Joe S.
Member
I've seen "piston style converters for fountain pens" at several vendor's sites. How do these things work? And how do you fill them? (I'm new to this whole fountain pen thing.)
The piston style converters that most of us have on our sites are made so that they either screw in or press fit onto the feed. If you think about how you would press a cartridge onto your pen, these work pretty much the same for installation. Filling is quite easy with these.... While on your pen, You simply twist the end of the converter to get the plunger all the way to the nib end (expelling the air that is inside) then you insert the nib into your ink bottle to a point where the ink is just level or slightly over the top of the section. This allows the ink to be drawn in through the nib and feed without also sucking air into the pen when you fill it. While holding the nib into the ink you twist the piston turning knob the opposite direction in order to pull the ink up through the nib and feed and into the converter (replacing the expelled air). You can then remove the pen from the ink and wipe off the section/nib with a soft paper towel and replace into your pen body and write on! Careful not to hold the paper towel against the feed or nib for more than a mere second as it will wick the ink out. It is only the briefest of swipes with the cloth that is needed to clean the excess ink off.