Summer greer says here that she was able to get the preppy to seal as an ED without using an o-ring, but that one must be careful to not twist the barrel onto the section too tightly or else the plastic will crack (the o-ring is meant to act as a cushion, when trying to get a tight seal, i believe).

Does anyone else have any experience? Summer, have you had any blunders since your post last May?

Melnicki- Summer is a guy , student at Florida State.

I've eyedropperized several Preppies, all without O-rings. What I've found to be the most successful method of doing this is to put a ton of silicone grease on the threads before you close it up, and then just wipe away the excess once you've tightened the barrel to your satisfaction. You'll get a tight, waterproof seal and avoid the ink-blobbing that comes from not having enough grease on the threads (as I learned the hard way )

Is there any alternative beside using silicone grease? I'm in Indonesia and could not find silicone grease here, HELP!

If you can't find any at a hardware shop, try looking for it at a scuba diving store or an underwater photography store. They sell silicone grease for lubricating the O-rings of camera cases and dive torches.

There's another way to convert a Preppy to ED fill. You can glue the barrel to the section. To fill then, you pull out the nib and inner feed and use a syringe with a long needle to fill the barrel.

Preppy highlighters have replaceable tips that are interchangeable with the FP nib and inner feed.

I've converted a couple like that, but I actually prefer just to fill Platinum cartridges with a syringe.

Yep, second that on refilling the carts with a syringe.

I managed to crack the plastic barrel the first time I replaced the cartridge, though. Careful whenever you twist these babies closed.

I have used only sillicone grease to use it an ED and have used it very roughly in all extremes of temp-even left it in the car at nearly 90 degrees. I did not experience any leaking.

I use Burt's Bees lip balm or candle wax on my ED pens.

Oh dear, I'm so sorry, Summer!!! I usually try to be very cautious about pronouns, but in this case I just slipped!!

I do that too. Daiso sells these 3 cartridge packs in their dollar store. To me its a a waste of ink to fill so much using the eyedropper method on a fine nib pen. You are going to throw a lot of ink away when you change your mind. Instead I insert a label reminding me what ink is being used.

All platinum cartridge have a little metal ball in it to keep the flow along. Still a new preppy takes a while to start. To solve that I would put a few drops on ink directly on the feed before inserting the cartridge. The downside is getting inky fingers.

Same here. The syringe is your friend!

Oh, I hadn't thought of using candle wax.

I've been leery of eye droppers; I have an Indian school pen eye dropper and some of those converted eye droppers that Nathan Tardif modified from cartridge pens to be sold along with some of his eye dropper ink bottles. I tried out the Indian eye dropper with some trepidation because the vendor had put the merest bead of silicon on the threads, apparently they come with nothing at all on the threads. Must be a lot of inky fingers in Indian schools.

Anyway, I've toyed with the idea of getting some serious silicon grease to give me more confidence in some of those pens and trying them out. But I haven't been doing the necessary searching to find a dive shop. but candles I have! Thanks for the tip.


Yes, the syringe and cartridge method is a sort of modern version of the eye dropper fountain pen, I think. We cartridge refillers are doing almost exactly what the eye dropper fillers were doing a hundred years ago or more, we've just got a better technology to work with. Tiny polyethylene openings are just more water tight than a large opening with a lot of screw threads. Best filling method going.

I have a Recife eyedropper pen bought from Levengers years ago. All it had was an o-ring, and it never leaked.

Does Burt's Bees Balm react to the ink? I thougth the whole point of silicone grease was that it was inert.




Thanks


Martok