Ink From Pen Back In To Bottle. Question.

[Mangrove Jack]

Is it okay to discharge ink from your fountain pen back in to the bottle of ink it came from ?

I normally do not do this bit when using expensive inks such as Pilot's Iroshizuku I feel it is a waste to discharge a 3/4 full pen ink into the toilet sink.

[Parker51]

I suggest you put the ink into a different bottle. I have many left over empty bottles, and will flush compatible ink into one that I will then use with low value pens, assuming after sitting a while the ink still looks good. In thi way I do not waste the ink, keep the source bottle largely free of possible contamination and provide myself with some unique ink combinations for some of my low cost pens.

[PS104]

It depends. Doesn't it always?

Was there anything icky inside the pen? Could compromise the integrity of the whole bottle of ink

Was the pen in pristine condition, ie, no other ink before loading up with the present unwanted ink? If there was ink then the bottle of ink will no longer be the color of the ink that you paid for but a combination of the two (or more) inks that were in the pen and are now in the bottle. Some pens are notoriously hard to completely clean.

Like I said, It depends how high your standards are.

[Buzz_130]

I use my pens until they run empty. This applies to the cheapest inks to the most expensive.

 

An often quoted statement on FPN is ink is cheap, pens are expensive. Depending on your pen, how much ink are you really saving? The big piston fillers are going to be around 1ml. The smaller converters are going to be .5 to .7 ml. I think my Sheaffer lever fillers are about .3ml. So if you get rid of 75% of your ink when you consider a 50ml or 60ml bottle of ink, how much are you really saving? I used to hate seeing ink swirl out of the nib and feed when I was flushing and cleaning pens until I thought about how much ink I was actually using (and "losing"). Now, I have no issues once they are empty, and I'm ready to swap.

 

But I understand, given the price of Iroshizuku inks, that you may want to savor every last .1ml. In that case, an extra bottle for your leftovers (even a sample size) would be great as you swap inks. You just may find out how little ink you are "saving."

 

Buzz

[doggonecarl]

I use my pens until they run empty.

 

I'm with Buzz. Run it dry.

[Mangrove Jack]

Parker51, PS104, Buzz_30 and Doggonecarl, thank you for your comments. All good advise and common sense suggestions. Greatly appreciated.

[Cyber6]

Is it okay to discharge ink from your fountain pen back in to the bottle of ink it came from ?

 

NO, is not ok.

 

 

I normally do not do this bit when using expensive inks such as Pilot's Iroshizuku I feel it is a waste to discharge a 3/4 full pen ink into the toilet sink.

 

If you like switching inks in the middle of a fill.... then get use to never fill your pen completely. I love switching inks and always fill my pens half way (if cartridge) or only a third if it is a piston filler (bigger capacity)

 

 

C.

[ac12]

Here is another problem with putting the ink back into the bottle.

If you are tired and your brain goes to sleep for a bit, you could end up putting ink A into the bottle for ink B. Now you have contaminated the entire bottle. This can be really bad if ink A is black and ink B is a light turquoise or other light color.

This is why I use an ink vial. Ink from the bottle goes into the vial, and I fill the pen from the vial.

 

Because, I did just what I said above. I put a pen that I KNEW had Waterman blue, into the vial with Cross/Pelikan blue. Blue is blue...right... All that I messed up was the 3ml of ink in the vial, not the 60ml bottle. In this case, blue and blue could pass. But black and turquoise would not have passed, and I would either dump the contaminated turquoise, or use it, knowing that the color is messed up.

 

Now if you use ONLY ONE ink (like I did in high school and college), then the color contamination problem that I mention above won't exist, because you only have 1 bottle of ink.

 

BTW, as others have said, you could eject out 1ml of ink from the pen, but there may be another 0.5ml of ink in the feed/collector of your pen. The amount in the feed/collector varies based on the pen, some hold just a little ink, other hold a LOT of ink. So you might as well write it dry, before you flush the pen.

