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Thread: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

  1. #41
    Useless mhosea's Avatar
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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    Quote Originally Posted by Gobblecup View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by mhosea View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Gobblecup View Post
    I’ve been wanting an ultrasonic for a long time now, but this thread has me really wanting to try one out. I just don’t know what price range to look at considering the different opinions stated here! 😂
    FWIW, I bought this one in 2013, and it is still doing just fine. It's not very powerful, but I find that it works just fine for what I need it to do, which is to make short work of my pen cleaning tasks. Note, I do not disassemble my pens. I fill them with water (+Photo Flo, but that's optional), poke a hole in a piece of cardboard of the right size to hold the pen, and adjust things so that the water level is high enough to reach the section and the nib is not touching anything. Then I run it for the default 180 seconds.
    Thanks for the breakdown of your process. I’m curious if you think it would damage a pen in any way to submerge the entire section or barrel of a piston filler in the ultrasonic? Would the materials of the pen make a difference here? I’ve never tried this before so I have a lot of questions! Also, the price sounds right on the cleaner you linked!
    Yes, immersion is not a good idea, generally. Immersion and the ultrasonic itself are unlikely to harm the pen (provided no part of the pen contacts the metal tank, only the plastic basket), but it may permit water to wick into areas where it is in contact with metallic parts that aren't very rust/corrosion resistant. If you want to immerse the pen further than it would be immersed in ink if you were filling it, it's probably going to need to be broken down into parts and dried before reassembly, else you'll be carrying around water stored in various places in the pen where there shouldn't be any. If you feel that you must clean the entire pen, and so must break it down, because of OCD or something, then do what you have to do, but don't do it unless your inner demons are forcing you to. I can't think of a rational reason to take things that far. Honestly, I think you'll be astonished at how well it works just to immerse the pen up to where it would be immersed in ink if you were filling it. With the pen filled first, the water inside the pen gets agitated by the ultrasonic, too. And unlike flushing alone, it's effective at removing ink deposits from nooks and crannies in the end of the section that only get there while you're filling it and then dry in place.
    Last edited by mhosea; May 4th, 2018 at 11:34 PM.
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  3. #42
    Senior Member VertOlive's Avatar
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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    As long as the talk has turned to ultra-Sonics, I got one because I am a lab nerd and contracted some OCD over the years. I bought three cheaper ones and returned them all because they didn't seem to do as well as the one I used for GC- MS parts at work. So I bought one recommended by a watchmaker. Pricey, but it really scrubbed off those evil glitter inks.

    A member here sent me a link for a decently priced ($50) unit on Amazon that looks to be of good quality, so no need to go off the deep end like I did if you want (but don't need) one.
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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    This is, as Popeye the Sailor man says (incidentally, I've only just now noticed that he was named after a premium line of Japanese pens), anyway, as said Sailor man says, "Faskinatin'!" An ultrasonic will get your pen nice and clean, BUT it may destroy it.

    I've found that if I flush a nib section with distilled water in an ear bulb repeatedly, soak it overnight, and leave it upright with the tip of the nib touching a folded-up piece of paper towel, the paper towel will wick the water away, but it often leaves a tiny dot the color of the ink that was last in the pen. If I then flush it repeatedly again and soak it overnight again, and let it dry nib-down on a folded piece of paper towel again, half the time there will still be a little spot of color, smaller than the one from the previous day but still quite visible. After a few flushes and 6 or 8 minutes in the cheap ultrasonic I just bought, however — no color! After 3 minutes, sometimes a speck of it, sometimes not. This is the unit I finally bought: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075L3Z4SK/ref=biss_dp_t_asn
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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    If I'm going to put a pen away and not use it, or if I'm going to change the ink that's in the pen, I clean it before storing or refilling. If I'm refilling a pen with the same ink it just had in it, I generally won't clean it first. However, I do like to clean my pens out at least once in a while, so if a pen stays in regular use for around a year or so (as a few of my favorites often do), I will clean them out then even if I'm going to keep using the same ink.

