Vintage Montblanc - No Ink Flow.

[ndgop]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm not a total rookie, but I'm stumped. I picked up this Montblanc cartridge pen from eBay and can't seem to get ink to flow to the nib. I've flushed it many times with lukewarm water using a converter with no improvement. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Water only gets sucked up and is expelled (and ink, when I squeeze the cartridge) through the large feeder hole in the third picture. None of it seems to be getting to the point of the nib.

 

Holding it up to the light, I can see a sliver of space at the very front between the plastic feed part and the metal nib. The tines aren't stuck together.

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/Np90D7J.jpg?1

 

http://i.imgur.com/qBDx9nH.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/8e3myAv.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

[ac12]

What ink are you using?

 

When you have ink in the pen, slip a piece of paper between the feed and the nib. If it does not come out with ink on it, you have a clogged ink channel in the feed.

 

I have a couple pens that have space between the nib and feed. If I close the space, I get no ink flow. So it depends on the ink and pen as to how much space or no space it needs.

 

My guess is the pen was used and has dry ink clogging the ink channel. I received pens from eBay with so much dry ink clogging the pen that I could not even force flush the pen. I had to go directly to a soaking or an ultrasonic cleaner (USC) until I could clear the ink channels.

 

Try soaking the pen. Remove the barrel, put the section vertical tip down into a narrow glass, and pour water till it covers the section. Then let it sit overnight. What you are trying to do is to disolve the dry ink from the feed channel. Depending on where the clog is and how much dry ink there is, it could take a LONG time. As long as you see some ink drifting out of the pen, you are making progress. When I do a soak like this, I do a 12 hour soak then a flush (to wash away what the soak loosened), then repeat 2x a day for several days.

 

In my case, I use an ultrasonic cleaner (USC). The USC blasts its way thru the old dry ink. But a USC must be used carefully, as it can also cause damage.

 

I do not know anything about that pen, but if you can remove the nib and feed, you will be able to do a much better and faster job of cleaning it. If you cannot remove the feed and nib, and without a USC, the best you can do is the soak and flush process.

 

BTW, I had pens that I flushed till the water was coming out clean. Then I put the section into my USC and a thick cloud of ink came boiling out of the feed. That is all the ink that flushing could not get out of the pen, some of which was clogging the ink channel. One of these was a pen that I got for 50 cents, because it was "broken." All it was was a clogged ink channel. Although it took quite a bit of cleaning to get the ink channel cleared. But the pen works perfectly now, in fact the ink flows so well that it is a WET writer.

Edited November 16, 2013 by ac12

[ndgop]

Thanks, ac12, for your very complete response. All I have at hand are Pelikan black cartridges, so that's what I was using. I can't see any obvious way to separate the feed and the nib, so lest I irreversibly mess something up, I'll stick to soakding.

 

I slipped paper between the feed and the nib, and the paper DID come out with ink on it at the very end (where the feed and nib come together), so there's some ink flow, but perhaps not enough to get ink to the nib. It's soaking now, and there's definitely ink coming out - I'll follow your prescription and keep this thread updated. Thanks!

[ndgop]

Okay, I'm getting somewhere (and if I was more patient, I might be even further along). After letting the front section soak for a while, flushing, and then repeating, I reattached the cartridge - no progress. So I capped the pen and left it standing vertically, cap-side down, on my desk for 45 minutes or so, and when I picked it up to try it, it was working!

 

After about thirty seconds of writing, the nib went dry, so I held the pen vertically for a while, and eventually enough ink fed down to the nib to write again. So, progress! I was able to figure out how to remove the nib and the feed and will let them soak a while longer.

[ac12]

Sounds like you have the ink channel open, but not enough for good ink flow.

 

Since you got the feed out, soak it overnight, so any dry ink will be softened/disolved more, then rinse it in the morning.

Also soak and flush the section, some sections have part of the ink reservoir, so could be holding a bunch of dry ink.

 

patience, soaking is a SLOW process.

[ac12]

dupe

Edited November 16, 2013 by ac12

[ndgop]

Thanks again, ac12. I've put the feed/nib and section in to soak and won't touch them until tomorrow.

 

My earlier success was short-lived; after further soaking, I couldn't get the pen to write anymore. Ink was getting to the comb but it didn't seem to be getting down the ink channel to the point. If I held a tissue up to the end of the point, no ink would come out. Ink WOULD come flowing out of the space where the plastic section and the nib/feed met (red arrows below). Does this mean I didn't have the nib/feed positioned securely enough within the section, or is there supposed to be some space for air/ink to move? I generally understand how fountain pens work, but this setup (w/o a breather hole) is pretty confounding to me.

 

http://i.imgur.com/aDrd5CK.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/LmGmxi8.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/0n99ebh.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/3tAbrSl.jpg

[BMG]

I had a very similar problem with a '50s era MB 244 recently. Hadn't used it for a while and when I inked it up it wouldn't write. If I forced ink to the nib by turning the piston knob I got a very wet line for a while, then shortly thereafter the nib would dry out and stop writing again. I was truly puzzled as the pen wrote normally before. After some head scratching I took a piece of 35mm film (remember that?) – I would have used a brass shim if I had had one – and drew it through the space between the tines, from the air hole to the tip. I also slipped it between the feed and the nib, and lo and behold, the pen wrote again as before! I believe that a small piece of paper or paper towel had got stuck between the feed and nib when I was cleaning the pen and blocked the flow of ink to the tip, at least, that was my diagnosis. Whatever the case may be, the pen writes beautifully now.

Edited November 17, 2013 by BMG

[Scribblesoften]

You might purchase a piston style converter for the pen and use it to draw up and expel water. This can force dried ink out of the feed channels.

[TorPelikan]

Had same problem with my MB320.

 

There may be some clogged ink between the nib and the feed, blocking the ink flow.

You'd better remove the nib from the feed and clean them separately and completely.

 

Inserting brass shim between them can scrape out the clogged ink, but may cause some damage to the surface of the feed, I'm afraid.

A piece of 35mm film is a good idea I agree.

 

Do not use excess force while disassembling, because the feed is relatively thin and fragile.

I used ultrasonic cleaner before the trial.

 

 

 

Good luck

[ac12]

As with TP, at this point, I would use my USC to clean the nib/feed assembly.

 

The other thing is IF the nib can be removed w/o damaging the feed. That will give you better access to the ink channels, then you can use a thin brass sheet to floss the ink channels.

 

BTW the nib w/o a breather hole is no different than a Lamy nib w/o a breather hole.

I would treat nib work the same way as a nib with a breather hole.