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Hi All Appealing to your collective wisdom. My daily driver is a MB 144. About six weeks ago it started acting like it was "running out" the whole time (I haven't dropped it or exposed it to any significant trauma that I recall). By that I mean there was ink in the piston converter but as I was writing, it wasn't flowing through the pen and on to the paper. The line therefore got lighter and lighter until it started skipping. I am able to fill the pen OK and it will continue to write if I force ink into the nib using the piston converter. So far I have cleaned out the pen with water and also a dilute solution of ammonia and detergent. I have also manually cleaned off a lot of gunk and had a look at the nib under 20x magnification. From what I can see, the tines on the nib appear to be aligned OK. Before I send it away to get fixed does anyone have any other suggestions of fixes I can try at home? James

This is a custom hard rubber Shawn Newton pen with a vintage Waterman nib in it, configured as an eyedropper. Last year I dropped it and broke the section at the ink window, which Shawn mended for me. It wrote okay after that for awhile but not really. It had the common eyedropper problems of blorping but this wasn't when it was near empty but just say three quarters full. And then it started writing very poorly. As though ink could barely get through to the nib. Upon refilling it would not start without dipping it in ink, or shaking it until drops flew. And it grew steadily worse, writing more dry and skipping all the time until I gave up struggling with it. This is a beautiful (and expensive) pen with a glorious flexible nib in it but something is clearly bigly wrong with it. I am emphatically not a mechanically-minded person but I am hoping for something to try that may preclude me sending it out yet again.

Dear fellow FPNers My beloved Parker Duofold International has begun developing issues lately, after years of being the most reliable pen I have ever known. I am not as well versed in fountain pen mechanics as I would wish, and maybe I have done something that hurt it, and I just don't know. I was hoping that someone here with a lot more knowledge than me could help me out? I read a bit in the forums and thought it might be a feed issue, but I wanted to ask again to make sure I'm not jumping to conclusions. The issues are: - I first began noticing that ink would dry in if I didn't write with it for 2 days, fair enough, that's normal for a fountain pen. I added water to it a few times and it worked again. - After doing this 2 times, I decided to give it a thorough clean to make sure no particles of ink or anything are stuck. I cleaned it with a bulb syringe until water ran clear and let it dry. I also unscrewed the metal part behind the feed and screwed it back on. Its been loose for a while. - When I filled it with ink today, and after I waited for a few hours to let the feed saturate, it started skipping after a few lines. It would only stop skipping if I really pushed the cartridge again (I only use Quink cartridges), until I guess the feed ran out of ink. I also noticed that the metal part under the feed was loose again, and tightening it helped as well. At times though, it would skip after I tightened it, still. I cleaned it out again, and am now waiting. Does anyone know what might be wrong? Any help would be super appreciated

I have two or three pens that skip severely, including a Pelikan M400. How do I address this issue? Thanks in advance.

Dear fellow fountain pen lovers, I was recently happy enough to find an early 90s Montblanc 149 online, great condition with the box, papers and original ink bottle for a very reasonable price from a reputable seller. The pen arrived the day after I ordered it and was as promised, except for a nib that seems to be a little quirky. It seems to really struggle with some ink starvation (some skipping but more often startup issues). The tines seem to be a tiny bit out of alignment, though not much because it doesn't feel terribly scratchy (a little perhaps, going left to right). Most of the time though, once it gets going, the pen writes ok. It was sold to me as a medium (it is what it says on the box so I don't blame the seller), but looking at it really makes me suspect it is actually some sort of oblique. I have written with these kinds of nibs before with nu issues so I don't think that I'm using it wrong. I was wondering if someone around here happens to have some experience with these issues and knows what my next step should be. I love the pen and want to use it often, but it just doesn't perform as I want it to. Should I try to find a nibmeister in Europe to have a look at it? If so, any suggestions for one in Belgium/the Netherlands? Should I send it to Montblanc to have the nib exchanged or looked at? Is there anything I can do myself? Thank you very much for any tips!

