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Keeping non-fountain pens inked up?

AimlessWanderer

Remember to forget me!
Managing fountain pens is easy. Three pens are kept inked at any time here. One has a blue, green or purple cartridge, one has a red or brown cartridge, and the third is filled from a bottle. The rest are flushed clean, and put away empty.

With rollerballs and ballpoints, i have a habit of keeping inserts in all of them, at all times. However, as I have a fair few of these, and tend to reach for a fountain pen most of the time at home, the inserts offer dry out before they are emptied, which feels quite wasteful.

Does anyone else find this happening? Do you keep lesser used pens empty, or replace the dried out inserts anyway, knowing the fate of the next refill is likely to be a similar story?
 

Rhody

I'm a Lumberjack.
I find that Parker and gel refills and the g2 refills last a very long time in my pens. So never had an issue. And they are more affordable so I don’t fuss. Fisher space refills which I also use in Parker style pens last forever. My big issue mentioned in another thread was my favorite refills the lamy rollerball and ballpoint tend to dry out. Especially vexing when I stocked up on the very expensive refills.
 
I use one pen at a time and have one on stand-by. Two or three refills later, I pick up the stand-by one and use it up. Then the cycle begins again. I go through quite a few refills in a year so I never get bored. All other pens stay empty and patiently awaiting their turn.
 

AimlessWanderer

Remember to forget me!
I find that Parker and gel refills and the g2 refills last a very long time in my pens. So never had an issue. And they are more affordable so I don’t fuss. Fisher space refills which I also use in Parker style pens last forever. My big issue mentioned in another thread was my favorite refills the lamy rollerball and ballpoint tend to dry out. Especially vexing when I stocked up on the very expensive refills.

I've been thinking of using pressurised cartridges in the lesser used pens (either Fisher or Scmidt P950M), which in theory at least, should keep them running longer, from what I have read.

I've also considering doing the same colour coordination that I do with the fountain pens. Blue and black bodies, get blue and black inserts, and silver bodied get red or similar.

Yeah, rollerball pens definitely dry out quick. I only have one, but either need to make it a frequent use pen, or let it go. Replacing a dried up refill with a fresh one would be pointless if I'm not going to use it often, and as you say stocking up on them is futile.
 

AimlessWanderer

Remember to forget me!
I use one pen at a time and have one on stand-by. Two or three refills later, I pick up the stand-by one and use it up. Then the cycle begins again. I go through quite a few refills in a year so I never get bored. All other pens stay empty and patiently awaiting their turn.

Makes sense. At the moment, all twelve of my ballpoints are inked up, plus the one rollerball. Between them all, there's eight that take G2 inserts, two take D1, and the other three take an F1, a Euro, and a Fisher without the adapter.

Several are fairly new, so I think i might need to see which become favourites, before deciding what "system" to adopt.
 

tankerjohn

A little poofier than I prefer
I have refills loaded in all of my Retro 51s and have never had a problem with them drying out. I didn't even think of it. Guess I should pay attention to it for the future. I just kind of grab the Retros to jot notes or throw in my pocket for an outing or whatever. They don't get the TLC my fountain pens do.
 
Even after giving away all my cheaper ballpoints, I have many left, most of them either Parker Jotters or Fisher Space Pens, as well as some miscellaneous ones that are souvenirs of this or that. Most of them were bought before I first tried a fountain pen some ten or eleven years ago. Also quite a few gel pens, which were an intermediate step to fountain pens. I do have refills in all of them, as well as quite a few packaged refills in my spares box. Since I use them comparatively rarely, I do occasionally find that one has dried out to the point where a bit of furious scribbling won't get it started again. Yes, it is wasteful in principle, but I find that most of them do last for years without being used.
 

AimlessWanderer

Remember to forget me!
Cheers guys. Nice to know I'm not the only one leaving them ready for use. :) It seems appropriate to leave fountain pens clean and empty when they're not currently in use, but seems more appropriate to leave ballpoints etc, armed and ready to go.

I think the rollerball will be most prone to conking out before it's empty. As Rhody discovered, it's probably not worth stashing spares in the drawer either. They're not guaranteeed to still function when I need them. It doesn't seem to offer any significant improvement over ballpoints, specifically ones with a Quinkflow insert, and if anything, it feels a little less refined. Less smooth. Maybe it's just a poor quality refill. I might be better trying it again with a branded insert, before deciding whether or not it's actually worth keeping a rollerball in the arsenal at all.

I might get myself a few pressurised cartridges too, which seem to claim an unlimited shelf life. Then as I end up using up the refills in the favourites (whichever they happen to be), pilfer the current insert from a lesser used pen (if it still works), and replace that one with a pressurised refill. That way, all the non-pressurised ones will get used up in the most frequently used G2 pen/s. and the sentimental ones will gradually get upgraded to ones which will function indefinitely, albeit with a less bold line than the ones with the hybrid Quinkflow, or whatever. It makes sense to have coloured (red etc) inserts that are pressurised too, as they'll be used even less often than the black and blue ones.

I think it's mainly the G2 pens that I think this will all happen with, in terms of refills drying out and going to waste. The compact pocket pens (Zebra Telescopic, Zebra Expamdz, and Fisher Stowaway, all have smaller capacity inserts anyway, and so are actually more likely to be used in full. They're also the ones that might end up getting the most use, as they're the ones I'm more likely to leave the house with, while I am more likely to reach for a fountain pen at home. At home, it's mainly freezer labels, addressing envelopes and parcels, and filling out official forms, that tend to get me reaching for a non-fountain pen. Although I do reach for one occasionally, just for the heck of it.
 
Ink is for documents only as far as my habits go. The majority of the time I write with pencils. But if I need ink, I like a heavy knurled-grip tool accommodating ISO-standard refills. As for the ink itself, water- or gel-based*. I can confirm that some refills dry out quickly (e.g. Online), but others don't seem to suffer from the issue (Schneider, Schmidt, Senator).

*in any case, document-proof (ISO 12757-2, ISO-14145). Typically the refills carry the designation "DOC"
 
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