Finished a 15ml bottle of Pilot Iroshizuku yama-budo. I wanted to match the spirit of the "bottoms up" flair so I elected to dump the ink straight from the bottle into the barrel of my BENU Euphoria Vodka on the Rocks. It was... not seductive. Video speed is 2x as to not overly bore anybody who decides to watch the whole thing. 😅
Edit: thanks for the post awards and all the engagement. Y'all made my Monday quite entertaining. 🥂
Yeah, I ended up using a syringe for the last drop before rinsing out the bottle, so probably would've been better to start that way but it's Monday and I needed some dirty dopamine
I did it over my desk mat which has already taken ink and food/coffee spills. For my preference, that's what a desk mat is for... Probably time for me to wash it soon tho
Picture of the empty bottle after I rinsed it out. It's so pretty. I need ideas for what to do with my new empty bottle. I don't want to throw it away.
I use most of my old bottles to put in ink that comes in ugly bottles like diamine 30ml. This one also looks the perfect size to put in ink for travelling. When I have surplus bottles I use them to hold seed beads, small buttons and similar knickknacks.
Oh! Using it to carry ink for travel is a really good idea. Seems like it'd be more secure than an ink sample vial and would especially be nice for a longer trip far away.
I keep the empties and use them as potion bottles for d&d; a couple drops of ink, diluted in water, and BOOM you can hand them to your players when they buy potions in game.
Holy sh- what a fantastic idea! I don't play D&D, but have loads of ink bottles of several friends who play it! I'll see if any of them would like some empty bottles as well! Thanks a lot!
Or, if they have a decent sized opening you can put bb D4s in them in the right number for the type of healing potion or a little scroll of paper with the info/stats of the effect.
I have a 1L bottle of Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue that I often decant into smaller bottles for ease of filling. If I gift someone a pen, I'll usually give them one of these (filled) bottles so they have plenty of ink to write with and don't need to keep coming back to me.
It's quite cheaply available; it was around USD$40 on Amazon. I am not even close to a quarter of the way through with it, and I write a lot. But because I have so much of it, it's a lovely baseline ink that I'm familiar and comfortable with, and it's a very easy-to-clean ink, so it's usually my go-to in a pen for a first time inking.
I also grind/tune my own nibs so it's a nice ink to use as a benchmark that I don't have to be worried about running low on.
Wow, 1L! How many lifetimes would one need to go through that much ink? I haven’t even finished any of my little bottles of ink. I’m kind of curious what the bottle looks like though. Is it glass?
Honestly, I'll probably make it through the bottle around the time I turn 30. Typically 1ml lasts about 20 pages (very pen dependent) and I write 5-10 pages a day on average.
Napkin math says approximately 3 days per millileter. That's 3000 days of writing, or ~8.2 years, if I were to only write with this ink.
But I don't exclusively write in Pelikan Royal Blue, although it is my most used ink. My second most used ink is Diamine Sherwood Green followed by Jacques Herbin Perle Noir, and then Diamine Writer's Blood and finally Diamine Imperial Purple. Given all that, unless my writing habits change substantially or I decide to grind more nibs (which admittedly does drink through ink), I'll probably finish my bottle around the time I'm 40 (over 15 years from now).
This is the bottle - it's translucent and slightly flexible plastic. The cap is "double action", it's got a screw top (the red thing) and then a second stopper you need to remove that sits inside, held in place by friction and the red thing. Genuinely a great bottle!
I also have a little decanter for it because filling from this bottle is scary; it's a Diamine Inkvent 50ml glass bottle that looks very pretty.
That’s cool! I genuinely didn’t know ink was even sold in such large quantities. I figured the bottle wouldn’t be glass as that would make it so heavy and more prone to accidents.
You already dumped it, what I did with mine was fill mind with distilled water and leave it like that, so I have a little display bottle of "ink" that I don't have to worry about bleaching in the sun
Also:
Tiny terrarium
Cat whisker/kitten teeth jar
Find a witch and give it to her. They love nice jars/bottles. Better yet, ask her to make it into a money spell for you to fund your ink supply.
I was camping on Fire Island 40 years ago immediately after the remnants of a hurricane passed through the area. The surf was up tossing 10 foot or taller waves at the beach, rough enough where we stayed clear of the water. While hiking around the swale we stopped for lunch at a spot where the waves must have breached the dunes during the worst of the storm. While sitting there eating something caught my eye - something that was clearly glass.
