Frustration does not even begin to describe it!

[Boston Brian]

I bought a Monteverde Sequoia fountain pen at the DC pen show from the company table and of course the pens looks wonderful, if only it would write! Leave the pen for five minutes and it is very hard to get the ink to start flowing. Now, once it does start flowing it is wet, and wonderful. I have cleaned the pen out with warm water and small amount of detergent, and for a day that seemed to work, but now it is back to being impossible to start.
Any suggestions, any thoughts, aside from throw the pen away?

Brian

[silverlifter]

Try it with Serenity Blue. If that doesn't flow, the problem is a hardware one.

[Jon Szanto]

Hard starts and initial flow are tricky things to diagnose remotely. It could be an issue of the pen not sealing well (screw- or snap-cap?), or poor feed design, or both. Honestly, you can try something as simple as placing the pen nib down, so that the ink supply is always in contact with the end of the feed, and see if that helps. I don't know that I'd try hacking that particular pen, and I've completely avoided Montegrappa pens for the quality/functionality issues. My only other two suggestions is to try a well-lubricated in, or just a different ink in general, as some pens happen to find an ink soul-mate at times; beyond that, I would consider writing the company/vendor for a refund.

[An old bloke]

I agree with Silverlifter that it may be an ink problem. I have one ink I like, that one and only one of my pens doesn't seem to favour.

[TSherbs]

I bought a Monteverde Sequoia fountain pen at the DC pen show from the company table and of course the pens looks wonderful, if only it would write! Leave the pen for five minutes and it is very hard to get the ink to start flowing. Now, once it does start flowing it is wet, and wonderful. I have cleaned the pen out with warm water and small amount of detergent, and for a day that seemed to work, but now it is back to being impossible to start.
Any suggestions, any thoughts, aside from throw the pen away?

Brian

Yeah, this sucks. Sorry that it is happening.

When you write, can you write, say, at least an entire A4 page without it stopping or running dry? If you can, then this means that the ink is getting from the barrel down though the section and out the nib and feed without problem. So that would likely mean a cap/seal/dryout issue. And when you say you put it down and it stops, do you mean that you put it down uncapped? This, of course, could lead to swifter dryout (but this is also annoying)

If the pen can't write a whole page straight without pause without giving you problems, then you probably have some other problem with the ink delivery system, or the ink, or both, or both combined with a capping problem....etc.

Like Jon said, this is a tough one to diagnose quickly (and from a distance). I think that you have to set up a whole bunch of tasks where you change one variable at a time and see what results you get. I've had to do this more than once: sometimes its been the ink, sometimes its been dryout in the nib/feed, sometimes its been the little demon gremlin just wanting to ruin my day....

I'd start by sticking the wettest ink you have in that sucker. See what happens.

[Boston Brian]

Firstly, thank you to everyone who has made suggestions, I have tried some of the wettest inks I know, like Waterman, Diamine, but it does not make a button of difference. Now when the pen starts to write it the ink will flow normally until you put the pen aside, and by that I mean capped and either on my desk or in my pocket. I left the pen capped and laying on its side on my desk all night, to the ink would reach the feed and the nib and not be upright and the ink drain away, and of course it will not start to write this morning.
I think that the only thing I can do is to return the pen to Monteverde in California.

[junglejim]

Are you using just ink cartridges or the ink converter? Some converters will cause ink to bind or lock-up and give you ink starvation. Try the pen with a cartridge. If you are using only cartridges then switch to the converter to see if the problem goes away.

[Boston Brian]

I have been using the ink convertor which came with the pen, but have just now changed to a cartridge and I will report back on how that works out before sending the pen back to CA. Thanks.

[Boston Brian]

Junglejim, Thank you, rather much to my surprise changing to using and ink cartridge has solved the problem, there is no ink starvation and the pen has written each time! A lesson learned, so many thanks !

[silverlifter]

You could fix that by either using a converter with an agitator in it, or hacking one by putting a small (stainless) ball bearing in your current one.

Glad you got it working!

[junglejim]

What Silverlifter said is right. Boston Brian, just out of curiousity, does your new pen have the new version of the Montverde converter (has a ball bearing in it) or the old version? I know there are still 1000's of the older version still being sold by dealers. Monteverde was probably aware about the ink starvation problem with their converters and redesigned it.

https://www.penboutique.com/products/monteverde-mixer-ink-converter-push-in

They also make it with the screw-in version converter.

https://www.penboutique.com/products/monteverde-mixer-ink-converter-threaded

[Boston Brian]

The converter does not appear to have a ball bearing in it, but it is a screw in type convert or!

[Chrissy]

It's amazing how some inks have the ability to bind inside a converter. When a converter isn't full it's quite easy to see this happening when you turn the pen with the converter inside and the ink inside stubbornly remains where it was. Some inks are even sluggish about moving inside a sample vial.

This problem sounded like an ink starvation problem rather than a pen fault. Always try a different ink before sending the pen off to be "fixed." :)

[TSherbs]

By the way, that's a big pen!

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

[Sailor Kenshin]

I'm glad the solution was that simple.

My garden hose Sailor 1911 is inked now with a converter. I loathe Sailor converters. Every time I pick this up to write, it won't. I have to advance the converter, which also likes to disassemble itself while I do so.

And ink is always a suspect!

