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Always added dish soap for flow, until my pen started leaking.
I mean, it seemed like a good hack, but now I stick to proper wetting agents. Idk, maybe it's just me but that was a messy lesson.
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the_keith3mo ago
Been there, got the stained fingers to prove it. Dish soap breaks down the little seals and feeds inside the pen over time. A proper pen flush is just water with a tiny bit of ammonia and soap, way gentler. Mixing a drop of clear dish soap in a cup of water for cleaning is okay, but putting it straight in the ink is asking for trouble. Switched to commercial pen flush years ago and never had a leak from cleaning since.
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keithwalker2mo ago
Yeah, that bit about it breaking down the seals is the real kicker. It's not just about a messy leak one time, it's that the soap keeps working and slowly eats away at the pen from the inside. Once those little rubber or plastic parts get degraded, the leak comes back again and again. A proper flush cleans without that damage, so the pen actually stays fixed. It's one of those things where the quick fix ends up costing you more in the long run.
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