Why Your Fountain Pen Is Skipping or Hard Starting (And How to Fix It)
Skipping (the nib touches the page but no ink comes out for a stroke or two) and hard starting (the pen needs a scribble or two before it writes at all) are the two most common fountain pen complaints, and the good news is that the causes are a short, predictable list. Almost none of them mean the pen is actually broken.
The most likely cause: dried ink in the feed
If a pen has sat capped for more than a few days, or uncapped for even a few minutes, the tiny amount of ink sitting in the feed's exposed channels can dry just enough to interrupt flow. This is by far the most common cause of both skipping and hard starting, and it's also the easiest to fix: a quick flush with water (see our cleaning guide) clears it in most cases within minutes.
Writing angle and pressure
Fountain pens are designed to be held at a fairly consistent angle, generally somewhere around 40 to 55 degrees from the paper, with both tines of the nib touching the surface evenly. Holding the pen too upright, too flat, or rotated to one side can cause only one tine to make contact, which reads as skipping even though nothing is actually wrong with the pen. Pressing hard doesn't help either; a fountain pen needs almost no pressure to write, and pushing down can force the tines apart in a way that interrupts the ink's capillary flow.
The ink itself
Very dry, fast-evaporating inks, or heavily pigmented and shimmer inks in a fine nib, can be more prone to intermittent flow issues than a standard, well-behaved dye-based ink. If a specific ink consistently causes problems in an otherwise reliable pen, the ink is a reasonable first suspect, not the pen.
A dry or damaged nib tip
If cleaning and angle adjustments don't help, check the nib tip itself under good light or a loupe. Nib tines that have become slightly misaligned (from a drop, or from being posted and unposted roughly) can separate just enough to break the capillary connection. This is usually a quick, free fix: very gently and carefully pressing the tines back into alignment, or in stubborn cases, having a pen shop or nibmeister look at it.
A troubleshooting order worth trying
In order of how often each one is actually the culprit: flush the pen with water first, then check your writing angle and grip, then consider whether the ink itself might be the problem, and only then look at the nib tines themselves. Most skipping and hard-starting complaints resolve at the first or second step.