Fountain Pen Problems – dry nib
I am a lover of fountain pens ever since my school days and I hate to use ball-point pens or gel pens. But sometimes a fountain pen can be a real pain and one of its frequently recurring inconveniences is the drying of nibs. If you keep the pen unused for long, this is bound to happen. That makes me irritated and sometimes any amount of coaxing or cajoling won’t work. I keep on tapping it and then scribble on the paper until it revives and write again. While you may do it in your own room, it can be a great inconvenience if you suddenly discover that your nib is dry when you are filling up a form in your bank! So what’s the solution?
A few months ago I bought two pens made of plastic — Flair Inky Fountain Pen and Cello Disney Liquid Fountain Pen. These pens are made for schoolchildren but they write well. These are very inexpensive writing tools and can be used by anyone. The nibs are smooth and give a medium line width. The pen comes in a blister pack with two spare cartridges. I use an ink bottle and a syringe to refill the cartridges. The liquid ink provided in the cartridges is of blue colour. However, once the cartridge is empty, you can fill it with any ink of your choice. These fountain pens are priced below Rs. 50 and you can also buy in lots of five or six pens from sites like Flipkart.com.
The reason for which I am recommending these pens is their convenience. These fountain pens have vacuum caps, so the ink never dries on the nib. I have tested a pen by not using it for a month and I have found it writing again as soon as I scribbled on a paper. It never missed a line and I have not seen any other fountain pen writing instantly after lying unused for so long. I don’t know how or why it happens. I have no explanation as to why the nib keeps wet all the time except perhaps the vacuum caps. So both — Flair Inky Fountain Pen and Cello Disney Liquid Fountain Pen have proved to be perfect alternatives for ball point pens. Highly recommended for school-going children and for their parents if they can ignore the aesthetically unattractive appearance and the Disney cartoon pictures on the body of the pen!
Ink cartridges for both Flair Inky Fountain Pen and Cello Disney Liquid Fountain Pen may not be readily available. You’d be lucky to find them. But these plastic cartridges can be easily refilled and reused many times. All you have to do is to buy a bottle of fountain pen ink and a syringe (those available in the medical shops). Fill the syringe with ink, insert carefully the tip of the syringe inside the cartridge and slowly fill it with ink. Flush the syringe a few times with water and keep it for reuse!
the reason for not drying the nib is the feed. The feed is plastic pilot v5 etc type feed WITH A COTTON FELT in the FEED CHANNEL. Apart from this, as you mentioned, the vaccum of the cap also prevents ink drying. The cotton felt that runs through the feed channel remains wet and soaked with ink the whole time and hence gives us a never drying ink pen. But i feel that there should be a change in nib design also. These are fixed and can never be taken apart. Perhaps these are not the traditional fountain pens. HERO 616 that i took apart has a plastic finned feed same as this one but it uses a ebonite feed (00 or double zero feed) hence, always flow even after months and still gives the feel of a traditional fountain pen.