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easy clean nibs and feed fountain pens for use with iron gall inks


dave321

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5 hours ago, fabri00 said:

The only attention I suggest you to pay is for gold plated nibs.

Platinum for example strongly suggest to not use platinum IG inks with platinum pens having a gold plated n in.

And they are right, as I experienced the peeling of the gold plated nib in a platinum balance using platinum blue black nib.

 

I also experienced peeling of the gold plating on a Platinum Balance, after using iron gall ink in it consistently for several years.

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8 hours ago, fabri00 said:

Platinum for example strongly suggest to not use platinum IG inks with platinum pens having a gold plated n in.

 

Where specifically, for reference?

 

Not:

  1. About Fountain Pen » Types of pen points
  2. About Fountain Pen » Ink Type
  3. About Fountain Pen » For long use
  4. Contact » FAQ

And old fountain pens sometimes have gold plated parts around the grip section. Gold itself will not corrode itself but it may corrode by attachment with Blue Black ink.

which doesn't seem to make much sense, until you read the equivalent page in Japanese (with the help of Google Translate, in my case):

Also, some old fountain pens have a gold-plated tip on the grip that you have when writing. Gold itself does not corrode, but if this part or the pen tip itself is gold-plated instead of gold, it may corrode (rust) if ink adheres without sufficient maintenance.

and “sufficient maintenance” is described in article (numbered 3 in this list) above it. 

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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5 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Where specifically, for reference?

 

Fountain pen shop in Osaka, Japan.

I bought a platinum balance and asked for blue black ink, but they almost refused to sell it to me because of the reason explained.

Then I both the ink, I used it, and in fact the plating of my nib was damaged.

 

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2 minutes ago, fabri00 said:

Then I both the ink, I used it, and in fact the plating of my nib was damaged.

 

Fair enough. I'm ‘using’ Rohrer & Klingner Salix in my Platinum Balance at the moment, although I don't write much with it. Let's see what happens.

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I eyedropper Kaweco Sports with Diamine Registrars. The nibs are easy to adjust, and cheap if you fail. Capacity’s good. Really very quite hard to break. Work pen!

 

I had to nerk the nib within an inch of it’s life to get it wet enough. I think that might be the IG Specific part of a pen choice: what flows the stuff. 

 

I just fit a shaved FPR ebonite feed (the 6.1 one) into a Wing Sung 699 piston filler. With the plastic feed, Aurora was good, Pelikan 4001 was a mite dry, and DRI stopped like a stuffy nose. Now, it’s a juicy writer and a full time DRI pen. 
 

Oh, and I never flush the DRI Sport. For two years now I just keep refilling it, and it starts every time. The Pelikans, maybe twice a year. 

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On 1/12/2021 at 4:45 PM, Bo Bo Olson said:

haloing...got to look that up.

Some supposedly 'sheen' inks I've tried...don't find it....It don't appear to be in my German inks.

"Haloing" is a term that I picked up on here -- not sure who originated it.  Basically it's a thing wherein ink will have darker edges to a pen stroke as an odd sort of shading.  The first ink I ran across that did it is some vintage Skrip Peacock I found in an antiques mall several years ago.  

It is sort of the opposite of feathering, because it gives a crisp edge to the lines on the page.  

I did a quick Google Image search and found a review of Sanford Pen-It Peacock Blue: https://www.mountainofink.com/blog/sanford-peacock-blue and if you click on the link to enlarge the photograph of the writing sample, you can see it in the downstrokes of the "p" and "l" and in the outer curve of the "a" and both "c"s.

I know other inks do this but I'm not entirely sure of the physics or chemistry of what inks exhibit the phenomenon and what don't (or whether the wetness/dryness of a nib or the type of paper have any part of it happening -- just that some of my favorite inks have it happen.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth 

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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On 1/9/2021 at 8:56 AM, dave321 said:

what other decent pens out there allow you to do the same thing,

I've used Opus 88 eydroppers with gold Jowo #6 to good effect with high saturated and IG inks like the current Jazz with KWZ IG Red. Easy to maintain.

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Thank you Ruth....I've run it something like that, or a darker clean outer line with a couple of inks with a superflex nib, doing 'my' fancy letter, capitol L.

In reference to P. T. Barnum; to advise for free is foolish, ........busybodies are ill liked by both factions.

 

 

The cheapest lessons are from those who learned expensive lessons. Ignorance is best for learning expensive lessons.