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    Senior Member calamus's Avatar
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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    I found this article by Richard Binder about fountain pen care http://richardspens.com/?page=ref/care/inks.htm, and particularly his discussion of ink evaporation and making rock candy (an experiment I performed several times as a lad), a confirmation of my gut instinct that it's a good idea to flush out pens at least every few months despite refilling them with the same ink.

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    Useless mhosea's Avatar
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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    Quote Originally Posted by calamus View Post
    I found this article by Richard Binder about fountain pen care http://richardspens.com/?page=ref/care/inks.htm, and particularly his discussion of ink evaporation and making rock candy (an experiment I performed several times as a lad), a confirmation of my gut instinct that it's a good idea to flush out pens at least every few months despite refilling them with the same ink.
    Reminds me of Nathan Tardif's experiment demonstrating what acidic fountain pen inks do to aluminum foil. If an acidic ink will dissolve aluminum foil, it must be bad for your fountain pen, right? Wrong, or at least, certainly not necessarily. Don't load your pen with Isaac Newton's iron gall ink, or anything of that sort, but the market is full of acidic inks designed for use in fountain pens that have never been known to damage any of them.

    I'm not sure that ink will even form crystals, BTW. Most likely you'll just get a powder that will rehydrate if you are patient or have an ultrasonic to speed the penetration of water into a "cake" (not crystal) of it. Take a cheap pen and deliberately let the ink dry out in it, or try the crystal-making experiment with ink. Even if there is something to worry about with highly saturated inks (and these may benefit from regular flushing--I'm not saying that they don't), most inks, rather, can be evaporated down to a fraction of their original volume without dropping anything at all out of solution. That means that when you re-ink them, they tend to dissolve dried ink deposits, the result being only slightly more saturated than before unless you were foolish enough to let a full load of ink dry out and then re-ink without flushing first.
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  11. #47
    Senior Member calamus's Avatar
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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    Quote Originally Posted by mhosea View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by calamus View Post
    I found this article by Richard Binder about fountain pen care http://richardspens.com/?page=ref/care/inks.htm, and particularly his discussion of ink evaporation and making rock candy (an experiment I performed several times as a lad), a confirmation of my gut instinct that it's a good idea to flush out pens at least every few months despite refilling them with the same ink.
    Reminds me of Nathan Tardif's experiment demonstrating what acidic fountain pen inks do to aluminum foil. If an acidic ink will dissolve aluminum foil, it must be bad for your fountain pen, right? Wrong, or at least, certainly not necessarily. Don't load your pen with Isaac Newton's iron gall ink, or anything of that sort, but the market is full of acidic inks designed for use in fountain pens that have never been known to damage any of them.

    I'm not sure that ink will even form crystals, BTW. Most likely you'll just get a powder that will rehydrate if you are patient or have an ultrasonic to speed the penetration of water into a "cake" (not crystal) of it. Take a cheap pen and deliberately let the ink dry out in it, or try the crystal-making experiment with ink. Even if there is something to worry about with highly saturated inks (and these may benefit from regular flushing--I'm not saying that they don't), most inks, rather, can be evaporated down to a fraction of their original volume without dropping anything at all out of solution. That means that when you re-ink them, they tend to dissolve dried ink deposits, the result being only slightly more saturated than before unless you were foolish enough to let a full load of ink dry out and then re-ink without flushing first.
    You have a good point there. Also, as I recall, when making rock candy I had to heat the water to get enough sugar to dissolve in it for the fluid to become supersaturated enough for crystallization to take place. Still, though, eventually evaporation may cause a problem, even with new ink being added periodically. And of course, not all inks are created equally.

    Regarding your contention that most inks can be evaporated down to a fraction of their original volume without dropping anything at all out of solution, is this something you've experimented with yourself extensively? How did you come up with that particular bit of lore? Not disputing it, mind you, just not quite ready to accept it at face value without a little more information.

