Every once in a while I like to take things back to basics and talk a bit about how to care for, maintain, and store fountain pens. While not as “high-maintenance” and messy as some would have you believe, fountain pens definitely require more attention than your typical ballpoint or rollerball in order to maintain an enjoyable writing experience. So what brought this particular topic to mind today? Well, I finally have a sink in my dedicated work area, so I can actually flush out some pens that I’ve been waiting to clean since the Baltimore Pen Show back in March.

For 90% of cleaning jobs, you need little more than a glass of water, a towel, and (maybe) a bulb syringe.

My cleaning process is pretty simple, and I follow three steps:

Start (and Finish) With Water. Most of the time, since I use fairly unexciting inks without permanence, shimmer, sparkles, extreme iron gall content, etc., I can make do with a glass of water. I can flush the pen by running plain water through the filling mechanism 5 or 6 times, and that’s typically more than sufficient to clean the pen to a point where you won’t have old ink drying up in the feed and clogging the pen, nor will you see traces of the previous ink when you go to refill it. To dry the pen out I will usually (GENTLY) place the pen nib down in a glass with a folded paper towel or tissue at the bottom for padding, which will wick out any remaining inky water. Note: Some people will probably flip out when they hear that I place the flushed pens nib-down to dry. I’ve never damaged a pen this way but as with everything here, proceed at your own risk and do what you are comfortable with.
Proceed to Water + Dish Detergent for Stubborn Messes. If I have a fountain pen where the ink has dried out, or a pen that was inked with a super-saturated color or shimmer ink, I will add a drop of dish detergent (i.e., Dawn) to a large glass of water and repeat step one. 9/10 times, this fixes any problem I have cleaning stubborn pens. In my experience, “pen flush” or dedicated cleaning fluids are almost always unnecessary, though they can sometimes speed up the cleaning process. Buy them from a pen store (preferably a pen manufacturer) and don’t try to make your own with ammonia, diluted Windex, etc. Certainly don’t use them with expensive pens or rare materials like celluloid or other vintage plastics because you never truly know what’s in them or how the material will react.
- Buy a Bulb Syringe. For either of these first two steps, you might want to pick up a bulb syringe. For cartridge-converter pens, it’s easier to flush water through the section using the bulb syringe than it is the converter, which doesn’t move much water at all. Just be sure to grip the section firmly because a bulb syringe can form a seal and cause the section to go shooting across the room if you’re not careful.

Buy an Ultrasonic Cleaner. IF you think you need one. That’s a big “IF” for me, because I hardly ever break mine out, and when I do it’s for pens like the Parker 51, Lamy 2000, or other hooded-nibs where flushing the pen is inadequate because it doesn’t necessarily get water to all parts of the feed. Vacumatic fountain pens are also easier to clean with an Ultrasonic, since the filling mechanism doesn’t push water through the feed with much force.

Cleaning a Cartridge-Converter pen with a bulb syringe — Cartridge-Converter section with a bulb syringe attached. It takes no time at all to clean a nib/section using the bulb syringe to flush water through the feed.

For tough jobs, a $40 ultrasonic jewelry cleaner (purchased at Bed, Bath & Beyond or Amazon on sale) is all the “heavy equipment” you’ll need. I typically use plain water, though you can add a drop of dish detergent if you like. Just be sure to flush the pen clean afterwards. (And if you’re considering remodeling, a grey or black sink is a nice upgrade to your “pen room” to hide the ink stains!)

Drying Cleaned Fountain Pens — Drying cleaned fountain pens nibs-down, which allows any remaining inky water to leach out. Just be sure to rest the nibs on a folded paper towel. As you can see, I don’t baby my pens.

Final Thoughts and Further Reading

To summarize my philosophy on cleaning fountain pens: Clean relatively frequently and go slowly, only adding substances other than water to the cleaning process if absolutely necessary. I think you’ll find that for most inks and most pens, it’s not. For some additional information and further reading on techniques for cleaning specific types of filling systems, check out this previous post.

I will likely do a further post on this topic at a later date, but favorite high-ink-capacity pens that are easy to clean include the TWSBI 580 piston filler, and the Opus 88 Japanese-style eyedroppers. I was able to flush all of these demonstrator pens perfectly clean in less than a minute since the sections separate and allow you to access the interior. Run them under the sink and/or flush them with a syringe.

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Which camp do you fall into? Of course, this refers to fountain pens. If you have to clean ink out of your rollerball, ballpoint, or gel pen, it's probably because something very, very bad happened. But pen maintenance is an essential part of fountain pen ownership. You have to do it, and to the extent you can, you should learn to love it. Do I? Sort of.

Pen cleaning is one of those things people do either (1) all the time, such as, after they finish every fill of ink; (2) semi-regularly, such as whenever they change colors or every 1-2 months; or (3) whenever the pen clogs up and stops writing. I'm squarely in the second category. I don't find cleaning pens to be torture, per se (unless it's one of the rare occasions I've been using some sort of Noodler's permanent ink), but it's not something I necessarily look forward to.

I'll walk through the various categories of pens that I clean on a regular basis, from what I consider to be the least difficult to the extremely aggravating, and provide my perspective on which of the various filling systems are easiest to maintain. While the basic principle is the same for all--flush the pen with water--each system has its own peculiarities and quirks that need to be taken into account.

