Wednesday, April 6, 2011

PennedHouse Double Feature: My Ink Blend and Pilot Petit1 Conversion

The Pilot Petit1 is a fantastic fountain pen that is similar in size to the Stipula Passaporto, and is extremely small with the pen cap on, but with the cap posted is a comfortable fit in my hand.  The nib is very smooth for a fine point pen, especially one that is as cheap as this pen is.  My big problem with the Petit1 as a daily writer is the size of the ink cartridge. While refillable, the ink cartridge barely holds enough ink for the amount of writing I encounter during the day. I was thinking that there must be a solution!

From the desire to increase the ink supply of the Pilot Petit1 came the following experiment.  My goal was to convert the Petit1 into an eyedropper pen, but along the way I got curious and started creating my own ink which, for which the recipe will be posted next week. Back to the Petit1 though, it wasn't really a whole lot of work doing the conversion.  The biggest problem I encountered was figuring out how much silicon grease I needed to prevent ink from leaking all over my fingers.  It took a few days to figure it out, but once I did, there were no problems whatsoever.

The fruit of my labor!

The ink color I ended up creating is a dark teal, which is similar to one of my most desired inks. Noodler's Coral Sea Blue is exclusive only to Australia and as such would cost a LOT of money to ship to America, not to mention that a bottle before shipping costs $39.95 in Australian dollars! I knew I would never be able to get my hands on a bottle unless by some miracle, so I combined different amounts of blue, black and green inks to get the ink in the pictures, which matches up almost perfectly with Coral Sea Blue.

This is probably my favorite color of ink now.



The results of both experiments were successful and should keep me occupied for a while, which is both a good and bad thing.
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6 comments:

  1. IronSoulApril 7, 2011 at 2:24 AM

    Great convert into an eyedropper :) did you use o-ring ?

    How much silicon grease is needed ?

    thx for info !

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  2. SpeckApril 7, 2011 at 8:03 AM

    I was mixing inks trying to get a dark purple and ended up with a teal color very similar to yours. I mixed a 4:1 ratio of Noodler's Turquoise Eel and Noodler's Red-Black. Blue and Red make purple, right? Nope, dark teal. It retained the eel qualities so it's slick as glass and has wonderful shading. I have just about abandoned all my other inks for this one.

    Yes, ink mixing can be addictive.

    ReplyDelete
  3. CarmenApril 9, 2011 at 8:50 PM

    are you in advertising too??

    ReplyDelete
  4. PeninkcillinApril 9, 2011 at 10:15 PM

    That's a very nice shade you got there. Very understated, yet elegant. That Petit was really asking to be converted.

    Have you tried the Plumix? That one takes normal cartridges but it also has an italic nib so I don't know if you'd want to write with it on a daily basis.

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  5. The ClassicistApril 10, 2011 at 12:06 PM

    @ironsoul: a LOT. I don't have a measurement, but more than seems reasonable for such a small pen. The grooves that connect the male and female ends are very deep
    @speck: Definitely going to have to try that ink mix. It sounds absolutely fantastic! Ink mixing is addictive!
    @carmen: My mom works for DDB Chicago. That's a nice catch there though. I love the notepads that she brings home!
    @peninkcillin: Thanks! I've been looking at the plumix, but it doesn't look like it would be that comfortable to write with. For as cheap as it is though, I suppose it wouldn't be THAT much of a risk. I'll probably end up trying it soon :D

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  6. IronSoulApril 11, 2011 at 12:31 AM

    yes Plumix is great ! Wife took my Plumix because she liked it, now I have to buy another one :D

    ReplyDelete

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