Advice Requested

[NewEnthusiast]

Hi All

I'm hoping to pick your brains a bit about fountain pen troubleshooting.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife gave me a lovely Waterman. Unfortunately, the nib is very "skippy" particularly on the downstrokes, the initial line of letters and if I'm starting a new line. A look under a x20 magnifying lens suggests that the prongs of the nib are aligned correctly and I've tried flushing it through a couple of times during filling. Although the pen writes better, it's still not perfect.

The other day, I tried forcing ink through using the piston mechanism in the filler which I could depress about 1/3 of the way before ink showed on the nib despite the fact that the level had not dropped at all in the filler.

Ink used; Diamine raw sienna.

Does anyone have any ideas what the problem is and how to fix it?

James