs. I knew someone the year before who had taken the class from a different professor, and *she* was told to get an Osmiroid....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

Refill what with an eyedropper? The dip pen?

[Goudy]

Refill what with an eyedropper? The dip pen?

 

The reservoir:

 

 

Image from https://calligraphypen.wordpress.com/2009/01/14/care-and-feeding-of-the-calligraphy-dip-pen/

 

When using a gold dip nib, I dip it in water and wipe with a tissue when I'm done, or when switching inks. Dried ink (particularly IG types) can be hard to remove.

Edited December 6, 2017 by Goudy

[AAAndrew]

When using thicker ink or gouache you can apply the ink to the. Nib with a brush.