What are its advantages to carry a small nalgene jar of ink (cheap) for short trips?
Got a good description and/or pics?
Thanks,
Jeen

If you go to the Visconti Website there is a nice description of the pen.

here is the description from their website www.visconti.it:




If you look around the site there are pics and instructions for filling their pens with the inkpot.

Really the best thing about them is that with one you can really fill a vac filler completely.

kurt h

Here:
http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...indpost&p=49700
you will find one of the pics.

That thing is simply a narrow plastic tube/pot with a conic and rubberized inner part, where you press your (fitting) pen tightly into and turn the combined pen/pot upside down. So all the ink in the pot is above and around the nib and can be sucked into the pen via converter or pistion etc.

Visconti made a few matching FP and ink pot sets.

(image by Visconti)
I've got the rose gold vermeil set :bunny1:

Thanks for the information guys.
Nice picture Saintsimon.
That pot looks like it could conveniently fit into a pen case.

Cheers,
Jeen

Hey there Jeen,

As for the Visconti Ink Pot, they DO fit perfectly in my pen cases. I will use my 10 pen case with 8 FP and 2 ink pots. The ink pot is 5 inches in length while it is roughly the same girth as the Bexley Prometheus and the Dani Trio Mikado. They are convienent and they work for a majority of pens. The big drawback is the price!!! I know Pam Braun sells then for a pretty good price, in fact the lowest price I have ever seen them, 49.98. I own the standard black plastic and the millenium edition one. The millenium differs by using a metal enclosure over the standard plastic ink pot. It looks very classy!!! Also the stopper is completely clear while the regular one is a black flat top.
I personally love the millenium ink pot over the regular one but as far as I am concerned, they are both ink pots and they both do the same thing. They are well worth the money as far as I am concerned.


TNS

I carry mine for business travel. 3 pen case, 2 pens and one ink pot. I can take a week long trip and never worry about running out of ink.

I have on occasion just packed a plain ink bottle on trips. It is probably harder to break than an ink pot, a properly tightened cap is nearly impossible to come off accidentally, and the cost of ziplock bag (pennies) for extra security sure beats the $50 for the ink pot

And if that still doesn't work for you, you can always stick to cartridges when going on trips.

$50 for an ink pot? Not out of my pocket!

Hi guys, dredging up an old topic here!!

It says on the Visconti Pot page that it doesn't work with rubber sac fillers, button fillers, etc. I am assuming this is because these fillers expell air into the ink bottle when being filled.

Has anyone tried filling a Parker 51 or similar type of pen with pen-sac with Visconti's Travelling Ink-Pot?

Thanks!!
-Allen

Filling a lever-filling pen from a Visconti Travelling Inkwell is no problem as long as you open the lever and lock it in place (hence expelling the air) before inserting into the inkwell. Button-fillers can be a problem since you would have to hold the button fully down whilst inserting the pen into the inkwell but it should be possible, if a little tricky. What you must not do is press the button again whilst the pen is in the inkwell as this could cause excess air to be forced into the inkwell, say if the button is pressed further than it was initially, which could cause a horrible mess!

The potential problem is that filling the pen requires the filling mechanism to work against the partial vacuum that will be created above the level of ink inside the inkwell when inverted to fill the pen. If you think about it, the pen is offered up to the inkwell with the sac in an empty and compressed state. Inserting the pen into the inkwell forms a tight seal and when the lever or button is released the elasticity of the sac restoring itself to normal shape has to work against the negative pressure of the air above the ink. I expect gravity will assist greatly in the filling process but there could be cases where a particularly thin and floppy ink sac does not provide sufficient pumping pressure to fully fill the pen.

I've never tried to fill a Parker Aerometric or Vacumatic filling pen from a Visconti Travelling Inkwell. I would imagine that a Vacumatic filler would be OK as long as the Vac pump was fully depressed when the pen is placed into the inkwell. Successive pumps will expell more air into the inkwell to be replaced by ink when the pump is released, potentially up to a level where the breather tube becomes immersed. With Aerometric fillers if a subsequent "pump" of the pressure bar caused greater volumetric displacement that the original pump then fluid could be forced passed the seal between the pen and the inkwell causing another horrible mess!

Warning: in my first sentence of the above paragraph I stated that I have never tried filling an Aero or Vac filler from a Visconti Travelling Inkwell. My advice, therefore, is to test it with clean water using a clean pen first!

HTH,

Martin

Great discussion, Martin! I appreciate your thoughts on this!!

I'm thinking of getting one... but I have half pistons and half sac pens... so this gave me a bit of pause.

I do have access to the little 1oz Nalgene bottles, and could probably get one easily... but these little inkwells the same size as pens are just nice little low-form factor solutions. I do wish they had some sort of thread on their cap, however, as it sounds as though it might be easy to have the cap work free from the tube. That would *not* make for a fun evening.

