I don't know about other FPGeeks, but I seriously dislike flushing/cleaning my piston filling pens.
I dislike the procedure for a couple of reasons:
1) It seems to take forever! I fill with clean water. I expel. I repeat and repeat and repeat. I fill, I shake, I expel. I fill. I expel. I wrap the pen in a paper towel and flip it with my wrist hoping that centrifugal force will come to my aid. I jump, I gyrate, I beg, I pray. I even do a little Ink Flushing Dance to gain favor with Tintonus, the God of Ink. Still, I fill and expel only to find that the pen has yet to surrender the last vestiges of its now unwanted ink supply.
All of the above brings me to my second problem:
2) Somewhere in the back of my mind I know that the piston mechanism has a finite number of cycles in its usable life-span. It pains me to know that I am wasting precious cycles on something as inane as my need to completely clean the pen!
So, might we all put our (geeky) heads together and share our techniques for flushing a piston filling pen? It would, in my mind, be a great boon to the Fountain Pen Community if Fountain Pen Geeks could put together the definitive White Paper (or Wiki Article) outlining the best, tried and true procedures.
Anyone?
=) Eric
Son of Ragnar
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