PSA: Diligently clean your L'il Dipper

As a follow up to my last post about the L'il Dipper from Schon Design, I wanted to relate my experience swatching another ink with it. I got a bottle of Platinum Classic Lavender Black today and swatched it for my reference library. I brought a small jar of water and a paint brush that I use for cleaning my fountain pen feeds, with the intent of scrubbing out the area around the screw before drying it off.

Although I thoroughly brushed the whole nib while submerged in the water, when I went to dry it, I could still see remnants of the ink around the screw, particularly around the "ledge" that you can see in the picture. I had to put the nib under running water to really flush it out, and still saw enough inky water that seeped onto the paper towel I used to dry it (which I really jammed in and around the screw hole) that I thought it warranted another rinse under the faucet and more deliberate dabbing around the screw to get all the ink out.

This doesn't take a long time to do or anything, but this signals to me that the L'il Dipper is not going to be as easy to use for swatching, particularly multiple inks at a time, because I will have to stop to run it under water and make sure to absorb the ink remnants around the screw each time, lest I introduce the previous ink into the next bottle of ink to be swatched. This is kind of disappointing, considering the L'il Dipper otherwise consolidates a swatching tool with a writing tool, which would've made my ink swatching workflow a bit smoother.

Someone on Mastodon suggested that I cover the screw hole with some clear resin that can be cured quickly via UV light. I might just do this and hope that I never need to adjust the nib with the screw (which shouldn't be needed in general anyway).

Just thought I'd follow up with my experience trying to swatch another ink with the L'il Dipper. It's a really cool design that is slightly hampered by the tiny screw hole acting as an ink reservoir that isn't as easy to clean out with a simple swish in a container of water. Perhaps I'll become more proficient in positioning the paper towel or another tool to clear out that persistent ink clinging around the screw as I continue to use the L'il Dipper. If I find a better workflow I'll post another update.