A fountain pen nib pressing on a dark surface

You lot may find yourself writing with a fountain pen one twenty-four hours, and information technology stops working every bit it should.

Every so often, fountain pens tin can fall victim to dryness, which results in scratchy and patchy handwriting. You may also notice that the ink dries lighter than it usually does.

This could be considering the pen has been in storage and unused for a while, or it could but randomly happen when you've been using it regularly for months.

Worry not though — this effect can easily be remedied using the tips below.

Still, it is worth bearing in mind before buy that pens with extra-fine nibs will be prone to suffer from this problem more often, as a effectively nib means less ink and therefore less moisture for lubrication.

So, let's look at how you lot can solve your dry pen issue.

Apply pressure to the cartridge

If you are using ink cartridges, or a converter, you lot tin assist the ink in its journey by unscrewing the pen grip and lightly squeezing the far cease of the cartridge or converter.

This process forces ink through the feed, and you tin keep as usual once the ink has appeared on the bill (although you may need to clean the backlog off first).

You lot may need to do this with a brand-new pen as well as your old favourites.

Clean your fountain pen

Dry writing can be an indicator of a clogged feed organisation, so a simple footstep is to detach your fountain pen and affluent the feed organisation with warm, make clean water.

If this fixes the problem, you will have probably shifted some dried ink or another blockage.

You can avert this happening again in the future by cleaning your fountain pens regularly and earlier storing them for long periods.

This blog post is all about cleaning your fountain pen nib.

Switch to wetter ink

a fountain pen nib with handwriting on paper

Both bottled fountain pen ink and cartridge ink varies in its flow.

Some inks are thicker than others, and some comprise particles — both of which tin contribute to blockages over fourth dimension.

If this is causing you problems, you can regularly flush your fountain pen feed.

However, you can foreclose the result altogether by switching to a wetter ink.

Wetter inks you could endeavor include Crewman Jentle and most of the Diamine ink collection.

Switch to a different newspaper blazon

Your paper choice tin make all the difference when information technology comes to how your fountain pen writes.

If y'all have recently changed to a new paper blazon, that could be your problem.

Test your pen out on your usual paper type to eliminate or confirm this every bit the issue.

Bearing pecker width in mind, the width of the lines you create when writing tin can indicate how absorptive the paper is.

More absorbent paper volition issue in a thicker line, equally it drinks the wet in and spreads information technology out.

If y'all are writing on an unabsorbent paper type, the line produced will exist thinner, and the pen may struggle to make any line at all.

Make nib alterations

I don't recommend you lot make alterations to a bill yourself, merely yous could accomplish out to a nib meister if you feel like your beak would benefit from some piece of work.

Nonetheless, if you do wish to brand small changes yourself — maybe it is a cheap fountain pen y'all are using which holds no sentimental value — the goal for a wetter pen is to increase the size of the gap between the tines, equally, all the way from its start to its end.

Some people achieve this by gently using a razor blade or dental floss between the tines, but I'd personally rather you didn't!

If none of the above tips accept helped and you bought the pen from usa, please do make it bear on and we can piece of work together to go your pen working exactly how you'd similar it to.

Equally a long-term stationery lover, I adore working for The Pen Company. My childhood saw me carrying around a little ruby-red briefcase covered in stickers and full of pens, newspaper and other such goodies; my machismo sees me doing pretty much exactly the same!