Flow Issues With Visconti Homesapiens

[Arfien]

Hi, I am relitivley new to fountain pens, owning only 3 at this point.

 

Yesterday I purchased my first expensice vountain pen, the visconti homosapiens steel midi, and am having some issues with the ink flow.

 

What happens is, I fill it and it writes beautifully, then it will suddenly stop. At this point, there seemes to be no ink left in the feed, yet there is definetly ink left in the piston filler as I turned the piston and watched the ink drop out. If I give the pen a bit of a flick, It will write again as I have flicked ink into the feed, but this only lasts about a paragraph. The same goes for thurning the piston, which saturates the feed enough to write maybe half a page.

 

I did some reading on the site and fushed the pen with soapy water, then with non soapy water a number of times to remove the soap. I then flushed it with ink before inking it up again. This did not solve the problem.

 

I also removed the nib and feed to see if there was a blockage, but the feed looked fine, albiet dry, and the hole that joins it to the resovoir of ink had no observable blockage, though it was very difficult so see far down it. Just out of curiosity, I turned the piston and watched as the vacated cylinder where the feed normally sits, filled up with ink.

 

I really dont know what to do now, and thougth to post here where it seems there are many knowledgable, long time pen owners who may be able to help me.

 

Any help that is offered will be much appreciated.

Edited July 3, 2013 by Arfien

[Skoff]

Hi Arfien, I had similar problems with my Homo Sapiens (bronze, with 1.3 Stub nib) I tried lots of soaking and different inks with no luck, and it sounds like you have done more than that. In the end I just got in touch with the retailer who sold me the pen and they had it sent off to a nib specialist, now it writes like a dream. It was an annoying thing to have to do, but it's such a great pen that I think the effort is well worth it.

 

I think retailers are usually pretty good about these sorts of things (and so they jolly well should be!) so definitely worth talking to them, after all it is an expensive pen so should write well.

 

Oh and welcome to FPN by the way, there are lots of very friendly and helpful people here.

 

Good luck!

[Arfien]

Thanks very much for your reply.

 

In fact, after much tinkering, it seems to be working.

 

First I used a 10mL medical serynge and needle to pressure clean the feed with dishsoapy water, and also the inbuilt converter, yet this still diddn't fix the problem. I also soaked iit for 2 or 3 hours in dishsoap solution, still no luck. After this, I wished to diagnose the problem, to see if a replacment nib and feed would be useful.

 

What I did was to write untill the pen failed, then removed the nib and feed. I Thouroughly dried the nib and feed, and also the chamber where it sat inside, so ink would have to freely flow for the pen to begin writing. I then aligned the pen in avertical writing position, and inserted the seringe needle into the little hole where the feed attaches to the converter/resovoir, and drew back. Only a very small amount of ink, and a lot of air, was drawn into the serynge, which lead me to believe there was a flow or static issue that was preventing the ink flowing from the top of the resovoir to the bottom. It appears an air bubble built up at the bottom of the resovoir as the pen was being used.

 

The insertion of the seringe needle was actually the cure. I think whatever static was built up in the ink was removed by the metal needle, or perhaps it dislodged and sucked up some machine oil or something. Whatever the case, I managed to use a whole resovoir of ink without any stopping or skipping.

 

I am going to test it extensivley tomorrow with the drier of my 3 inks and see if the problem reoccurs, and I'll post how it goes. I hope this helps anyone else who has a HS and runs into similar problems.

[Nashten]

I don't think it's static, but rather a capillary issue with the pen/nib.

 

If an air bubble sneaks into the top/bottom of the pen and prevents ink from moving, then something with the nib/feed is wrong and causing said capillary action to be insufficient.

 

I say this because of my old Duofold Junior, it's feed and nib were hideously misaligned and it was basically a fancy dip pen. If I ran my finger over the breather hole, it would suck ink into the feed and I could write for a page due to the pressure difference created. I didn't bother taking it all apart though seeing as it is a vintage pen, and is best left to a pro.

 

But it also may be your filling system too, that allows a pocket of air in.

 

Just my two cents of course.

[Arfien]

Thanks for your reply.

 

You may be correct; I tried the pen again today, and after about 6 pages it stopped again. This is a huge improvment, as before it would last 2, but still an issue.

 

I will continue testing the pen, and if the problem persists, I'll return it. It seems thought that it is getting better rather than worse. Time will tell I suppose.

[PAKMAN]

When converters don't like to let go of ink, a flush with 1/10 ammonia/water mix will sometimes fix the problem.

[georges zaslavsky]

User Herbin flushing solution, it will help a lot

[Arfien]

Thanks very much for your reply. I will definitely try that if it starts to dry out again.

 

You guys on this site are really very helpful and kind

[humsin]

I would disassemble the pen...although many on this forum will vehemently disagree with my behaviour

[a_m]

One thing I have observed with FPs is that while some will write smooth out of box - however some may not write smooth flow out of box.

 

For many of those that do not have smooth ink flow out of box - if we leave them inked overnight - then they usually have smooth ink flow without any problem.

 

I dont know whether its the feed thing that soaks up ink, or any other reasons to it - but thats my observation.

[jskywalker]

I'm also having problems with low flow or no flow with my Visconti Homo Sapient. I like the pen, I have 3 of them (1×18K F, 1x18k EF and 1x14k F), all are suffering from low flow or no flow problem.

 

I did some troubleshooting. There are mainly 2 issues:

1. The tines are too tight. While the nib has some flex, the tightness caused low flow problem.

 

2. The gap between the nib and the feed is too wide. For most pens, the nib "sticks" to the feed. But for the Homo Sapiens, there's a gap. It's gets wider because of the flex and low flow, which one tends to press it down.

 

I dismantled the nib and feed. Widen the tines a bit and immersed the feed into hot water and bend it up to touch the nib. Now it writes much much better. 

[dcaesq]

Interesting information! A few years back I saw a Homo Sapiens Magma on Facebook and absolutely HAD to have one. I'd never been particularly drawn to or even aware of Visconti before that. I looked online and found the pen at nibs.com. At that time, I wasn't even aware that Mottishaw owned the company. I ordered the Magma with a custom ground 0.5 italic nib. That pen wrote/writes like a dream. Absolute perfection. I've used shimmer ink exclusively in it, and there has never been an issue with it not writing. Fast forward a bit, and I've bought a Dark Crystal and a Blue Lagoon. And both have had the same issue addressed in this thread.  I have a custom ground 0.3 italic from nibs.com on the Blue Lagoon that has the stopping issue and a standard EF on the Dark Crystal, also crapping out after writing a while. The 0.3 was acquired after Mottishaw sold the company.

I sent both pens off to Mike-It-Work last week.