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I bought this MontBlanc fountain pen a few weeks ago and it was all full of dried ink. I cleaned it and I think I forced the piston mechanism, as I could unscrew it and I took it apart. Now when I try to suck ink from the reservoir, the piston gets stuck at the bottom of the barrel. Any tips on how to fix this issue? Thank you very much.

Hello! This is my first time using this forum but I could tell from other threads that this forum has the best advice and experience with stuff like this. I recently bought a Namiki Emperor second-hand and it arrived with the shut-off valve being completely stuck and unable to open. I was able to put a lot of force to open it and it was fine for a few days but now it’s back to being shut and I can’t budge it at all. Does anyone have any experience with this and have any potential solutions? I’ve tried ultrasonic cleaners, soaking it for a few minutes and some of the other “standard” potential solutions but none of it has worked. I am in the process of sending it to Namiki Japan for repairs but I’d love to hear if there’s an at-home solution for this problem. Thank you for reading and hopefully someone knows of any solutions!

Hi everyone! I bought this TWSBI Vac Mini back in November of 2021 (so almost exactly a year ago). Its had 3 different inks in it (Monteverde California Teal, Noodler’s Black Eel, and Noodler’s Cactus Fruit Eel) and every single ink has leaked into the end cap knob at the end of the pen (I don’t know the official name for this piece). The Monteverde ink was the first ink I ever used and that’s when the whole issue started. Is this normal? If so how can I clean the old ink out and prevent this in the future? Any help or guidance would be appreciated. I’ve looked online for help and can’t seem to find anything for this specific issue. I have used silicone grease to help seal up any threads and lubricant the o-rings but that doesn’t seem like it helped. I contacted the company where I bought it from and they said it seemed like a manufacturer issue and to email TWSBI but then I emailed TWSBI and they said this was normal. For a $65 pen, this is really irritating to me because aesthetically it looks horrible and I’m afraid it could damage the metal inside the piece as well in the long run. If I can get ideas how to fix this or a potential solution I would be elated. I really do like this pen and love the 2 Ecos I have as well. I was wanting the TWSBI Vac Iris but I sure don’t want to pay $80-$85 for a pen and it do the same thing this one is doing. This doesn’t affect the performance of the pen, but I’m particular about keeping my pens clean and this drives me insane! 😅 I have 2 other vacuum fillers but the end cap knobs are opaque so I don’t know if this is just a common issue with vac fillers. Thanks in advance!

Dear all, (I hope I am posting in the right part of the forum. Apologies if I am not and, moderators, please help me move this message where appropriate.) TL;DR: This is about an issue with a 1970s Pilot Elite, Soft 18K Nib. I have never seen something like this before, but I suspect there is something wrong with the iridium tip of this pen. In plain English, I think it's missing. Could you please comment? Details: I just received a few pens from an eBay seller from Japan. One of the pens felt very scratchy on my thumb, so I started looking at its with 10x optics. Here are the photos, Figures 1-3, showing the nib overhead, sideways, and underneath, respectively. The original photo from seller seems to me to show the nib with tip, but I will not display it for now so I do not damage the reputation of the seller (which is high wherever I checked). My questions are: What do you think could be the problem? Is there a missing (iridium) tip? Is this reason to contact the seller and complain? What would be a typical request - money back? Is there any other way I could fix this? Can the nib be re-tipped? Who could do this and what would be typical expenses? Many thanks. Figure 1. Nib from above. Figure 2. Nib from the side. Figure 3. Nib from underneath.

So I had purchased a parker 51 from an antique store for 10$( i know it was a steal) I cleaned it up made sure everything was working, added some diamine ink in it but at times when I was writing notes, the pen would completely stop writing. At first, I presumed it was not enough ink so I refilled it but after the problem still remained. Do any of wise men and women of FPN know as to why this is?

So I recently purchased a TWSBI Vac Mini in Smoke from my local fountain pen store. I must say the filling mechanism is super cool and it writes really well, however, I am having an issue with it and I am seeking FPN community input. Today when I was writing, I noticed some ink drops on my thumb and the side of my middle finger where the grip section/cap threads would normally rest on my hand. My immediate thought was that there was a crack in the pen and that it was leaking onto my fingers. However, when I ran that section of the pen across some paper, there was no ink left behind nor was there any additional ink drip after more writing. I inspected the grip and cap threads with a flashlight and a laser pointer to see if there were any cracks and failed to see anything (in a way this was perhaps unsurprising as I never dropped the pen before). This left me thinking, could it just be ink trickle from being bounced around in my knapsack, or is there actually a crack in the pen I should look to get repaired? Has anyone else experienced something similar before? Thanks for any input!

