My pen flushing blues

So one of my Rotring Cores, the one that doesn't skip, used up its
entire long international cartridge of Waterman Florida Blue ink. I
figured it's time to try out the only other blue ink I have, some
Swisher blue/black.

I was able to wash out the cartridge pretty easily. I've done it with
the short international cartridges before and this wasn't different,
there was just more of it to clean out.

And then I flushed the Core. I ran cold water across the nib and feed
then I washed some into the nipple that connects the cartridge to the
section. I did this for a while, until the water coming out of the nib
ran clear. I held the section and blew on it to get whatever drops of
water out that I could.

I reloaded the cartridge with ink and tried to write. That's when I
remembered what had happened when I'd tried this before. I was writing
with nothing but water. D'Oh!

Apparently there's enough water ahead of the ink that it's able to
keep the ink from getting to the nib. Last time it took days and days
before I got ink that wasn't too pale to come out of the nib. This
time I've been leaving the Core uncapped and scribbling with it every
half hour or so, which is getting the clear water out but I still have
a pretty pale line of ink. This could take a couple of days, I think.
So much for my instant gratification of using some new ink!

How necessary is it to flush a pen if you're switching inks? Is there
a trick to getting the water out? I also used toilet paper to wick out
as much of the water as possible before I put the refilled cartridge
in. This is all very frustrating and I'm sure that some folks reading
this group know the perfect way to deal with this sort of stuff. I'd
appreciate any hints so I don't have to go through this the next time.

R. Paul Martin wrote:

How necessary is it to flush a pen if you're switching inks? Is
there a trick to getting the water out?

You could try the method explained by Richard Binder:

| One of the most effective ways to clear a pen of ink or water
| after you have expelled as much as the filling system can push
| out, is to wrap the nib end in several thicknesses of tissue or
| paper towel and shake the pen down vigorously with strong
| "flips" of the wrist, as you would shake down an old-fashioned
| mercury medical thermometer.

There's more, and a couple of pictures illustrating this method, on
his site in the section beginning "In general, you flush a pen ..."

http://www.richardspens.com/?page=ref_info/care.htm

--
Steve

My e-mail address works as is.

"R. Paul Martin" wrote in message
...
How necessary is it to flush a pen if you're switching inks? Is there
a trick to getting the water out? I also used toilet paper to wick out
as much of the water as possible before I put the refilled cartridge
in. This is all very frustrating and I'm sure that some folks reading
this group know the perfect way to deal with this sort of stuff. I'd
appreciate any hints so I don't have to go through this the next time.

The necessity of flushing: depends on the ink you are using. For some inks
I've found that mixing can create crud in the pen. Sheaffer NOS red. PR
Hot Bubble Gum and the other discontinued PR inks. and of course, how much
you care about the ink color. if I have blue ink in a pen I would rather
not mix it with a nice green. So I flush. If it's from one blue to another
I don't care too much and sometimes won't flush.

The core holds an amazing amount of fluid in it's section/feed. I had a
near-full converter in mine and because it had sat for a long time I decided
to "prime" the pen by pushing the ink up into the nib (turning the piston as
if to expel the ink.) I was able to completely empty the converter into the
pen and no ink ever appeared in the nib or feed. so... it would appear that
the "collector" of the Core holds a good .5 mls. Yeesh.

As it happens, I cleaned mine the other day as well but with some of my inks
I'm rather lazy and I just dip the pen in the bottle and slurp up ink
through the nib. But I use a piston converter to flush the pen and to fill
with.

The way I find wicking works best is to put the pen nib-down in a large wad
of tissue in a small glass or jar and just leave it. you should remove the
cartridge before doing so or you'll wick out the good ink, too. I'd say
stick with the wicking and Richard's method. just be sure to wrap the pen
and hold onto it so you don't fling it (or ink) across the room. maybe
consider getting a converter for it for flushing at least. I don't know of
any other magic for drying out a pen except for patience. :-)

I live in a very humid area and pen drying can seem an eternity at times.

