I felared I had baby bottom problems (see Richard Binder's most excellent site www.richardspens.com; Richard is a nib demigod), but closer examination revealed that the culprit was something else: surface tension. When I pressed the nib to the paper - not gorilla-like you understand but with a not unmanly pressure - the nibs came away from the feeder and the ink rolled back, presenting a ball surface between tines and feeder, but figurative kilometres (unreconstructed metric guy) away from the business end of the tip. This was bad.
This was actually bloody good. Surface tension is physics. This is laws-of-the-universe stuff. I know a thing or two about them. Newton, Bohr and Feynman got my back on this. I know that soap breaks surface tension. I know that there is a collection of lovely, helpful and fanatic crazies that debate which ink is the wettest (big hello to fellow denizens of www.fountainpennetwork.com).
So I flushed with very dilute fairy and water (soap), and put private reserve American blue in (consensus is that PR inks are some of e wettest around - but , be warned, high maintenance - and the problem was solved.
And if you argue that my solution was not from the field of physics but chemistry, i invite you to consider that chemistry is quantum mechanics in action.
