S1:P9 — Flossing your tines
A step-by-step tutorial on how to remove tiny paper bits and dried ink from your fountain pen’s nib. Remember kids: flossing is important. — Season 1, Post 9
Your fountain pen picks up tiny paper fibers as it moves along a page. These fibers can sometimes stick between the tines of your fountain pen’s nib. Once there, the fibers can mess with your line width and, when especially bad, they can cause a small clog.
A simple and straightforward fix is to floss your tines - just like you floss your teeth. Well, this method is nothing like how you floss your teeth. Please don’t floss your teeth with this method. But do floss.
Finding your shim
Pen shops sell brass shims for only a couple of bucks. These are great tools and work quite well. You will just need to be careful not to damage the ink channel of your pen’s feed by pushing too hard.
Another cheaper and more forgiving way to floss the tines of your pen is to find your own soft shim. My preference is to tear open the security tags that come packaged in movie and game cases.
These are already paid for. They’re much softer than brass sheets. And they run a lower risk of damaging your pen’s feed.
Flossing those tines
We’re going to make two passes between the tines of your pen’s nib with your shiny new shims.
Step one: bottoms-up. Start underneath with your pen nib upside down and facing away from you. Slide the corner of your improvised shim into the space between your nib’s tines. Be careful to stay above the feed.
Gently pull your shim away from you and through the tines. One pass is usually enough to remove stuck paper fibers or dried ink particles.
Step two: top-down. Next, flip your pen over so that you’re more-or-less in writing position. Place the corner of your shim into the breather hole in the middle of your nib.
Lift up a smidge – we’ll pretend that’s a scientific term – so that you can only barely feel the feed underneath. Your goal is to just tickle the feed with the corner of your shim.
Like so
Gently drag your shim from the breather hole out through the tines, like a ship going out to sea. One pass is usually all you need.
Courtesy flush
Lastly, we want to make sure there is no now-loose debris left in your feed or between the tines that could become a new clog. Chances are that your flossing has shaken loose whatever fibers or ink particles were lodged in your nib. We want to remove those now-loose particles.
If your pen is empty, flush it once with clean water. If the pen is inked, I like to give a quick wipe with a reusable towel.
Victory.