Hi all I feel like throwing in the towel on my most expensive pen (a double reservoir fine nibbed Visconti Michelangelo Grande LE in beautiful green celluloid). By my standards, this pen cost me a fortune a few years ago, but it has been problematic since day one. I bought the pen second hand but was told it was uninked and in mint, unused condition. It certainly seemed to match that description when it arrived. It looked (and still does look) mint...it's a beautiful pen. However, regardless of how often I flush it, and regardless of what type of ink I try in it, I have a perennial problem. The pen usually starts from the first stroke, but after half a page of A5 writing, it starts to skip...first just on the occasional downstroke, but within a line or two it skips on practically every stroke of every letter. I check and it has plenty of ink...I unscrew the bottom and tip more ink from the reservoir - it hardly make a jot of difference. If I persevere to the end of the sheet and turn to the next page in my notebook, it often starts writing like a dream again...until the dreaded half way point of the page, when it starts to skip again....start a new page and often it writes well again...until the midway point. It seems to happen in all my notebooks (although, admittedly, these tend to be restricted to Rhodia, Clairefontaine or Paperblanks journals). Smooth papers seem to exacerbate the problem (it hardly writes at all on Clairfontaine paper)....if the paper's a bit toothier it tends to happen less, but ALWAYS happens eventually, regardless of the paper. I've just bought some Midori cotton paper to see if it happens on that - I haven't yet tried it - but really I don't want the pen to be so temperamental that it only writes on one or two types of paper. I've wondered if it's something about the oils from my skin rubbing on the bottom half of each sheet of paper, but I've tried covering the writing surface with a covering sheet and it still happens...and I have quite dry skin and ought to use hand moisturiser, but I'm lazy and rarely do, so I can't see oil transfer onto the paper being a contributory factor. My husband suggested it could be that I'm inadvertently changing the angle at which I write as I reach the halfway point of the page...but he's observed me and can't spot any noticeable different in my writing style between the top and bottom halves of the page. Could it be something to do with the double reservoir design? But if so, why does the problem tend to resolve itself when I turn to a new page? Then recur at the halfway point? For clarity, I write on both sides of each sheet of paper, and the problem occurs on both sides of the paper and on both the verso and recto sides of the notebook. I am mystified, frustrated and fed up. The nib itself seems well aligned and I can't see any evident signs of baby's bottom (not that I'm an expert). I thought it could be a feed/flow issue, but when I switch to a new page it often starts wrting again prefectly...until the half way point! At this point I'm so frustrated that I feel like chucking the pen in the bin! Does anyone have any insights or ideas about what could be causing this problem?

I recently bought a Parker 51 Vacumatic. The pen was heavily used. However after, changing the filler unit, the diaphragm, cleaning the collector the breather tube and polishing, the pen looked like new. I was excited and all, filled it with Waterman Serenity Blue and begun writing with it. The line was very wet and the nib quite smooth (I did smooth it at a little). However after a few words the pen started to dry and then the inkflow stopped. I shook it a little, again wet line and after a few words dry. Does, anyone have any idea whats the problem and how can it be fixed. The nib has no baby's bottom, the collector feed and breather tube are super clean the nib is aligned with the feed and the collector slot. The only thing I suspect that may be causing this could be that the breather hole does not have a tiny hole on its side. The aerometric breather tube does so that tiny amounts of ink can flow to the feed. Are vacumatic breather tubes supposed to have a tiny hole on the bottom and the side, like the aerometric? If no is there any other reason I may have missed that causes the nib to run dry? Thanks in advance, Nestor

Hello everyone, Today I just want to write an opinionated post about what I consider German fountain pens quality control. Please take note, this is my view, my opinion, and thus is highly subjective. I don't claim to write here about absolute truths, incontestable facts and scientific observations. Thanks. Over the years I have purchased dozens of nibs for Lamy as well as Kaweco and Pelikan. The rate of success was less than 20% overall. Maybe I am the most unlucky man on earth, but let me explain. I like EF nibs and not a single EF Lamy nib that I bought was smooth. They were all more or less scratchy, misaligned or toothy. I could live with that if I wasn't able to straighen them out and smoothen them with lapping film myself. Something I paid Lamy to do for me but they shamefully didn't and sold me a half finished product. Next, Kaweco. Now these other guys decided to go in the other extreme. They make all their nibs so smooth that they practically don't write. Yes. You buy a fountain pen just to look at it. Everybody complains all over the internet about Kaweco nibs having baby bottom and yet Kaweco completely ignores the problem. All my Kaweco nibs have this problem. Does every fountain pen customer have to become a nibmeister himself? Is this what the world of fountain pens is turning into? Then I spent a ton of money on Pelikans and found that the only nibs that write legible for me without writting just 30 words per page are the EF nibs. But all of them have flow issues and if you even try to adjust the flow, the smoothness is gone, the nib is ruined and again ... back to grinding and smoothing. I've found Japanese pens to be the highest quality of them all, but also the least attractive. While the Europeans are extremely expensive pieces of art that cannot write but look gorgeous and like true fountain pens should (at least in my personal opinion), the Japanese ones are of superb quality but ... I know that you can't make a fountain pen nib that can satisfy everybody, and I know that many people might actually not be bothered by a scratchy nib or a nib that skips a little every 3 words. The world is a vast place and there are many individuals in it, for sure. Some might even like writing with absolutely whatever writing tool they find on a desk, for them being more important what you write than how you write it. And some may exclusively type. But even so, I strongly believe that is is pretty common sense and has been established for a long time how a nib should write and it's only a matter of additional effort to bring it there. It's possible and I think it's better if manufacturers did it instead of their customers, just like going to a dentist shouldn't require that you fix your filling after you return home. I apologize to the readers that have German pens that write like a dream. And I tell them to cherish those pens even more now after they've read my opinions. I am sure there are many such pens out there.

