A fountain pen will forgive a lot. Skip a day of writing, leave the cap off for an hour, fill it with an ink you don't much like — it usually shrugs and carries on. What it won't forgive is dried ink sitting in the feed for six months. That is how a smooth writer becomes a pen that skips, hard-starts and eventually needs a repair rather than a rinse.

The good news is that maintenance is not fussy. Lukewarm water, a bit of patience and somewhere to make a small mess are most of what you need.

When a pen actually needs cleaning

Ink is mostly water, dye and a surfactant or two, with pigment or shimmer particles in some formulations. As the water evaporates, whatever is left concentrates in the narrow channels of the feed and in the slit between the tines. Dried ink isn't dust you can blow away; it's a film that interferes with the capillary action the pen relies on to move ink from reservoir to paper.

Clean your pen when:

• you're changing inks, especially going from a dark colour to a pale one
• the pen has sat unused for more than a couple of weeks
• flow turns stingy, the nib skips, or the first strokes after uncapping come out dry
• you're about to put the pen into storage
• you've been using a pigment, iron-gall or shimmer ink, which need flushing more often than a plain dye ink
• the pen is brand new, since a quick flush shifts any manufacturing residue

Weekly cleaning isn't necessary for a pen in daily use with the same ink. Monthly is a sensible habit, and plenty of people clean less often and get away with it. If a pen writes well, don't fix it.

What you'll need

• Lukewarm water — room temperature or barely warm, never hot
• Two small cups or glasses, one for rinsing and one for clean water
• Kitchen paper or a soft, lint-free cloth
• A bulb syringe, the sort sold for cleaning a baby's nose, for pushing water through a section
• A blunt-tipped syringe for rinsing converters and cartridges
• A drop of mild washing-up liquid for stubborn cases, or a commercial pen flush
• A tray or old towel to work over, because this gets messy

Don't reach for alcohol, acetone, white spirit, bleach or hot water. They damage plastics, plated trim and ebonite, and they are almost never needed.

The flush, step by step

1. Empty the pen. If there's ink left in the converter, expel it onto a tissue or into a waste jar. Don't return it to the bottle, where it can spoil the rest.
2. Dismantle only what comes apart easily. Unscrew the section from the barrel and remove the converter or cartridge. Leave piston fillers, vacuum fillers and vintage pens assembled and use their own filling mechanism instead.
3. Draw and expel lukewarm water repeatedly. Tip the dirty water away when it darkens and start again with clean. Keep going until what you expel runs clear. Six to ten cycles is typical; a pen that has been sitting will take more.
4. Treat stubborn cases gently. Add a single drop of mild washing-up liquid to a cup of water, flush with that, then rinse several times with plain water to shift the residue. Commercial pen flushes do the same job.
5. Speed things up with a bulb syringe. Fit it over the back of the section and push water through until it runs clear at the nib. Hold it firmly and point the nib down into the sink.
6. Blot and wipe. Dry the nib and feed on kitchen paper, then wipe the section and its threads so the cap doesn't pick up old ink.

If your pen is vintage, or made of ebonite or casein, keep soaking to a minimum. Some materials discolour or soften after prolonged contact with water, and plated trim can pit. Flush, dry, stop.

Drying: the step most people rush

The feed will stay damp after flushing, and that's fine if you're about to refill — a little water in the reservoir just dilutes the first few lines. If the pen is going into storage, dry it properly.

Give it a gentle shake, nib down, wrapped in a folded cloth. Then stand it nib-down on a wad of kitchen paper in a cup and leave it overnight. Capillary action pulls the moisture out of the feed, and by morning it should be dry or close to it.

Avoid heat. Hairdryers, radiators and sunny windowsills warp plastics and loosen glued parts. Air is the only drying tool you need.

Storing pens so they survive the wait

• Store clean pens horizontally or nib-up in a case, slot or fabric sleeve. Nib-down for months risks damage if the case is knocked about.
• Keep them out of direct sunlight and away from radiators, hot cars and damp cellars. UV fades resins, heat warps them, and damp encourages corrosion on steel nibs and trim.
• Leave caps loose rather than screwed down hard on a pen in long-term storage, so air can move and nothing is under tension.
• Cap ink bottles firmly and keep them out of the light. Never pour used ink back into the bottle. If you spot floating filaments, a skin or a suspicious smell, throw that bottle away.
• Keep only one or two pens inked at a time. A pen left inked and untouched for months is the most common cause of a clogged feed.

Mistakes worth avoiding

• Hot water, alcohol, acetone or bleach, however tempting they look.
• Pulling the nib and feed out "to clean it properly". If it doesn't come apart easily, it doesn't need to.
• Soaking a whole pen, especially a vintage barrel with plated trim, for hours on end.
• Screwing the cap on tightly while the pen is still damp, trapping moisture against the nib.
• Running everything through an ultrasonic cleaner. They can loosen inlays and damage delicate finishes.
• Dipping a dirty nib back into the bottle, which transfers particles and, worse, mould.

A routine that takes five minutes

Keep two pens in rotation and everything else clean and put away. Choose one day a month — the first Sunday, say — and flush whatever is inked, then refill fresh. Leave a bulb syringe and a roll of kitchen paper near the sink so the job never feels like a project.

If you use pigment or shimmer inks, flush when you finish a fill rather than waiting for the monthly slot. And if a pen starts to feel sluggish mid-fill, don't push it: a quick rinse now is far less trouble than a clogged feed later.

Do this much and a good fountain pen will write the way it did on the day you first filled it, for decades.

Photo: freephotocc / Pixabay