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Reusable cartridges


Mysterious Mose

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How often, or for how long, or how many times can I keep reusing a long Waterman ink cartridge?

 

Very specifically, I went to fill a Waterman Expert II with a reused ink cartridge which I filled with Pilot iroshizuku Ama-iro (Sky Blue) ink.  I had two reusable cartridges.  One didn't hold on the nipple.  It just fell off.  The other one stayed on, but leaked.  I finally put on a new cartridge filled with Bleu Serenite (Serenity Blue) and that worked fine.

 

It appears that as you keep reusing a cartridge, the ink hole gets more and more worn until it's unusable.  So how long, or how many times or how often can I reuse these cartridges?

Dan Kalish

 

Fountain Pens: Pelikan Souveran M805, Pelikan Petrol-Marble M205, Santini Libra Cumberland, Waterman Expert II, Waterman Phileas, Waterman Kultur, Stipula Splash, Sheaffer Sagaris, Sheaffer Prelude, Osmiroid 65

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I'm partial to refilling cartridges myself. I find the brand plays a role. For me the longest lasting international standards are Pelikan Edelstein's. The weakest are the Waterman long's. Proprietary - Namikis are the strongest and most versatile.

As for a specific number of times, I never counted, but so many they wouldn't wash clean anymore.

P.S. the one that didn't hold - my money's on a hairline crack.

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1 hour ago, evan-houseman said:

I'm partial to refilling cartridges myself. I find the brand plays a role. For me the longest lasting international standards are Pelikan Edelstein's. The weakest are the Waterman long's. Proprietary - Namikis are the strongest and most versatile.

As for a specific number of times, I never counted, but so many they wouldn't wash clean anymore.

P.S. the one that didn't hold - my money's on a hairline crack.

Can I use any international cartridge in the Waterman Expert II, Waterman Phileas or Waterman Kultur?

 

Where would the hairline crack be?

 

Another idea: I have 3 different Waterman fountain pens.  Maybe the nipples on the three pens have slightly different diameters.  If I used these cartridges in a pen with a thicker nipple, maybe that enlarged the cartridge's ink hole.  What d'ya think?

 

I've had the Waterman Phileas for about 10 years, so I might have been using these cartridges for that long.

Dan Kalish

 

Fountain Pens: Pelikan Souveran M805, Pelikan Petrol-Marble M205, Santini Libra Cumberland, Waterman Expert II, Waterman Phileas, Waterman Kultur, Stipula Splash, Sheaffer Sagaris, Sheaffer Prelude, Osmiroid 65

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43 minutes ago, Mysterious Mose said:

Where would the hairline crack be?

 

Lengthwise up the lip of the cartridge opening.

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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9 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Lengthwise up the lip of the cartridge opening.

On the cartridge???  So that's how the ink hole has gotten bigger?

 

I can't check because I threw those cartridges out.

Dan Kalish

 

Fountain Pens: Pelikan Souveran M805, Pelikan Petrol-Marble M205, Santini Libra Cumberland, Waterman Expert II, Waterman Phileas, Waterman Kultur, Stipula Splash, Sheaffer Sagaris, Sheaffer Prelude, Osmiroid 65

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7 hours ago, Mysterious Mose said:

Can I use any international cartridge in the Waterman Expert II, Waterman Phileas or Waterman Kultur?

Waterman cartridges and converters are proprietary so I would think not. The best Waterman converters for a Phileas/Kultur are those that have the metal band, that looks like a screw thread, around the end. Newer versions that are just plastic easily split up the collar part that goes onto the piercer.

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I'd like to rephrase and, hopefully clarify, this inquiry (notwithstanding any hostile replies).

 

There have been many posts on this forum and on FPG in favor of reusing cartridges.  (I prefer to say "reuse" rather than "refill" because you can refill a cartridge and yet not reuse it.

 

Is there a limit to reusing a cartridge?  I didn't think so but, based on my experience as stated in the OP  (A Smug Dill, in a since deleted post, refers to this as a "phenomenon"), there seems to be such a limit.  In biology, pharmacology, etc., there is a precise statistical term LD50 - Lethal Dose 50%.  This measures at what point 50% of the original subjects are still alive.  Life insurance is based on life expectancy.  We're all mortal but, how much longer can we expect to stick around?  I guess this is true in general.  Very few material things last forever.

 

So I want to get some sense of the life expectancy of these cartridges.  What have your experiences been with reusing cartridges?   I'm pretty sure you can reuse a cartridge once.  But I'd like to keep them around a bit longer.

 

Sure, I'd like to know why these two cartridges were unusable.  However we may never know and that's not really important except if "why" tells me what I can do in the future to prolong the lifespan of my cartridges.  A Smug Dill wrote that the "phenomenon" might involve a hairline split.  If the split were on the pen, that would be very important to know.  If it were on the cartridge, I'd simply throw out the cartridge, which I did.

 

Thank you repliers for comments about Waterman converters.  I have three Waterman converters of the first type Dione writes about and so far, knock on wood, they have worked fine.  I had a fourth but it gave me problems so I threw it out.

