Thursday, 3 October 2013

Clearing a Blocked Parker Frontier Cartridge Nipple


Left to right: blocked M nib Frontier section,
clear B nib Frontier section.


So little goes wrong with cartridge pens that I was a little thrown when my medium-tip nibbed Parker Frontier started playing up. Despite giving the nib and feed a good clean, flow had become erratic, sometimes okay, and sometimes very miserly, even with a fresh cart installed. I hope this post makes for useful reading if you have a similar problem.

The Frontier is normally a real workhourse, supremely reliable. Parker cartridges are also some of the best there are, with channels thoughtfully molded in the interior to help prevent surface tension from spoiling the flow.

Internal channels in a Parker ink cartridge.


Anyhoo, comparing the two sections, I finally spotted the cause of the flow issue. There's some kind of something partially blocking the cartridge nipple, highlighted below.


Without a bright light and another section to compare it to,
I'd probably have overlooked this blockage!


As Parker adopted a fab screw-in nib & feed design for the Frontier, clearing out the cart nipple was a doddle. In homage to and in appreciation of Hamish McNagg's great YouTube clips (kindly hosted on Stephen Brown's channel), I've uploaded a wee vid illustrating this, embedded below. Hi from Glasgow, Hamish!



Till next time,


Flounder



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