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MB 149 and shallow ink bottles


eaudom

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In order to fill my 149 the entire nib must be immersed.  The MB ink bottle with the sort of heeled shoe shape allows you to transfer ink to the heel and thus build up a deep ink pool for filling.  But it is not deep enough and the bottle must be tilted to allow the nib to be fully immersed.  And the pen point typically ends up bumping the bottom of the bottle.  Anyone else with this problem and found a solution?

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Once the tightly capped bottle has been turned upside down enough to fill the pool in it's heel, it's deep enough to fill a Montblanc 149. Not sure I can see the problem. The fact that the tip might occasionally very gently touch the bottom of the well isn't a disaster.

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Another solution would be to have a full bottle ready for when the current one runs low.  Start with the full and pour the old bottles remainder in the new bottle once possible.  😉

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Remember too that the "heel" of the "shoe" is wide enough that you can put the pen in at an angle if need be.

 

I don't know exactly the volume of the heel(something good to find out when I finally empty a bottle-I'm close on one) but the bottle itself would have to be pretty darn close to empty to not get a decent fill of the heel.

 

And yes, a 149 nib will certainly fit in a full heel. MB is careful enough with other small details that I can't imagine their signature pen not being able to make use of the signature feature of their mainline ink bottles.

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4 hours ago, eaudom said:

In order to fill my 149 the entire nib must be immersed.  The MB ink bottle with the sort of heeled shoe shape allows you to transfer ink to the heel and thus build up a deep ink pool for filling.  But it is not deep enough and the bottle must be tilted to allow the nib to be fully immersed.  And the pen point typically ends up bumping the bottom of the bottle.  Anyone else with this problem and found a solution?

Yes.  Save Waterman bottles which are designed to be tipped, and decant into those.  Pelikan bottles are almost the same.  Compare these three Waterman, Omas and Montblanc (50ml) bottles which contain the same volume of liquid.

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49 minutes ago, FredRydr said:

 Pelikan bottles are almost the same.

 

Except for the 2x as expensive Edelstein botttles...my bottle of Sapphire is about half gone, and it's hit or miss whether or not I can fill a pen from it without transferring to a different bottle. Beautiful bottle, terrible practicality.

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Fill from a sample vial. You can move ink with an eyedropper or syringe. 

 

I also like tall ink bottles. Lamy bottles are great. Iroshizuku ink bottles work well too for a while. But eventually you'll have to move into to something small and deep like a sample vial.

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31 minutes ago, zaddick said:

Iroshizuku ink bottles work well too for a while.

 

The "dimple" in the bottom of the bottle is supposed to help squeeze a bit more out. It's great if you're filling a VP, but it's not deep enough to help with other nibs. Otherwise, I think that's a great bottle that combines BOTH being incredibly attractive with also being functional.

 

Lamy bottles are-like a lot of their products-very utilitarian but also an incredibly functional design. In particular, the L2K draws from low enough that it can squeeze all but the last drop out of the well.

 

At the end of the day, though, I think simple may be best. I find wide mouth, medium height jar type bottles some of the most useful. Private Reserve and Lamy Crystal come to mind on this front. At least on those, if you have a C/C pen, you can suck up directly from the converter easily when the bottle gets low.

 

The Diamine 30mL bottles are in theory great since they are sized and priced such that they're sort of a "big sample bottle", but to me they are a pain since a lot(most?) modern piston fillers won't fit through the neck.

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I can think of three more bottle designs for getting more of the last of the ink into a 149:

 

Vintage Sheaffer Skrip "top-well" bottles.  They're available fairly cheap for any ink color other than Peacock Blue, Melon Red, and Persian Rose.

 

Namiki ink bottles, available in blue or black.  The ink is indistinguishable from Pilot blue or black, and is almost certainly the same ink.  The bottle has an internal plastic widget that helps hold the last ink for filling a piston-filler.

 

Parker Penman bottles also have a plastic widget to get the last of the ink.  Prices are high, especially for Penman Sapphire, but if you happen have a bottle lying around....

-- Joel -- "I collect expensive and time-consuming hobbies."

 

INK (noun): A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic and water,

chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime.

(from The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce)

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Thanks everyone.  I think the problem with the MB bottle is that the wall between heel and toe is not high.  So I tilt the bottle to fill the heel,  but on placing the bottle flat on a table much of the ink flows back to the toe area.

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6 hours ago, bunnspecial said:

 

The "dimple" in the bottom of the bottle is supposed to help squeeze a bit more out. It's great if you're filling a VP, but it's not deep enough to help with other nibs. Otherwise, I think that's a great bottle that combines BOTH being incredibly attractive with also being functional.

 I see it as a way to keep the nib upright and centered while filling, more than for adding depth.

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To fill a 149 from a shallow or nearly empty bottle, I use a syringe and saturate the gap between collar and section end. Turn the piston to the empty position. Then fill the small area around the nib shank between collar and section lip. Turn piston to draw in ink. Repeat until you have used all of the ink in the bottom of your bottle or until the 149 ink chamber is filled. Good luck. 

IMG_4656 (1).JPG

IMG_4659 (1).JPG

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The simple solution: have someone hold the bottle at an acute angle when you fill the pen. You'll make lots of friends with this maneuver and convert the masses from ball points to piston filler pens, too!

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This is why the older bottles work better. The newer ones are squarer and have less of an angle in the heel of the shoe. The way to fill when the ink is low is to tilt the shoe with the toe pointing up. Put a thick book in front so that it stays that way. Then just put your nib at an angle which should fill just fine.

 

Go buy the older rounder bottles and always refill it with the newer bottles which don't work as well.

 

DSC03478.JPG

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6 hours ago, JCC123 said:

This is why the older bottles work better. The newer ones are squarer and have less of an angle in the heel of the shoe. The way to fill when the ink is low is to tilt the shoe with the toe pointing up. Put a thick book in front so that it stays that way. Then just put your nib at an angle which should fill just fine.

 

Go buy the older rounder bottles and always refill it with the newer bottles which don't work as well.

 

DSC03478.JPG

 

 

Also works as a pen rest when turned on its side. I know that people will say, 'what about leaks'. I have used MB shoe bottles as pen rests for years without leaking.

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