Anyone tried reconstituting old ink?

[cajunphil]

I found a few bottles of Skrip In the back of a dresser drawer recently. On a couple of the bottles of Skrip Blue and Blue Black, either the lids had failed or the jars he'd been opened and partially used in the past 10 to 20 years, and the contents had dried to a scratchy powder at the bottoms of the jars.

I tried to reconstitute them by by adding arbitrary amounts of water and shaking the bottles to dissolve. I tried the Blue in a modern low level Pelikan. It seemed to work, more or less, but left a less dark line, possibly due to adding too much water; maybe the bottle was not full when it got shunted to the back of. The drawer. Also not sure if there are still undissolved particles in the jar. So the results were that a letter was written, lettering could have been darker, and the inks have been freed from their dungeons.

Has anyone else tried to resuscitate a dried out bottle of ink? What was the technique and outcome?

[gwgtaylor]

Add water--distilled water specifically. Go slow and test with a dip pen. You can't take water away.


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[Paddler]

I add distilled water a little at a time and test until the darkness is right.

If it is new cartridge that is dried out, first load the cartridge into a pen to pierce it. Then remove it and fill it up with water, leaving a small bubble to allow for the volume of the pen's fang.

I have no idea if dried-out ink still retains its anti-microbial properties. So far, I haven't had any go biological.

[mrcharlie]

When I do cartridges, I a) put it in a pen in order to open it, then remove b) half fill with distilled water, cover opening with finger, and shake vigorously c) fill to about 90% with distilled water, install in pen, let it sit for half a day or a day d) turn the pen nib down and get the ink into the feed. It seems to work well. If I try to use it immediately it also works, but the color is usually not quite as good as it will be after some hours of letting the dye dissolve.

I've had good luck with old Sheaffer carts. I tried it using a very old Waterman C/F cart and it did not work at all. YMMV.

I re-hydrated an old Skrip bottle of Emerald Green I got with a "lot" of a couple pens and two old bottles. I just used distilled water and filled it a little less than my best guess of the ink level prior to being left to dry out, judging by the where the dye was stuck to the sides of the bottle. It worked well. I later obtained some non-dried out ink of the same color, and my comparisons showed I got it nearly exactly right, and it seemed to work and flow about the same as well.

If you put too much water in, you can try rubber-banding a napkin/serviette or some coffee-filter paper material over the top of the bottle to keep particles from floating in, and letting it sit without the lid for a while. Try 12 hours or a day and see how much the level goes down. That should keep most of the possible microbe contamination out while you are letting it evaporate to raise the saturation.

[cajunphil]

Thanks for the advice folks. I should have thought of using distilled water. I always have a few bottles around for tropical plants. I'll try it on the blue-black.

[Sailor Kenshin]

I've reconstituted inks before, vintage and newer. Nothing bad ever happened even with plain ol' tapwater. I might try distilled from now on.

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