Ball-Point Pens

Typical mug on a desk, dozens of pens which often enough don't work.

Here they are laid out, over three dozen of them.

I haven't shown you the piece of paper with scribbles where we try to find a pen that works. When we find it, we use it, but replace all the non-working pens into the mug. You never know, some of them might work next time ...

I sorted the pens into categories. I was particularly interested in re-using the small springs from the spring-loaded pens.

I extracted the thin plastic ink-tubes and loaded them into a jam-jar part-filled with gasoline, shook it, and left it for a week.

The gasoline will loosen the ink.

A thin piece of (plastic-coated) wire serves as an interior cleaner.

Here you can see it is partway down a tube, dislodging the remainder of the ink from the far end.

Some ink/gasoline adheres to the wire. You can rub this off under a hot tap.

I hold each tube for a second or two under a hot tap to flush out any loose liquid.

My goal in cleaning out ink is to avoid huge splodges of goop in what follows.

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