[TSherbs]

I'm glad the solution was that simple.

My garden hose Sailor 1911 is inked now with a converter. I loathe Sailor converters. Every time I pick this up to write, it won't. I have to advance the converter, which also likes to disassemble itself while I do so.

And ink is always a suspect!

Some day I'd like to try a Sailor pen/nib. But I am unlikely to shell out money without a good long testing, first. These comments spook me.

[Sailor Kenshin]

I'm glad the solution was that simple.

My garden hose Sailor 1911 is inked now with a converter. I loathe Sailor converters. Every time I pick this up to write, it won't. I have to advance the converter, which also likes to disassemble itself while I do so.

And ink is always a suspect!

Some day I'd like to try a Sailor pen/nib. But I am unlikely to shell out money without a good long testing, first. These comments spook me.

The pens are wonderful. The converters ....

Save your carts. 😜

[Chrissy]

I'm glad the solution was that simple.

My garden hose Sailor 1911 is inked now with a converter. I loathe Sailor converters. Every time I pick this up to write, it won't. I have to advance the converter, which also likes to disassemble itself while I do so.

And ink is always a suspect!

Some day I'd like to try a Sailor pen/nib. But I am unlikely to shell out money without a good long testing, first. These comments spook me.
Like you I've also never tried a Sailor pen with or without a converter.

[Linger]

Weird how experiences can differ. I own four Sailors at present, and used to own five, and all of them wrote perfectly straight out of the box - never had any problems with anything.

[Sailor Kenshin]

Weird how experiences can differ. I own four Sailors at present, and used to own five, and all of them wrote perfectly straight out of the box - never had any problems with anything.

Of course they WRITE perfectly. All of mine did, from the $15 fude de mannen to the somewhat more costly ProGear. It's the hideous converters.

[penwash]

I'm glad the solution was that simple.

My garden hose Sailor 1911 is inked now with a converter. I loathe Sailor converters. Every time I pick this up to write, it won't. I have to advance the converter, which also likes to disassemble itself while I do so.

And ink is always a suspect!

Some day I'd like to try a Sailor pen/nib. But I am unlikely to shell out money without a good long testing, first. These comments spook me.

I had several Sailor pens in the past (part of a bulk purchase from Japan), and they are nice pens. Excellent nibs, good build quality, and they always come with a cartridge that I just refill. I don't remember any persistent ink starvation issues. It takes a while to flush old inks that came with the pen, but then again, I don't expect anything different.

Now, I never bought a new Sailor because I think their pricing is a bit too high for the larger models.

[titrisol]

It's amazing how some inks have the ability to bind inside a converter. When a converter isn't full it's quite easy to see this happening when you turn the pen with the converter inside and the ink inside stubbornly remains where it was. Some inks are even sluggish about moving inside a sample vial.

This problem sounded like an ink starvation problem rather than a pen fault. Always try a different ink before sending the pen off to be "fixed." :)

It happens in some ink cartridges as well. Some cartridges get "air-locked" and starve the feed.
Lamy black has done that to me several times

[Cyril]

I have 6 Sailor pens. I don't have any problems and they are all with converters. They never get dry and they have an anti-dry locking through tight sealing mechanism.
Even after months they quick start with out priming the ink to write.

[PenInvestigations]

I've had this problem with the two Monteverdes I bought. Though I could never get them to write. Swore off the entire brand. One of them was my second pen too; I nearly gave up on fountain pens altogether after the problems it gave me.

[KBeezie]

I've had this problem with the two Monteverdes I bought. Though I could never get them to write. Swore off the entire brand. One of them was my second pen too; I nearly gave up on fountain pens altogether after the problems it gave me.

Pretty much done the same with Monteverde and likewise their parent company Yafa.

[BoBo Olson]

I have a couple of pens, both Lamy's with converters; that work with no problems. And I have some never used converters sitting around. I have Pelikan cartridge pens, some 4-5, but somehow never got around to using or even seeing if those 'spare' 'new' converters even fit them.
I have basically piston pens....near as many sac pens as cartridge.

I have enough piston pens for all my bottles of inks.

I tend to use cartridge pens therefore for my somehow obtained cartridges. Those are a minimum of my inks, in I've said since childhood in the late '50-early '60's, cartridges were too expensive...........still are.

Some times one ends up with some..........like I really got to go find out what nib width is best....for my couple Penman Sapphire cartridges.
Or got to really look at some unlabeled Diamine cartridges; as an ink.
I bought some Kaweco cartridges instead of bottles thankfully. So one ends up with some.
Some just hang around for decades. Black is not my thing, and Quink black even less.

I've been reading about converter problems for a number of years. One guy likes permanence so uses gold plated piano springs; others think to take out the small cut ball point spring when it rusts.***... Those seem the best working get a rounds.

Some have said the plastic ball of a Pelikan cartridge does well...others are not too enthused. Same goes for the steel ball, which could block the feed.

Here in this thread and often a cartridge solves a converter problem.

The problem is not the ink, it is the converter is too narrow so has a vapor lock problem; when not that, then that ink clings to the sides where it has no problem in piston pens.

Piston pens are wide enough that they don't have converter problems.
So best cure is to buy a piston pen.

*** Save the steel ball point spring. I don't know how much of it is needed to fit and work in a converter, but such a spring could be used up over years.