Alternative to Online Nachtblau (midnight blue) cartridges?

[RJS]

On 4/26/2024 at 7:15 PM, Mercian said:

If you do ever buy ESSRI, you need to know that it gets shipped in a posting-friendly plastic bottle.
The bottle is therefore gas-permeable, which means that the ink in it will ‘go off’ quickly as the hydrochloric acid in it gasses-off, and oxygen gets in.
(E.g. after decanting its contents, I wanted to dissolve some precipitates that were still in the shipping bottle, so I filled it with a solution of bleach, replaced its cap, and left the bleach to do its job. Within a day of doing so, I noticed that the label on the bottle was getting bleached by HCl outgassing. After three days it was almost completely white 😮)

 

I therefore spent a few £ to buy some brown glass ‘sirop’ (sic) bottles from an online vendor.

ESSRI ships in bottles that hold 110ml of ink, so I bought a 50ml ‘sirop’ bottle, and two 30ml ‘sirop’ bottles with airtight caps.
The bottles cost so little that I actually bought three sets of the bottles, in order to make the shipping costs less than the cost of the bottles 😁

 

As contact with atmospheric oxygen will accelerate the spoiling of the ink (as will light, hence my buying bottles made of brown glass), I decanted all my 110ml of ESSRI into my sirop bottles straight away (after first sterilising them with the stuff that parents use to sterilise bottles for babies).

 

I am using-up a 30ml bottle first. I will then use-up my second 30ml bottle.
When both of those bottles are empty, I will re-sterilise them and then transfer the ink from the 50ml bottle into them, using up the contents of the one that contains only 20ml of ink before the one that is full. Doing this should minimise the amount of time for which my ESSRI gets exposed to oxygen during storage.

 

This does sound like a faff, and it may put people off from buying the ink.
But it doesn’t take very long to do, and it does extend the shelf-life of an ink that I like very much.
And of course I will always have my sirop bottles sitting ready to accept the contents of my next ‘tanker’ of ESSRI 😊

It sounds like they didn't choose a very suitable type of plastic 😅 Certain plastics will behave far better.

[inkstainedruth]

On 4/26/2024 at 1:15 PM, Mercian said:

If you do ever buy ESSRI, you need to know that it gets shipped in a posting-friendly plastic bottle.
The bottle is therefore gas-permeable, which means that the ink in it will ‘go off’ quickly as the hydrochloric acid in it gasses-off, and oxygen gets in.
(E.g. after decanting its contents, I wanted to dissolve some precipitates that were still in the shipping bottle, so I filled it with a solution of bleach, replaced its cap, and left the bleach to do its job. Within a day of doing so, I noticed that the label on the bottle was getting bleached by HCl outgassing. After three days it was almost completely white 😮)

 

YIKES!  Thanks for the heads up!

Given that I had a 60 ml (glass) bottle of Akkerman Ijzer-Galnoten go bad on me, there's no WAY I'd be able to use up a bottle of ESSRI -- even if that was the only ink I used for a year....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Mercian]

9 hours ago, RJS said:

It sounds like they didn't choose a very suitable type of plastic 😅 Certain plastics will behave far better.

I think that they’re constrained by the choices made by the manufactures of ‘posting-friendly’ bottles.

 

But, given that their main market/client is Registrars’ Offices and Passport Offices, their ‘choice’ of bottle may even have been made for them by a specification that was issued by HMG/Royal Mail/the Post Office 🤷‍♂️

[RJS]

19 minutes ago, Mercian said:

I think that they’re constrained by the choices made by the manufactures of ‘posting-friendly’ bottles.

 

But, given that their main market/client is Registrars’ Offices and Passport Offices, their ‘choice’ of bottle may even have been made for them by a specification that was issued by HMG/Royal Mail/the Post Office 🤷‍♂️

The only time I've ever been in a government office that used such ink, they'd decanted it into an unmarked glass container. Perhaps the plastic isn't very important if it is not expected to remain in contact with it for long? I can't imagine any official body specifying that they must not mail it in high quality plastic.

[Mercian]

1 hour ago, RJS said:

I can't imagine any official body specifying that they must not mail it in high quality plastic.

Oh, I’m certain that no specification would ever require them to use ‘low-quality’ plastic.
[Even though I have seen several public sector contracts/specifications written to require the purchase of products/materials/components from a specific, named supplier. With all-too predictable outcomes.]

 

I expect that, as you say, the main client for the ink has always decanted the ink into glass bottles as soon as they received it, and so regards the plastic bottle in which it is sent to them as being solely an item for temporary usage during transit, which will be disposed of as soon as it has served its temporary purpose.
And that said client (who gets through a lot of ink) is happier to be able to purchase the ink at a lower cost than would be the case if it were shipped to them in bottles made out of glass (or ‘better’ plastic).

After all, any business is going to tailor its products to match the preferences of its main customer(s).

 

By contrast, if one were mainly selling one’s product to ‘domestic’ consumers, who only purchase ink in low volumes (in comparison to HMG), they are less likely to decant it as soon as it arrives, and so may prefer ‘better quality’ bottles.

 

ESSRI is, in essence, an ‘industrial tool’, and one that is sold mainly to HMG.
Its packaging - which is very much ‘functional’, rather than being in any sense ‘marketable’ - reflects that it has that status, rather than being a ‘discretionary purchase’ for ‘ordinary consumers’.

[RJS]

21 minutes ago, Mercian said:

Oh, I’m certain that no specification would ever require them to use ‘low-quality’ plastic.
[Even though I have seen several public sector contracts/specifications written to require the purchase of products/materials/components from a specific, named supplier. With all-too predictable outcomes.]

 

I expect that, as you say, the main client for the ink has always decanted the ink into glass bottles as soon as they received it, and so regards the plastic bottle in which it is sent to them as being solely an item for temporary usage during transit, which will be disposed of as soon as it has served its temporary purpose.
And that said client (who gets through a lot of ink) is happier to be able to purchase the ink at a lower cost than would be the case if it were shipped to them in bottles made out of glass (or ‘better’ plastic).

After all, any business is going to tailor its products to match the preferences if its main customer(s).

 

By contrast, if one were mainly selling one’s product to ‘domestic’ consumers, who only purchase ink in low volumes (in comparison to HMG), they are less likely to decant it as soon as it arrives, and so may prefer ‘better quality’ bottles.

 

ESSRI is, in essence, an ‘industrial tool’, and one that is sold mainly to HMG.
Its packaging - which is very much ‘functional’, rather than being in any sense ‘marketable’ - reflects that it has that status, rather than being a ‘discretionary purchase’ for ‘ordinary consumers’.

I agree with all of that. I also saw some funny (by which I mean downright moronic) specifications from HMG, back when I worked in the UK. There was no point questioning or challenging anything either, because it wouldn't get you any closer to finding out the logic, let alone facilitating change.

[Mercian]

5 minutes ago, RJS said:

There was no point questioning or challenging anything either, because it wouldn't get you any closer to finding out the logic, let alone facilitating change.

Yup.
And, if you ever do find out the ‘logic’ behind the mandated specs/methodology, it only makes you go 🤪

[XYZZY]

You guys are reminding me of how much I enjoyed watching Yes Minister. 

[Mercian]

18 minutes ago, XYZZY said:

You guys are reminding me of how much I enjoyed watching Yes Minister. 

Ah, how I wish that I were able to extemporise with the same degree of erudite obfuscatory precision as Sir Humphrey! 😉