Cleaning

[jackwebb]

My questing is, how clean is clean enough?
I have had my Pelikan M600 White Tortoise inked up with Noodler's Apache Sunset for a couple of weeks, but started flushing over the weekend when I ordered some Sailor Jentle Grenade because I knew I wanted to pair the two. On day one I flushed the pen 25-30 times with water and left it full of water, about an hour later I checked the water was clear with a tissue, it was not. I flushed the pen another 10-15 times with water and left it 24hr... still not clear. I used an ammonia solution for an hour and flushed the pen 25-30 times with water and left it full of water for 2 days. When my new ink arrived today I checked the pen with a tissue again and it still had yellow residue (note that the pen would flush clear after the first fill of water each time), I again flushed the pen with water 20-30 times and inked it up with the new ink. What is clean enough for you? I didn't disassemble the pen, should I next time?
Thanks
Joe

[00Photo]

What I usually do is flush it normally until the water runs clean, then fill the pen with water, wrap it in toilet paper and sit it upright in a small cup. I check and refill the pen once an hour, re-wrapping it until the toilet paper is clean. that seems to work better than just flushing with water.

[jackwebb]

What I usually do is flush it normally until the water runs clean, then fill the pen with water, wrap it in toilet paper and sit it upright in a small cup. I check and refill the pen once an hour, re-wrapping it until the toilet paper is clean. that seems to work better than just flushing with water.
Thanks, that would have been much faster than my method, I assume, and sounds like a winner. Much to learn and always appreciate experience.
Joe

[AndyT]

Ugh, pen flushing. I really love lever fillers, but there's always a downside. :(

I've come to the conclusion that they're probably never clean enough, but here's the process for me:

- Run nib under the tap, then flush again and again till the water seems to be coming out clear. Making like it's a cocktail shaker every now and then to make sure the end of the sac gets done.
- Maybe run some 10% ammonia through.
- Wrap the nib in kitchen paper, take a firm grip and shake it down like a thermometer. Huh, back to square one.
- Repeat ad nauseam until the paper looks unstained ... peer at it in better light and then do the whole thing again.
- Eventually wrap the nib up and leave it nib down in a shot glass overnight.
- Inspect the paper in the morning. Surprise! Curse inventively and give it one last shot.
- Admit defeat and call it a draw.

I'm seriously considering giving the salad spinner centrifuge idea a whirl.

[Wile E Coyote]

Sounds like there is still ink residue in the nib unit. If at all possible remove the nib unit and use an ultrasonic cleaner. Otherwise, remove and soak in some ammonia/water solution. You can then reassemble and flush with water.

You really don't need the salad spinner with a piston filler. They're more useful for P51 type fillers which due to the breather tube don't expel the water completely.

[jackwebb]

Ugh, pen flushing. I really love lever fillers, but there's always a downside. :(

I've come to the conclusion that they're probably never clean enough, but here's the process for me:

- Run nib under the tap, then flush again and again till the water seems to be coming out clear. Making like it's a cocktail shaker every now and then to make sure the end of the sac gets done.
- Maybe run some 10% ammonia through.
- Wrap the nib in kitchen paper, take a firm grip and shake it down like a thermometer. Huh, back to square one.
- Repeat ad nauseam until the paper looks unstained ... peer at it in better light and then do the whole thing again.
- Eventually wrap the nib up and leave it nib down in a shot glass overnight.
- Inspect the paper in the morning. Surprise! Curse inventively and give it one last shot.
- Admit defeat and call it a draw.

I'm seriously considering giving the salad spinner centrifuge idea a whirl.

Sounds exactly like my experience, sans the shot glass. I was guessing it was probably clean enough and my OCD was the real issue.

[jackwebb]

Sounds like there is still ink residue in the nib unit. If at all possible remove the nib unit and use an ultrasonic cleaner. Otherwise, remove and soak in some ammonia/water solution. You can then reassemble and flush with water.

You really don't need the salad spinner with a piston filler. They're more useful for P51 type fillers which due to the breather tube don't expel the water completely.

I have a couple of ultrasonic cleaners and that was one of the things that came to mind a couple of months ago while researching this hobby. Funny how your mind turns to mush when it comes time to implement strategy. Would you use the ammonia solution in the ultrasonic bath or just water?

