Top Fountain Pen Hacks

1. Keep a tissue handy when filling up your fountain pens. It's useful to quickly wipe up any spills or inky fingers.
2. Did you know about ink eradicators? They are just like a rubber for fountain pen ink. However, they only erase some blue inks but are perfect for little mistakes or errors.
3. You've probably got some blu-tack stashed in a drawer somewhere or you could pinch some of your child's play dough for this one. Use it to hold your ink vials steady while you fill up from them.
4. Use a blunt syringe needle attached to your converter to fill up and get the last few drops of ink from a bottle of ink. This is a perfect way to fill just the converter when you don't have enough ink left in the bottle to submerge the nib, it also avoids getting the nib messy.
5. Expel a few drops of ink from the pen after filling up, this ensures a good consistent ink flow whilst writing.
6. If you need to use cheaper paper or sign documents and still want to use a fountain pen try turning your pen over and write with the nib upside down. It gives a drier, thinner line and won't bleed on the paper.
7. Rub a white candle over your writing to make it waterproof if your ink isn't. This is a good idea if you are worried an addressed envelope could get wet during postage.
8. Use a bulb syringe to remove any residual ink in your pen feed and nib and give it a good clean.
9. Re-use empty ink cartridges by filling them up back up with ink using a blunt syringe. It's a great way to use your favourite bottled ink that may not come in cartridge form.
10. Sometimes ink can get between the cap insert and cap itself and on a clear demonstrator pen this can be very frustrating. You can get to it to clean it by wrapping a rubber band around the end of a pencil, inserting it into the cap and using the friction to pull the insert out. Your pen never looked so good!
11. If you are taking your fountain pens away with you when flying always completely fill or completely empty your pens with ink first. This will avoid any leaky situations. See full Blog post about Travelling with Fountain Pens HERE.

You can find the cleaning accessories, such as a bulb syringe and blunt needle for converters HERE.