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How to Clean the Lamy 2000


tooloose-letrek

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I have a Lamy 2000 and it is one of my favorite writers.  I am not a fan of the filing system and fear it will not endure many cleanings.  The twisting back and forth, over and over - I fear I will damage the filling mechanism - it takes so many fill-refill to give the pen a good cleaning.  I'm wondering if anybody has an alternative method for giving this pen a good cleaning?  Thanks.

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The pen is remarkably robust and well engineered. The likelihood of damaging it via using the piston is much smaller than regularly disassembling it. 

 

Having said that, it is also very easy to remove the section and flush both the barrel and section. Just don't lose the ears or overtighten it when putting it back together.

Vintage. Cursive italic. Iron gall.

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Is there a special technique to remove the section?  I do not want to damage the pen.  Thanks.

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What ink are you using in the pen? I don't have a 2000 so things may be different, but in all of my piston fillers, I've had good results with doing two additional "things" while cleaning. 

 

First, I've found it slightly beneficial to do both expunge and fill operations with the nib under water. This gives the nib a better rinse and seems to clear out certain spots of the pen better than when I expunge the pen out of water. 

 

Second, I like to fill the pen with a little air bubble in it, and then give the pen a bit of a shake. I find this tends to do a better job of quickly cleaning the inside of the pen. So I give the pen a bit of a shake after filling with clean water each time, which seems to accelerate things. 

 

Finally, I personally wouldn't see the need or desire to disassemble a pen for cleaning in almost all cases. All my piston cleaning pens get sufficiently clean without this step and the pens aren't designed, usually, around constant disassembly, so I think there would be less wear and tear on the pen simply using the piston in most cases. 

 

 

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The section just unscrews. There are a number of videos on youtube showing the procedure.

 

Disassembly, even for a pen where it is relatively straightforward, should never been done regularly. I've had my L2K for three or four years and have only done it two, perhaps three times (once to change the nib and once to apply a little silicone grease to the piston).

 

The techniques @arcfide describes are probably sufficient to achieve what you want 95% of the time. You should really only disassemble for cleaning if you let the pen dry out (which is very difficult) and ink residues are stuck in the feed.

Vintage. Cursive italic. Iron gall.

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5 hours ago, tooloose-letrek said:

I'm wondering if anybody has an alternative method for giving this pen a good cleaning?

 

As has been pointed out, one could readily disassemble the Lamy 2000 (for “a good cleaning” or otherwise), as an alternative method to just repeatedly filling and emptying the ink reservoir with plain water — or pen flush solution, if you so desire — by way of the pen's built-in piston mechanism.

 

I know from first-hand experience that instructions for it can easily be found by Web search.

 

5 hours ago, tooloose-letrek said:

The twisting back and forth, over and over - I fear I will damage the filling mechanism

 

4 hours ago, tooloose-letrek said:

I do not want to damage the pen.

 

Be careful, then. “An alternative” does not imply it is less risky; and the degree of risk depends non-trivially on the skill (and patience) in execution on the part of the doer, not just the mechanical nature of the operation. Now that you have two options, you can decide which one is less risky in your hands. No-one else can protect (the integrity and/or value of) your pen for you.

 

Keep in mind what are the cleaning and care tips/procedures recommended officially by Lamy:

 

so they ought to be considered of least risk, but of course not completely proof against wear and tear that you would expect to happen with normal and regular use of your pen. Isn't that good enough for you?

 

4 hours ago, tooloose-letrek said:

Is there a special technique to remove the section?

 

Nope. Practice makes perfect. ;)

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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7 hours ago, silverlifter said:

Just don't lose the ears

completely agree with this - the clutch ring ears arent held on by anything, with disassembly mine went down the sink.  disaster after this when pen fell out of the cap, landed on its nib and luckily was fixable afterwards by gena salorino.

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For less wear and tear try this method.

Flush 2/3 times as normal. Leaving the piston down at the section, place the pen, nib down, in a glass of water, with the water level up to the top of the section. Ink will slowly leach out of the feed. Check after several hours. dump and refresh the water as required. Once the water remains clear, flush 2/3 times.

 

If you're a serial ink changer I'd suggest a CC pen as they are easier to clean, and leave the 2000 for longer term ink usage.

