SITB! Why me?

[Ron Z]

Has anyone found success with a replacement seal or o-ring in a 2.8cm inside-diameter cap of a 50ml Montblanc ink bottle?

I use a piece of a foam plate. Trace the outside with an Xacto knife. That's a snug fit in the cap. It works.

[Lithium466]

It’s weird.

I haven’t had a mold problem in years, and only a couple times total. Completely out of the blue (no pun intended), last week I went to fill a pen with a nearly full bottle of Monteverdi Horizon Blue, bought last year. As soon as I opened the bottle it smelled rotten, like garbage. I put the cap back on and set it aside. I have no idea how it happened.

Same thing happened to my MV horizon blue bottle, they replaced it and the new one smelled like rotten eggs right away. I threw it away and that put me away from MV inks since then, probably my loss.

[calamus]

I have a Nemosine Singularity that I was using MB Toffee Brown cartridges in, and when my last cartridge ran out I replaced it with a converter (standard piston type, flushed out about a year ago and sitting empty in a sealed small ziplock bag ever since) that I filled with MB Toffee Brown from a bottle I've never had any trouble with. After a few days the Nemosine started having hard starts, and then it wouldn't write at all. I opened up the pen, and found the converter full of brown snot. I checked the bottle, and the ink in it looks fine. I even put some in a Platinum Preppy to see if it would write, and had no trouble with it. Must have been the converter, I figure, but I haven't been able to bring myself to fill any of my better pens with the Toffee Brown yet.

[Sailor Kenshin]

I have a Nemosine Singularity that I was using MB Toffee Brown cartridges in, and when my last cartridge ran out I replaced it with a converter (standard piston type, flushed out about a year ago and sitting empty in a sealed small ziplock bag ever since) that I filled with MB Toffee Brown from a bottle I've never had any trouble with. After a few days the Nemosine started having hard starts, and then it wouldn't write at all. I opened up the pen, and found the converter full of brown snot. I checked the bottle, and the ink in it looks fine. I even put some in a Platinum Preppy to see if it would write, and had no trouble with it. Must have been the converter, I figure, but I haven't been able to bring myself to fill any of my better pens with the Toffee Brown yet.

😱!!

[FredRydr]

If the bottle could be tested to eliminate it as an infection source, that’d be great. Until that happens, the risk of filling pens from the equivalent of a petri dish for ink just isn’t worth it IMHO. And Toffee Brown is one of my favorites.

[dneal]

I have a Nemosine Singularity that I was using MB Toffee Brown cartridges in, and when my last cartridge ran out I replaced it with a converter (standard piston type, flushed out about a year ago and sitting empty in a sealed small ziplock bag ever since) that I filled with MB Toffee Brown from a bottle I've never had any trouble with. After a few days the Nemosine started having hard starts, and then it wouldn't write at all. I opened up the pen, and found the converter full of brown snot. I checked the bottle, and the ink in it looks fine. I even put some in a Platinum Preppy to see if it would write, and had no trouble with it. Must have been the converter, I figure, but I haven't been able to bring myself to fill any of my better pens with the Toffee Brown yet.

Ugh. Mine just turns green around the threads, although there's nothing visible in the ink itself. I suppose there's copper oxidizing...

Toffee Verdigris - 1.jpeg

[calamus]

I have a Nemosine Singularity that I was using MB Toffee Brown cartridges in, and when my last cartridge ran out I replaced it with a converter (standard piston type, flushed out about a year ago and sitting empty in a sealed small ziplock bag ever since) that I filled with MB Toffee Brown from a bottle I've never had any trouble with. After a few days the Nemosine started having hard starts, and then it wouldn't write at all. I opened up the pen, and found the converter full of brown snot. I checked the bottle, and the ink in it looks fine. I even put some in a Platinum Preppy to see if it would write, and had no trouble with it. Must have been the converter, I figure, but I haven't been able to bring myself to fill any of my better pens with the Toffee Brown yet.

Ugh. Mine just turns green around the threads, although there's nothing visible in the ink itself. I suppose there's copper oxidizing...

Toffee Verdigris - 1.jpeg

Holy Cow!!

[calamus]

If the bottle could be tested to eliminate it as an infection source, that’d be great. Until that happens, the risk of filling pens from the equivalent of a petri dish for ink just isn’t worth it IMHO. And Toffee Brown is one of my favorites.

I'm not sure how to test it in order to be able to eliminate it. I examined it visually and by poking, and encountered nothing except normal-seeming liquid ink. I filled an empty Preppy cartridge with Toffee Brown from the bottle weeks and weeks ago, and it's still writing. I think. It was recently. I'd better check it. {short musical interlude} It works great. That Platinum inner cap really does keep a nib wet even when you don't use it for a while. So instant-starting and laying down a normal, even line. And that suggests that there's a good chance it's not the infection source. But if it was the converter, then I could have infected the whole bottle when I filled it. Yikes! Maybe it's slowly growing in there, not showing itself yet, but just waiting until it's infected every pen I own that I've inked with MB Toffee Brown. It's a terrifying thought.