[ardgedee]

When flushing and cleaning pens by hand (which I do before putting them in the ultrasonic cleaner), I usually have three jars in a row: One with a very mild soap solution (Dr. Bronner's Peppermint), one empty (to flush the pens into), one with plain filtered water. I'll do a few cycles with plain water, then switch to the soapy water. When most-but-probably-not-all of the ink has been flushed out with soap, I'll continue flushing with plain water, and when that looks good, they go in the machine.

It's worth wiping the nib and feed after a flush now and again during the process. It can help prevent ink from getting sucked back up into the reservoir.

When cleaning by hand, the only time ammonia's done the job soap couldn't was on pens with thoroughly dried-out ink or with certain varieties of wet ink... whether because they're permanent inks or have an extremely high dye saturation, I dunno.

With the ultrasonic, I've tried plain water, plain water with a pinch of oxidizing cleanser powder (OxyClean or similar), and 9:1 water:ammonia.

The water with a pinch of cleanser worked about as well as the ammonia solution and was considerably less toxic-smelling, but it required an initial cycle without any pens to thoroughly dissolve the powder. Plain water usually works too, but usually needs a couple more cycles for similar results.

I don't know how safe it is to use OxyClean on vintage pens. I haven't seen any short-term harm on my everyday carry-grade pens of any vintage. I couldn't tell a difference between using a barely-noticeable amount of powder and using more, so you may as well use as little as seems reasonable. It's there as a surfactant to help the water penetrate dried ink, and not much at all is needed to do the job. I'd say that if you already have ammonia, fix a large jug of 10% solution to store with the other household toxins, and don't bother with OxyClean.

[mhosea]

I have a couple of ultrasonic cleaners and that was one of the things that came to mind a couple of months ago while researching this hobby. Funny how your mind turns to mush when it comes time to implement strategy. Would you use the ammonia solution in the ultrasonic bath or just water?

To use my ultrasonic with pens that can't be separated at the section, I use a sheet of cardboard with some different size holes in it. I choose a hole that will hold the pen. Then I lay it over the top and adjust the pen so that the end of the grip section is immersed and the nib is touching nothing, only the liquid in the cleaner. This gets rid of the ink that gets in the nooks and crannies of the section but which isn't in the path of the flow when flushing.

I add a swig of ammonia.

[Lady Onogaro]

I have a couple of ultrasonic cleaners and that was one of the things that came to mind a couple of months ago while researching this hobby. Funny how your mind turns to mush when it comes time to implement strategy. Would you use the ammonia solution in the ultrasonic bath or just water?

To use my ultrasonic with pens that can't be separated at the section, I use a sheet of cardboard with some different size holes in it. I choose a hole that will hold the pen. Then I lay it over the top and adjust the pen so that the end of the grip section is immersed and the nib is touching nothing, only the liquid in the cleaner. This gets rid of the ink that gets in the nooks and crannies of the section but which isn't in the path of the flow when flushing.

I add a swig of ammonia.

Mike,

Any chance you can show a picture of this?

Denise

[mhosea]

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5225/13951444878_f347728fe0_q.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/nfQNv5)Cleaning mock up (https://flic.kr/p/nfQNv5)

See the comments on the photo. For your convenience:

"Pretend the Pyrex dish is the basin of an ultrasonic cleaner. This is the method I use to employ an ultrasonic cleaner on pens that can't be separated at the section. If you fill the pen with water or flushing solution, you may be able to remove ink more efficiently from the inside of the ink reservoir or sac, too. It's important that the pen, and especially the nib, isn't touching any part of the cleaner--wouldn't want to abrade any part of it."

Often, even after extensive flushing, one will see ink coming out of the area of the section that touches the nib and feed.

[SteveE]

OK, I guess I'm the dissenting opinion. Maybe there is a difference in why we clean pens, but I just don't see the need for near-medical quality cleaning. Maybe if you're changing inks it makes sense, but otherwise, just flushing with plain water until that water is almost clear is sufficient.

And, I'll accept the need to clean a pen better if it is to be stored. We don't want ink to dry out in a pen in storage - it could cause damage, depending upon the ink.

As I've said before, back when I was in grade school, we never flushed pens. The simple act of filling the pen flushed lint and dust out of the nib and feed, and the inks didn't care if they lived together in a pen. Back then, I never had a pen clog. . . never.

