You know how I say “write more … clean less”? And tell you it’s entirely possible to use affordable fountain pens on a daily basis for DECADES without EVER making an ink mess? It’s totally true! I know because that was my experience for over twenty years with my first fountain pens!
So … what happened? How did I find myself with ink all over my hands (and kind of loving it)?
My fingers with delicious droplets of Diamine Majestic Blue ink spattered, smudged on & soaking into my skin
Long story short: I got sloppy! I’ve become so comfortable with my fountain pens and my systems for refilling them, that sometimes now … I kind of rush through it and just don’t pay attention to what I’m doing.
That’s what happened the last couple of times I used a syringe to refill a cartridge for my Parker Sonnet; since I don’t worry about making a mess, I now sometimes just bang bang unscrew sucksuck bang don’t attend carefully and hurry and then … squirt. Or whatever.
In the case of the Platinum Preppy conversion that I keep refilling with Noodler’s Polar Black “bulletproof” ink, I simply didn’t do anything to keep the pen tidy refill after refill. So all that happened is that the o-ring slipped down a bit after half a dozen or more times of unscrewing the body and filling it up (the whole entire body of the pen! filled up! I never get tired of it because it’s so awesome!!).
If I’d been just a tiny bit more meticulous, I would have looked at it more closely, made sure that ring was nice and snug, and re-applied some silicone grease to the threads. But honey it was just trucking along so easily I think I just wanted to test my luck and see how many times I could do that with completely efficient careless abandon.
You’ll be happy to know (I certainly was) that after The Leak, I did a minimal amount of tune-up & tidying and the pen seems even better than before: refreshed, with no leaks (and I’ve taken it out of the plastic bag and have been carrying it back and forth to work in my pen bag without any drips or contamination to its fellow riders (hehe WRITERS). It still blows my mind how much pleasure and use I’ve gotten out of such an inexpensive pen.
My cheap Platinum Preppie eyedropper conversion all cleaned up after I was careless on it’s 9th (I’m guessing) refill
After the leak, I sheathed the pen in a plastic baggie within my pen bag JUST IN CASE, but it was not necessary; my tune-up took care of everything & the pen has been completely leak-proof since
I’m glad for this experience helping me test the limits of my much-loved super-inexpensive converted Preppie. I feel even more confident about recommending Preppies as a first fountain pen (and later as a great candidate for converting to an eyedropper-fill). Mine gives me as much pleasure or more than my fanciest pen (a Parker Sonnet) that cost over a hundred dollars more, and makes me want a whole bunch more of them.
