Do It Yourself (DIY) Mixing Fountain Pen Inks

After ruling out blueberry juice fountain pen ink (unless we’re in dire conditions), I decided to try easier available options.

I thought it would be fun to experiment with ink jet printer refills to see what I could get for fountain pens.

I wasn’t sure if these experiments would damage the fountain pen, given some of the misgivings of others about this idea online. But they did not backup their concerns with data. I wanted data. And, I did not want to ruin my TWSBI Eco fountain pen $31, which has been the best fountain pen I have ever tried (for me). So I thought that with a few non-recurring costs for a couple of cheap pens, I could test this with minimal risk to my nicer fountain pens. So I bought a few "test" pens to try this experiment with.

Experiments

I recorded my experiments. I even used a fountain pen friendly paper scratch pad from Rhodia to ensure the bleed, if any, was not from the paper but from the ink.

I ordered Aomya Refill Ink Kit for $9.99 USD.

It came with four 100 ml bottles of black, cyan, magenta and yellow. That is 40 ml of ink per $1. This is a bit cheaper than typical fountain pen ink, so I thought it worth trying in this experiment.

I looked on line, but could find no ready description of mixing such inks to get the color combination I wanted, so I set up an experiment.

Experiments

Dark Blue Experiment: 8 ml of magenta and 8 ml of cyan produced a bottle full of this slightly purple blue ink. The result on the image below was from mixing half and half in the pen’s ink converter with a syringe for each color (that came with the kit of refill ink!).
Lighter Blue Experiment : 25% magenta and 75% cyan gave a lighter blue than the 1st experiment.
Red Experiment: 50% yellow and 50% magenta mixed in the pen converter provided a red I liked so much I made an entire little bottle of red after that.
I added my Noodlers blue ink just so you could compare. I have found that the TWSBI fine nib is really nice. I had to order a Kaweco extra fine nib to compete with it.
In-Between Blue Experiment: Looking for something darker than step two, but not as purple looking as step 1. By then I had run out of pens. I could have washed out the ink and dabbed each pen dry, but I didn’t feel like that so I just used some bamboo skewers I had for a barbecue that had a tip that had been ground down to resemble a pencil tip shape.
Green Experiments. 1st I tried 50%/50% yellow and cyan, but seeing it was lighter than desired, I added 0.5 ml of magenta to darken it somewhat. So with 2 ml of cyan, 2 ml of yellow and 0.5 ml of magenta, I got a usable green.
Optimal Blue Experiment: To get more Navy Blue without any purple tinge, I did an experiment with 5.25 ml of magenta and 9.75 ml of cyan to get a blue that is close enough to Navy Blue for me to use this for working pen purposes.

Experimental Data

Here are the results of my tests in a photo so you too can see what happened.

Figure 1. My Results

In smudge tests within 30 seconds of writing nothing smudged at all. That surprised me since sometimes fountain pen inks do not dry quite so quickly.

Conclusions

The syringes the kit included worked very well for keeping the ink off my skin and clothing. They also rinsed out easily when I was done.

My data indicates that these DIY ink mixtures using commercially available dye inks that are intended for other purposes works fine for my own requirements writing with fountain pens.

Unexpected test results included writing with bamboo meat skewers that are designed to be used for BBQ and thrown away.

NOTE: Although bamboo skewers can "work" in a pinch when no other pens are available, I don’t recommend bamboo skewers for normal writing instruments. You have to dip the tip into the ink regularly to continue to write. It is like a trip back in time.

Given I mostly use Navy blue fountain pen ink, I only tested red and green ink on a whim because I had the ingredients to make them.

With the data indicating this ink is smooth flowing and fast drying, I will use it for some applications.

Next Steps

Next, I intend to begin using my 35% magenta and 65% cyan mixture. So I will order 500 ml of cyan and 500 ml of magenta giving me 675 ml (500 ml of cyan all used, 175 ml of magenta used) of fountain pen ink for an ongoing cost of 20 ml of ink per dollar. This is better than 7 ml per bottle for 'normal' fountain pen ink I get from Noodlers and the 1.5 ml per dollar I would get from Montblanc blue ink. I am not disparaging any ink suppliers. I appreciate their products and still buy them. I also wanted to know about cheaper alternatives for projects that use up lots of ink.

Frankly, I still like some of the color options of fountain pen inks even if they do cost more.

This was an interesting experiment. I hope you can use the data to make your own choices.

Experiment Tools Used

Empty small bottles for new ink mixtures. At $13, these were great.
A $14 pen from Jinhao called chainmail
A $9 pen from Jinhao called Arrow Yellow. Do NOT buy this pen, by the way. The printed-on decoration wore off during my experiment. It was ugly in less than an hour. Wow! I guess that is what you get for $9.
A $9 pen from Jinhao called Arrow Steel
An unintended tool was a bag of BBQ bamboo skewers I had on-hand that I ended up using as a "pen" when my experimental mixtures exceeded the number of pens I was willing to test this DIY ink with. I used a skewer for green and blue inks.

Caution

I realized midway through the tests that if I knocked over any of these bottles of ink that my carpet would be ruined.

Updated on 09 Aug 2019