hazard of cleaning vintage pens

Phyllis, my 1938 Swan Mabie Todd, has always had uneven ink flow. I considered it part of her charm and wondered if her feed had gotten damaged somewhere along the way. No matter, she still wrote and drew well. Idiosyncrasies are, after all, one of interesting things about vintage pens.

Last time she ran out of ink, I decided to give her a thorough cleaning. This meant that she spent about 36 hours soaking in tepid water, being filled and emptied every few hours along the way. Until the water ran clean, which took longer than I anticipated.

Towards the end of this process, I noticed that her feed looked substantially smaller than it had previously. There was apparently so much dried ink caked on her feed that it made it look bigger.

She writes much more evenly now.