How Far A Parker Ballpoint Writes

April 16, 2013

I have bought some ballpoint and gel Parker style refills cheaply in bulk lots. These are clear plastic bodied, and while lighter than the metal refills they do write well. Since they are clear I thought I would fill an A4 page and measure how much the ink level drops. I realise that the scribble that I wrote on the pages would use more ink than what would be used in a normal writing of words situation, maybe take this as 2 A4 pages of written words? I'm not sure...

Anyway I scratched a ring in the body of each refill to record where the ink level in each one was and then filled an A4 page with one ballpoint refill and one gel refill and measured how far the ink level dropped. The ballpoint refill used 2mm of ink and the gel used 7mm of ink. I measured unused refills that match these and there was 50mm of ink in both types when full. There is 40mm of ink in the main body and 20mm of ink in the narrower necks which I take as 10mm because the neck is half the width of the body, making a total of 50mm of ink in each.

So, in the way I have filled the pages with ink, the ballpoint would last for 25 pages in this way and the gel would last for 7.14 pages.

I have read stories of these type of refills lasting for 300-600 pages, maybe my scribble uses much more ink than normal writing, but I can't see it being that much more?

These refills I bought were about $15 for 25 ballpoints and $9.80 for 10 gels. They both wrote perfectly, no skipping or blobbing. And of course the gel required less pressure and had no strong chemical smell of the ballpoint ink. Also less pressure meant the page didn't curl up as much as the ballpoint page (why I have to weigh them down for the photo). They are lighter than metal refills and this can be felt in a Jotter, but not in a heavier Sonnet for example. The gel refills I have do get stuck in the tip spring though because they have a wider part at the top of the neck, so maybe avoid putting them into Duofolds since the refills sits all the way in the body and can't be pulled out easily.

Just thought I would post this, in case anyone found it useful!

I've placed the ruler just to show the level the ink was at before my scribble.

Edited April 16, 2013 by bahnstormer

April 16, 2013

Hi, Interesting test, and it's about what I would expect.

A few years ago I bought a Gel refill pen for £2 ( about USD 3 & it was not a Parker.)

I used it for just under 2 weeks, when it ran out! I could see the level going down daily. So that would be the most expensive pen I have ever owned ! ( in terms of ink.)

I bought a Parker Jotter with a Powerpoint refill in the early 1980's at college, and I used it daily, and I think I changed the refill twice in a year and a half. I used other pens at the same time of course, but I thought that was impressive performance for the cost.

Strangely, only this year I had two refills leak, from the joint of the plastic 'plug/rotator' at the top, can't put it down to warm weather, considering the winter we have just gone through.

That won't put me off, I use ballpoint on certain forms weekly, I like the QuinkFlow smoothness, both black and blue, and I usually carry two 'Jotters', one for each.

Edited April 16, 2013 by Mike 59