Add lightness and simplicate.

 

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8 hours ago, lionelc said:

completely agree with this - the clutch ring ears arent held on by anything, with disassembly mine went down the sink.  disaster after this when pen fell out of the cap, landed on its nib and luckily was fixable afterwards by gena salorino.

I dropped mine and it also landed nib first on the hardwood floor. Sent it to Mark Bacas and all was well.

 

By the way, Mark says no matter how you drop the 2000, it always lands on its nib. He likens it to a dart.😀

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37 minutes ago, gawain3 said:

I dropped mine and it also landed nib first on the hardwood floor. Sent it to Mark Bacas and all was well.

 

By the way, Mark says no matter how you drop the 2000, it always lands on its nib. He likens it to a dart.😀

In my experience, 99% of any type of pen I drop always lands on the writing end first.  So far the only fountain pen I’ve dropped was the inexpensive Platinum Preppy...it did not survive the fall.

 

This Mark Bacas person - how long does it take to get your pen back, generally, and how much money does it cost?

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1 hour ago, Geslina said:

In my experience, 99% of any type of pen I drop always lands on the writing end first.  So far the only fountain pen I’ve dropped was the inexpensive Platinum Preppy...it did not survive the fall.

 

This Mark Bacas person - how long does it take to get your pen back, generally, and how much money does it cost?

Seven or eight weeks before you get your pen back. That's not an unusual time. Oh, he charged me $60.00 and that included postage.

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have learnt from my clutch ring misadventures - should have read through threads on fpn before trying it - a sink hole sieve in the laundry now an essential bit of kit for all pen disassemblies and cleaning.

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4 hours ago, gawain3 said:

Seven or eight weeks before you get your pen back. That's not an unusual time. Oh, he charged me $60.00 and that included postage.

i wonder if he could change a broad gold nib into fine?  has anyone here had this done, and is it successful?

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16 minutes ago, Geslina said:

i wonder if he could change a broad gold nib into fine?  has anyone here had this done, and is it successful?

 

Yes. But grinding down two sizes (B->M->F) costs a little more.

Vintage. Cursive italic. Iron gall.

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I figured it out but thanks anyway.  It came apart so easily the little metal washer almost fell into a spot where I would never find it again...so I won't be doing that again under normal cleaning. 

 

What kind of ink?  That fill was Diemine Oxblood and I recall that reds can be a stubborn clean.  Most of the time I use dark inks, mostly Diemine and Aurora.  Thanks.

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  • 2 years later...

Instead of repeatedly using the piston to flush water through the pen, you can use a bulb syringe to gently force water through the pen's feed and nib. This method provides a more controlled and less repetitive action than the piston mechanism. Fill the bulb syringe with lukewarm water and gently flush the pen by aiming the water into the nib section.

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On 4/12/2021 at 2:54 PM, Karmachanic said:

For less wear and tear try this method.

Flush 2/3 times as normal. Leaving the piston down at the section, place the pen, nib down, in a glass of water, with the water level up to the top of the section. Ink will slowly leach out of the feed. Check after several hours. dump and refresh the water as required. Once the water remains clear, flush 2/3 times.

 

If you're a serial ink changer I'd suggest a CC pen as they are easier to clean, and leave the 2000 for longer term ink usage.

+ 1.

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  • 3 weeks later...

My 2000, 2+ years old now has never been disassembled. No need to. I have used blues, greens, violet,among others and no problems cleaning out just using the piston. 

Brad

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind" - Rudyard Kipling
"None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness; but we can try." - Mark Twain

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At about the two-year mark I removed the section on my 2000 to lubricate the piston chamber from the section end, using a Q-Tip and silicon lube.  It made the piston move much smoother and easier, but I have never had the need to fully disassemble the pen.

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  • 1 month later...

I recently fully disassembled my 2k including the piston. I gave it a thorough cleaning and lubed the piston with grease. I will not be doing that again as I decided to dedicate the pen to only use Diamine Majestic Blue. I have enough great pens that I am now dedicating certain pens with certain inks. So going forward I'll just refill my Lamy 2000 with the same ink from here on out and probably give it a flush about once a year or so. 

20230725_071118_kindlephoto-58792748.jpg

n+1

 

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