Hey everyone, About a month ago I purchased a Pilot Custom 74 SF. Right out of the box this pen worked perfectly, and was by far my best pen. I have since refilled the converter with it three times and also used a cartridge most recently, with no issues in the process. After cleaning it five days ago, it started skipping in the middle of writing or hard starting. This doesn't always happen every time I write, but it happens enough where I am getting very frustrated because I am having to fix a lot of empty spots in my writing. I have a few more experiments to try to pinpoint the problem, but here is what I have done so far. 1.) I cleaned it out again. Still no help. 2.) I have checked the nib/tines/feed and there are no apparent issues. 3.) I have tried cheap paper and it seems to not have any issues, but I don't use cheap paper enough to know if this will always work or I am getting lucky. 4.) I switched back to using the converter. No luck. I still need to try using a different ink, though the ink I am using now (Waterman Black) I have used since the glory days when I first owned the pen. It is important to note, that no damage has befallen this pen in my possession. Any suggestions as to what may be wrong and solutions would be greatly appreciated. Everything I have found in research refers to nib/feed alignment issues or baby's bottom, and neither of these seem like the problem right now. Thank you! Anthony

I hope you don't mind me copying and reposting the essence of a couple of posts from a Facebook group I belong to, but I wanted to reach a wider and more diverse audience with this. A few of us in the group have recently purchased Dante Del Vecchio's newest creation, the Pineider Le Grande Bellezza (which has also been reviewed in the Italy - Europe forum). As the reviewer there has indicated, OOTB it writes like a dream. The problems arise when one has only a small-ish amount of ink left in the cartridge converter - less than half, but not nearly empty. When one reaches that point, the pen begins with hard starts, skipping and even railroading. We are now trying wetter inks, Iroshizuku Shin-Kai in mine. One poster suggested that it is a converter problem, where the ink sticks to the sides of the converter instead of flowing down to the mouth and into the feed. I wanted to tap into the wisdom of this group for your thoughts. If this is a converter/ink flow problem, I would think that it would also happen to other people, with other pens. I love me some sheening (not shimmering!) inks - Organics Studio Nitrogen and Walden being two of my favorites - and would hate to have to give them up for this beautiful pen. Is there anything that can be added to the ink to insure that it will flow down to the mouth? Thank you for any insight that you may have. Best, Rindy_Ruth

I've added a comparison with my fine nib Metro which works and writes beautifully. Any suggestions on how to fix this?

I recently purchased a serviced Parker 51. However it skips terribly, and starts hard. Backstory: So I asserted that the seller had maybe mislead me about servicing it. So I decided to take it apart and fix it myself. The filler unit works well, so I didn't bother to take that apart. I took off the hood, but realized that the seller didn't lie about it, the collector and feed were completely clean. I re-aligned the nib and feed with the collector carefully, so that the wide air gap on the collector is now precisely over the top of the nib. Then I pushed the nib and feed into the collector as far as they go, and screwed the hood back on. The result: Flow has improved a little bit (possibly because I aligned the nib + feed in relation to the collector better), but the pen still hard starts and skips and like hell. There is a very tight sweet spot, ie. I can hold it in a way in which it skips much less, and of course it doesn't skip when I apply considerable pressure, but... it is not pleasurable to write with it this way. How can I fix this? What am I missing?