[mhosea]

Maybe there is a difference in why we clean pens, but I just don't see the need for near-medical quality cleaning.

No worries. I don't think I would claim that you need any such thing if you are behaving exactly as you behaved in grade school, i.e. using just one ink, or perhaps switching occasionally between blue and black from the same manufacturer or some such. However, if you want to understand where some people are coming from on this matter, I will try to explain it as I see it.

IMHO, ink and the variety of ink colors is one of the big factors that has driven up interest in FPs. But the proliferation of ink colors and manufacturers has consequences. Many of today's inks are more saturated than in the past and employ ink technologies not used then, such as cellulose reactive dyes. Pigmented inks such as the Sailor "nano" inks as well as more conventional pigmented inks are also designed now for fountain pen use. Some (e.g. Sailor Sei Boku) are hard to clear out of a pen by water flushing alone, and even soaking (which I'm not big on) doesn't solve that problem very well.

Furthermore, ink formulations range from highly acidic (European inks tend to be acidic, not just IG inks) to at least moderately alkaline (typical of Japanese inks), and nowadays many folks are using dozens of different inks from a half-dozen different manufacturers. These inks occasionally should not be mixed, and it is not unusual that different inks even from the same manufacturers are incompatible for mixing. Those of us who sometimes dabble with mixing inks know that one of the possibilities is an insoluble sludge. You mix in a sample vial and you give it a day. Doing a half-ass job of flushing and then loading an incompatible ink presents an unnecessary risk. Why do it?

The disconnect is that there are a lot of people using FPs today who see them exactly the same way as we did 30+ years ago, when ink was an ancillary matter. Now ink is one third of a the fine writing expression: pen + paper + ink and is in no way an inferior or ancillary consideration to many fountain pen users. The old strategies for maintenance when using one or at most two or, rarely, three inks from the same manufacturer rotating through the same pen probably are insufficient for the way many are using FPs today. Judging from the fact we hear about "clogging" using "boutique" inks from more than a few repairmen, while at the same time folks like myself who use dozens and dozens of inks never see a real "clog" (let's say that's anything that requires more than one cycle of water to essentially clear, as any ink can dry out in the feed, some quicker than others), I'd say that probability is high.

A final consideration for inkophiles is purity of the ink being used. If you're asking yourself whether you like the nuances of, say, Pilot Iroshizuku Kon-Peki versus Sailor Jentle Sky High, you won't know jack if the ink in your pen is randomly dissolving remnants of old inks and has diluted it with an unknown amount of water, perhaps more so in the feed than in the reservoir, leading to changing characteristics. The only proper way to explore the nuances of inks is by loading them in a clean, dry pen, which requires a method for converting a pen to that condition from a normal "in use" condition.

Now do I think I am obsessive about cleaning pens? Yes. I have way too many pens to keep them all inked, and I rotate them in and out of use a lot, as my fancy dictates. I like the idea of putting them away clean and dry. I could claim that this is so I don't have to think about incompatibilities when I next ink them up, but truthfully, it's just what makes happy, and it doesn't take extra time. That's a myth that comes from people stuck on inefficient methods. I can get most pens thoroughly clean in about 5 minutes, 3 of which is spent at my desk doing something else. The ones that take the longest are, ironically, the ones with the more "desirable" filling systems that also do not have a nib and feed designed to be removed easily (e.g. MB149). So I can clean my Bexley Corona in 5, but the 149 takes maybe 7 or 8 minutes. I should time it next time because I don't really know.

[ardgedee]

And, I'll accept the need to clean a pen better if it is to be stored. We don't want ink to dry out in a pen in storage - it could cause damage, depending upon the ink.

That's the essence of why I clean pens the way I do. To echo mhosea, I rotate between pens, so any freshly emptied pen should be cleaned thoroughly because it will dry out completely before it's reused.

Like you, when I use the same pen continuously, I don't bother cleaning it between refills unless I'm changing inks, and I don't bother bringing it to pristine cleanliness.

[bleair]

I had similar questions about cleaning.

How dangerous are ultrasonic cleaners? Can I do both the feed and nib, or is only the nib safe in them? Are there types of metal that shouldn't see the ultrasonic cleaner? I recall a anecdotal post on FPN where the poster said a nib that was gold plated lost it's platting in one. Is there a cleaning duration that is generally considered safe, like never clean more than N seconds?

I use a similar flushing approach as describe here until the water flush runs clean. My is-it-clean check is to wrap the nib in paper towel, extend my arm and swing downward (in effect I am an arm's diameter salad spinner :). The combination of my swing and semi sudden stop along with the wicking effect of the paper towel seem to be a good test.

I find that if I fill my pen with water and let it sit for an hour and come back almost no color or dye comes out. If however I fill with water and leave the pen over night and then try my swing test I get visible dye for a few shakes. At this point I'll flush water and shake and almost no more dye comes out. I'll then leave the filled pen overnight again and once more the next morning I'll get more ink out. This usually this goes on for about 4 nights, sometime longer (a few used pens I've bought have taken literally 2 weeks!).

Most commonly the ink I'm flushing is Waterman's Serentiy blue, but I've seen this with PR Black cherry, Pilot Blue, Parker Penman Sapphire, and a few others. Some pens don't require this multi night effort, and I suspect it could have something to do with variations in feeds, but dang it is a fair amount of work. I don't believe my pens have cracks in their caps, and in my everyday use my pen is uncapped only while writing and then I'm immediately recapping.

I've seen this incredible ink tenacity in both my modern pens and vintage ones. It occurs to me I should keep notes about those pens that don't have this problem because right now I'm not certain, I just know that for a few of my pens the cleaning ritual is only a day or two.

Does everyone just take multiple days to clean their pens? Are my inks too exotic and fall into that horrible "super saturated" category experts complain about? I keep reading the mantra about "good pen hygiene" and all of that but I wonder if I'm doing something wrong.

[Jon Szanto]

Yes to everything.

It's a pain in the ass, and only totally necessary before storage or between the change of radically different ink hues, but in those occasions, you've got to use every trick in the book to do your best to get all the ink residue out. I never cease to be amazed at the process of repeatedly flushing a pen, taking off the section and flushing *that* with a bulb syringe until it runs clear again, and then popping it in the USC and watching all the ink tendrils float out into the liquid.

But it has to be done, for those circumstances. <le sigh>

[mhosea]

I had similar questions about cleaning.
How dangerous are ultrasonic cleaners? Can I do both the feed and nib, or is only the nib safe in them? Are there types of metal that shouldn't see the ultrasonic cleaner? I recall a anecdotal post on FPN where the poster said a nib that was gold plated lost it's platting in one. Is there a cleaning duration that is generally considered safe, like never clean more than N seconds?


There are different opinions on this. It seems that in the pen world, you can find somebody who will warn you off of anything for fear of something or other. I would err on the side of caution with vintage plated nibs. The plating is not very robust in many cases. Indeed, in some cases the plating can be simply wiped off. Aside from that, don't let any part of the pen touch the metal basin of an ultrasonic cleaner while it is on. Mine has a plastic insert, so this is not a problem. Modern gold plating, such as seen on JoWo nibs, is unaffected. I've also seen no evidence that the plating on two-tone Sheaffer nibs is affected.

The main point of using the ultrasonic is to get to the feed. If you don't put the feed in, then what's the point? A nib can be wiped clean in a few seconds with a damp cloth if you have the nib out of the pen, but you should not be removing friction-fit nibs with any regularity. And people worry that an ultrasonic might loosen the nib! Removing it regularly would be much more likely to have that effect.



Does everyone just take multiple days to clean their pens? Are my inks too exotic and fall into that horrible "super saturated" category experts complain about? I keep reading the mantra about "good pen hygiene" and all of that but I wonder if I'm doing something wrong.

As I said, it takes me about 5 minutes or so, usually. Maybe I am exaggerating and it really takes 10-15 minutes. With most inks I highly doubt it goes on that long, but red and purple inks seem to require the most flushing, but it goes much more quickly if I fill the pen and run it through the ultrasonic. In the worst cases it is iterative, with a few short trips to the ultrasonic with flushing interspersed. Note that the amount of effort to flush may be one thing if the pen is inked for 2-3 weeks, quite another if it is inked for 2-3 months. I wouldn't expect it to take my usual amount of time if the pen had been inked for a long time. If the ink dried out in the pen 30 years ago, the ultrasonic will not work miracles. This sort of thing will take more time than just cleaning out the ink that put in the pen a few weeks ago.

