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The Essential Fountain Pen Guide (Pt. 3): Converting a Kaweco ICE Sport into an Eyedropper

Converting a pen into an eyedropper, one of the probably oldest ways of how to get ink into a pen, is not half as scary as it may seem. In fact, it is even fairly easy and just takes a few pretty simple steps to get from the about 0.5 ml ink-capacity of the standard international ink cartridges or converters that the pens normally take to around 2ml ink capacity or more (depending on barrel size). And if you use a transparent pen for that, it looks even really cool, because you can see the ink sloshing around in the barrel.

The eyedropper is called like that, because in the beginning of fountain pens you simply poured ink into the pen’s barrel with an eyedropper. Up till now, the procedure of doing this has remained pretty much the same. All you need is the handful of supplies that I list below – and the following video-instruction.

As always, I hope the video is useful and that you enjoy using your newly converted eyedropper pen. Be sure to also check out the other parts of The Essential Fountain Pen Guide. Feel free to also check out my Lefty-Fountain Pen Guide.

What I talk about in this video:

How to convert a cartridge- or converter-filling fountain pen into an eyedropper pen. All you need is:

  • A fountain pen that has no ‘holes’ in it (such as the Lamy Safari with its ink “window” does have) and where there are no metal parts inside the pen that might get in contact with ink, since the ink might react with the metal – and you don’t want that. A very popular pen for doing this is the Kaweco Sport pens. I use a black Kaweco ICE Sport in this video to perform the conversion. If you are curious about the pen itself, I have done a review of it’s orange brother, and you can find this here.
  • Ink
  • Silicon grease
  • And eyedropper pipette or a syringe
  • Some paper towels

This is it. You are now all set. If you prefer to read a manual on how to do such an eyedropper conversion, I can recommend two tutorials that I have actually also used personally, namely the ones of Jetpens and Gouletpens.

Last but not least a little disclaimer:
do this completely at your own risk. I can not be held responsible for ink-ruined Armani suits to the like.

4 Comments

  1. Julie Paradise Julie Paradise

    Thank you for this fun tutorial!

    I converted some KaWeCos (and Ahabs, too) to eyedroppers a while ago and can report: No leaking, no blurping, no spilling. Just plain fun, watching all the ink sloshing around, wooo-oo-oosh, wee—eee–esh, great!

    (I do not carry my pens around so much, just to be fair, they only reside on laying my desk or in my purse for short.)

    • Scrively Scrively

      Thanks a lot for your comment, Julie! I can second your experience – I have also never experienced any ‘ink-burps’ or leaking. But just as you, my eyedropper-pens do exclusively rest on my desk. I have never carried them with me. For me, there is no need for taking them with me and ‘trying them the hard way’.

  2. Omer Omer

    is the silicoDoes the silicone Works for glue too? or is it possible to refill.

    • Scrively Scrively

      Sorry, I am not sure if I got your question right. Could you please re-phrase? You can NOT use glue instead of silicone grease, if that is your question. This will destroy your pen.

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