Thanks for your thoughts!
-Allen

Some thoughts from far far away.

Those Visconti inkwells are really nice. In fact, I own two of them. The first was specified for Pelikans (without any further constraints regarding size &c). I spent a big amount of money, about 100€. As a result, that inkwell did not work. The version I bought has a thread where the shaft of the Pelikan is screwed in. We all know that Pels have different threadings, according to their size. So I read some additional descriptions and bang! my Visconti works only for M800s. Of course, the vendor did not spend the slightest thought on such problems. Writing instruments are not their core business. OK. So I had to find an M800 matching the inkwell. You need some sort of humour ... buying an inkwell and then searching for the right pen ... anyway, now I own two M800s, a green-striped one and a Blue Ocean.

The inkwells which are sold nowadays do not have a thread. There is a big funnel-shaped rubber seal inside which fits nearly any pen shaft. BTW, the price of 50$ is acceptable - in Germany it's 45€, equivalent to 60$. I use this inkwell for the smaller Pelikans, the Kaweco Sport, the Montblanc ... of course, M800 fits as well. The nib-converter-unit of the Pilot VP ist too thin, however. That's a pity, because the VP's capacity is not very big.

Blue Ocean (i.e. M800) and my first inkwell (the one-trick version) sit nicely together in a two pen Pelikan case.

@Allen: I was attracted by the form-factor, too. During my schooldays and when I was a student I carried an inkbottle with me. But those are clumsy, IMHO. The old Visconti inkwell has a threaded cap matching the M800-thread inside, in contrast to the actual version. But the cap won't work free. It has a very tight fit in that big rubber seal. You need both hands to loosen it.

The old inkwells have a form similar to the version that saintsimon shows in his picture. But the newer inkwells have a strange look. Their form reminds me of a big lipstick (this is a very decent and politically correct description). Less decent people might have a convenient dual use in their minds ... sorry.

Greetz from nightly Europe,

Hans-Peter

I've never tried filling anything but converter pens from my Visconti ink pots. This is because of a bad/embarassing experience I had once when I was filling a Sonnet with my brain only partly engaged. Instead of moving the piston in the converter all the way down before inserting the pen in the ink pot, I put the pen into the rubber seal of the ink pot first, and then moved the piston down. It gets worse. I had already inverted the ink pot. The increased air pressure in the ink pot "popped" the pot off of the pen and left me with hands and desktop blotter covered in nice Penman Sapphire. :doh:

I would be very very careful if trying to fill an aerometric, vacumatic, or button filler from a Visconti ink pot! :ph34r:

A piston fill would work well with the Visconti, though.

Oh Bill!!! Sorry! I had a laugh at your expense! Sounds something like what I would do, however!

I agree- the idea of pressurizing that little vial with the ink sitting at the bottom with only a press-seal doesn't sound like the best thing to do. If I go ahead with the pruchase, I'll try it out with water in any pen I hope to use it with...

@Hans-Peter: Thanks for your discussion as well! I definitely can get by with an ink bottle, but it does take up quite a bit of space in my already over-stuffed insane bag. So, going small is always a nice thing. It's too bad that Namiki doesn't produce a similar product for the VP's... they have a very limited ink Capacity, and the ability to refill would do wonders for that little guy. [Oh how I love my new VP!] I guess I can alway keep a spare cart around... but to be honest, I'd rather not use 'em. I'd rather use the ink that's already in the feed etc.

I could definitely use some of the little Nalgenes, and should likely pick up a few just for this purpose.

It actually wouldn't be too hard to produce a neck similar to the visconti rubberized neck for small bottles... the only thing I can't figure out too well is how to make a nice seal to the top of the vial so that it won't easily be pressed inwards, or allow ink to seep around it. Perhaps if I get the inkwell, I'll do a bit of discovery on how they solved the problem. Perhaps that'll give me some ideas as to how I could solve the problem.

Of course, I could always bond directly to the glass with a silane of some sort... and using a silicon rubber form, could make the neck that way... seems like a lot of effort for a conical rubber gasket. Hmm... well, if I can get my Preliminary Examination over with soon, I'll dig around some of the gasket suppliers and see if they have an annulus with a sloping inner diameter of various sizes that migth fit a glass vial...

Thanks for the thoughts, guys! I appreciate it. At least I know the ink-pots work really well with some pens- especially the pistons.

My best to you guys this evening!!
-Allen

Space isn't an issue for me, so I do like a prior poster and travel with an ink bottle in my luggage in a ZipLoc. Never had a problem, and I do a lot of travel. I figure the same way--I'd rather spend that money on more ink.