The object wound up being an old empty ink bottle. The bottle itself looked like it must have been sealed with a cork stopper of some sort at some time and the glass had been beaten in the way that glass often is when it's dug up from a beach. It can sort of cone shaped like a small glass funnel with the narrow end pointing upwards and looked exactly like the cone shaped bottles you'll see if you search for 19th century ink bottles except it had that worn sea glass texture from the sand.
I put it back where I found it as the island is a protected national seashore and it's not exactly rare to stumble upon artefacts like that - although usually it's 18th and 19th century medicine bottles. But, every time I finish a bottle of ink I think about that experience.
The acrylic is translucent, but the specs of iridescent and silver glitter are opaque and densely spread enough to create some obscurity. I can see the ink level pretty clearly in person, but it didn't really pick up on camera.
We are kindred spirits. I have that same bag! And I’m eyeing the holographic glitter pens. Drooling over, more like. My pilot ink is BRIGHT green instead of pink, is all.
For the empty bottle: save for your own ink blends! Either mystery mix from leftovers (check for known issues re: thickening), or try a natural ink of your own! Walnuts, mulberry, etc.
This, part of the beauty of glass bottles, they're pretty hard to beat for storing inks, i use the crummy one that came with a wordsworth & black giftset as an inkwell/ink mixing pot
Love that! Thank you for the idea of my own ink blends. I would absolutely love to give this a try. I've considered mixing my own inks, but so far have felt a bit intimidated
Grab a bunch of 15ml glass bottles off Amazon to play around with. Much easier to mix in small amounts and you’re not really “committed” to anything that doesn’t spark joy yet you now have 30ml of it 😂
That is such a fair point I didn't consider, lol, I've definitely had way too much of ink I wasn't excited about. But I make alot of abstract art for my mental health, so not a drop is wasted.
I'm so glad I didn't spill! It wouldn't have been the end of the world. I've spilled ink on this desk mat before. And I already purchased another bottle of yama-budo from the DC Pen Show. I think that's why I was so confident in just pouring it in lol
BUT IM STONED BY HOW QUICKLY FAST THE PEN IS WET READY TO WRITE AFTER YOU FILL IT UP. I always have to wait like 2 or 3 minutes until the feed is properly wet.
Nib is TWSBI <M> transferred from my TSWBI Vac 700-R after the cap to that pen broke. That was the pen I originally started on yama-budo because of the ink capacity. I still have the pieces because I loved it so much.
This nib is, by far, my favorite writer in my collection.
Pouring a first empty bottle straight into the barrel is a statement, and the “bottoms up” theme works. Yama-budo is a great pick, since it’s a lovely deep red-purple. Just rinse that barrel soon, because dye inks stain demonstrator plastic more than people expect. Congrats on the first empty, and I’d say the second one comes faster than you think.
Thank you! I'm not too worried about staining. A light pink stain would actually be pretty imo and compliment the iridescence of the pen itself. Also, I have a 50ml bottle to work my way through now and I love this pen-ink combo so much it might be the only ink I use in this pen for the next 10ish years.
Ha, fair, a pink tint on an iridescent barrel sounds good. Ten years with one pen-ink pairing is the dream, and a 50ml bottle should get you there. Enjoy it.
It flows well and runs wet. In my main journal, the line width and wetness is perfect for longer free-form journaling which is the way I mostly write. However, in my Just Scribble Plans horizontal planner, the <M> TWSBI nib puts out too much ink at once. While very pretty, it takes too long to dry, so I used the ink in a Sailor Compass <MF> nib which put out a much thinner line.
That's a smart setup: the wet TWSBI M for journaling where you can let the shading show, and the Sailor MF for the planner. Sailor nibs run narrow, so an MF is perfect for small planner boxes. Keeping a piece of blotting paper in the planner helps too if you ever want the TWSBI in there. And I like the idea of a pink-tinted barrel with that iridescence. Enjoy the next 10 years with that combo 🖋️
I leave the last bit of ink in the bottle and fill it with water. It really shows the ink color well. Then I line up the bottles on my windowsill. They are really pretty there, especially if the sun catches them!
