Left Hook Pens

Back in December, I needed to refill a pen that had run out of ink. The ink (Diamine Wild Strawberry) had been in my pen (a Pilot Legno) for about three months. The nib had some ink dried on it, as well as the feed. I figured that since I was just refilling the pen that I didn’t need to clean it before dipping it in the ink bottle. Two months later, I would find out that I was wrong. Don’t leave dried ink on your nibs kids!

When I was making my chromatography, I decided to get out Wild Strawberry for my next strip. I shook the bottle a bit so that the ink would be mixed. I noticed some solid particles at the bottom of the bottle as well as some kind of floating mass, so I opened the bottle to smell the ink. It smelled like straight mold, but I did the chromatography anyway for some reason. I ended up throwing away the bottle, the chromatography strip, and the pen cleaning towel that the strip was drying on. I thoroughly cleaned the chopsticks, the bag clips, the glass of water, and the pen that had Wild Strawberry in it. My girlfriend and I then went though and smelled every bottle of ink that we own to see if there were any other moldy bottles, and threw away too many bottles. Besides Diamine Wild Strawberry, other effected bottles were: Diamine Polar Glow, Colorverse Extra Dimension, Organics Studio Copper Turquoise, Noodlers American Aristocracy, Lamy Benitoite, Herbin Emeraude de Chivor, and TWSBI Midnight Blue. I learned that many Noodlers Inks smell like almonds, and that all Iroshizuku inks smell like nothing and have great mold protection.

From now on, I won’t be dipping a nib into an ink bottle unless it’s been cleaned. If a piston or vacuum filler pen hasn’t been inked up for very long and it needs to be refilled, I will decant ink into a small jar and refill from there. For cartridge converter pens, I’ll fill the converter with a clean syringe. Eyedroppers are already easy to maintain, but I will pay more attention to making sure that the inside of the eyedropper bulb is clean and dry. If there’s a lot of ink left in a pen and I want to change colors or just clean the pen and put it away, I’ll dump the ink in a sample bottle or tiny jar.

This incident has helped me further appreciate pens and converters that can be easily and completely disassembled. If you stick a pencil (eraser side in) to a TWSBI cap and turn it counterclockwise, you can remove the inner cap and clean any ink out. I wish that Pilot would bring back the Con-50, because those can actually be taken apart without hassle. A Pilot nib and feed can be removed very easily after you’ve done it once. Any feed with a little indent for the nib makes it easier to remove without risk of damaging the nib. Most Pilot feeds are like this, as well as Kaweco. The Lamy nibs just slide onto the feed, but the feed needs to be reinserted just right or it gets stuck in the section.

I’ve now replaced the bottle of Wild Strawberry as well as Polar Glow. We already had a bottle of Extra Dimension that hadn’t been opened to save for later when the original bottle ran out. I feel ashamed about the pen practices (especially early on) that led to so much wasted ink, but the only thing to do is learn from any mistakes and be mindful of potential biohazards.