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 😃

It's a nice pen, this Gravitas Pocket fountain pen...!

I've found that the cartridges of ink I'm using in the Gravitas Pocket fountain pen, last about a week of consistent (journalling per day in a Leuchtturm1917 pocket-sized notebook) use.

I'm reasonably happy with that: They're small cartridges, the International size, and shouldn't last all that long with regular use.

Cleaning out the old cartridge was dead easy using the hobby syringe kit I got from Amazon; I flushed out the old cartridge with a 1ml syringe a few times with warm water, and it's now completely clean. It'll take a day or two to dry out inside, but that's no bother, as I don't plan to refill it for a few days yet.

It also means that in another week or so, I'll have two empty, cleaned cartridges that I can refill with the Diamine blue/black I bought at the London Pen Show.

The photo shows my Gravitas Pocket fountain pen, with full and empty Kaweko-brand black ink cartridges, and a couple of different model plunger format converter cartridges, that regrettably aren't much use, as the hold even less ink than an actual International-size cartridge.

In addition, the converter plungers will be pushed in as the end cap of the pen is screwed into place, forcing ink through the nib; that reduces their usefulness in this particular pen even more, which is a shame, but not the end of the world.

So, refilling old, empty cartridges may well be the long-term solution for this pen. I still have a couple of Kaweko pens, that are with my niece (Haze Peers) for fixing/repairing (she's well into fountain pens 🙂 ).

However, this one works nicely, writes even more nicely, and I REALLY like this pen too 😉

So, colour me rather happy with this purchase 😃

A little retail therapy...!

 I attended the London pen Show today. First one I've been to. It caters to pens, obviously, but mostly fountain pens, which I like. However, my last few haven't really done well with me; two Kawekos, a Platinum, and a Lamy Safari, and before that, in school (AHEM years ago!), a Parker 25.

The Lamy and the Platinum still work fine, I just can't get comfortable enough with them: They're too light, and there's no real feedback when I have them in the hand (I prefer a pen with a bit of heft in it). The two Kawekos jammed up all the time, which was a pity, as others have had good results with the brand. The Parker 25 was lost in the mists of time.

So, the London Pen Show.

The show was small, well attended, and for a fiver admission, well worth the visit to Hammersmith in west London on a damned chilly morning, at yougottabekiddingme o'clock in the morning?! I work LATES, for pities sake! What's the "morning" thing?! 😂

Anyway, I was up at 7 in the a.m., on a train by roughly 9 (again, in the "ayem"), and at the show by just after 10, whereupon I linked up with my brother-in-law, neice, and some of their friends.

My niece is an admin of a UK facebook group, the "Fountain Pens UK" group; she's also VERY knowledgeable about how these pens are made, and how to repair and maintain them. She also knows a number of people in the trade, and put me onto Gravitas Pens, and their very compact 'pocket' model, in this case, a brass body with a medium nib.

I tested one at the table Gravitas had at the show, and WOW, did it feel NICE in the hand. It also writes cleanly, with a decent flow of ink to the nib, giving clear, consistent lines. I was impressed - so I bought one (you KNEW that was coming, didn't you? 😉).

Also, have a look at that photo, at the cap at the bottom of the shot. Notice the logo Gravitas uses: It's VERY much like the old British Army "Crow's Foot" (a.k.a. the "British Broad Arrow Mark"), that used to be plastered/stamped/printed on pretty-much every bit of Army kit in inventory until well into the 1980s 😂

I also picked up some ink, and a few notebooks for the pen (well, you KNOW it's rude not to, and all that 😉😂

Anyhow, I now have a decent fountain pen, which didn't cost a mint, and got home happy, satisfied, and yawning like a very tired thing (late shift worker, remember?).

All in all, not a bad way to spend a lazy Sunday 😀

Time for some DIY...

Also, bugger. The weekends single job has morphed into three, this morning.

Job #1. Replace shredded garden gate.

Job #2. Fix apparently blocked water trap to down pipe from gutters to water butt.

