Pen Cleaning

Materials: all materials were purchased by me with no expectation of reward. Sources include Pure Pens (brown Noodler's Creeper and syringe); a pharmacy somewhere for the bulb; La Estilográfica Moderna in Zaragoza for the black pen with the turquoise highlights (an IXC Barcelona pen) and if I recall correctly the Pen Corner on Dame Street for the Silver pen (I've had it for years).  In this post I receive no financial return for any of the links.
 
 see also: Goulet Pen's Fountain Pen 101 Pen Cleaning and Levenger's Pen Cleaning guide

Most places suggest using filtered water, I have a filtered water tap, you could also reduce the material in the water by using cold previously boiled water (perfect excuse to make a cup of tea and a nice sit down for a while before doing this).  Hot or very warm water is not recommended as that might warp the materials, so room temperature is best.

Now I probably don't do this as often as I should with some cheaper pens but it's a good habit to get into when you change inks because some brands of ink could react with others. I've never had this but knowing my luck it would happen with some of my favourites!  Also if you leave pens inked up they can dry up (and the ink can evaporate anyway which is a waste); many sites suggest only inking up enough for a few days or weeks. Not that that stops a lot of people and it shouldn't stop you, just be aware that if it gets really bad you will have to resort to special pen flushes aka solvents. Don't use random solvents as it might destroy your pen.  Another reason to wash pens is because small fibres from paper which can cause pens to work sub-optimally.

Pens ready to go with water in two of the containers, a piece of kitchen paper in the third, the fourth is just to hold the blunt syringe and bulb syringe.  I use this configuration when I'm cleaning several pens, which is my usual pattern, I'm lazy and tend to do pens in a bunch rather than do them singly.

First step: dismantle pens, except the Noodler, it's brand new I'm just rinsing it out as recommended by many sites.  But it's a piston fill, so it's basically twist the piston to open


You can see the cartridges, these are what are referred to as International Standard Cartridges and I don't normally clean them as I have a lot of them.







Pushing the bulb syringe to flush, you really want to push it in as far as possible.  Otherwise you will get overspill of ink.You can add a drop of washing up liquid to the mix, this is often useful for first flushes to ensure any residual oils from the making process are removed, but also flush with plain water a few times after this.

 Pen 1 in to soak, to make sure I've flushed it enough there shouldn't be any sign of ink in the water while flushing the second pen.  Don't forget to flush out the lids,

 If you don't want ink all over your fingers you need to wear gloves to do this, I'm pretty careful with all this and I still regularly get ink everywhere

 Clean cartridge versus dirty one.

Putting everything in to drain, including the lids.  I left them for a few days before taking them out.  There's a lot of pens I have inked at the moment so I'm trying to use more of the variety.