Letters have never been written more elegantly than with a fountain pen.
But did you know that there’s something more you can do to level up your fountain pen experience?
With the right fountain pen and these 10 hacks, certainly, there are a few ways to make things a lot easier.
Grab your favorite Dryden Designs fountain pen and follow these steps you need to try:
1. Clean your ink cartridge and pen converters with a bulb syringe.It’s time to refill. If you are a beginner and wondering how you’re supposed to clean that tiny and narrow ink cartridge, lo and behold the power of a bulb syringe!
Goodbye to using brushes and cloths that don’t fit in the cartridge and converter.
You simply have to fill the bulb syringe with water and flush the converter from the back. It holds enough water to flush out the spots of ink inside the converter. This will save you a lot of time, and it’s not stressful to do! You might even find it kind of fun!
2. Write with the nib upside down when writing on ordinary paper.Flipping your nib over to write with can get it at least two nib sizes smaller. This is useful if the paper choice is outside your control, too absorbent, or if you need to write in a tiny area!
Not all nibs are designed for this and it may not be the smoothest and most pleasant writing experience, so use light pressure and keep in mind your mileage may vary on this one.
3. Shake your pen when ink isn’t flowing out to write.
If a pen is failing to start and you know you’ve inked it up, it could be that you need to force ink into the feed. Try holding the pen high enough in your hand so you know it won’t hit the table, and gently tap the heel of your hand on the table to “shake down” the ink, forcing it to flow down the pen.
Make sure you do this over paper, because you may fling ink. Don’t be reckless and slam your nib into the desk!
4. Remove the converter from the pen and fill directly from the ink bottle.
This is especially useful if you have low ink in your bottle or want to keep your nib clean. This will decrease a little of your ink capacity because your feed is empty, which can sometimes account for 0.2-0.3ml
You’ll want to force some ink through the feed once you’ve installed the converter to help get things flowing.
5. Dilute highly saturated inks to improve their flow through the nib.
Some inks are supersaturated that they don’t always flow as you’d like them to or they have long dry times. When you encounter such a problem, you can dilute your fountain pen inks with distilled water to help with this.
10% dilution to start should make a difference without sacrificing too much color saturation or ink properties.
6. Fill to the top or completely drain your fountain pen when you need to travel through a plane.
Changing altitudes when flying drop pressure in the cabin and essentially create a vacuum wanting to suck the air out of your pen, causing ink burping.
Eliminate the air or the ink, and you’re good! Either fill the pen all the way with no air bubbles or completely empty it.
7. Cleaning out your demonstrator pen cap.
If you have a demonstrator pen or what we call the transparent fountain pen with a cap insert, ink can sometimes collect between the insert and the cap.
Wrap a rubber band around the end of a pencil, insert it into the cap, and use the friction to grab the insert and pull it out. Then you can just swab it out to clean it.
8. Dip the nib that you haven’t used in a while in the water or ink bottle to get it flowing again.
Sometimes your pen has dried out a little bit and it needs some help getting going. Dipping the tip of the nib into the bottle of ink you filled it within a glass of water or water can saturate the feed and get things flowing.
9. Flood the feed to get a more saturated ink
If the ink isn’t as dark as you want or if you want to show off the best your ink has to offer, simply lay more ink down! Dip the pen in the bottle or flood the feed through the pen’s filling system as often as you wish to get more dramatic shading/sheening/shimmering effects.
10. Let out a couple of drips of ink after filling
Fill the pen all the way, then let out two drops of ink, and suck in a little air. This keeps the feed from being over saturated and dripping into your cap, especially if you carry the pen around.
With all these simple hacks, you will surely enjoy a better writing experience with your fountain pen!