By default mine runs a 3 minute cycle. I sometimes don't let it go on quite that long because if it needs to run that long, it is better to stop it, flush and refill the pen with flushing solution, and restart it.

[Jon Szanto]

For any pen where the section (and therefore nib and feed) can be removed from the barrel (c/c pens), the usefulness of this item cannot be overstated:

http://esbropharmacy.com/m/images_us/walgreens-adult-ear-syringe.jpg

[mhosea]

Yes. Every tool has its strengths and weaknesses. Thirty years ago, I used to fill my mouth with water and squirt it through. :) The bulb syringe is better! I wore out a vinyl one and replaced it with some smaller light blue rubber ones bought off ebay. They fill much quicker than the vinyl ones.

[dmendel]

My questing is, how clean is clean enough?
I have had my Pelikan M600 White Tortoise inked up with Noodler's Apache Sunset for a couple of weeks, but started flushing over the weekend when I ordered some Sailor Jentle Grenade because I knew I wanted to pair the two. On day one I flushed the pen 25-30 times with water and left it full of water, about an hour later I checked the water was clear with a tissue, it was not. I flushed the pen another 10-15 times with water and left it 24hr... still not clear. I used an ammonia solution for an hour and flushed the pen 25-30 times with water and left it full of water for 2 days. When my new ink arrived today I checked the pen with a tissue again and it still had yellow residue (note that the pen would flush clear after the first fill of water each time), I again flushed the pen with water 20-30 times and inked it up with the new ink. What is clean enough for you? I didn't disassemble the pen, should I next time?
Thanks
Joe

This is a particular problem with newer Pelikans. There is an inner sleeve in the section where the nib screws into. It collects ink and is very difficult to remove. If you have a Pelikan demonstrator you can see this, With regular barrels you cannot. I have a M205 and it is one of the reasons that I rarely use it. The ink that collects in the inner sleeve of the section drives me nuts. The only way to get it thoroghly flushed is to remove the nib, fill the barrel with water, put your thumb over the open end of the barrel and SHAKE vigorously. This forces water between the sleeve and barrel. It takes FOREVER to get it thoroughly flushed out. I will say this: if you have a regular colored barrel, and not a demonstrator, there is no point flushing the pen like this. It's unlikely to contaminate the ink in the barrel and I really can't see how it can affect or harm the function of the pen in any way. As long as water flows clear after flushing it's fine. For my brown tortoise I Never flush like this. I occasionally take out the nib unit and clean it in my US cleaner, or flush it with ear syringe.

[SteveE]

Yes. Every tool has its strengths and weaknesses. Thirty years ago, I used to fill my mouth with water and squirt it through. :) The bulb syringe is better! I wore out a vinyl one and replaced it with some smaller light blue rubber ones bought off ebay. They fill much quicker than the vinyl ones.

Ooops! For a second, Mike, I thought you were saying that you wore your mouth out. . .

Kidding aside, I see your points re: cleaning - especially when using inks of unknown compatibility. In my case, most of my inks in current use are the more benign, conventional inks such as Waterman and the now out-of-production EverFlo. I do use some Noodler's and Private Reserve, but even then, mine are the blues or blue-blacks. No candy colors in my pens, no sir. I am not a chemist, but have not yet noted any deterioration or clogging that I might attribute to any off these inks. In fact, over the past 10 to 15 years, the only filler system problems I've noted, more than just once in a great while, are the magic dissolving sacs. Are they related to ink? Maybe. Nobody can really prove it in the wilds of common usage, and I don't have access to a lab to test the remains. I just re-sac and move on. Clogging? "Knock on wood." None as yet. I don't "surgically clean" my pens, but when I take one out of use, I do flush it several times (or many times, as the mood takes me), and I do the "thermometer shake" into a towel or paper towel. I just make sure, as Frank Dubiel used to teach us, that the water that comes out is almost clear to clear. A minute remnant of ink dissolved in water and then allowed to evaporate will probably never cause an issue - especially among the inks on my shelf.

I'm not against cleaning a pen that is to be stored or when you are changing inks, especially if you use IG inks, red inks or other known troublemaker inks. I just don't want to give all the newer hobbyists the impression that near-surgical cleaning is needed as a normal maintenance chore on a user pen. Clean enough is clean enough.

