My Opera Club Palladium nib dries up.

**lowks** · June 11th, 2017, 07:59 PM

Hi all,

I bought a NOS opera club recently with a Medium Palladium nib. It lays down a great and wet line. The only problem is, the ink gets drier and drier and finally it will be completely dry although there is still ink in the converter. What I have to do is to tap the nib a few times on paper or prime the nib and it will write again for a while. These writing cycles are typically for 4 pages on my A5 journal. Visual inspection on the tines does not look like anything wrong and the nib and feed seems to be aligned properly

I brought the pen back to the place where I bought it and the repair person introduced a small spring agitator into the converter of the pen. I did not like this because when the pen is riding in my pocket for a while, a lot of ink ends up inside of the cap until there is a black ring around the pen. The first time I noticed these symptoms I used Iroshizuku Pilot ink, then I used Diamine black Oynx.

Any help is greatly appreciated as other than this small problem the pen writes great.

**grainweevil** · June 12th, 2017, 02:27 AM

My initial thought with the dry writing would also be starvation caused by the converter holding up the ink, so the repair person made a sensible call with the agitator. Could be it's still not solved the problem though, so would suggest you try a cartridge and if the problem still persists, ink starvation can be eliminated. Not familiar with Onyx, but generally Diamine and Iroshizukus tend to be okay, but for completely ruling out the ink as the problem, I like to use Waterman Serenity Blue as my test ink. If that doesn't work, it's definitely the pen.

As to the ink in the cap, "riding in my pocket" covers ground from "sedately upright in a jacket" to "jostled with my keys in my trouser/pants", which could make a big difference! It could be your pocket is warm enough to cause the air to expand in the converter and result in the pen burping. Or you might have a tiny air leak. It's possible that the repair person disassembling the converter to insert the agitator could have inadvertently caused this, so again, try with a cartridge.