How to Fill a Piston Fountain Pen with Ink

Using the Noodler’s Nib Creaper Piston-Fill Flex Fountain Pen, which we just did a review on here.

We just got in our Noodler’s Pens (and a few new inks!), and we figured we could take some pictures on filling the Nib Creaper as we inked it up for testing.

The Creaper is a piston-fill or piston-filler fountain pen.

For piston-fillers, you don’t need a converter or cartridges (as the pen has the “converter” built right into the pen barrel”) so all you need is a bottle of ink. Here, we’re using J. Herbin’s Poussiere de Lune.

You can see the piston rod through the clear barrel – it moves up and down to draw ink into the barrel of the pen itself.

Step 1: Twist the back of the pen so the piston rod is all the way down. It’s like a syringe, so as you twist the rod back up, ink will be sucked up into the barrel of the pen.

Step 2: Submerge the nib and the lower part of the grip section into the ink bottle. Don’t be afraid to get the pen inky, as you can wipe it off easily. If you don’t submerge the nib far enough into the ink bottle, you’ll end up drawing air into the barrel.

Step 3: Twist to draw up the piston rod and ink. You will probably get a small air bubble because there is air in the feed to begin with. If you want it as full as you can get, try emptying the ink and drawing it up again a few times. Generally speaking, piston-fill pens hold much more ink than cartridges or converters, so you’ll get quite a bit of ink.

Step 4: Wipe off any drops of ink.

And off you go! Because you drew ink up through the feed, your feed should already be wet and should write without too much hesitation or skipping.