[mhosea]

In fact, over the past 10 to 15 years, the only filler system problems I've noted, more than just once in a great while, are the magic dissolving sacs. Are they related to ink? Maybe. Nobody can really prove it in the wilds of common usage, and I don't have access to a lab to test the remains. I just re-sac and move on.

I don't know if you've been following my exploits in the matter. I have been trying to be of some service to the FP community by investigating the matter in a way that might give me the ammunition to inspire Nathan to pick up the ball and figure out what is going on (if anything) and maybe even fix it, or at least be able to identify for folks which of his inks are safe for latex sacs and which are not. I'm not very happy with the status quo. I was originally spurred on by what seemed to me to be a spectacular claim that Noodler's Black had melted the sac in a Snorkel in a matter of minutes. It is easy to show that any reactions must take place over a much longer term, so my conclusion is that that case was NOT a case of Noodler's Ink melting a sac. However, my initial tests for quick results, which included controls to help rule out the bad sac explanation, turned into long-running tests of immersion with a dozen or so inks, mostly Noodler's. For the most part nothing definitive has come of it. I was very nearly going to call it a failure, but after one year, the fragment in Noodler's Blue had deteriorated into stretchable putty. It was gummy but not yet melted, stretchy, but lacked elasticity. None of the control fragments were in that state. But one is not enough.

Ron Zorn feels that the immersion tests are not good enough because normal use places ink on one side and air on the other, not to mention air ink and sac in juxtaposition. Consequently, I have restarted a Noodler's Blue experiment by dividing a sac in half and filling the halves with ink, one Noodler's Blue, the other Waterman Blue. I do not like the method I used to seal off one end, so I plan to start another pair with Noodler's Blue using a different method. I would also like to start this test on a few other colors as well, but my patience for the whole thing is wearing thin, in part because not many people seem to care all that much, and also because I get the distinct feeling that my unwillingness to accept appeals to authority hasn't won me any friends among the authorities.

[vikramguliya]

When ever you wanted to clean your pen first clean it it water and at last use little petrol to wipe it. U could surly c a difference.

[WirsPlm]

In fact, over the past 10 to 15 years, the only filler system problems I've noted, more than just once in a great while, are the magic dissolving sacs. Are they related to ink? Maybe. Nobody can really prove it in the wilds of common usage, and I don't have access to a lab to test the remains. I just re-sac and move on.

I don't know if you've been following my exploits in the matter. I have been trying to be of some service to the FP community by investigating the matter in a way that might give me the ammunition to inspire Nathan to pick up the ball and figure out what is going on (if anything) and maybe even fix it, or at least be able to identify for folks which of his inks are safe for latex sacs and which are not. I'm not very happy with the status quo. I was originally spurred on by what seemed to me to be a spectacular claim that Noodler's Black had melted the sac in a Snorkel in a matter of minutes. It is easy to show that any reactions must take place over a much longer term, so my conclusion is that that case was NOT a case of Noodler's Ink melting a sac. However, my initial tests for quick results, which included controls to help rule out the bad sac explanation, turned into long-running tests of immersion with a dozen or so inks, mostly Noodler's. For the most part nothing definitive has come of it. I was very nearly going to call it a failure, but after one year, the fragment in Noodler's Blue had deteriorated into stretchable putty. It was gummy but not yet melted, stretchy, but lacked elasticity. None of the control fragments were in that state. But one is not enough.

Ron Zorn feels that the immersion tests are not good enough because normal use places ink on one side and air on the other, not to mention air ink and sac in juxtaposition. Consequently, I have restarted a Noodler's Blue experiment by dividing a sac in half and filling the halves with ink, one Noodler's Blue, the other Waterman Blue. I do not like the method I used to seal off one end, so I plan to start another pair with Noodler's Blue using a different method. I would also like to start this test on a few other colors as well, but my patience for the whole thing is wearing thin, in part because not many people seem to care all that much, and also because I get the distinct feeling that my unwillingness to accept appeals to authority hasn't won me any friends among the authorities.

I care that you're doing that quite a bit (and since I've told people to their face they were making claims without evidence, I think I'm in the same boat as you)! We definitely need more hard data than someone-I-know-says when it comes to sac failures if we're ever going to stop them from happening.