Sod's law, and all that crap...

I spoke too damn soon.

The Gravitas Pocket fountain pen I bought at the London pen Show a few weeks back jammed up about a week ago.

Turns out, after much gnashing of teeth and dark mutterings, not to mention a liberal quantity of very rude words, that it was the damned INK that jammed up all three of my fountain pens.

Who made the ink, I hear you ask?

Kaweko. The same people who made my other two pocket-sized fountain pens.

Seems that the batch I had - which I've now binned - was heavy with particulate matter, possibly as a result of the dye (black). Whatever the reason, this is what buggered up all three of my fountain pens.

I sent the two Kawekos to my niece, the family pen guru, who has unjammed them with a thorough and detail-level cleaning, and I managed to unjam the Gravitas with a warm water soak, followed by a warm water soaking, followed by a clean warm water flush or five, and a different ink.

It appears that the year-plus old Kaweko black ink I was using may either have been an iffy batch, or time expired, or something. Either way, it was the ink that screwed things up. I've since changed over to Diamine Blue/Black, and it's working properly again 🙂

Now, Kaweko have an ongoing issue, according to some, with their nibs. I'd have to say it's their ink, given my experiences with two Kawekos in my collection, but that's water under the bridge. Some of their kit is extraordinarily good - such as their converters (refillable in-pen reservoirs for fountain pens), and I've got a Kaweko converter in my Gravitas Pocket fountain pen right now.

There's only one problem with it, and it's not anything to do with Kaweko - it's the design of the Gravitas pocket, which is just barely long enough to accept an international-size ink cartridge, but too short to accept a fully loaded converter cartridge, because it does not permit a fully charged converter to be fitted to the pen, as with the pen body screwed back in place, the plunger of the converter would push back down and flush ink through the nib, which is not a Good Thing ^(tm).

So, why did I use a converter this time? Simple: to properly charge the pens ink flow system. You dip the pen, with an empty converter, nib-down into a bottle of ink, draw back the plunger, and by suction, the reservoir is filled with ink.

As the reservoir fills, it pulls the ink through the nib, and the ink delivery system that forms the rear half of the nib assembly, properly priming the delivery system for when you write with the pen: There are no air pockets between the end of the nib, and the fitted cartridge as a result, so ink flow is instant, correct, and reliable. After that, you simply either keep refilling the pen using the converter, or fit a freshly loaded cartridge into the pen to continue writing when the previous load of ink is depleted.

The two plugged cartridges in the photo are spent Kaweko cartridges, cleaned out, and refilled with Diamine Blue/Black, and plugged with "Great Fountain Ink Cartridge Stopper - International Standard" turned brass plugs from the Hamilton Pen Co. Good bits of kit 🙂

All in all, I'm now happy again with this pen, and the ink I'm now using.

I hope I'm not tempting fate (again) by saying that I dare say this state of affairs will continue unabated 😃