Pilot Custom 823 - Persistent Stain inside barrel?

[InVinoVeritas]

Hello, All.

I've had my Pilot Custom 823 for about a month now, and I love it. It writes beautifully and I've only ever inked it with one type of ink: Pilot Irushizuko take-sumi (black). Earlier today though, I inked it up again for a long writing stint..and it started to feel clogged and not so smooth. It would lay down light ink at first then get dark, then light again. Also, the feedback started to feel more "scratchier" on a Leuchtturm notebook where just last night it was smooth as butter. So I thought I would flush it out.

I have a GouletPens flushing solution and so I went about flushing it out with water first, then used the solution...but as I did, I noticed a weird stain on the inside of the barrel that no matter how hard I tried to flush it out, would not come off. I'm very hesitant about disassembling my PC823 for fear of voiding the warranty, but wondering if there's anything non-intrusive I could do to try and remove this weird stain. It probably isn't hurting why ink per se, but it's just me knowing it's there that's probably the main issue. Still I don't like that a really expensive pen (at least for me) has a stain on the inside of the barrel.

[DvdRiet]

In these photos, this really looks to me like piston (silicone) grease or something similar. Is that possible?

 

I'm curious to know also because I just recently got this - quite expensive for me as well - pen and I was just about to put it back into rotation. I would like to be prepared if it happens with mine! I didn't see anything like this when I flushed it recently, but I know it took absolutely forever for all the water to evaporate out of the barrel.

[InVinoVeritas]

19 minutes ago, DvdRiet said:

In these photos, this really looks to me like piston (silicone) grease or something similar. Is that possible?

 

I'm curious to know also because I just recently got this - quite expensive for me as well - pen and I was just about to put it back into rotation. I would like to be prepared if it happens with mine! I didn't see anything like this when I flushed it recently, but I know it took absolutely forever for all the water to evaporate out of the barrel.

It's possibly a grease stain, but I'm not sure. This is my first vacuum filler, but I have heard on other forums that Pilot overly greases some pens, this may be one of them. I'm honestly just not that experienced enough with fountain pens in general to know what a silicone grease stain looks like.

[DvdRiet]

I've also never had a vacuum filler before this, but I have been cleaning the old ink and accumulated gunk out of a lot of old German pistons (mostly simple ones) from the 50s lately. Some of them have been in the hands of pen people (less gunk but sometimes excess grease) and some of them haven't (gunk, gunk, and more gunk), and I've also been greasing the pistons myself before putting the pens back together. Grease was the first thing I thought of when I saw your photos. Also makes sense if you've heard that they sometimes over-grease them. So, hopefully that's what it is, because that's not any big deal really, except that it can cause a bit of blockage in the the feed if there's too much of it. 

 

How to get it out from where it is currently located, on the other hand, or if it will dissolve and go away by itself eventually, I can't say. It may just be a case of leaving the cleaning fluid in for a little longer to let it dissolve the grease before you flush it out again. Or a special dilution. Hopefully someone here with actual expertise with these pens can help out!

[InVinoVeritas]

9 minutes ago, DvdRiet said:

How to get it out from where it is currently located, on the other hand, or if it will dissolve and go away by itself eventually, I can't say. It may just be a case of leaving the cleaning fluid in for a little longer to let it dissolve the grease before you flush it out again. Or a special dilution. Hopefully someone here with actual expertise with these pens can help out!

Thanks. I was actually considering doing exactly that, leaving the flushing solution in for a bit longer, just to see if maybe it'll go away. Still researching other means, but I may give this a try tonight.

[SpecTP]

that doesn't look like ink stain to me either.

[A Smug Dill]

If it's just gunk sticking to the surface of the barrel's interior wall, then a soak and cycle in an ultrasonic cleaning tank should help knock it loose, without disassembling the pen.

 

Do keep in mind that, if it is indeed a glob of silicone grease that sticks together and is insoluble in water, you may not actually want it coming off and end up clogging the end of the feed or clinging to its ink channel.

[InVinoVeritas]

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

Do keep in mind that, if it is indeed a glob of silicone grease that sticks together and is insoluble in water, you may not actually want it coming off and end up clogging the end of the feed or clinging to its ink channel.

Yikes. Good point. DIdn't even think about that. Ugh.

[sirgilbert357]

I know what I would do...Just fill it and write on! Inks have chemicals in them to make them flow better. I'm no chemist, but I'm guessing those same properties will eventually dissolve the silicone grease over time.

 

Also, some inks have a reputation for removing ink stains inside pens. Sailor Doyou is one such ink. You can do some searches on that topic. Just food for thought if you do eventually develop an actual ink stain at some point.

 

I love my Pilot 823 too. For the inks that might stain it, I use the Wing Sung 699.