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Eventually when you collect fountain pens you will need to clean them because you need to change ink colors, let ink dry inside so much it will not write correctly, or you get a pen with dried ink inside. There are lots of ways to clean them out, the method I will show you is the one I use that has worked extremely well for me over the years.
Most pens made today are cartridge and/or converter pens. The cleaning method works well with other types of pens too. The first step is to disassemble the pen like so:
Once the pen is apart to this degree you need to remove the converter. There are two general types of converters, screw in and push in. You can really mess up a converter that is a screw in by yanking it out thinking it is a push in. The best way is to treat all converters as screw in and unscrew it counter clockwise while pulling gently. Once the converter is out rinse the nib off, rinse the converter out, and then allow water to flow through the nib and feed like such:
This gets all the liquid ink out to get ready for the next step. To really clean the pen out you need an ultrasonic cleaner. This does not have to be an expensive one, the one I use I picked up for less than $100 at Brookstone and it works wonderfully for this:
Fill the ultrasonic cleaner to the fill line with regular water, then find a glass or bowl to place inside, I use pyrex graduated cups. Fill the cup up enough to cover the nib section and converter (if you have one) still disassembled, I like to use purified water, and for stubborn pens I will put a drop or two of ammonia (clear, not the lemon or pine scented) in the cup. That setup should look like this:
Note that the nib of the pen is not on the bottom of the cup, never place the nib down so that it is on the bottom as this can damage the nib tipping. Let this run a few minutes, remove the parts and dry well, do not use a hairdryer or anything that generates heat or large amounts of air pressure. Fill up your pen and give it a try!
This same method works with other filling systems as well although you need a way to suspend the pen in the liquid without the nib tip touching anything as you do not want to submerge lever, crescent, button, or piston fillers as the water will get into places where it should not go.
More warnings! Never try this with Casein pens, be careful with hard rubber, never add chemicals like ammonia with pens made of anything other than plastic or metal, never submerge parts that you do not have to (caps etc) unless you have experimented with junkers first to see what will happen.
Good luck!
Copyright 2012 Allan Hall, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED