Fitting A "snorkle" To A Piston Convertor To Get That Last Drop In A Bottle

[leewm]

Hi folks,

 

Here's a method to fit a syringe needle over a piston converter to suck the very last drop of ink from an ink bottle.

 

rgds

kenneth

 

PS: Forgot to add, this method doesn't require a syringe that would take up extra space in your pen case. It's also one less item to clean. In any case, choose your favourite method :-)

Edited August 13, 2019 by leewm

[peroride]

Thank you @leewm Great tip!

[Bo Bo Olson]

If the ink is worth the very last drop.....get a Snorkel, you need one anyway, and they are cheaper now than a decade ago from what I hear here.

If that ink is so good..............just buy a new bottle and after loading your pen, drip the drops left in the old bottle into the new one.

If the ink is not worth buying again....why worry about it. If it has a glass bottle clean it and save it for an eventual plastic bottle of ink.

 

I have a needle syringe that I use to re-fill cartridges, it can re-fill a converter just as easy.

Why go through a lot of trouble when you Do Not need too making a gadget for poor ink? How often are you going to be so cheap that you will need to suck up the last drops of an ink you don't like.....buy a new bottle if any good.

 

(I'm a basic piston guy.......with a very bad habit.............when the ink bottle gets low, I save it. Mostly that is long before last drop.)

[bemon]

I use the Pineider Snorkel as standard practice to fill even if I can fit my nib in a bottle. I can fill my converter in two draws.

[LeakyInk]

The snorkels seem pretty cool. I have a blunt tip syringe which I just used to fill the cleaned cartridge for my Vanishing Point. It does allow me to get to the bottom of the samples I have.

[stenolearner]

Great idea! Another thin you can do is use a sample vial, tip the last remaining drops into that, and fill from there.

[bogiesan]

I use an allergy syringe. I don’t have any inks that precious.

[sirgilbert357]

These needles that fit over a converter seem like a solution looking for a problem to me. A blunt tip syringe works just as well and keeps the mouth of the converter cleaner. It takes up very little space and is washed out in mere seconds. I can also fill any converter 100% full in one go and not have to fiddle with the pumping the converter piston twice to get all the air out. Bought a two pack of these syringes from Goulet years ago and I'm still waiting for the first one to wear out so I can move to the second one.

 

To each their own though, I guess.

[sztainbok]

Does anybody know if the Pinaider Snorkel will fit a Parker 45 converter and an older Sheaffer converter of the 1960's?

Thanks,

Victor.

[dkreider]

Seems like a personal preference thing. I have never tried one of these snorkels, but they are on my list of things to try out! Sure a syringe can do the same job, but for me, I would want to find out if it's more satisfying to use a snorkel, and is a snorkel easier to flush out than a syringe after use. I don't use a pen case per se, but would you say that a snorkel such as this can be flushed out in a few seconds, under running water?

Thanks for the post, it's a very cool gadget.

[peterg]

Seems like an awful lot of effort.

 

Of course you could start by tipping the bottle on a corner to raise the ink level and (as said) tip the residue into the new bottle of ink that you are going to have to buy shortly anyway. But then I am a pen person, not an ink person!

[Joe124013]

How messy is filling with a syringe? I'm always worried about the ink spilling out of the converter, which may be a bit silly but it is what it is.

[bemon]

How messy is filling with a syringe? I'm always worried about the ink spilling out of the converter, which may be a bit silly but it is what it is.

Friction seems to keep the ink in the converter for me. I use one every time and it's been messy once because I was rushing and wasn't paying attention.

[txomsy]

How messy is filling with a syringe? I'm always worried about the ink spilling out of the converter, which may be a bit silly but it is what it is.

 

Unless you have Parkinson and even so... it is not messy at all. The only thing that comes to me is this: why syringe fill a converter? If you are going to do so, it is much better to syringe fill an empty double size cartridge and get almost double capacity.

 

If you try... what I'd advice as a cheap, quick and dirty solution is to get at your pharmacist an insulin/subcutaneous syringe (1ml) and an intramuscular needle ('cos it has a wider gauge). Fill up to, say, 0.8ml of ink, put the needle well inside the cartridge or converter and pour the ink in slowly to avoid overflowing and to check you are not making bubbles that might end up being ejected, popping and messing everything. That is easier if you place the needle touching the wall and let the ink slide in. When it is almost full (not completely) draw out the syringe. You do not want complete filling for then when you place the cartridge in the section, the nipple will displace some ink, which will overflow and mess around. Plus, it's not bad idea to leave some small amount of air inside.

 

When you are done, closed the pen and all, just flush the syringe/needle with water until it washes clean, this will ensure you don't get ink left to dry or to mix with other coloured ink should you want to fill with another ink colour later.

 

As for the OP's idea of fitting a needle to a converter... I find it kind of cool. Having always around a syringe or two for refilling, it is a convenient way to use those last drops of ink.

 

As for the advice on good/bad ink, I agree... up to some point. 'Cos, you see, at some point one has way too many ink bottles and wants to finish one, not to open a new bottle of the same ink, but to start a new, different ink, notwithstanding how excellent the ending ink was. In these special cases, one wants to use till the last drop and not leave it in the bottle until a new equal bottle is eventually opened somewhere in the unforeseeable future.

[Charles Rice]

Hmmm - by the time you get finished filling that way, I could have written seven letters to my mother-in-law.

[A Smug Dill]

These needles that fit over a converter seem like a solution looking for a problem to me. A blunt tip syringe works just as well and keeps the mouth of the converter cleaner.

 

I personally think the snorkel appeals more to (my) geekiness than actual need. I thought the idea was neat enough, especially when the Pineider version is designed to fit more than only international standard converters, that I was happy to shell out 12 euro or so for one, but I wasn't expecting it to work better than a syringe with a blunt needle attached.

 

(The order was never fulfilled, and I eventually cancelled it after a couple of months. Waiting for it fruitlessly cancelled out all the imagined neatness, and now I no longer find the item appealing.)

 

• A syringe is cheaper by two orders of magnitude and, as far as I'm concerned, way more disposable. I have easily more than a hundred syringes here, with 29 blunt steel needle attachments of different gauges, and (still!) waiting for an order of 100 blunt plastic needle attachments which are "safer".
• A syringe is way more versatile. You can fill a converter with any bore, a cartridge with any bore, or the barrel of an eyedropper (or, if you can access the cavity by unscrewing the nib unit, a piston-filler) pen with it; and you can use it for flushing pen components with pressurised jets of water. You can only fill a limited number of types of converters with a snorkel.
• A syringe is easier to thoroughly clean after using it to transfer ink, because of the pressure on the water passing through the blunt needle when you fill and empty the syringe.

I've used fountain pens for years, and honestly never found any real need for either a snorkel or a syringe when filling converters; unplugging the converter from the pen and sticking its mouth directly below the surface of the ink in a bottle or a sample vial is easy enough. Flushing a snorkel under a tap is not easier than wiping the outside of the converter clean with a sheet of tissue or paper towel; I don't have a tap in my study, but I have a box of facial tissues and a bin.

 

Hmmm - by the time you get finished filling that way, I could have written seven letters to my mother-in-law.

Um... g o o d b y e?

Edited October 23, 2019 by A Smug Dill

[senzen]

Thank you, good idea!

[corgicoupe]

Hmmm - by the time you get finished filling that way, I could have written seven letters to my mother-in-law.

Short letters?

[Bibliophage]

I've used fountain pens for years, and honestly never found any real need for either a snorkel or a syringe when filling converters; unplugging the converter from the pen and sticking its mouth directly below the surface of the ink in a bottle or a sample vial is easy enough. Flushing a snorkel under a tap is not easier than wiping the outside of the converter clean with a sheet of tissue or paper towel; I don't have a tap in my study, but I have a box of facial tissues and a bin.

Strange. I just stick the feed and nib into the ink, turn the converter until it backs out completely, and go about my business. The feed is then completely saturated, and I have a good amount of ink to use. No waiting for the ink to work its way down the feed - which leads to air in the converter _anyway_.