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    Useless mhosea's Avatar
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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    Quote Originally Posted by calamus View Post
    Regarding your contention that most inks can be evaporated down to a fraction of their original volume without dropping anything at all out of solution, is this something you've experimented with yourself extensively? How did you come up with that particular bit of lore? Not disputing it, mind you, just not quite ready to accept it at face value without a little more information.
    Extensively? I wouldn't say so. It's more of an extrapolation based on the experiments that I've already done coupled with arguably "extensive" observations about how saturated most inks appear to be. I've actually experimented with perhaps a dozen or so inks when I was trying to replicate sac failure, and I conducted a dry-out experiment with Noodler's versus ESSRI once. One of the facets of the sac failure experiment involved letting sac fragment sit in ink in an open vial while it evaporated. It's not pretty with a pigment-based ink like Sailor Sei Boku, but with most of the inks, it just got more and more concentrated. I've also encountered inks in the wild that have substantially evaporated, such as has often occurred with old Sheaffer cartridges. The cartridges can be observed to be about 30% full with no hint of precipitation inside. In fact, one can load such a cartridge and write with it in that form, and you may find that it has only gotten into the ballpark of saturation that we see with some of the highly saturated inks that are popular now. Finally, I don't write that much. I get a lot of dry-out these days before I end up flushing a pen. The concentration level is frequently substantial. I sometimes just add distilled water rather than refilling. I'll at least wick a few drops into the feed, perhaps even drop some straight into the reservoir, if the pen design permits it.

    The dry-out experiment was actually kind of interesting because the ink did not dry out in situ, rather wicked out onto the nib and feed and dried there, producing globs of moist ink paste. I believe that was true of both the "bulletproof" and IG ink in the experiment. BTW, it is well-known that IG inks like ESSRI will oxidize and drop stuff out of solution over time. That's a different phenomenon.
    Last edited by mhosea; May 16th, 2018 at 12:52 AM.
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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    Diamine Registrars in a Lamy 2000 or Vanishing Point, I think about cleaning monthly, but 6-8 weeks is more of the reality. Diamine Macassar doubles that routinely. No problems. Changing ink is a solid clean every time, but I don’t change often.

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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    My wife gave me a Mont Blanc 146 in June 1979. I cleaned it with tap water in February 2012. For the first time. The piston was stuck because for a number of years I was trying to be the computer only user. But warm water loosened it up and it is just fine. When I was actively using it I switched inks between black and blue black, perhaps some blue. But I had no idea that one would need to flush the pen, let alone clean it.

    Since discovering a large quantity of ink makers and colors I now will flush a pen when I've emptied it and when I reload it I don't worry about colors or types mixing. But I mostly just flush the ink. If I have an ink that particularly does not want to flush out of a pen I'll use a pen flush. Water is usually enough

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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ted A View Post
    My wife gave me a Mont Blanc 146 in June 1979. I cleaned it with tap water in February 2012. For the first time. The piston was stuck because for a number of years I was trying to be the computer only user. But warm water loosened it up and it is just fine. When I was actively using it I switched inks between black and blue black, perhaps some blue. But I had no idea that one would need to flush the pen, let alone clean it.

    Since discovering a large quantity of ink makers and colors I now will flush a pen when I've emptied it and when I reload it I don't worry about colors or types mixing. But I mostly just flush the ink. If I have an ink that particularly does not want to flush out of a pen I'll use a pen flush. Water is usually enough
    I have a 146 that has had ink in there for months. It doesn't dry out, despite not being used very often.
    When I feel too guilty about leaving it filled for so long, I will clean it out and leave it unfilled for a while. Water is usually enough.
    I never immerse it in my USC that is a mid range jewellers model, but every once in a while I might hold it vertically so that the nib and feed are in the solution while the USC is running. My hand gets tired after about 30 seconds of this.
    Regards, Chrissy | My Review Blog: inkyfountainpens