Job #3. Replace 22" LCD computer monitor, which just this morning died, dammit 😠

Well, dodging between the hailstones, I partially drained the water butt so it was no longer overflowing, unblocked the down pipe from the gutters, and cleared the trap by the butt. Water is now flowing as it's supposed to, although I got a bit of splash from the 12 inch column of water from the recent rain and hail 🌧️ that was held back by the soggy mess of moss in the drain and trap 😱

So, one down, two to go...

The last two storms to come through here, Eunice and Franklin, really did some damage around the country; this included blowing apart (damn near shredding, even) the garden gate and ripping it in half here at home, meaning that I have to set to and replace the damn thing.

The parts blown off by the storms.

Top hinge damage

With flash this time.

Bottom hinge damage.

This gate managed to survive the Great Storm of 1987, so it wasn't as weak as it appears. Never the less, it was shredded by Eunice and Franklin. Gives you an idea of how bad the storms were. Note that the storm of '87 did its damage mostly as the trees still had foliage on them, as it his in the autumn, not the winter. As a result, Eunice and Franklin did their damage by virtue of wind speed alone, and boy, did they spread the misery about.

The other view. The latch was completely buggered.

I have a rough idea of how I'm going to go about replacing the gate, and it involves laying my hands on ten feather fencing boards (thinner on one edge than the other, hence "feather board"), a few nails or wood screws, a couple of brass hinges, a hammer, and a bottle of "Curses, invective, loud and vile" 😆

As to the monitor, well, is going to be a pain in the backside, and likely involve traipsing down to Curry's, Argos (Sainsbury's), or using some other online supplier, such as Amazon, and will no doubt cost over a ton, dammit 😠 At least I can get by for the moment with the laptop monitor, even if it does result in more eyestrain due to resolution limitations.

Oh well. At least it's a long weekend, with reasonably fair weather forecast 🙂

A quick update...

 

OK, I may have the settings for comments sorted on here, now; seems I missed an aspect of commentary on here which may save me a lot of time in the future. If you want to comment, you should now be able to create an account. This provides a level of safety; I still have the blog on 100% moderation (and apols for the historical comments that just got approved, there was a shedton of spam I had to wade through, most of it Arabic, Cyrillic, and Chinese, that had to be deleted one item at a time, dammit), but I hope to be able to reduce that in time :)

Happy New Year, 2022!

 

Happy New Year!

I've not posted here in a  l o n g  time, so it's high time I restarted posting again.

So. New Year's Resolution: Post at least once a month on here, if not more regularly.

I'll also be looking at possibly moving this blog somewhere else, where I can vet who can post comments prior to those comments being moderated.

In the past, I've had to remove spam and other, more objectionable commentaries, and I'd like to be able to do that before it can be seen by others.

In the mean time, Happy New Year, and let's hope 2022 is a damn sight better for everyone than last year was!

All the best,

R.

Toothache is a pain - getting treatment in these unpleasant times is agony.

I just spend the last four days in some considerable pain (occasionally fold-up wish the world would bugger off type pain) from toothache.

Thanks to anti-covid measures, my dentist wasn't able to take me as an emergency examination until earlier today; no other dentists, private or NHS, could help, they're all in the same damn boat, and that ruddy Rib (Rigid Inflatable Boat) is just about swamped in the wake of Covid.

By the grace of whatever your Deity might be, I got seen earlier (thanks to a short-notice early morning cancellation), and I'm now on antibiotics (ruddy great horse pills of 500mg Amoxicillin, 3 times per day for five days), which have made a MASSIVE improvement in things already.

The pain was a result of an abscess, of course. The resulting infection-caused swelling in my face was not at all nice, but is going down nicely, even now, just over twelve hours post-exam.

I've got to make return visits for longer-lasting and more permanent treatment (which is going to cost a packet, as there aren't any NHS dentists available around here), but I have the satisfaction of knowing that my gnasher-basher centre is now part of the Portman Group (https://www.portmandentalcare.com/), and has a wide range of resources available to it without need for referral to other firms/practices.

I still don't like the idea of going to a Dentist (I'm sure Torquemada was a trainee gnasher-smasher), but at least I know the one I see is a respected one.