Yesterday I received a Pilot Custom 823 (Medium) from Amazon--my first fountain pen in quite a while. I loaded it with Diamine Monaco Red (which seems to be quite wet) and it wrote well in my first tests. I emptied it out, cleaned it, and loaded it with Diamine Woodland Green. The green ink seemed much drier than the red and had a lot of skipping. So I switched again to Waterman Serenity Blue. Seemed to be mid-way between the two. More skipping than with the wetter red, less than the drier green. Today I put the Diamine Monaco Red (the wettest of the three) back in. It still occasionally skips. I bought this as an everyday writer based on a lot of very positive reviews and many discussions--often from FPN. I'm not a collector (or at least trying to resist the urge) and just want one great-writing pen that will last for years. I exceeded my budget to get this pen. Generally, I'm very happy with it, but the skipping and general inability to use dry ink are surprising. None of the reviews mentioned this, so I think this is an outlier. My question is this: should I just return it for a replacement and hope to get luckier the next time around? With a 1-day-old pen, I really hate to start trying to tune the nib. Is it expecting too much to get a good nib out of the box? *Please note: I am well aware of the need to allow the ink from the barrel to be released into the nib area in this pen. That is not the problem. What would you do?

Hi guys, I have a fairly new Safari with fine nib and Noodler's Hear of Darkness ink that keeps drying out or clogging up and skipping. Not sure if the fault is in the pen, ink or combination of two. Any advise would be appreciated. p.s. I have other various other pens filled with noodlers ink and they seem fine.

Hi, I have a problem that I am struggling to find a solution for on Google. I'm hoping someone here might be able to help! It seems I cannot use rollerball pens. Whenever I write with them the ink intermittently skips, and I find myself having to go over and over the same word in order to get the ink to flow at all. There are also times when not much ink comes out, so I have random lighter patches in my text. This has happened with every single rollerball I have ever tried, so it isn't any individual pen malfunctioning. I don't understand why this is. I have no problems at all using any other kind of pen - including gel pens and rollerballs of the type such as the Uni-ball Eye. I have had consistent problems with Parker, Lamy, Waterman and, most recently, a J Herbin cartridge rollerball. Everything I have read online states that rollerballs are less likely to skip and produce more ink than a ballpoint, so I don't understand this. I was wondering whether it is something to do with the way I hold a pen? I have attached a photo of me holding a pen - am I holding it at the wrong angle for a rollerball? Really hoping you can help - this has been driving me mad for years now!

Hello membersFPN, this is my first post here. I have been having some issues with my first fountain pen, a Scrikss honor 38. It writes extremely wet for the first few lines but the more I write the dryer it seems to get and becomes nearly unusable because of skipping. It skips even when writing wet but it gets worse the dryer it gets. I noticed that when I suck up only ink into the converter, the pen just dumps ink on the page and writes very wet but writes a decent amount dryer if I suck a bit of air into the converter. I already got a replacement pen, a Pilot Metropolitan, but was wondering if these issues could be easily fixed or were the result of newbie mistakes or if it's just a bad pen. Here are some pictures:

Gday everyone, Long time lurker first time poster I'd like to jump straight into it and go ahead and say that I've been having problems (or should i say A problem) with my Noodlers Bulletproof black. It's an absolutely wonderful ink in pretty much every way, except one. My 'Online German: Event' Pen doesn't seem to agree with the Noodlers ink. (I have a Noodlers Flex pen inked up in Noodlers black which works perfectly fine) I've inked it up through a converter and for about, I would say the first page and a half of writing, it writes fine. It flows well with no skipping etc. However once that 1-2 page thresh-hold has been passed the problems occur: The flow becomes weaker and the nib starts to dry outMinor skipping occurs (some shaking and tapping remedies this)Flow becomes near non-existent Every second stroke skips (No amount of shaking or tapping or wetting the nib remedies this)​I've went back and talked to the boutique owner and he says that he's not surprised that an American ink, especially the 'Bulletproof' line, works poorly with a European pen. At first I thought that maybe there was a problem with the nib/feed. However after purchasing some J-Herbin and Mont-Blanc inks I'm starting to think he may be right. MY PEN WRITES PERFECTLY!! It's a very wet writer and has never skipped or been prone to dry or anything of the sort. I decided to brave the Noodlers in my Online German again, but alas, the same exact problem. I've recently read a post somewhere that the Noodlers 'Bulletproof' line is not a very well lubricated ink and is prone to flowing problems. Anyway tell me what you guys think of my situation and if you've had any similar problems with any of the Noodlers inks. ​

