Ink Omakase: November 2022

This month I refilled a total of 7 pens but not all are fountain pens.

Ink Omakase #4

A friend bought a pack of Kuretake Karappo empty felt tip pens and asked me to fill them with ink. For the colours, they asked for a blue with sheen and a dark green. The other three colours are left up to me.

It was my first time filling such a pen and I made a bit of a mess on my first try. After some practice, I found it neater to place the sponge in the pen and use an eyedropper to add ink to it. However, I still couldn’t quite get it totally spotless.

Using an eyedropper to add ink to the sponge, came with it’s own problem. It was hard for me to tell when the sponge had soaked up enough ink. Once, I overfilled the pen with so much ink that it started dripping out of the felt nib. But overall, it was pretty fun filling up the pens.

This could be a way to get people to start an interest in fountain pen inks, and then maybe try out a fountain pen. After all, it’s my interest in the inks that got me started using a fountain pen.

For the colours, I chose:

• Cult Pens Herbert
• Diamine Monboddo’s Hat
• Pilot Iroshizuku Kon-Peki
• Van Dieman’s Zucchini
• Vinta Terracotta (Damili 1572)

Ink Omakase #5

Filled up two Jinhao X450 for a friend.

This friend prefers dark or muted colours. I filled the blue Jinhao X450 with Birmingham Mountain Laurel which is a lovely dusky pink.

The grey Jinhao X450 was filled with Van Dieman’s Sailor’s Delight. I wanted to push the boundaries a little, a little step out of the comfort zone. Thinking the ink had an average flow, I thought it would be suitable for this wet writing pen. Imagine my horror when I checked my notes (stupidly not before but after filling the pen) and realised that the ink had a wet flow.

A wet writing pen + wet flowing ink = firehose

However my friend didn’t mind and took the pen home to try out the firehose experience.

Lesson learnt today: memories are not infallible.