What Pen did you clean out today?

[Penguincollector]

  I cleaned out my Parker Mixy, Pilot 78g, Sheaffer Jr. Balance, Radius 1934 Settimo, and MB 144 yesterday and this morning.

[A Smug Dill]

Ten HongDian fountain pens that were each ⑴ fitted with a different type and/or width grade of (size) №26 steel nib, and ⑵ filled with the same ink in their individual converters. Although Monteverde Brown Sugar is not generally a high-maintenance ink or one that is difficult to flush out, thoroughly cleaning ten nib units and ten converters was a chore, even with the aid of an ultrasonic cleaner and a water flosser. In particular, the nib unit with the Blade F nib retained a lot of (dried?) ink in the housing and/or feed, and even five cycles of ultrasonic cleaning, and a round or two of flushing with a bulb syringe immediately after each cycle, could not get rid of all traces of pink (evident when wicking the moisture from the nib using a sheet of paper towel).

 

Also, the only Majohn/Moonman B25 I retained.

[nm4]

Pilot Elabo in Burgundy with SF nib today; Porsche Design Tec Flex broad nib yesterday.  Trying to get at least one cleaned out per day..

 

N

[boilermaker1975]

My Onoto Pi pen.

[Mr. Pink]

My Parker 51 - FOR THE LAST TIME  I quit!  I bought the thing new long ago and for the last 20 years it hasn't written worth s***.  And for the life of me I can't understand why I wanted a pen with a hooded nib in the first place.  Yes, I know it's a classic, but so is an Edsel.

[ParramattaPaul]

Yesterday actually -- the Onoto Heritage.

[inkstainedruth]

@Mr. Pink -- I'm really surprised when I saw your post just now.  All my 51s (both the Aerometrics & the Vacs) are great writers.

Wondering if it needs some sort of checkup by a repair person -- something like the sac has gone bad (although those ply-glass ones are pretty sturdy -- they were designed to use Superchrome Ink in them, after all, and I gather that was pretty noxious stuff).  Or maybe the nib needs tuning somehow?

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Mr. Pink]

Yup, Mr. Pink may have committed heresy and will be banished to the island of the ball points and roller balls.  But if I get burned at the Bic, I think I have enough ink to douse the flames.   

[inkstainedruth]

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[AmandaW]

Lamy Al-Star Gold with black clip EF

Parker 45 Classic Black F

TWSBI Royal Jade F

Pilot Parallel 3.8mm and 6.0mm

Pilot Explorer White F

Pilot Custom 74 Turquoise EF

Pilot Custom 91 M

Rotring ArtPen M

 

The long cartridges in the Lamy and Parker would be easier to clean if the blunt syringe had a longer pointy bit. Is there such a thing? The one I have came from a pen shop and I don't remember if I ever saw any other kind offered.

 

The little blue plastic cleaning bulb that comes with the Pilot Parallel pens works well with Lamy and Parker as well as other Pilot pens. 

 

[AndreasMikry]

I cleaned out my Parker Sonnet LIII and Pelikan Jazz this morning 😫

[Misfit]

On 1/12/2026 at 8:22 AM, AmandaW said:

The long cartridges in the Lamy and Parker would be easier to clean if the blunt syringe had a longer pointy bit. Is there such a thing? The one I have came from a pen shop and I don't remember if I ever saw any other kind offered.

I’ve wondered about that too. Pilot and Platinum cartridges are too long for the syringes I have. One came from Jet Pens. I tried looking online. We might will have to ask a pharmacist for longer needles. 

[Amberjack]

All of my Parker 45s.  

Something I've been meaning to do for some time.  

I picked these up at a pen show for $25 a piece some time ago and have neglected them since then, assuming they're just mix-masters.

The 45 is such a wonderful, functional product, interchangeable, with infinite variation in the piece-parts.

That's also it's challenge, really no way to know if a pen is original or not once it's been taken from the package.

 

All in all though I ended up with 2 really terrific writers with buttered glass nibs, 3 that are okay but could use improvement and 1 that's the 'charlie brown tree' of pens.  Discoloured plastic, dingy steel nib and trim and wouldn't stop skipping no matter what I did to it.  Just like Mr. Brown tho, I won't give up on it - maybe it just needs a little love.   

 

AJ

 

[inkstainedruth]

That's a nice set you have there -- in spite of the issues with some of them.  And you've got some colors I've never seen in the wild as well!  

My first semi-vintage pen was a Parker 45, and was also my first pen that had a 14K nib.  Found it in a box in a little antiques shop on the eastern edge of Corry, PA, a number of years ago, when my husband and I were taking a weekend drive through the Northern Tier counties (it was the only pen where I recognized the brand, but too new to the FP world to know what model it was).  

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

[lamarax]

4 hours ago, Amberjack said:

All of my Parker 45s.  

Something I've been meaning to do for some time.  

I picked these up at a pen show for $25 a piece some time ago and have neglected them since then, assuming they're just mix-masters.

The 45 is such a wonderful, functional product, interchangeable, with infinite variation in the piece-parts.

That's also it's challenge, really no way to know if a pen is original or not once it's been taken from the package.

 

All in all though I ended up with 2 really terrific writers with buttered glass nibs, 3 that are okay but could use improvement and 1 that's the 'charlie brown tree' of pens.  Discoloured plastic, dingy steel nib and trim and wouldn't stop skipping no matter what I did to it.  Just like Mr. Brown tho, I won't give up on it - maybe it just needs a little love.   

 

AJ

 

 

I'm positive these have inspired the ubiquitous Jotter! 

[Misfit]

@Amberjack I love the Linus and the tree.

[AmandaW]

13 hours ago, Misfit said:

I’ve wondered about that too. Pilot and Platinum cartridges are too long for the syringes I have. One came from Jet Pens. I tried looking online. We might will have to ask a pharmacist for longer needles. 

I found some on ebay by searching 'long blunt ink syringe'. What came up for me was just the blunt needle part which should fit into the syringe I already have. And 10cm / 4 inch long.

 

Five for AU$3.25 including postage... yeah I can risk that for an experiment. That's like US$2, I think.

 

I will report back.

[A Smug Dill]

23 hours ago, Misfit said:

We might will have to ask a pharmacist for longer needles. 

Last year I ordered a pack of 100 of those from Taobao.

 

I now usually bring a few of these packs (shown below) to local hobbyists' get-togethers to ‘sell’, because the admin of Fountain Pens Australia group on Facebook asked me to be ready to help some newbies, to whom she referred me, in the Sydney area with sourcing singles or small numbers of odds and ends such as syringes and sample vials if they seek me out at meets, but I'm not expected to give (even low-cost) items away for free just because someone asks.

 

[Misfit]

Thank you @A Smug Dill your search terms must be better, because I did search. Or maybe I searched outside of FPN. But FPN should have shown up in the results if I used the right keywords. 
 

I ordered the long needles from @A Smug Dill’s link in the thread he provided above. $1.66 to get 5.

[Amberjack]

21 hours ago, Misfit said:

@Amberjack I love the Linus and the tree.

 Saint Linus knew the way, even 60 years ago.

We're all works in progress - just need a little kindness to shine.