We get asked this question with great frequency.
No. No! A thousand times NO!
Please never, ever, ever disassemble your fountain pen any more than you would need to in order to install a cartridge or ink converter!
There are many YouTube videos made by self-anointed "pen gurus" online feeding people a bunch of nonsense about how to clean pens.
If you are the original owner of your pen and have followed our in-store instructions or those in previous blog posts you should never have to disassemble your pen for any reason. There will always be a tiny trace amount of ink pigment remaining after a cleaning. Do not worry about it. It does get to the pickiest of us sometimes, but trust that after a new fill of ink has been drawn into the pen and a few test strokes have been put to paper, that trace pigment that remained will be gone!
If you have purchased a used or vintage pen and want to be sure it is free of any ink that could have been left inside (for perhaps decades) you will want to soak the nib in water overnight before you clean it per our original instructions. Only if after repeated soaking and cleaning attempts have failed to clean old ink from a pen should any attempt at disassembly be made...and best to let someone who has done it before be the one to do it if you've never attempted it yourself, especially on vintage pieces that are easily irreparably damaged. We can service many of these vintage pieces for you here at Appointments.
Also, even if you did not buy your pen from us we are always happy to help in cleaning or servicing them for you! That's one of the reasons people have been coming to us since 1993!
(If you do need some item serviced and can not come to us in person, please call us during business hours to let us know of your problem with the pen. We will do what we can to assist you over the phone before giving you instructions on how best to ship the item to us. Depending on what sort of service a pen could need to get it back up and writing service times could take an average of 4 -6 weeks. Due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, that could be longer.)