No more inky fingers!

I reckoned that sooner or later, like last night, I would be struggling to fill a fountain pen. Last night's adventure went without a syringe, but it might have helped.

I struggled for about an hour, perhaps more, trying to loosen the upper barrel of a Caran d'ache Dunas pen. I had actually given up and posted asking for help on FPn when repeated turnings with greasy fingers released it. I was then able to remove the cartridge that had been jammed into the lower barrel, and get the converter. The converter went in, no problem, but while I had no problems with the White Caran d'ache Dunas, her Red sister seemed to flood. My fingers and hand were covered with Caran d'ache Caribbean Sea (a sample bottle from Pear Tree).

And the most disappointing end result, when writing with Caran Red was a total absence of the vibrant colour I had experienced while testing the Caribbean Sea with a dip pen.

What went wrong?

While in sorting out what went wrong, I also thought I'd check to see how to improve my chances of filling a fountain pen by re-using a cartridge and soon discovered a FPn member had put up this video.