Monteverde – Writer's Bloc Blog

July 17, 2013

How to Flush a Fountain Pen using a Monteverde Mini Converter

The Monteverde Mini Converter is a handy little tool to have around when you want to flush out a fountain pen with water to clean it. The supplies you will need are: a glass of cool or room temperature water, a fountain pen or rollerball pen that uses standard international ink cartridge refills (the Mini Converter is compatible with most of these type of pens) and the Monteverde Mini Ink Converter.

Attach the Mini Converter to the feed of the pen and push the black plunger down.

Immerse the nib or tip of the pen in the water and pull the black plunger on the Mini Converter up to draw water into the converter. Push the black plunger down to expel the water back into the glass.

Repeat the above step several times, drawing water into and then pushing it out of the converter. Replace the water with clean water as many times as it takes for the water to remain clear as you draw water in and out of the converter.

When the water is all clear you’re done with the cleaning.

Push the black plunger on the Mini Converter down to expel the water. Remove the converter from the pen and dry off the pen feed and nib with a soft cloth. Let the pen dry overnight if you wish. Attach a new ink cartridge to the feed of the pen, wait awhile for the ink to seep into the feed and you’re ready to write – easy!

June 19, 2013

Monteverde Mini Converter for Fountain Pens

The Monteverde Mini Ink Converter is designed to fit most fountain pens that take short standard universal ink cartridges. It has a simple plunger style filling system with an easy to use push/pull action. This mini ink converter does not hold as much ink as a short cartridge, so why would anyone want to use it? An ink converter allows you to use bottled fountain pen ink in a fountain pen that would normally only use ink cartridges. This greatly expands the selection of ink that you can use with your pen, reduces waste and saves a bit of money!

Monteverde Mini Converter size — Monteverde Mini Converter compared to a Pelikan giant ink cartridge and a short standard international cartridge.

There are several fountain pens and rollerball pens that have a barrel that is too short or too narrow to take a regular size ink converter. This is where the Monteverde Mini Ink Converter comes to the rescue! Fully extended the Mini Converter is only about 2.25″ long. Here it is inside a J. Herbin Rollerball Pen:

Monteverde Mini Converter & J. Herbin Rollerball Pen

It also fits inside the short barrel of the Kaweco Sport fountain pen and rollerball pen:

Monteverde Mini Converter & Kaweco Sport Fountain Pen — Monteverde Mini Converter & Kaweco Sport Rollerball Pen

A note about using the Monteverde Mini Converter with the Kaweco Sport: Because the connector for the ink cartridge in the Kaweco pen is very short, some writers find that the converter wants to “pop off” of the connector or does not seem to attach very securely. This can be remedied by wrapping tape around the clear part of the converter. Wrap it with tape once and check to see if it fits the pen securely. If not, try wrapping it with tape a second time and it should stay put.

Since the plunger on the Monteverde Mini Converter is so easy to use, the Mini is a useful tool for using water to flush out the feed of some of your fountain pens or rollerball pens (assuming that standard universal cartridges fit in your pen).

What fountain pens do you find the Monteverde Mini Converter to be particularly suited for?

March 27, 2013January 28, 2016

Monteverde Cartridge Refill for LAMY Fountain Pens Review

(Monteverde Ink Cartridges for LAMY Fountain Pens – Burgundy)

Monteverde took it upon themselves to broaden the selection of ink cartridge refills available for LAMY fountain pens by creating their own version of a LAMY T10 ink cartridge.

The ink inside these cartridges features Monteverde’s Ink Treatment Formula that is described as offering the following benefits:

Drastically improves ink-flow quality
Extends cap-off time
Automatically cleans fountain pen feeders
Lubricates and protects the ink feeding system from corrosion and clogging
Improves ink drying time on paper

LAMY produces T10 ink cartridges in only seven colors including black, blue washable, blue-black, turquoise, red, violet, and green. Monteverde’s LAMY-compatible ink cartridge lineup includes eleven colors: black, blue, blue-black, turquoise, red, purple, green, brown, burgundy, fluorescent orange and fluorescent yellow.

(LAMY Safari with a calligraphy nib)

Pick up a LAMY Safari with a calligraphy nib and some Monteverde fluorescent orange or yellow ink cartridges and you’ve got yourself a long-lasting highlighter pen. I personally really like Monteverde’s highlighting ink colors because in my opinion they are softer than some of the screaming bright highlighter inks out there.

(Monteverde Fluorescent Yellow Highlighting Ink Sample)

We noticed a very interesting feature of these Monteverde ink cartridges: one end of the cartridge fits into LAMY fountain pens and the other end fits into fountain pens that take standard international ink cartridges. These cartridges are longer than your usual standard international ink cartridge though, so due to their extra length they will not fit inside the barrel some fountain pens that use this type of cartridge.

Here is a photo of my blue Plumink fountain pen (left) and my lime green LAMY Safari fountain pen (right). They both are using the exact same Monteverde cartridge refills (which happen to be almost empty when I took this photo). If you look closely you can see that the exposed ends of these cartridges are different, depending on if the cartridge is installed in a standard international refill pen or a LAMY T10 refill pen. Dual purpose ink refills!

So far I’ve been very happy with this ink and it has been well behaved on the paper and in pens that I have used. Have you used Monteverde ink refills for LAMY fountain pens? If so, what do you think of them? Have you tried using them in fountain pens that use standard international refills?

January 2, 2013August 20, 2013

When is a standard ink converter not a standard ink converter?

(Pelikan standard universal ink converter)

Not too long ago as we were trying to use an ink converter in a new fountain pen we made an interesting discovery. Not all “standard” fountain pen ink converters are created equal. I’m not talking about the filling mechanism, quality, appearance, length or ink capacity, I’m talking about the part of the converter that attaches to the pen. One would assume that all “standard” converters would be able to attach correctly to all pens that take “standard” cartridges and converters, but this simply is not true.

(Monteverde standard international ink converter)

Take for example the standard ink converter made by Pelikan. It is a good price and has a slightly larger ink capacity than some other standard converters, but it does not attach correctly to all pens that take standard converters. I grabbed my collection of school fountain pens and did an experiment. I tried to attach both the Pelikan and the Monteverde standard ink converters to each one of them with varying success. Here are the results:

Type of Fountain Pen	Pelikan Converter	Monteverde Converter
Pelikan Script	✓	X
Borghini	?	✓
Unknown	X	✓
Plumink	✓	✓
Pilot Vortex	X	✓
Maped	✓	✓
Waterman	✓	✓

✓ = fit correctly
X = did not fit
? = was not sure

Even though both of the “standard” ink converters, particularly the Pelikan, did not fit all pens equally, short standard universal ink cartridges worked in all of the pens.

(J. Herbin standard universal ink cartridges)

Our conclusion? If you don’t want any surprises, if possible, buy an ink converter that is the same brand as the pen you plan to use it in. For the most foolproof results stick to short standard universal ink cartridges since they seem to be able to fit into all “standard” fountain pens.

Have you had any similar experiences with fountain pen ink converters?