Hi Guys, I am pretty new to fountain pens and to the forum. But I wish I can have some of your opinions on a MB pen I recently acquired. It is a Meisterstuck 149 with an M-nib. The pen is pre-owned pen. The seller claims it is new. Though I think it has been inked before. What annoys me is that the pen tends to skip a bit on downward strokes---especially on the first few, but otherwise writes well. (You see the attached picture to see what I mean. The pen is filled with Edelstein Onyx ink, and it was on an ordinary writing pad.) I have flushed the pen throughoutly a few times, and the problem persists. Is this something I should be concerned with? Will it go away as I use the pen for longer? To be honest, it does not affect much, but annoys quite a bit. All my other pens (including a 146 with EF-nib) does not have such a problem. I appreciate your thoughts.

I recently got a Pelikan DF nib in the mail and found that it had some hard start/skipping issues. It was also a little scratchy. When I checked the tines they were indeed misaligned so I corrected them, which was not so easy with a DF nib. I then found, to my delight, that the hard start/skipping problem had vanished! I had no idea the two were related. Or are they? Was it coincidence or did I kill two birds with one stone? And while we're at it, does anyone know why this nib has two breather holes?

Hi guys. I love this pen. The nib is just awesome, especially the line variations, but unfortunately, it is giving me a headache. It is hardstarting. I have to shake the pen,, and after a page of writing, the ink flow would just stop, and i have to twist the filler knob a bit before it would start writing again. I flushed the pen with warm water and refilled it again with Edelatein Topaz ink but the problem would recur. I brought it to Scribe where Ever, the best calligrapher that i have seen in action, said that the tines were misaligned which maybe a result of my writing angle. After the nib was realigned and a few writing tips, it was behaving well only recur when i got home. Yesterday, the nib was replaced but again the problem recurred. I tried using a different ink, this time i used Jentle ink by sailor but it would still skip occasionally, although it just would require a few seconds of continues pressure on the nib against the paper and it would write again. This is just a one month old pen, and maybe i'm just on my 4th refill, and it is giving me problems. In fact it is the only pen in my collection that is behaving like this. Is there a breathing port somewhere that won't let air in causing a vacuum which prevents the ink from flowing? Or is there even such a thing? Any inputs would be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

My first review here at FPN. After reading a lot about the TWSBI pens on FPN, I was really tempted to try one of them. So, I purchased the recently released TWSBI Diamond 580 with a medium nib (and later on bought an EF nib too) directly from TWSBI. The pen cost me $80 ($50+$30 for shipping). An aside, noticed today that the TWSBI website has increased the shipping cost by $10, which means, you may have to shell out nearly as much as the pen if you are from India, like me. Edit: as pointed by hari317 below, the shipping rate is still $30 (when not logged in through a mobile) Coming back to the pen, the first time I wrote, I was blown away by the smoothness of the pen. The medium nib is really that smooth. And though I feared that the pen might be huge, looking at the images, but never felt so after actually handling it for a while. Also, I found the grip of the pen very pleasing and now, I am really comfortable with the length, grip as well as the weight of the pen. But my initial pleasure of using such a smooth nib vanished very quickly as the nib skipped a LOT and got dry very soon. I wrote to TWSBI and Philip Wang was quick to respond, asking me to press the nib using my thumb and index finger to stop the skipping issue. I followed that but didn't find much of a difference, but when I followed what TWSBI has demonstrated on their , I was surprisingly able to correct the issue and pen never skipped afterwards. With regard to the drying of the pen, unfortunately, the issue still persists, The solution, though not entirely pleased with it, is turning the piston knob to push the ink and then do it again after about a page. Meaning, if you are using the pen for longer periods, this might be bit of an irritation. When it comes to the extra fine nib, I had requested Philip Wang to test it and make sure that the nib doesn't skip, and then ship it. Thanks to TWSBI, my EF nib never skipped, but unfortunately, even that faced the same drying issue. After about a page, the nib/feed started getting very dry. Apart from that, the EF nib is, naturally, not as smooth as Medium and was too dry for my liking. So, followed the same method suggested by TWSBI, mentioned earlier, to make it wet and it worked and now, happy with the ink flow. (I separated the nib from the feed while following their method) Have to mention that I have changed the ink lot of times and it is a very easy and quick process to clean the pen. Overall, my experience with TWSBI, if I have to summarise in just a line, is it gives one of the smoothest writing experiences, except when it gets dry. I like the look of the pen a lot (pardon my photography skills) [original image] Writing sample of EF nib [original image] Writing sample of Medium nib [original image] Initial skipping of the nib (M) [original image] You can notice the difference between the dry nib (EF) and the wet nib immediately after turning the piston ring [original image]