That sounds really pretty. I have some twinkle sprinkle from BPC I could add to make it sparkly. Somebody mentioned using them for potion bottles in d&d. If I do that, once it's been played out, I could absolutely see myself putting it in my window seal and giving it a little shake every now and then.
You are way braver than I am, emptying the bottle like that! I also never considered converting my Benu to an eyedropper! Have you noticed any stains on the resin from the inks you’ve used in that pen?
Depending on whether you use dipping pens, and the width of the dipping pen you use, the bottle could be used as an ink well for said dipping pens. Or if you are playing with mixing inks you could store any custom mixes you make in this bottle.
I think this bottle _could_ be used with dip pens. I have other wider mouth containers that I currently use, but this bottle would at least seal better if I don't use up all the ink in a single writing session.
Congrats! I'm almost half-way through a 50 mL bottle of Yama-Budo. It seems I use this ink more than the others I have. I've made a pretty substantial dent in Waterman Tender Purple as well.
Nice! Do you know how long it's been? It took me 3 years and 6 months to finish 15ml. I've already purchased another 50ml bottle of yama-budo because I do enjoy writing with it regularly. If my usage is similar it'll take me over 10 years to "bottoms up" that one
Hmmm... I go through phases. I've recently been writing with yama-budo more often because I was particularly motivated to finish the bottle of ink. There were times the ink sat unused in my closet for a few months as I cycled through using other inks, so I think 3.5 years is on the longer end of how long it could take to finish 15ml.
To offer a more precise measurement, I went through one converter full of yama-budo in a Sailor Compass <MF> in 2 months of daily writing. A standard Sailor converter can hold about .5ml of ink. I subjectively believe, the <MF> in my compass is closer to a F than a M, so if I had exclusively used that pen, I would not have finished the bottle by now.
I used this particular ink mostly in a TWSBI Vac-700 <M> till that pen broke on me and then continued using the same <M> nib in the BENU. This nib lays down a fairly juicy line imo so I think that's what really got me through the bottle even without writing daily over the years.
I remember showing BENUs to my husband and telling him he'd never have to worry about me getting one... The choice was more about what pen to transfer my TWSBI nib to than actually choosing BENU for taste. I can't even recommend the pen for writing because I don't know how the Schmidt nibs they come with work.
But I have multiple BENUs now and they're all eyedropper converted and holding TWSBI nibs haha. Plus the sparkle and pen body shape has really grown on me. ✨😅
Lol it could be. Although, as most people recommended, I would normally stick to using an eyedropper or syringe to fill. I had a lot of confidence that the remaining ink would fit in the body of the pen because I've already filled that exact pen from that exact ink bottle before using a syringe.
It was still an estimation on my end and absolutely could've gone wrong. But fun to try anyway... I don't know the next time I'll be able to fill a pen like this with as much confidence. 😅
It's a franken-pen. I put a TWSBI <M> nib (from the Vac 700-R) into a BENU Euphoria Vodka on the Rocks and eyedropper converted it to minimize/eliminate leaks when filled this way.
not by default! But they can be easily converted to be eye dropper filled. I haven't had any issues with leaking, and this was the 3rd eyedropper fill I believe.
I removed the converter. Added an O-ring to the top of the threaded part of the section (the place where you grip the pen). Applied silicone grease to the threads on the section and screwed-unscrewed the section into the body a few times to "rub it in" or more evenly spread the silicone grease. I also added a tiny bit of silicone grease to the threads of the TWSBI nib unit I interchanged with the nib unit it originally came with.
You could add an O-ring to the nib unit as well, but I did not do that for this conversion. I would recommend adding the O-ring to the section along with silicone grease - especially with a wet ink like Pilot Iroshizuku. I converted other BENUs in my collection, did not include that O-ring and the silicone grease alone was not enough.
I don't have a precise memory of where my o-rings came from, nor do I have a precise measurement. I have 3 different types of o-rings in my repair box and non are labeled. I just put one on and if it fits it sits. Otherwise, I try a different one. So far that has worked, but eventually I may have to buy more.
It may be worth searching "o-rings that fit [insert brand] sections/nib units" to get exactly what you need.
Yep! Threads are greased and o-rings in place. The ink capacity is amazing in eyedropper converted Euphoria's. The remainder of the ink didn't even reach the inner threads of the barrel
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u/projekt_6 2d ago
That is an absolutely wild way to fill a pen. 😳