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When cleaning and refilling one of my Wing Sung 3008 pens to give it to my son who wanted to use it in school I encountered a stubborn clear feed that would not want to give away all of its orange glory (Akkerman #16 Oranje Boven) after cleaning and even after refilling the pen with Lamy (Royal) Blue. So I was able to take the following pictures. Edit: (Was interrupted before I could add what I was going for, tsss ...) What do your feeds look like? Do you have unusual or unusually beautiful feeds? I am sure you have!

After reading many postings on this and other forums regarding J. Herbin's 1670 inks and their apparent ability to clog pens, I decided to share my experience with them after some 6 months of usage on several pens on an almost daily basis. Hope this is helpful. Like many pen enthusiasts the world over, I became truly hooked to the idea of using J. Herbin's inks after watching some videos depicting their shinning and sheening characteristics, specially those of Emaraude de Chivor, which is without a doubt, the most fascinating ink on this earth for those of us creative types (I'm a designer and photographer). Yet, after doing my proper research on them, I came across many, many posts, stating that these inks were the equivalent of Armageddon for the majority of fountain pens. A few lone voices claimed otherwise, but the general consensus was to stay away from them. Low and behold, I ordered 3 bottles: Emaraude de Chivor, Blue Ocean, and Stormy Grey. I filled 2 Lamy Safari pens with Ocean Blue (M nib) and Stormy Grey (F nib) and then I filled an Al-Star with a stub 1.5mm nib with Emeraude. After using them for nearly 3 months (refilling the same pens or inking similar pens), I've had experienced no flow issues whatsoever. No hard starts, no skipping, no clogging of any sort. The only "issue" I got to experience is that the finer the nib, the less gold flecks that will end up on your paper. After this initial test, I decided to convert my brand new transparent Kaweco Sport Classic with an M nib into an eyedropper and the ink I decided to fill it up with was Ocean Blue. Kaweco's are known to have starting and skipping issues when brand new. Mine not only turned to be and excellent writer right away, but the conversion also helped turn the feed into a very wet one. After 3 months of constant use, I'm yet to experience issues. BTW the gold flecks look gorgeous laying on the barrel and match the pen nib, clip and markings in a lovely way! One thing that I have noted thou is that the gold flecks tend to get everywhere into the pen. My eyedropper has some flecks -with ink- stuck between the feed and the section, it also appears trapped in some parts of my converters and, needless to say, they are also present on the feeds. Yet, so far, they seem to be quite easy to clean off. The only bad experience I've had so far has been with a Kaweco AL-Sport that I filled with Stormy Grey. Right after filling it, all it came out the nib were gold flecks, not a single drop of ink! I shook the pen hoping for the specks to settle but it never worked. I had to extract the ink from the cartridge, and then it all took to clean and unclog the pen, was a standard rinse with water. This pen has since been inked-up twice with other inks and so far, it works flawlessly. The AL-Sport uses a different feed than that of the Classic, so maybe it is a bit more restrictive. I have also used the Emeraude ink on my Pilot Parallel pen without any issues. The only thing I should note here is that the gold flecks didn't show on the lettering work I did with this combination. I will fill it up again and update this post to reflect the outcome. So, to recap, I truly consider these inks to be pretty safe for most pens and they seem pretty easy to clean-off. I will refrain myself from putting them on vintage pens or expensive ones just to remain on the safe side. But other than that, they all prove why J. Herbin has been around for more than a hundred years!