Hello everyone, I've recently bought the LAMY Safari fountain pen (fine nib) with the LAMY Z24 converter. I really enjoy and like the pen, however, I've noticed a problem. When my converter is full of ink, everything seems to be working fine (the ink flow is perfect), however, when it's not full the piston stops the ink flow because of the pressure. In other words, unless I slightly push the piston down, the ink won't flow. Am I supposed to push the piston everytime or is it not properly working?

Hello everyone, I’ve been using my Mont Blanc M for just a little over 1 year now and I like it so far. Aside from occassional ink skipping at the beginning of a stroke, I have no complain about the pen. However, it came to my attention today that a portion of the ring around the nib is ajar revealing what’s under the ring/plate in the grip section as shown in the attached photos. I have never paid attention to that part of the pen since I bought it until today so I did not know when exactly did it come off. I have never dropped the pen and so far it does not seem to affect the ink flow. My question is should I be worry and immediately send the pen to a MB boutique for a repair? What possibly could cause this? Has anyone had this issue with their Mont Blanc M? Is this a common issue with the MB M? To be honest, now that I found an issue on my M on top of the occasional ink skipping, I feel a little unsatisfied with this new series from MB and I can’t say I would recommend it to anyone on the market looking for a fountain pen to buy. This is my first post in this forum. I would like to say hi to everyone and thank for your time and attention on this thread, any response would be appreciated. Cheers!!

Hello FPN! I've got a Waterman Taperite (open nib version) that's been giving me trouble since I got it. The pen writes dryly and refuses to write on upstrokes. The nib appears to not be touching the feed and I can wiggle the nib in the section with my fingers. I've tried pulling them out of the section, resetting the position the nib/feed, then sticking them back in, to no avail. What else should I try before saying "screw it" and sending it to a professional to fix?

Hi everyone! I'm a newbie in Pelikan. Recently I bought a Pelikan M805 and find some little issue on barrel. I see a very small crack in the blue stripe. Here I mean the little "crack hole" aside the "crack line". As I marked with red circle. The barrel itself is very smooth and shinny, and I like it very much. So is that normal in Pelikan pen or need to contact dealer to swap a new one? Thanks!

