Monday, June 27, 2011

Pipettes for ink filling

So I picked up a cheap set of pipettes from Walmart a couple of weeks ago. They were in the eye/ear section of the pharmacy. As soon as I laid my eyes on them I thought INK! I paid about $3 for them.

Pipettes

As you can see, one has a straight tip while the other is slightly bent. Though I would have preferred that both tips were straight, it turns out that I can still use the curved tip almost as well as the straight.

The reason why I like these little eyedroppers more than syringes is because they are made of glass and thus very easy to clean. The other nice thing is that the suction is very good for such a cheap eyedropper.

Pipettes

These are great for drawing ink out of sample vials. I use them to fill anything that can accommodate the tip. They work great with any of my eyedropper fountain pens. They work with Pilot cartridges because they have a wide opening. Unfortunately Lamy and international cartridges have a very narrow opening so I can only use the needle of a syringe to fill those.

One other way in which I use these pipettes is to fill a fountain pen via the feed saturation method. This works mostly for piston fillers such as my Noodler's flex.

I would really recommend these pipettes if you haven't found something more suitable for your ink filling needs. They are cheap and extremely easy to clean.

2 comments:

  1. Nice find! And at walmart too! I need to get some of these, for only $3.00, I really can't go wrong.

    I don't really have much use for pipettes though, as I'm not to interested in getting the max fill. But still, they'd be nice to have around. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I use them all the time because they are so easy to clean. Being made of glass, there's no ink residue left after flushing with water. And they dry quicker than syringes.

    ReplyDelete