When Sailor bottles make you give up !!!

[earthdawn]

So after a long time dealing with the ever annoying Sailor bottles i finally gathered enough empty Akkerman bottles to do the deed.

Ohhhhh Happy Day

[gwgtaylor]

Love this! Those flat Sailor bottles are the absolute worst. I won't buy their ink anymore because of them.


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[Jon Szanto]

Nice job with the labels! The Sailor containers don't bum me out as much as they seem to others, but the bottle implementation isn't up there with the ink itself.

[AndyYNWA]

Nice job with the labels! The Sailor containers don't bum me out as much as they seem to others, but the bottle implementation isn't up there with the ink itself.

+1


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[Jon Szanto]

Question for the OP:

I only own one of these bottles, which held #5 Shocking Blue. I recently decanted what was left so I could put Aurora Blue in it. I cleaned everything thoroughly, including the glass marble. As much as I cleaned it, the marble still remains a pale blue. Looks lovely when all the ink is drained to the bottom.

So... do the marbles have tint, or are they all clear and get stained by the inks? I have a hard time believing this is stain, it looks like blue glass.

Just curious.

[earthdawn]

Question for the OP:

I only own one of these bottles, which held #5 Shocking Blue. I recently decanted what was left so I could put Aurora Blue in it. I cleaned everything thoroughly, including the glass marble. As much as I cleaned it, the marble still remains a pale blue. Looks lovely when all the ink is drained to the bottom.

So... do the marbles have tint, or are they all clear and get stained by the inks? I have a hard time believing this is stain, it looks like blue glass.

Just curious.

Some are clear, some are tinted and some are a solid color.

Short story.... as I cleaned them all out at once and took everything apart, meaning the cap and its liner as well as the marble, put those in a small dish and took as I needed.

Guess what.... all bottle necks are not uniformly the same size. I think the marbles are colors or tints to know the size. Why do I think this? Because I filled one of the bottles and put the marble in and it went right to the bottom! I had to pour the ink back into the sailor bottle to get the marble out and then realized they were different. Lesson learned and I checked the rest to make sure BEFORE filling any more that the marbles were correct for the bottle.

The Sailor labels are a nice thick vinyl so removing and then placing on the Akkerman bottles was actually the easy part. It was really nice to see they mounted cleanly. One gave me a small sticking issue so I used a hair dryer on the label for a few seconds and it got sticky again and stuck like it was meant to be there.

PS ~ You can see the marbles are different colors in the picture. Those are not ink stained they are the color you see.

[Chrissy]

Did you buy all of those bottles as full bottles and use the ink? Or did you find them as empty bottles?

[migo984]

As the French say, à chacun son goût.

I've said before that I'd buy Sailor ink if it was sold in old milk bottles :-) For me it's the best ink available today by a long way.

Let's face it, very few ink bottles are ideal for all pen shapes & sizes. The Sailor bottles are fine for my use, in the way that I use them. Not to buy an ink because of the bottle..... well, that old adage about cutting off nose to spite your face comes to mind. But it would be a boring world if we all liked the same things ;-)

I only have original large 150ml version Akkerman bottles. I can't see myself emptying one of them any day soon! The bottle design (Gimborn langhalsfles) I think was originally used for ink by Waterman & others. Examples of older versions, with & without marbles, are still relatively easy to find in junk shops. Marble colours do vary, and the bottles are known for idiosyncratic sizing. I have a few stored in boxes somewhere.

[Jon Szanto]

[Jon Szanto]

Also of note is this FPN thread about the history of the bottle (design).

[Chrissy]

Also of note is this FPN thread about the history of the bottle (design).

Thanks Jon. That is an interesting read.

Now, all I need to do is find some of these bottles....