"KCat"

"R. Paul Martin" wrote:
How necessary is it to flush a pen if you're switching inks? Is there
a trick to getting the water out? I also used toilet paper to wick out
as much of the water as possible before I put the refilled cartridge
in. This is all very frustrating and I'm sure that some folks reading
this group know the perfect way to deal with this sort of stuff. I'd
appreciate any hints so I don't have to go through this the next time.

The necessity of flushing: depends on the ink you are using. For some inks
I've found that mixing can create crud in the pen. Sheaffer NOS red. PR
Hot Bubble Gum and the other discontinued PR inks. and of course, how much
you care about the ink color. if I have blue ink in a pen I would rather
not mix it with a nice green. So I flush. If it's from one blue to another
I don't care too much and sometimes won't flush.

The core holds an amazing amount of fluid in it's section/feed. I had a
near-full converter in mine and because it had sat for a long time I decided
to "prime" the pen by pushing the ink up into the nib (turning the piston as
if to expel the ink.) I was able to completely empty the converter into the
pen and no ink ever appeared in the nib or feed. so... it would appear that
the "collector" of the Core holds a good .5 mls. Yeesh.

As it happens, I cleaned mine the other day as well but with some of my inks
I'm rather lazy and I just dip the pen in the bottle and slurp up ink
through the nib. But I use a piston converter to flush the pen and to fill
with.

The way I find wicking works best is to put the pen nib-down in a large wad
of tissue in a small glass or jar and just leave it. you should remove the
cartridge before doing so or you'll wick out the good ink, too. I'd say
stick with the wicking and Richard's method. just be sure to wrap the pen
and hold onto it so you don't fling it (or ink) across the room. maybe
consider getting a converter for it for flushing at least. I don't know of
any other magic for drying out a pen except for patience. :-)

Gee, you took quite a circuitous route to get to an answer to the OP's query:
"Is there a trick to getting the water out?"

It's really quite simple, and I'm suprised you didn't... all's ya gotta do is
pucker up and blow... of course yoose gals know it's a good idea to have a
tissue handy. hehe


