Standard international twist converter in a steel-nibbed pen. It fills to roughly half and then stops taking ink, even doing the plunge-and-twist trick five or six times. The pen writes fine on what it does take. New converter, new bottle, and the ink level is deep enough to cover the whole section.
Make sure the nib and feed are both fully submerged, not just the nib. The feed's job is to let air in while ink goes out, and if the breather hole is above the ink line you get exactly this.
Cheap converters vary a lot in piston fit. If you have another one lying around, swap it in as a control before you conclude anything about the pen.
If you want a genuinely full pen, eyedropper it. Silicone grease on the threads, fill the barrel, four or five times the capacity. Only works on pens with no metal parts inside the barrel and no vent hole, so check first.
And accept some burping when your hand warms the barrel. Manageable but real, especially once it's half empty.
@gimbal_gus · 2mo ago · 3 replies
That's mostly normal. A twist converter can't fill completely in one go because you're pulling against an air bubble with nowhere to go, and 60-70% is behaving as designed.
To do better: fill, then with the nib still submerged twist the piston back down a quarter turn to expel some air, and fill again. Two or three cycles gets you nearly full.
If it stops at half and doesn't improve across cycles, check the seal. A converter not fully seated on the section nipple leaks air and never builds vacuum. Push it on firmly with a slight twist and you should feel a definite stop.
Reply
Report
@tripodwobble · 2mo ago
The quarter turn down between fills took it to nearly full. I'd been pumping the whole stroke each time, which just moved the same air around.
Reply
Report
@seamripper_sol · 2mo ago
Same trick works on squeeze converters, just release slowly rather than snapping your fingers off it.
Reply
Report