cleaning a fountain pen, it is an art form for sure...

[InesF]

Almost everything is already said here about cleaning.

For all my converter fountain pens the cleaning will never last longer than 3 minutes, it will be 4-5 minutes for piston fillers where I can screw out the nib+feed unit and maybe overnight for those piston + vac filler which can not be disassembled. However, even for those nasty cleaning-resistant pens I will not spend much time with them. The soak overnight is in a cup of water and usually the (more dense) ink flows out of the pen during the night hours. The boring suck-in-push-out by turning the piston know may be repeated several times, sure not longer than for 10 minutes.

 

When I used only standard inks (no flitter, no pigments, no waterproofness), I did not clean my fountain pens more often than once every 3-5 years. It was only in those rare cases when I changed the ink colour or when I put the pen aside for a planned long time.

[greencobra]

1 hour ago, InesF said:

Almost everything is already said here about cleaning.

yep. to paraphrase kamala, we got to the root!

[Dblchief2]

On 11/16/2023 at 8:14 AM, txomsy said:

Or you could just follow the well-known makers' advice: flush it with water once every three months.

 

That's what every body did way back when, although it is true that when changing colors you would get a couple of pages in mixed ink until the old ink was washed out and the new one took over. But we did not know -nor care- better and it worked finely.

 

Nowadays you can take as a rule, flush your pen once every three months or when switching colors.

 

Actually I have pens that always fill with the same ink and haven't cleaned in years. As long as they are continuously in use that shouldn't be a problem. If you let the ink dry, then a flush is not a bad idea.

 

Modern marketing tries to keep us in a continuous state of unbalance/paranoia/neurosis in anguish so we are more susceptible to their messages. With a good pen, there should be no need to.

 

Does this count, in your view, for IG and/or pigmented inks? Or does this only apply to dye-based inks?

[txomsy]

I don't think that whether the ink is IG or not should make a difference, at least with decent pens and inks. I have certainly been using IG inks for decades with little concern. Actually most classic blue-black inks, which used to be the most popular, where IG, and I never saw (nor have yet seen) any pen manufacturer issue a special warning.

 

Obviously there are always exceptions : India ink has never been friendly to FPs, for example.

[XYZZY]

When I started out with FPs the cleaning was an enjoyable ritual, but now it's a chore.  I have many pens and try to keep only 4-5 inked at once, which means that when I empty one it usually gets thoroughly cleaned so that it can be set aside for months while I used others.  So yeah, the get cleaned.

 

But on the other end of the spectrum, I have a Namiki Emperor that has written over 1100 A4 pages with Sailor Souboku since it's last cleaning in October 2022.  I did run brass shim through the nib/feed this past weekend because it appeared to have accumulated some dust over that time, but that's it as far as cleaning.  "Accumulated dust" isn't because I leave it sitting out, but I estimate that amount of writing to be over 500 hours so I supposed it's only natural for some dust to accumulate in the slot when exposed for that long.  Anyhow, I clearly don't buy into the need to clean a frequently used pen on a regular basis, even if using a pigmented ink.

 

Take that all with a grain of salt though: this long term experience is with a single pen and a single ink.  And I know I'm pushing common wisdom with this, so if it does ever act up I'll probably just tear it down and pull out the ultrasonic, skipping the bulb syringe entirely.

[Buford]

Question.... are all pen flush solutions created equal? Speedball pen cleaner says it's for use on fountain pens, and so that's what I use. I'm always a little worried because it's inexpensive and comes in a giant bottle. My experience has been that things that are inexpensive and available in bulk quantities sometimes have drawbacks. To be on the safe side, I dilute the stuff with water -and then always flush with water and dry with the nib resting on a paper towel overnight.

[txomsy]

I thought the Speedball Pen Cleaner was for dip pens and only to remove acrylic or India ink.

 

In theory, one shouldn't need a cleaner fluid unless something nasty (like clogging) has happened (or seems to be happening) to a pen. Otherwise, typical advice has always been to just flush it with water when changing inks or setting it aside for a long time.

[Buford]

40 minutes ago, txomsy said:

I thought the Speedball Pen Cleaner was for dip pens and only to remove acrylic or India ink.

The bottle says it does both, dip pens (India Ink) and fountain pens.

[senzen]

Not sure if art form or sorcery, I have a Geha 725 that finally started working well with Poppy Red, I decided to swap for Shirakashi after cleaning the section with an ultrasonic cleaner... Starting problems, again.