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    Useless mhosea's Avatar
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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    Poke a hole in a piece of corrugated cardboard large enough to span the ultrasonic. Expand it with a cheap pen or whatnot until it is the right size to accept and hold the 146 or whatever pen you are cleaning securely. Adjust the pen in the cardboard so that when you put the cardboard on top of the ultrasonic, the nib and section are immersed exactly as they would be when filling the pen. Fill the pen with water. Run the ultrasonic as long as you want, say 180 seconds. Keep the cardboard and poke other holes in it for slimmer or fatter pens as you need them.
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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    Quote Originally Posted by mhosea View Post
    Poke a hole in a piece of corrugated cardboard large enough to span the ultrasonic. Expand it with a cheap pen or whatnot until it is the right size to accept and hold the 146 or whatever pen you are cleaning securely. Adjust the pen in the cardboard so that when you put the cardboard on top of the ultrasonic, the nib and section are immersed exactly as they would be when filling the pen. Fill the pen with water. Run the ultrasonic as long as you want, say 180 seconds. Keep the cardboard and poke other holes in it for slimmer or fatter pens as you need them.
    Thank you. I have considered making something that sounds very similar. Would I trust it to sit there on top of my USC holding my 146 safely? Not sure....Put it this way: I've never been confident enough to try it out.
    Regards, Chrissy | My Review Blog: inkyfountainpens

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    Useless mhosea's Avatar
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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    It was kind of hard for me to relate to feeling apprehensive about it, so I just made a video to show you what I see when I do it. Naturally, I don't usually shake it. You just have to make the hole the right size so that it can be inserted at all and is held securely at the right depth. The beauty of it is that if you make the hole too large, you just make another hole.


    Last edited by mhosea; July 30th, 2019 at 06:49 PM.
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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    Thank you, that looks very safe. I'm going to try it out today although I held a pen by hand in the liquid yesterday for 180 seconds.
    Regards, Chrissy | My Review Blog: inkyfountainpens

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    Senior Member Jon Szanto's Avatar
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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    Quote Originally Posted by mhosea View Post
    Poke a hole in a piece of corrugated cardboard large enough to span the ultrasonic. Expand it with a cheap pen or whatnot until it is the right size to accept and hold the 146 or whatever pen you are cleaning securely. Adjust the pen in the cardboard so that when you put the cardboard on top of the ultrasonic, the nib and section are immersed exactly as they would be when filling the pen. Fill the pen with water. Run the ultrasonic as long as you want, say 180 seconds. Keep the cardboard and poke other holes in it for slimmer or fatter pens as you need them.
    I have a piece of soft foam that I just put a slit about an inch long in the middle. The foam is stiff enough to hold the pen over the USC without drooping, but soft enough that you can put any size pen in the 'slot' and it will hold it safely. Works just like Mike's example, just a different material and one (hole) size fits all. A great way to do just the front end of the pen.
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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    I must say I'm probably an abuser! I do like about 7 or 8 of my pens inked-up and always ready to go, even though they don't get much exercise. Just sitting up there being admired!
    I'll pay by having to do clean-outs frequently I'm sure. An ultrasonic cleaner I recently borrowed did a brilliant job.

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    Default Re: How often do you clean your fountain pens?

    MontBlanc recommends once every three months for their pens.

    The rest, when the inkflow stops or becomes impaired.

    If it's just the feed, I dip the pen in a beaker of water and start writing with it, that usualy works.

    If it doesn't, then the pens needs a flush.

    I tend to use the same colour withethe same pen, so there's less flushing. If I'm replacing the same ink in, there's no need to flush, and with cartridges it is better not to - as trying to coax ink into a clean feed can be a pain. It's better to replace the cartridge as the old one runs out to get a continuos, and less messy and frustrating change of ink.

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