Cross Original Century: Masking tape to the rescue?

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I previously wrote about an original Cross Century FP from around 1984 (auspicious year?) which allows ink to get under the trim ring when filling the pen. To get a normal fill, you have to dip the trim ring in the ink. I first tried the trick of filling the converter off the pen, then re-attaching it. That prevents ink from getting under the trim ring but it's a little messy and you have to get the ink up to the feed after that.

 

I just tried the idea of using a temporary piece of tape around the trim ring. My fist try was black electrical tape. That was not a good idea because it left a sticky residue on the section that had to be cleaned off, although the trim ring was sealed off. Next, I tried masking tape. This left no residue at all on the section and I confirmed that the trim ring remained dry under the masking tape. So, for now, I plan to use this method.

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Using masking tape turned out to be too messy. But, I managed to get a second (mint) original Cross Century on Ebay for $11. It has a medium nib, which I don't like, but I use it to fill the conveter, then take the converter out and stick it in my other pen with an XF nib, which I do like. The unused medium nib and section never get any ink under the metal ring, so it's easy to fill and then just move the filled converter to the XF section. This depends on being able to find a second section somewhere to use for filling the converter. You can also use a syringe but I found that more messy than using the other section as the filler.

 

Actually, you can use any Cross pen that uses the same converter as the filler to transfer over to a model that gets ink under the metal ring.  I could have use my Radiance, but I just didn't bother.