Hi I'm Kirby Allison,
founder of the Hanger Project,
and here at the Hanger Project,
we love to help the well-dressed take care
of their wardrobes.
In today's video I'm going to show
you how to fill a fountain pen.
In our last video on fountain pens
and stationery I talked about how I had my
first fountain pen is this ivory
Waterman Elegance
and how they also have a matching
black Elegance pen also
that I really wanted in order to make a set.
After all the conversations that
were going on in the comments section
I decided to finally pull the trigger
on getting that second pen.
So it just came in today
and we're going to be opening this
for the first time.
So this is the Waterman Elegance
packaging
and you can see that it just
comes in a nice
Waterman box.
So, let's pull that out.
I absolutely love the gold detailing
in this pen
and I like the idea of having a pair of
something because this way I can put
my black ink
or my grey ink in
my black pen
and then I can flush this out
and refill it with the second color
ink maybe like a midnight
Navy.
Anyway I've been holding off on this for a long time
and I'm really excited to finally add a second
fountain pen to my collection.
And I wanted to use this as an opportunity
to just go over again how you fill
a fountain pen.
So in our last video I showed
you how to actually remove the converter
from the pen.
And to refill that directly in the
ink cartridge. Some of the users on YouTube
were commenting absolutely correctly that
it is not necessary to
remove your converter in order
to refill that
and that you can actually refill
it directly through the pen itself
and in some cases it's actually
easier to do that.
So I'm just going to show you how to do that
in this video.
So let's just start from
scratch, right.
So you got your new fountain pen.
You're going to pull the cap off.
Right, to expose the nib.
And then you're going to unscrew
the barrel to then expose the converter.
Right. So I've got this right here.
Now here's my inkwell jar.
And I've got one of our shoeshine carpets here
just because you want to be very careful about possibly
spilling any ink.
You know pen ink is incredibly
permanent so if you get that on anything
you're never going to get it off.
So you want to be very careful there.
So either set out some newspaper
or just do it someplace that
you can be very careful.
So I've got the new pen
and what I'm going to do is I'm just going to fully
depress this plunger
all the way down to the bottom
of the cartridge then just
simply stick the
nib in the inkwell jar
and then draw the ink all the
way through the pen
into the cartridge.
Now what's nice about doing it this way,
is that you're actually also
priming the entire
nib itself with ink so
you don't have to then
flush the ink out in order
to fill the pen to make it so that you can write.
Now, by sticking the entire nib into
the inkwell jar
and then drawing the ink through
the nib all the way into
the converter.
And what you're doing is you're just priming this
entire system here
and it just makes it so that the pen is ready
to write immediately.
So I'm going to screw this back on
and then again.
I've got some paper here.
And you know let's see
how this writes.
You can see
that again, this is writing
very nicely
and you know new nibs
do have to break in slightly
just to kind of gain their flex.
Right. So it's just nice to,
you know write
with them a little
bit whenever you get them.
But as you can see I mean having stuck
this directly into the inkwell jar
you know it's not messy it's not getting ink
everywhere.
You know if you're really worried about it you know you
can just run the
pen over some paper just to take
any excess ink off.
But otherwise there's really nothing to worry about.
So there we have it.
Personally I was very intimidated
by purchasing my first fountain pen
because I just thought that
there was a lot of maintenance involved
in taking care of one.
And once I finally got my first fountain pen
and learned how to use it,
that couldn't have been any farther from
the truth.
I mean a lot of fanatics
and aficionados you know really talk
about how fussy
and how you know kind
of specific and idiosyncratic
as some pens can be.
But if you invest in a nice fountain pen
and you're just going to use it to write at your desk
or carry in your briefcase it's
really not that difficult to take care
of. As I just showed you you
know refilling a converter is
incredibly easy to do.
You can use cartridges if you'd like
and there's really just not an incredible amount
of maintenance. One of the other things I just want to mention
is that if you're ever flushing your pen
that you'd never want to flush the ink
back into the ink well jar because
bacteria that may have been picked up
on the pen itself can contaminate
the ink.
And if you have bacteria growth that
contaminates your ink
and it gets into your pen
can actually ruin a really nice pen.
So in the last video I showed you
that you could just expel the ink into the
ink jar and then refill it.
Now you probably want to avoid doing that.
One of the other things is before you
refiguring you know all of these
just kind of look inside
and kind of visually inspect the ink itself.
If you see any type of slicking
or anything on the surface of ink
it means that your ink has become contaminated
and you probably just want to throw that ink away.
It's not something that happens commonly
but I think it's just worth mentioning as
some other YouTube user suggested.
So here we go I finally have completed
the pair of Waterman
Elegance pen.
I have the Waterman Elegance in
ivory
and then I have an in black here
and you can see I've got this nice pen
case you know that was given
to me as a gift.
And I like this because it's got a slot for
two pens here so I can keep
both of my pens here
each with a different colored ink.
I really look forward to the pleasure of continuing
to write with a nice fountain pen.
I'm very excited to have added the second one
to my collection.
That's a big step for me
and I encourage anyone on this YouTube
channel that is watching this video that's kind
of on the edge or the fence as
to whether or not they should invest in
a nice fountain pen.
I'd really encourage you to go check out Goulet
Pens or look on Amazon
and buy your first fountain pen
and enjoy that process
with us. If you have any questions
or if you just have anything to share
with everyone else on this YouTube channel,
please comment in the comments section
below. If you like this video give
us the thumbs up,
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Please take a moment to visit HangerProject.com
where we have the largest collection of luxury
garment care and shoe care accessories
in the world
and other products for the well dressed.
I'm Kirby Allison founder of the Hanger Project,
thanks for joining us.