---= BOYCOTT FRANCE (belgium) GERMANY--SPAIN =---
---= Move UNITED NATIONS To Paris =---
*********
"Life would be devoid of all meaning were it without tribulation."
Sheldon
````````````

"PENMART01" wrote in message
...
"KCat"

"R. Paul Martin" wrote:
How necessary is it to flush a pen if you're switching inks? Is there
a trick to getting the water out? I also used toilet paper to wick out
as much of the water as possible before I put the refilled cartridge
in. This is all very frustrating and I'm sure that some folks reading
this group know the perfect way to deal with this sort of stuff. I'd
appreciate any hints so I don't have to go through this the next time.


It's really quite simple, and I'm suprised you didn't... all's ya gotta do
is
pucker up and blow... of course yoose gals know it's a good idea to have a
tissue handy. hehe

Hmph. The answer is "swallow", but not to the original question.




---= BOYCOTT FRANCE (belgium) GERMANY--SPAIN =---
---= Move UNITED NATIONS To Paris =---
*********

uh. yeah. okay.

SPOILER: Penmart is quoted below...





















"PENMART01" wrote in message

It's really quite simple, and I'm suprised you didn't... all's ya gotta do
is
snipped bit about something "little shel" never gets to experience

keep wishin', sweetie. keep wishin'.

You could try the method explained by Richard Binder:

| One of the most effective ways to clear a pen of ink or water
| after you have expelled as much as the filling system can push
| out, is to wrap the nib end in several thicknesses of tissue or
| paper towel and shake the pen down vigorously with strong
| "flips" of the wrist, as you would shake down an old-fashioned
| mercury medical thermometer.

There's more, and a couple of pictures illustrating this method, on
his site in the section beginning "In general, you flush a pen ..."

http://www.richardspens.com/?page=ref_info/care.htm

--
Steve

Also....some inks have extremes in PH differences and components. Some inks
actually have certain salts in them....Noodler's HATES salts - and you can see
its PH measures in Greg Clark's ink sampler (a high acid ink would toss it out
of balance if mixed with Noodler's). I don't like any crystalline structures
anyway (reminds me of the old Parker superchrome ink). Also - if a cellulose
reactive ink...don't expect it to work well with cotton swabs or cloth brushes
and print pads! Incredibly, people have mailed in complaining that cellulose
reactive inks don't work well with cellulose based fiber brushes, cellulose
marker pens and cotton swabs! THEY ARE CELLULOSE...that's why!!!! Argh!

So, as with any ink...it is wise to rinse out the old ink before mixing with a
new one. I also find it incredible that people store their pens unrinsed. You
are just asking for a cleanup job if you do that - especially if you mixed a
bunch of divergent ph inks in the chamber and then let it go bone dry. It is
only prudent to rinse out the ink before the pen goes into storage for
months/years, n'est pas?

Although - a triumph plunger filler and a kaweco sport ink ball have had the
same ink in them a much longer time...they are also used regularly and don't
suffer the evaporation losses many other pen models seem to when stored.
Everything is relative I suppose... Still, it seems to me it is common sense
to rinse the pens out if you expect to store them a long time.

"Scaupaug1" wrote in message
...

Although - a triumph plunger filler and a kaweco sport ink ball have had
the
same ink in them a much longer time...they are also used regularly and
don't
suffer the evaporation losses many other pen models seem to when stored.
Everything is relative I suppose... Still, it seems to me it is common
sense
to rinse the pens out if you expect to store them a long time.

it's that "used regularly" that seems to count a great deal. I have had no
problems at all with the dreaded Penman inks but the pens I have them in are
used almost daily - at least every other day. I used to keep all of my pens
(all 18, woohoo) inked with different inks but started getting clogging
problems. Now I keep 7 or 8 inked at a time. The others are flushed and
stored dry.

Speaking of cellulose reactive inks, how does Noodler's Ink do on
heavily-sized paper (which I assume doesn't have a whole lot of
cellulose showing)?

(Example - Clairefontaine or similar)

David

On 17 Sep 2004 09:03:04 GMT, Stephen Hust wrote:

....
You could try the method explained by Richard Binder:

| One of the most effective ways to clear a pen of ink or water
| after you have expelled as much as the filling system can push
| out, is to wrap the nib end in several thicknesses of tissue or
| paper towel and shake the pen down vigorously with strong
| "flips" of the wrist, as you would shake down an old-fashioned
| mercury medical thermometer.

There's more, and a couple of pictures illustrating this method, on
his site in the section beginning "In general, you flush a pen ..."

http://www.richardspens.com/?page=ref_info/care.htm

Thanks. I tried that too. I also wrapped my fingers around the
perforated part of the Core that holds the cartridge and blew into it
a number of times. I figure that got some water out.

I removed the ink cartridge and flushed the Core completely again,
using the method shown at the URL you cited, and I blew through the
pen. After all of this the pen still wasn't doing well.

Now, my eyes aren't as sharp as they used to be but I thought that I
saw maybe some tiny something sticking out of the very tip of the nib.
So I got the dental floss out, unwaxed polyester, and flossed the slit
in the nib a little bit. I was only able to get a couple of filaments
of the floss to actually go through the slit, but I was certain that I
wasn't seeing anything sticking out of the point after that. After
this the pen could write a bit but it still put out an anaemic line
and it skipped. I wondered if something else might help so, simply on
a whim, I used a cotton swab to clean the nib point using 70%
isopropyl alcohol. I guess capillary action got the alcohol into the
slit because when I tried to write with the pen it flooded the paper
and the ink feathered and bled through heavily. So I let the pen set
and tried again later on. On the next try the Core wrote, but it
skipped a lot. It hadn't been skipping for the previous six or eight
weeks I'd been using it, so this was new.

I couldn't figure out what to do about the skipping and so I put the
cartridge into a Pelikano Jr. and flushed the Core again, doing all
the wicking, etc. and leaving the nib/section component out for some
hours to air evaporation.

The Pelikano Jr. is working all right with the ink, but I'm wondering
what's up with the Rotring Core. I now have two of them hors de combat
for skipping. The first one skips due to the "baby bottomed" tip, but
this second one I'm puzzled about. Does anyone know how to take the
nib and feed out of the section on this pen? Maybe I need to
thoroughly clean out the ink path or something.