Hi All: I bought a Dietrich fountain pen for my wife for Christmas (not the super exclusive one), gorgeous pen she really loves it. But there is a major problem as i keeps skipping so it's totally impossible to get a flow in your writing, as parts of the letter constantly is missing (down-strokes are particular problematic). I should be said that this pen is supposed to be "a writer" and not a show-piece. Immediately after Christmas the dealer was contacted, the pen went to Montblanc and was gone for 8 (eight) weeks. When the pen was picket up at the dealer the problem was not solved the pen was still skipping. Back to Montblanc this time they returned it faster than lightning (this is a joke as it this time was gone for 4 weeks). Problem NOT solved. For comparison she tried out a John Lennon edition medium nib), and this wrote as a dream - I tried it as well and it was really smooth and perfect. We can rule out problems with the angle when writing as 4 people (2 of them dealer representatives) experienced the same problem. The dealer has offered to swap the pen with another model. Does any expert in here know what to do. I should mention that an explanation given was that as the nib is so relatively small in the Diva line there might be a problem with a medium nib because of the amount of ink flowing - but really, one should thing that Montblanc shouldn't have this kind of problem ............. but does the expert in here thing that fitting a fine nib might solve the problem. Sorry for this very long message, hope someone can help. Kind regards Johnny Lindhardt

My new Parker I.M. is skipping... enough i could say.... i have tried to flush it (with water and stuff) but it skips again! What can i do? Please help! (I use a parker converter and quink black ink)

As a new user let me first say hello to everyone on the Fountain Pen network. I have been a long time lurker and have finally decided to partake in your colorful and informative community. Now down to my problem, my wife bought me a beautiful Rotring Initial while on a trip to Portugal and aesthtically it is a real joy. However, it skips quite badly on the initial stroke requiring a slightly firm hand to start the flow. I have scoured the internet, including this forum, trying to diagnose the problem with no luck. If the problem I describe below has been documented I appologize. Symptoms: Almost always skipps on initial stroke, 100% skips if it is a down stroke.I have also just observed that while it skips when writing with it properly, it works 100% of the time if I write with it inverted, i.e. top of the nib towards paper, thought understandably scratchy. Diagnostic steps: Initially it was cleaned in an ultrasonic as I do with all of my new pens.Flushed it with ink (used Waterman's Florida Blue)Tried different inks (fully cleaning and drying in between)Waterman - Florida BluePilot Iroshizuku - Kiri-SameJ. Herbin - Eclat De Saphir (Blue)Sailor - Blue BlackMont Blanc - Oyster GreyI have inspected the nib using a loupeThe tines appear aligned and well placed both vertically and horizontallyWhile I do not have the brass sheets for checking spacing, the gap does not appear abnormal when compared to any of my other pens. Once it does write the pen is quite wet.The ball does have a flatter area towards the end of the nibOther than the flat area on the ball, overgrinding?, I am honestly at a loss with this pen. The fact that I can write easily with the pen upside down seems to indicate it is not a general flow problem but specifically with ball on the nib. Any advice or insight would be greatly appreciated. Thank you Scott P.S. If pictures are required I can see how well I can do with some of my macro lenses.

I have used and enjoyed Pilot Murex stainless steel pens, all with a fine nib since the early 1970s, buying several at later dates, including one inscribed H804. With three or four of them, I found a consistent problem. The pen skips, particularly with Waterman's Green or Brown inks as well as those from different manufacturers, notably on Steno pad paper, but on other types of paper as well. Taking them to my local pen store where the nib prongs were separated slightly to improve flow did little to solve the problem, save changing the line from fine to medium. This is not a difficulty I found with earlier models of the same pen. Have any other of my fellow pen lovers had similar problems? If so, how did you solve the difficulty? Thank you for your help. Best wishes, herschm