I welcome any insight on this problem I've been having. I was given a fountain pens for my birthday about fifteen years ago. I enjoyed it but after a little, I discovered that its ink could wash away with water. I didn't know there were other options in ink so I stopped using the pen I had. A few months ago I mentioned this to a clerk at my favourite stationary shop, that I'd love to use a fountain pen but that water-soluble ink is a deal breaker. He said, but there are permanent inks. I bought the Lamy 2000 and the only permanent ink they stock, the Diamine Registrar's Ink. After a few weeks, the pen started to clog. The ink had quickly stopped being the rich blue black that it started as and often I would have a few hints of the dark colour and then a much thinner pale blue. Then it started to clog and I couldn't write a full sentence without having to stop and nurse the flow out again. When I went back to the shop, they kindly ordered a medium nib and switched it for my fine nib. That seemed to have solved the problem for a while but then that too started clogging. The owner speculated that the iron gall was reacting with the gold nib. (But then isn't gold nonreactive? Perhaps with the laminate.) This last week, I gave up on the ink and picked up Noodler's Black from another shop in town. When I switched out the ink, I took the pen apart (not like in the timid video on the Lamy website where they show a beautiful video of an animation of emptying the pen and filling and emptying it with water a few times) and rinsed it with filtered water. The first day the pen wrote smoothly for the better part of an hour. And then started to go dry towards the end of my writing time. I thought, well, there is a gentle cross-draft going through my apartment on this hot and humid day. Maybe that's why. But then I wrote again just after midnight and it started stopping again. So much so that I switched back to my faithful Uniball Deluxe. I disassembled the pen and this time soaked it until morning with a hint of biodegradable dish soap, as some people (the shop owner included) had suggested. I filled it again with the Noodler's Black and that morning, yesterday morning, it wrote beautifully. My only remark was that it had a lot less character than the Diamine (like a one note whisky to the Diamine's complexity of colour) but that it wrote smoothly with my pen. Then last night, I wrote for half an hour and it started to skip. This morning the skipping became too much and I had to go back to the Uniball. So, first, I strongly suggest avoiding iron gall inks such as the Diamine Archival Registrar's Ink in a Lamy 2000. I don't know if this would be an issue with all gold nib pens or if it is the lamination process that Lamy uses to coat the gold nib. I just know I will never again put that ink in this pen, as beautiful as it is. And, second, can anyone help me? I'll go back to the shop and see what they suggest. But this is driving me crazy. Is this problem coming from residue from the iron gall? It was in both the fine and medium nibs. The only other common denominators are me and the notebook, a Leuchtrum, think Moleskin but nicer paper. Is there a way to clean the pen once and for all? Thanks, Andrew

Found this write-up on Richard's website http://www.richardspens.com/?page=ref/care/inks.htm And can tell you I've experienced firsthand the clogging issues he mentions in my trusty Pilot Custom 823 with several versions of Noodler's ink. I really want to like Noodler's but can ill afford to keep running into issues or, worse, possibly destroy my feed as Richard mentions is possible. I ordered some Waterman and Diamine inks in the hope they'll perform much better. According to several write-ups, these two brands are supposed to be the two better ones in terms of general purpose inks with good flow properties. Anyone else have this occur to them? Any other ink recommendations? Thanks.

Hello! I found my missing Vanishing Point today. I tried to write with it, but it looks like the ink dried out in the cartridge converter. I tried to clean it by filling the converter with water and emptying, but the pen will no longer fill this way. In fact, when I twist the converter to empty it, it sort of pops up. And when I try to fill it, nothing comes up. I see there's a small metal part that is loose--I can't remember if it's supposed to be loose or if it's supposed to stick to the part of the converter that twists up and down. Right now I'm soaking both the nib unit and the cartridge converter in some water, and hoping that does the trick. Does this just need to soak for a longer time, or does it sound like something else is wrong? I think it's weird that the converter pops up--I've never had that happen before. Also, when I tried to flush the nib unit with a bulb, it was "constipated" and the water did not go through the nib like usual. Anyone else have something similar happen, and have suggestions for making this pen be able to fill again?

I'm a student and am trying to find a good pen setup for myself. I'm a bit heavy handed with a pen; I tend to ruin ballpoints by pushing the ball upwards with a little writing, and with felt tips tend to grind the felt tip down before the ink runs out. I decided to try a Pilot Vpen and it went really well as I developed a lighter writing style with it (which helped with hand cramps too). As Pilot Vpens are pretty expensive throwaway pens I was thinking of getting a re-usable fountain pen when my friend gave me a Lamy safari for my birthday. I'm now finished the first cartridge but have had quite few problems with it and am hoping I can change some things to get it working well so it can be my main pen. The problems I've had are mainly that the ink doesn't flow very well or very fast especially compared to how the Vpen worked. With the Vpen I was able to write really quickly but with the Lamy I had to write slowly or else I'd have sections of my writing where no ink came out and so letters were missing. Also, after a while the ink from the nib dried up completely. I removed the nib and ran water through it and it worked again for a while before becoming quite scratchy. I have a size M nib - would an L nib be better at letting the ink through without clogging up? Also, a problem I had with both fountain pens was that when I used a highlighter over my writing the ink became very pale - would that be because the ink is water-based? Is it possible to get a fountain pen ink that doesn't do this? Finally I'm wanting to switch to a refillable cartridge and find a different ink. Is it likely that I could find a cheap ink to use with the Lamy that won't clog up? As a student I do a lot of writing but don't have a lot of money to spend on stationary.