Cleaning My Fountain Pens and Sketching

I cannot believe how long it's been since I touched a fountain pen.  They have been sitting with ink in them for many months (shame on me) and was in bad need of some maintenance.

First I completely took each pen apart soaking and cleaning each component.  I have a little hummingbird feeder brush I used on the ribs of the nib unit to work loose any dried ink.  My brown inked pen was the worst, which had #41 Brown ink from Noodler's.  I didn't have quite the cleaning job with those loaded with Lexington Grey or Document Gray.  After the components were dry, I (for the first time) used the grease that comes with TWSBI pens for the plunger that pulls/pushes ink in the barrel.  One of my TWSBI 580 pens was a bit finicky in putting back together but I finally worked through that issue.  Now I have four clean pens with only two I have loaded with fresh ink.

After I loaded the pens with ink, I took the one with Document Brown ink (instead of the #41 Brown) and worked a couple loose sketches in my journal with Fabriano Artistico Cold Press (old stock).  The second illustration shows using the Urban Gray on Fabriano Hot Press in another journal.