Pen-4u

A question we often get asked is when you have recently changed your fountain pen ink cartridge in your pen from, for example, black ink to blue ink, but it's still coming out as a midnight blue instead of royal blue. Having spent ages writing with it to use up all the remaining black ink the problem still remains. So what to do?

Firstly, you should ALWAYS flush your pen between ink changes. Even if you will be using exactly the same color ink, you will still need to flush your pen out with lukewarm water around once a month to prevent ink buildup in the nib of your fountain pen.

When you wish to change ink colors, if you discover that you can’t remove the excess ink you can try a squirt of 409 cleaner, or alternatively ammonia. Don’t try to use anything else as it could damage your pen. Add the cleaner to some lukewarm water and swish your pen around. Thoroughly flush with water afterward.

It’s likely that you probably still have remaining black ink in the nib, so it will run dark blue for quite a while until it is all out. You can try to squeeze the ink out whilst the cartridge is in the pen, just a little to wash out the black ink if it really bothers you. However, if you have been using black ink for a while, unless you thoroughly wash out the pen it might still take a while to get to the correct blue ink color.