Edited June 30, 2015 by ac12

[Pravda]

I am with the 'it depends' camp.

 

If I feel it was an immaculately clean pen before filing and I have a lot of ink in the reservoir AND it is not one of my favorite inks, then I may put the ink back in the bottle.

 

If it is one of the inks I really like, I value its integrity too much to compromise and so alas I just dump whatever I have left in the sink if I am unable to finish it off.

[musicman123]

I'm also in the "it depends."

 

I must say that there are a couple of risks of dumping ink right back into the bottle. First off, you risk contaminating a almost fresh bottle of brand new ink. If your pen has a bit of mold in it, dumping the ink could risk getting the entire bottle contaminated. Also, you could also run into the risk of accidentally dumping into the wrong bottle, god forbid. It would be terrible if you accidentally put a whole bunch of Baystate Blue into a brand new bottle of Iro Kon-Peki.

 

However, I think it is a terrible waste of money to just dump ink down the drain. A typical vacuum filler holds around 1.1mL of ink. A bottle of Iroshizuku has 50mL of ink and costs $28 from Goulet. If you dump a full fill down the drain, you just dumped $0.61 in the toilet. I know it doesn't seem like much, but it eventually adds up.

 

It is up to you to weigh the risks and savings from dumping the ink down the drain or not.

 

Edit- Just wrote a blog post about this topic because of this thread. Check it out below!

 

http://www.inkoutsidethebottle.tk/dumping-ink-down-the-drain-or-into-the-bottle/

Edited July 1, 2015 by musicman123

[DrDebG]

Great discussion! I really appreciate hearing everyone's thoughts.

 

I think my technique is closer to Cyber6's. I change all of the ink in the pens I am using once a week, and the pens are thoroughly cleaned and allowed to dry. At that time, I may swap out one or two of my pens. I don't have any piston fillers, and am filling only converters. I use a clean needle and syringe to draw from the bottle - about .3 ml. I recap the bottle, then fill the converter with the ink in the syringe - which is generally less than full. I do that for each ink that is filled into each pen - generally 4-5 per week. Then, if any ink remains by the end of the week (not generally), I discard it. If I run out of ink in one pen in the middle of the week, I clean the pen and converter and put it aside and use the other pens that still have ink in them. I am pretty fastidious about my pens. And I am just as particular about the ink that I put into my pens.

[Mr. Dante]

One way to avoid or minimize this problem is to not fully fill your pen. I do most of my writing on the computer, so it would take me a long time to write my pens dry, especially since I usually keep about three or four pens inked at a time. If I know I'm going to be writing for several hours, then I will fully fill a pen. Most of the time, I fill the pen's reservoir about half way and this has worked for me so far. If I feel like changing the ink, there's less waste.

 

If there's more than a few drops in the reservoir and I want to take the pen out of rotation or change colors, I will discharge ink back into the bottle only from my Pelikans or converters. Since the Pelikan nibs and converters unscrew, those pens can be thoroughly cleaned, which reduces the risk of contamination from leftover ink residue. With all others, I discharge ink down the drain. However, since I don't usually fully fill my pens, there is much less waste.

[SeeksAdvice]

No. Period. The end.

As somebody who experienced bad SitB issues, you might as well just have your bottle of ink drop its pants, bend over, and spread.

If there is mold, bacteria, etc. in the pen, running ink back and forth through it is a great way to pick up spores (bacterial or fungal) and deposit them into the bottle.

[ChuckB]

Interesting question. Equally interesting comments.

 

Disclaimer: I am no scientist, nor am I a biologist. I never played one on TV. I did however stay in a Holiday Inn once.

 

With that out of the way it seems to me if your pen is contaminated with some vile microorganism the effect of dumping unused ink back into it's bottle is no different than dipping the pen in to ink up. I don't see the same level of concern from forum members for filling the pen.

 

There is no real advice here from me other than - do what you are most comfortable with. In the grand scheme of life this is but a small thing.

 

Enjoy writing with your pen!