Lamy Safari - Ink Between A Finial And An Inner Cap

[day]

Recently I encountered a strange problem with my Lamy Safari - during pen's cleanup before changing an ink I noticed that there was a lot of ink in the cap between a finial and an inner cap. Note that there was no ink in the cap itself, which is where I would expect it to be - the inner part of a cap (that is, the space where the nib is located when the cap is closed) was clean. When I was shaking the cap to get the water out after rinsing it I noticed that there was an ink on my fingers, and that it was leaving via the holes which hold the clip inside the cap. So I soaked the cap, and after some minutes saw more ink leaving the cap from those holes. In fact, I had to soak the cap a number of times before the ink stopped leaving via those holes.

 

Since I never accidentaly dipped the cap in the ink, I am puzzled about how it got there. I thought that maybe there was a hole in the inner cap through which the ink got though - but no, the inner cap is pretty tight - when I insert the cap finial-down into water and try to blow air into the other end, there are no air bubbles.

 

Did somebody encounter a similar problem and succeeded understood how it had happened?

 

Here is a picture of an ink leaving the cap (from a third soaking session):

 

[jchch1950]

The ink coming out of the clip holes is the same as the one you were using in the pen? If it isn't the case then maybe the ink in the space between the inner cap and the finial has been there for a long time and it was dry until you wash it. Do you buy the pen new?

[day]

Before the cleaning the pen had a blue ink as well (Diamine Oxford Blue), but beyond that it is hard to compare the color of the ink on paper to a color of the ink in the water.

 

This is not a new pen, I have it for a couple of years and didn't notice the problem during previous cleanups which included cap soaking as well...

[jchch1950]

No idea from where the ink came