Gummy Stretchy Ink #8920

[pitonyak]

I have not used many cross fountain pens, but I purchased a couple and immediately liked them; mostly Century or Century II. 

 

My initial impressions were that: (1) the ink started flowing very fast and (2) they write very nicely. 

 

I purchased a Century II with an 18K gold nib on eBay to try it. I grabbed a pack of blue ink #8920 and dropped it in and it just did not want to start writing. So, I squeezed the converter. Still, it was reluctant. Eventually I got some ink to flow. Boy was it slow. I wrote some vertical bars. You know how you pull out a new piece of pizza and that bit of cheese just stretches and look all tasty, well, the ink did that when I picked up from the bottom of the vertical line and moved it to the top of the next. Very very thin and almost impossible to see, but it really was doing that. 

 

I opened the pen and pulled the cartridge and sure enough, there was like this gooey line of ink pulling out. I cleaned the pen and tried a blue/back (#8924) with (c) 2019 on the back and that worked just fine; so the pen works, yeah!

 

I have NEVER seen this before. Admittedly, the ink is not new. This was given to me, but, the back of the package says (c) 2015 A.T. Cross Company, so this ink is NOT that old. I have surely used much older ink cartridges with no problems at all. That said, I have very little experience with Cross ink cartridges. 

 

I wrote "bad" on the back of the six pack of cartridges (that now contains 5), but, has anyone ever seen this before? I have had ink cartridges dry out. I have even used cartridges that had clearly lost some ink. It was not clear to me that this had lost ink, but, it is also pretty dark and I do not see the ink clearly flow as I turn the package over (like I do with the blue/black). In other words, it simply acts thick (without opening and checking). 

 

I think that I will NOT use the rest of those cartridges. 

 

So, any thoughts on how long a cartridge should last? This is new behavior for me. I dropped in another (c) 2015 black cartridge packed in a box and that seemed to work just fine. 

 

[pitonyak]

Cross tells me that the lifespan on their cartridges may be as low as a few years. So not that many. I have routinely used cartridges much older than that. Not really happy with that answer, but, now I know. 

[mizgeorge]

sitc

 

Not come across that - but I don't use cartridges other than in a dire emergency...

[dadbar]

I get the feeling that the cartridge plastic they use must be somewhat permeable to water vapor.....my older cartridges have all dried out. Sounds like yours are halfway there.....

 

The weakest link of all the Cross fountain pens I've used has been their ink cartridges. The ink never flows well. You really have to use a converter and bottled ink with these pens for a satisfactory experience.