Dan Kalish

 

Fountain Pens: Pelikan Souveran M805, Pelikan Petrol-Marble M205, Santini Libra Cumberland, Waterman Expert II, Waterman Phileas, Waterman Kultur, Stipula Splash, Sheaffer Sagaris, Sheaffer Prelude, Osmiroid 65

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On 7/12/2021 at 9:09 AM, Mysterious Mose said:

I'd like to rephrase and, hopefully clarify, this inquiry (notwithstanding any hostile replies).

 

There have been many posts on this forum and on FPG in favor of reusing cartridges.  (I prefer to say "reuse" rather than "refill" because you can refill a cartridge and yet not reuse it.

 

Is there a limit to reusing a cartridge?  I didn't think so but, based on my experience as stated in the OP  (A Smug Dill, in a since deleted post, refers to this as a "phenomenon"), there seems to be such a limit.  In biology, pharmacology, etc., there is a precise statistical term LD50 - Lethal Dose 50%.  This measures at what point 50% of the original subjects are still alive.  Life insurance is based on life expectancy.  We're all mortal but, how much longer can we expect to stick around?  I guess this is true in general.  Very few material things last forever.

 

So I want to get some sense of the life expectancy of these cartridges.  What have your experiences been with reusing cartridges?   I'm pretty sure you can reuse a cartridge once.  But I'd like to keep them around a bit longer.

 

Sure, I'd like to know why these two cartridges were unusable.  However we may never know and that's not really important except if "why" tells me what I can do in the future to prolong the lifespan of my cartridges.  A Smug Dill wrote that the "phenomenon" might involve a hairline split.  If the split were on the pen, that would be very important to know.  If it were on the cartridge, I'd simply throw out the cartridge, which I did.

 

Thank you repliers for comments about Waterman converters.  I have three Waterman converters of the first type Dione writes about and so far, knock on wood, they have worked fine.  I had a fourth but it gave me problems so I threw it out.

I don't think you need to worry about your pen being cracked. If your pen was cracked, then I don't think it would really matter which cartridge you used.

 

In my experience, standard international cartridges, especially Waterman's, tend to crack on the lip of the cartridge as the plastic is fairly thin. I don't count how many times I use them but I always check to see if there are any cracks before refilling them.

 

With most other proprietary cartridges like Pilot/Namiki, Platinum, Parker, or Lamy, I have been reusing the same cartridges for years now. 

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On 7/12/2021 at 12:09 PM, Mysterious Mose said:

I'd like to rephrase and, hopefully clarify, this inquiry (notwithstanding any hostile replies).

 

There have been many posts on this forum and on FPG in favor of reusing cartridges.  (I prefer to say "reuse" rather than "refill" because you can refill a cartridge and yet not reuse it.

 

Is there a limit to reusing a cartridge?  I didn't think so but, based on my experience as stated in the OP  (A Smug Dill, in a since deleted post, refers to this as a "phenomenon"), there seems to be such a limit.  In biology, pharmacology, etc., there is a precise statistical term LD50 - Lethal Dose 50%.  This measures at what point 50% of the original subjects are still alive.  Life insurance is based on life expectancy.  We're all mortal but, how much longer can we expect to stick around?  I guess this is true in general.  Very few material things last forever.

 

So I want to get some sense of the life expectancy of these cartridges.  What have your experiences been with reusing cartridges?   I'm pretty sure you can reuse a cartridge once.  But I'd like to keep them around a bit longer.

 

Sure, I'd like to know why these two cartridges were unusable.  However we may never know and that's not really important except if "why" tells me what I can do in the future to prolong the lifespan of my cartridges.  A Smug Dill wrote that the "phenomenon" might involve a hairline split.  If the split were on the pen, that would be very important to know.  If it were on the cartridge, I'd simply throw out the cartridge, which I did.

 

Thank you repliers for comments about Waterman converters.  I have three Waterman converters of the first type Dione writes about and so far, knock on wood, they have worked fine.  I had a fourth but it gave me problems so I threw it out.

 

I've had one of your problems, and once I got a loupe (even a magnifying glass will do), I discovered that a crack in the cart neck caused it to leak.  I do random cart checks now.

 

I'm not sure how many refills/re-uses any carts are good for (Platinum carts seem made of iron), but it's not a bad idea to look at them now and again for cracks.

 

I never had one fall off, though. 

My latest ebook.   And not just for Halloween!
 

My other pen is a Montblanc.

 

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I'm glad to hear that other people have had the same experience with Waterman cartridges.  

 

As to the cartridge that fell off, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration.  It didn't have a firm grip on the nipple.  The other cartridge had a firmer grip, but it still leaked.

 

The brand new (well, never before used) cartridge is doing fine, so there's nothing wrong with the pen.  And, I've got good converters, which I use more often than cartridges.

Dan Kalish

 

Fountain Pens: Pelikan Souveran M805, Pelikan Petrol-Marble M205, Santini Libra Cumberland, Waterman Expert II, Waterman Phileas, Waterman Kultur, Stipula Splash, Sheaffer Sagaris, Sheaffer Prelude, Osmiroid 65

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