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Hello from Jakarta, It's great that I could find this great forum for fountain pen where I could learn so much form many people. I just have this hobby recently and really interested in fountain pen (Actually, I've already liked fountain pen for quite a long time but only considering to start collecting it recently). So I've bought my first fountain pen, the Sheaffer Taranis. It came with the converter but I decided to buy the cartridges also. First I tried to use the cartridges because it was more practical than filling up the converter, considering I've never use one. After a few days I started to like the pen and found it worked well. Then a few days ago I tried to use the converter for the first time, it was unique for me. The first time I tried to fill up the converter I found a problem right away, it won't suck the ink from the bottle! I thought there might be some air inside, so I tried to do it many times to push the air out, yet still nothing happened. Then I tried a different way which I dipped the converter directly to bottle to fill it, and it worked. I put it to the pen and started using it. For some time it worked well then it stopped writing. I thought I was running out of ink (which is impossible because I just inked it up). I opened the barrel and saw it still had a lot of ink inside, so I turned the piston a little bit just to push the ink down, then the pen started to write again. But after using it for some writing, the same thing happened again. I don't know what's wrong with it. So my questions are: 1. Is it normal for a converter to behave so or it's just me being picky? 2. Do I have to push the piston each time to draw the ink out? it's really a bother for me because I have pushed the piston about 2-3x in 30 minutes of writing (not 30 minutes of non-stop writing). 3. Shouldn't I be able to draw the ink from the bottle with the converter attached to the grip section? or is there some type of converter which I have to put the converter directly to the bottle if I want to draw the ink out of it? Thanks!