Metropolitan feeding problem

[Asteris]

I have been using a mr for 2 months now on a daily basis. I flush it every 3 fills, using tap water (it is clean and drinkable in my area). I was using pelikan 4001 brilliant black and now I swiched to pelikan 4001 royal blue. Sometimes the pen suddently stops writing and I have to twist the piston converter a little to get it going again. This happens once I've used around half the ink in the converter and after I switch inks. Any ideas to what causes the problem?

[Sailor Kenshin]

Dry ink in a dry writer.  Pelikan is among the driest of inks, and Pilot pens tend to be dry writers, especially the Mets and the Plumix.

[Chi]

Are you using Con-40?

 

I find it happens a lot with con-40, especially after cleaning. After piecing pens back together, there would be air trapped in the convertor and somehow left inside even though I always run the converter couple times when filling. It definitely affects the ink flow when there is not enough liquid pressure to push the air bubble around. 

 

My get around was using syringe to over fill the converter when refilling for the first time after cleaning and force the air out both in feed and converter.  I have not yet found a smarter way to overcome this problem. 

[Asteris]

6 hours ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

Dry ink in a dry writer.  Pelikan is among the driest of inks, and Pilot pens tend to be dry writers, especially the Mets and the Plumix.

Thanks for the answer, are there any wet or lubricated inks other than the pilot ones that you would recomend?

[Asteris]

3 hours ago, Chi said:

Are you using Con-40?

 

I find it happens a lot with con-40, especially after cleaning. After piecing pens back together, there would be air trapped in the convertor and somehow left inside even though I always run the converter couple times when filling. It definitely affects the ink flow when there is not enough liquid pressure to push the air bubble around. 

 

My get around was using syringe to over fill the converter when refilling for the first time after cleaning and force the air out both in feed and converter.  I have not yet found a smarter way to overcome this problem. 

No, I have the european mr, which takes the waterman deluxe converter?

[Sailor Kenshin]

5 minutes ago, Asteris said:

Thanks for the answer, are there any wet or lubricated inks other than the pilot ones that you would recomend?

 

Other than the expensive Iroshizuku line?  Some of the Diamine and Monteverde inks are wet/lubricated.

 

LizEF who reviews inks here talks about lubrication and wetness, and uses Pilot pens.

[inkstainedruth]

Clean and drinkable water may not be sufficient, Asteris. 

Do you have hard or soft water where you live?  If you have mineral deposits building up around your sink fixtures, it's hard.  And those deposits may be clogging up your feed.  Which is why I invariably recommend flushing with distilled water, and if you are using a homemade mix (generally a 9:1 ratio of water and clear ammonia -- or substituting white vinegar if you are using iron gall inks -- with a drop of Dawn dish detergent [or whatever your local substitute is -- in the UK I believe the equivalent is called Fairy]) I suspect that distilled water is pretty important, since you may not know what's *in* your water (and if there is any sort of adverse reaction with either ammonia or vinegar.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Asteris]

10 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

Clean and drinkable water may not be sufficient, Asteris. 

Do you have hard or soft water where you live?  If you have mineral deposits building up around your sink fixtures, it's hard.  And those deposits may be clogging up your feed.  Which is why I invariably recommend flushing with distilled water, and if you are using a homemade mix (generally a 9:1 ratio of water and clear ammonia -- or substituting white vinegar if you are using iron gall inks -- with a drop of Dawn dish detergent [or whatever your local substitute is -- in the UK I believe the equivalent is called Fairy]) I suspect that distilled water is pretty important, since you may not know what's *in* your water (and if there is any sort of adverse reaction with either ammonia or vinegar.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

Thanks for the advice,I think that if I'll use distilled water, it will be for the last 2-3 flushes. Dish soap is a great idea as well.

[Ergative]

14 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

a drop of Dawn dish detergent [or whatever your local substitute is -- in the UK I believe the equivalent is called Fairy]

 

Fairy is a brand of dish soap, but I don't know if its formulation is different from Dawn brand. More generally, the UK calls dish soap 'washing up liquid', which strikes me as a hilariously clumsy phrasing, but it is what it is.

 

Are brands of dish soap actually that important? Wouldn't any dish soap work reasonably well as a surfectant for a homemade pen flush, or is there something special about Dawn?

[mizgeorge]

In reality, nobody says 'washing up liquid' in the UK, we just call it Fairy Liquid, which is far more accurate since we stopped scraping bits off a block of hard soap for washing up (we don't 'do dishes' here). Same way we refer to Hoovering rather than vacuuming. Both are made by Proctor and Gamble, but the formula is slightly different.

 

Either way the important thing, and the reason Dawn/Fairy tends to be recommended is that it's the most basic, pure soap version. Avoid anything strongly scented, antibacterial, bleach-enhanced, etc etc, these additives are not good for your ink or your pens.

[inkstainedruth]

Good point.  I don't even know if the other colors/formulations of Dawn are safe (one time at the local Sam's I Club couldn't get the regular (blue) formulation and got the green instead.  I tend to restrict the use of that version to scrubbing greasy pots in the kitchen sink (I have a regular (larger size) bottle of the standard blue version in the bathroom for flushing pens, and of course I'm only using a drop or two at the time, so it will literally take me years to go through that bottle.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[awa54]

...even better is Koh-i-Noor or Speedball pen cleaning solution. These are more effective than dish soap or ammonia on their own and even when used full strength they rinse out completely with just warm water.