Syringe Fillers. Say what you will about Conid's Bulkfiller system being hard to get the hang of. Once you do, these pens are a snap to clean. It's like using a built-in bulb syringe (see below). Because the pen has such a large ink capacity, it's capable of pushing a large amount of water through the nib, reducing the number of times you have to flush it. If the pen's clogged, or if you've used an ink that's extremely difficult to clean out, you may have to disassemble the pen, but most syringe fillers have a small number of moving parts, and Conid even provides you with tools and instructions.

Cartridge/Converter. I have a growing appreciation for cartridge/converter pens because of how simple it is to clean and maintain them. While you technically don't need any special equipment, and can just use the converter to flush water through the feed and section several times, a bulb syringe and an ultrasonic cleaner allow you to thoroughly clean your pen quickly. For me, one of the best features of the cartridge/converter system is that you don't actually have to worry about cleaning the entire pen. Typically, the only part of the pen that touches any ink is the nib section and the converter (though I would recommend occasionally cleaning out the interior of the cap).

Eyedropper. Some people are going to be puzzled at this one. How, they might ask, is an eyedropper filling system--where the entire barrel holds ink--more convenient than the piston filler? Because there are no moving parts, and all you have to do is drop the entire pen into the ultrasonic cleaner. (In the "after" photo below, there is still some blue-black residue in the barrel, which I will clean out with a q-tip if I decide to change colors.) While disassembling a pen takes time, you don't have to do it that often! Eyedroppers hold a ton of ink, and if you use a low-maintenance ink and don't feel compelled to change colors, well, you can go a long time without cleaning that pen!

Piston Filler. Some piston-filling pens are easier than others to clean. Pilot's Custom Heritage 92 is a snap (because the piston is highly efficient and works well), and the clear TWSBI demonstrators are also somewhat convenient because they are transparent and relatively easy to disassemble if necessary. At the end of the day, however most piston-filling pens simply take a long time to flush out all the ink, and I often worry whether that repeated flushing is good for the piston mechanism. I've had particular difficulty cleaning my Montblanc 146 and my Pelikan M600, though the otherwise excellent Lamy 2000 can be a pain as well. On all three, I've noticed that the piston mechanisms have loosened up over time, after many many cleanings.

Pilot's excellent Custom Heritage 92 is extremely easy to clean.  The piston is highly efficient, and as you can sort of see from this terrible photo, the piston fills the ink chamber to capacity, making it easier to flush out the pen. — Pilot's excellent Custom Heritage 92 is extremely easy to clean. The piston is highly efficient, and as you can sort of see from this terrible photo, the piston fills the ink chamber to capacity, making it easier to flush out the pen.

Sac-Filling Pens (Lever and button Fillers). Flush these pens with water until it runs clear. I have these pens listed pretty far down on the convenience list because sacs tend to accumulate ink residue inside them, and it's generally impossible to have any visibility into what's going on inside the pen because they aren't made to be disassembled on a regular basis. I very rarely use anything other than a "safe" blue or black ink in a pen that fills using a sac.

Vac-Fillers. And then, we come to the end. I love the mechanics of a good vac-filling system, whether it be the classic Parker Vacumatic and the Edison Menlo. I absolutely hate cleaning them. After much experimentation, I have scientifically determined that it is physically impossible to get all of the ink residue out of a Parker Vacumatic. No, not really, but it takes so long, and involves so much repeated filling/emptying the pen with water, that I've given up on regularly changing the inks that I use in these pens and stick to "safe blue" or "safe black". To illustrate how much effort (and ingenuity) it takes to clean these things thoroughly, check out this article by Ron Zorn, who built a centrifuge out of a salad spinner. (Yes, really.) In all fairness, the Vacumatic filling system is the product of a time period when most people used three colors of ink (blue, black, and blue/black), so this probably wasn't an issue back then. (See note below: a "vac-fill" pen is a pump filler, distinct from the "vacuum-fillers" made by TWSBI and Pilot. For a demonstration on how a "vac-fill" pen works, see Brian Gray's video.)

As you can probably tell, this post isn't intended to be a comprehensive, "how-to" guide on cleaning pens (though that may not be a bad idea in the future). I mainly wanted to provide my thoughts on how easy/difficult I've found certain filling systems to maintain, since it's such an important part of pen ownership. Opinions may differ. But if I could provide you with one "semi-pro tip", it would be:

Buy An Ultrasonic Cleaner. I was once a skeptic, but about a year ago I purchased one at Bed, Bath & Beyond on a lark and I've since become a convert. You can get these things really cheap (even cheaper if you have one of those ubiquitous BBB 20% off coupons). The ultrasonic cleaner is great for cleaning ink out of the nooks and crannies of feeds and nib sections, and saves your fingers a lot of repeated flushing. If you use a lot of red ink, like I do, the ultrasonic is a lifesaver, because reds can be notoriously difficult to flush.

Note: I don't have a ton of experience with vacuum-fillers such as the Pilot Custom 823, TWSBI Vac 700, or the TWSBI Vac Mini, at least not yet. I've recently picked up a Vac Mini, and plan on having my thoughts on the pen up on the blog soon. I expect that in terms of ease-of-cleaning, these pens will probably fall somewhere between a piston filler and a vac-fill.