Sorry if this topic has been covered before, but on impulse I bought some full bottles of vintage Skrip (from the 40's or 50's) off of ebay and wonder if the inks can still be used in modern fountain pens. The colors are Washable Blue and Blue-Black. The bottles do not appear to have been opened. If the inks can harm pens, I won't use them, and then at least I'll have some nice nostalgic bottles for decoration!

If they smell really bad, don't use them (bacteria, fungus, etc...). I use vintage Quink and Skrip in many of my pens (both modern and vintage).

Somewhere on the Pendemonium web site there's some information about using old ink. Basically, I remember it as saying that if it looks OK and smells OK you can use it. Check out the ink info on the site; it's interesting.

Sniff the ink and look at it. So long as it doesn't smell bad, there's no sludge, it's not separated or too dry, or doesn't look off-colour, it should be safe to use. Ink isn't like milk. It doesn't go off after X-number of months/years.

I really like vintage skrip. I bouoght a large bottle of blue black and find that it is well behaved and is one of those inks that flows well but does not seem to put down a heavy line. So if you have a pen that puts down a little more of a wet line than you like, try the skrip in it and see if it cuts back the line width a little. j

As everyone has said, it's pretty safe, as long as there's no big chunks or an off smell (it's supposed to smell a little "chemically"). Skrip hasn't changed much in 60 years, so it's almost always a safe bet. Enjoy!