 

 

 

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On 1/9/2021 at 10:26 PM, dave321 said:

the best pen i have to use with iron gall inks like kwz is a TWISBE ECO, its so easy to clean the nib

and feed and generally the whole pen, and its a really smooth writer.

 

what other decent pens out there allow you to do the same thing,

(not cheap Chinese) ?

 

this would also be beneficial for nano pigment inks which i also like using.

You could go with any Indian ebonite eyedropper pen.

 

I personally recommend the Gama Eyas. Speaking from personal experience, while backpacking South America, I was holed up for a long time in a remote surfing village in North Eastern Brasil and ran out of fountain pen ink. The stationery store in the village did not have any fountain pen ink and the only ink I could find was acrylic ink. I got the acrylic ink and filled it into my trusted Gama Eyas and used it for two weeks straight. The ink never dried out in the pen and there were no flow stoppages or hard starts or railroading. My Gama Eyas just kept going like a cross country ATV. After 2 weeks, all it took was unscrewing the section and running the section and barrel through running water, till the colour of water was clear. And after that, it kept working, as well as before, with regular fountain pen ink.

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I think IG inks have made too many paranoid....in one normally changes ink every couple of fills, just use it and don't worry.

If you are a one ink, one pen man, you might try it cleaning it every 6 weeks.

 

Back when IG ink was more common than now and perhaps even stronger, I have '50's pamphlets from both MB and Pelikan saying clean your pen every three months.

That was back when a man had three choices, black, blue and blue black...unless a book keeper who would keep one pen filled with red. So there was not a lot of ink of the month, much less ink of the week.

 

 

In reference to P. T. Barnum; to advise for free is foolish, ........busybodies are ill liked by both factions.

 

 

The cheapest lessons are from those who learned expensive lessons. Ignorance is best for learning expensive lessons.

 

 

 

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I wouldn't worry as well.  I'd use with any cartridge converter pen that has no issue with hard-starting after a few days unused which typically implies that there is an element of drying out even if the pen is capped.  I think that the concern with pigment and iron gall inks clogging pens has been exaggerated by their use in pens that do not fully seal when capped.  Not all fountain pens do well at providing a proper seal when capped.  Those that don't do well may work just fine with average use with minor hard starts after a week or so without use.  Many of my pens fall into this category.

 

I find that the pens I've used with IG inks cleaned out quite readily after use and never hard start, just as they don't with 'regular' inks.  I've use Diamine Registrars as well as KWZ ink with Platinum, as well as Sailor pens.  With the KWZ inks I've tried, there was an element of nib creeping on my Sailor 1911S that I was using with it at the time.  The ink that was on the back of the nib dried.  After going a couple converters full of writing over a few weeks and doing a regular flush, the dried ink on the back of the nib remained, but was readily removed by a couple strokes of a toothbrush.  I'd imagine a soaking would have done the same but I've not really had to be soaking my pens.

 

The pens I've noted to do very well capped for long periods with no dryout and instant startups are 

TWSBI Eco - Although this is a piston filler, I'd still recommend it. This pen amazes me in how reliable it is.  I've had one inked for well over a year now and I've left it as such as an experiment.  It writes immediately every time I try it, while others similarly inadvertently neglected have fallen after much shorter periods, either dried out fully, or hard starting with a challenge to get them going again without having to abort and flush.

Platinum 3776 - their reputation for not drying out precedes them and my experience is no exception. They make for a great choice to keep loaded with ink or nib size that I use on occasion only.

Kaweco Sport - another I've left unused for a very long time in a drawer and to my amazement, it wrote straight away.

Sailor 1911L/S - I find these pens do provide a nice seal leading to a reliable writing experience.

 

 

 

 

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  • 1 month later...
On 1/13/2021 at 4:43 PM, A Smug Dill said:

I'm ‘using’ Rohrer & Klingner Salix in my Platinum Balance at the moment, although I don't write much with it. Let's see what happens.

 

After ten or so weeks:

large.1724725914_PlatinumBalancenibconditionafterRKSalix.jpg.ec303f2677c59efb0412202198cea45e.jpg

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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21 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

After ten or so weeks:

large.1724725914_PlatinumBalancenibconditionafterRKSalix.jpg.ec303f2677c59efb0412202198cea45e.jpg

 

I had a similar experience with Rohrer & Klingner Scabiosa in my Balance, although I used the pen daily and it took longer than ten weeks to see damage to the plating.

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