J.B.’s Perfect Pen Flush Review

The deeper I fall down the fountain pen rabbit hole, the more interested I become in tools that help me maintain them. Micro mesh and brass sheets are two of my go-to items, and J.B.’s Perfect Pen Flush has been added to the list.

You will see bottles of J.B.’s around pen shows, and for good reason. It can clean out some of the oldest and hardest to reach ink in fountain pens of any age. I’ve always told myself I didn’t need it, and truth is, you may not either, but there are many situations when it comes in handy.

Most modern cartridge and converter pens are easy to clean. Take them apart, run the parts under the faucet, power clean with an aspirator if possible, rinse, dry, repeat. No need for anything special. But as my tastes change toward unique filling systems or older pens bought second and third hand, sometimes a little extra cleaning is needed. That’s where J.B.’s Pen Flush comes in handy.

According to the instructions, you should flush your pen with water until it is as clean as possible. Then, follow the same process with J.B.’s. Finally, flush the pen with water once more. The initial step gets most of the ink out, with the pen flush taking care of any extra ink the original water flush didn’t get. The last step cleans the pen and has it ready to be inked once more.

These steps have worked well for me when cleaning out pens with a vacuum filling mechanism, especially older pens. The only step I don’t follow is that I pour J.B.’s into a small bowl to clean from as opposed to using the bottle directly, which the label recommends. It is usable over and over again, so I make sure I have a good batch of pens to clean so I am not wasteful with it.

One thing I need to try that others have done is to soak finicky parts overnight, like nibs with gunked up feeds. It also works well with a Q-Tip inside demonstrator barrels to make them shine once again.

J.B.’s Perfect Pen Flush is an excellent addition to your pen cleaning arsenal. Keep a bottle with all of the other tools you use on a regular basis. It will come in handy when you need it.

(Anderson Pens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Posted on March 24, 2017 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Pen Flush, Pen Reviews.

Pilot Juice Paint Marker 8-color Set Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter.)

With the Pilot Juice Paint Marker, Pilot brings their Juice brand to arts-and-crafts time. The versatile ink works on light or dark paper, or on nonporous surfaces such as glass or metal. It is water- and pigment-based, odorless, waterproof, and bleed-resistant. It is also meant to be opaque, though I had issues with that feature on all but white paper. The colors included in the 8-color set are black, red, blue, light blue, green, yellow, white, and pink. There are a number of other fun colors available as open stock or in other sets, including pastels and metallics.

On dark paper, some colors performed very well while others seemed watery. I tried shaking them and refreshing the ink in the tip, but they just didn't get to the level I was hoping for. They were really fun to use on glass. Again, some lacked saturation, but most worked well. They aren't permanent on glass, alas, so my now-lovely water glass will lose its luster when I wash it. But it does mean I can go crazy painting designs on my windows if I want (I do want).

The tip is bullet-shaped felt. It's firm, though I did get some fraying when I used them briefly on watercolor paper, which makes me question whether the tip will survive the lifespan of the ink supply. Only many hours of arts and crafts will tell.

The body of the pen is a wide hexagonal barrel in white plastic. The cap and grip section are the color of the paint inside. The grip is a little awkward in that it has four levels--the nose near the tip steps up to a narrow collar, which steps up again to the actual section (which is a bit short), which steps up again to the body. There's not an easy way to hold these without putting your fingers on an edge. None of the edges are sharp, however, and it's not the sort of pen you'd be gripping for very long periods of time, so an uncomfortable grip isn't a huge issue for these.

The cap slides in place, but doesn't click. It took me a minute to be reassured that it was securely closed. The cap does post, though not deeply.

They run a little pricier than other paint markers, but not by much. The sets are a little cheaper than buying open stock.

I'd say my biggest issue with the pens is their designation as a fine point. They're certainly fine if compared to a chisel tip, but they're among the broadest paint pens I've tried. I wouldn't recommend them for very fine detail work, but they're still fun for broader sketches. Especially on windows.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Posted on March 23, 2017 by Sarah Read and filed under Pilot, Juice, Paint Pen.

Zebra DelGuard Type-ER Mechanical Pencil Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

Mechanical pencils come in all shapes and sizes, and it seems that most manufacturers try to introduce a unique angle or feature for their pencils to make them stand out from the pack. Some times, the features are pure gimmicks, but other times we benefit from the ingenuity of their design. In the case of the Zebra DelGuard Type-ER, it's the latter.

The DelGuard Type-ER looks like an ordinary mechanical pencil, but it has a couple of tricks up its sleeve. The first one involves the eraser. Many mechanical pencils hide the eraser under the click mechanism cap, which means you have to remove it in order to erase. Unfortunately, this makes the metal cap easy to lose. Other pencils use some sort of twist or push mechanism to show or hide the eraser when you need it. This is good, but the Zebra takes it a step further by relying on gravity and friction.

See, when you're writing with the pencil, the eraser is hidden inside the cap. But, when you turn the pencil upside down to erase, the eraser pops out. Once you apply some pressure to the eraser, the friction between the eraser casing and the pen body cause it to stay put while you erase. Brilliant. The only time this won't work well is if you're trying to erase in a position where the normal assumptions of gravity aren't true (say, upside down or up against a wall).

The other tricks this pencil boasts involve the lead system. We all know that if you press too hard on mechanical pencil pencil lead, it will break. Well, the DelGuard Type-ER has a couple of springs in the body that prevent that from happening. Are you pushing down on the lead too hard? Then the lead pipe will slide down to protect the lead until the pressure eases. Same thing is true if it detects too much sideways pressures on the lead. This is handy if you're tracing a ruler with the pencil at an angle and don't realize you're pressing down too hard. Very nifty indeed.

In my tests, this system works great. I'm more prone to put too much pressure on the lead from the side, so this feature is a lead saver for me. It also serves as a training tool to let me know (without wasting lead) that I'm pressing too hard while writing or drawing.

This pencil doesn't have a fancy click mechanism, a lead rotation device, or any of the other usual niceties, but the two features it does sport are down-right cool.

Apart from that, the grip on this pencil is extremely comfortable. Even without the lead protection system and cool eraser, this is a great pencil.

The Zebra Del-Guard Type-ER only works with 0.5mm lead, but it comes in a variety of colors (with an extra couple of erasers included) at JetPens. It will set you back about $12, but that's a sweet price for a pen with a couple of surprising tricks. I've been pleasantly surprised by it, and I'll be keeping it in my "top five" list of mechanical pencils for a while.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!