This pen found it's way to my door via the Yafa outlet website. I had a coupon code for 10% off, and was in the mood for a Conklin pen, and this one was on their website for a decent price as a prototype color. The pen was shipped promptly, and well packaged. The box that it came in was a standard Conklin box.....blue, too big for the pen, lined with cheap satin-like material, and held the pen in place for shipping. First impressions: This pen looked gorgeous. I really liked the "snowflake" appearance of the material, and it reminded me of granite or snowflake obsidian. The pen was light, and the curves "made sense" in my hand. In other words, it felt nice. I really liked the Conklin clip with the spring system. It's a neat style of clip that holds firmly, but doesn't feel like it will tear into a shirt. The gold "crescent" inlay was a nice touch and showed an attention to detail that I wasn't expecting. I flushed the pen thoroughly, and then plugged in a cartridge. I wrote with the pen for a full day at work without any problems. I put the pen in my pen case for 2 days, and then took it out again to write with. That's when I noticed that the area where you hold the pen was turning black. Uh oh! I unscrewed the nib section, and sure enough the ink had leaked inside of the pen, and dribbled between the nib holder insert and the nib holder (an odd place). Straight to the sink for a thorough flushing! I threw away the cartridge and figured that it might have been an old one (it had shipped with the pen) that Conklin had forgotten about. No worries as I switched straight away to the threaded converter. I then loaded the pen with Noodler's purple and spent a day writing. I was rotating with 2 other pens at the time, so this one went back in the pen case. The pens are stored horizontally. Two days later I retrieved this pen from the case. There was purple in the cap. Yikes! Back to the sink, flushing the pen again. I thought maybe I had improperly installed the converter. I rinsed the pen out and flushed using pen flush. Now there was a black AND a purple stain inside of the nib holder (and outside the black plastic insert tube). I loaded the pen with Diamine Wild Strawberry ink after re-assembling very carefully. I let it sit for two days and did not see any staining, so I thought that it was now properly inked. I started to write this review on a Rhodia pad, and the pen started skipping and stopping. I had to turn the converter nob to urge some ink out into the feed. While writing the review, I bent the nib. Just the left hand tine. By now, I had a few other fountain pens, and had never had another one leak (including two other Conklins), and no other bent nibs. Hmmm.....something wasn't right. So I de-inked the pen, flushed the nib section and noticed some red staining now. This was becoming a colorful pen. I pulled the nib and the feed. I tried massaging the nib back into shape, and got it pretty much back to normal, but could not get the pen to write. I almost through it in the trash at that point. I ordered up a Heritance nib (inexpensive in a 5mm size) and mounted it. This time with Private Reserve DC Blue. The pen wrote great for a day. 2 days later and.....it's another in the series of "super dry start, skips, doesn't write, writes heavy after turning the knob on the converter and stains". The nib is outstanding. For what I paid (I think about 8 bucks shipped), it's an awesome nib. Smooth, with a hint of flex. And it did not bend while writing with it :-) I've tried very hard to like this pen. The ergonomics are great, the new nib is smooth, but it's just not a reliable pen. I've sinced tried some J. Herbin ink (Larmes de Cassis color) and it didn't change a thing (except add a pretty purple stain). I'm guessing that this is a feed problem (maybe? I dunno), but the leak between the nib holder section and the full black plastic insert bothers me. Ink should not be able to get in there. Summary: Appearance 10/10 - Really a pretty pen. I like the black and white flakes. Wetness: 3/10 - it's wet only when you force ink into the feed. And then only for a short time. Smoothness of nib: 2/10 AND 8.5/10 - Stock nib was scratchy and it bent. Heritance nib felt great! Not as smooth as some other brands, but definitely nothing to sneeze at. Ergonomics: 10/10 - It feels great in the hand! Sealing (how well the cap seals against drying out): 1/10 - I'm including the sealing of the converter and/or ink cartridges in this. The pen dries out quickly, and the ink doesn't seal well. Boo. Weight: 9/10 - It's a lighter weight pen with a little bit of balanced weight. Posted, it's long. Unposted, it feels fine. Overall: 3/10 - A pen in it's very basic form should be able to put ink on paper. I have other pens (Conklin, Edison, Lamy) that can manage this task. The Symetrik cannot. I sent an email to Conklin via their website and did NOT get a reply. I like the feel of the pen. I like the look of the pen. I would like to use the pen. I'm putting this one in my "Lessons Learned" file.

Hello! I'm new on FPN, and mostly new to fountain pens. I've used cheap pens, but nothing more serious until now. I have just bought a new Waterman Hemisphere, but I immediately found it has some flow problems. Specifically, it is a hard starter, the first letter of a word is usually missing. Not exactly every word, but always the first word when I start writing. It can also skip in the middle of a line, though this is more uncommon. I have already googled a bit, and I have read this topic on FPN: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php/topic/259353-hemisphere-flow-issue/ I know enough to keep it capped when not using it, so I don't think it is because of ink drying. I have tried washing it, first with water, and then with water and a drop of dishwashing liquid (and then more water afterwards to remove dishwashing liquid), but it hasn't helped. I use a converter filled with Pelikan Edelstein Tanzanite ink, could this ink be at fault? Finally, I live in Sweden and bought the pen online. I have absolutely no idea where to find someone to look at or fix my pen in Sweden, fountain pens seems to be unknown here. So I very much hope that this is not "baby's bottom", because if it is I don't know what to do about it. How do I diagnose the problem?

Hi, everyone! I am new to both - fountain pens and this forum. Sorry, if this has already been discussed, but I haven't found it on the forum. I recently bought my first fountain pen - a Montblanc Jonathan Swift with medium nib with Montblanc toffee brown ink. I was looking for a decent notebook which would be used both - for office notes and my personal ones. Moleskine seemed to be the perfect choice due to it's design and creamy paper colour. It turned out to be a disaster as I can use only one side of the notebook due to severe bleed-through of the ink. Please see the pic. http://s11.postimg.org/domcfwwir/image.jpg Please advise if all moleskines are like that or it is due to the choice of pen/ink. What substitute to moleskine would you recommend? I would rather change the notebook, then the pen . Do all monblanc inks have the same bleedthrough qualities or should I try another ink, maybe a non-montblanc one? thank you in advance! Dennis