April 2024

Fixing dried out ballpoint refills

Ballpoint pens do dry out if you don't use them for a couple of years. You will notice that ballpoint pens stop gliding nicely before they dry out completely. They can still be used to write something but the ink does not flow easily and you have to press the pen a bit onto the paper to get it to write. It is in this stage of the drying out process that you can revive the ballpoint refills easily. They will be like new. Note that this method can not fix ballpoint pens which are actually empty or ballpoint pens that have been droped on a hard surface such that the tiny ball on the tip has been damaged (has a dent). However most ball pens simply dry out and you don't have to throw them away. You can fix them.

You need a jar with a metal lid and that jar needs to be high enough for the ballpoint refill to stand upright in the jar.

Four ballpoint refills soaking in benzyl alcohol and iso-propanol

Put a small piece of a kitchen paper towel at the bottom of the jar. This is to prevent damage to the ballpoint pen refills when you put them into the jar. Glas is a very hard material and it can make a dent on the little steel ball even if you drop the refills into the jar from just a few inch above the jar.
The solvent in most of the ballpoint pen inks is a mixture of Benzly Alcohol and Phenoxyethanol. Benzly Alcohol is a slightly sweet smelling alcohol that evaporates a little slower than Propanol. Phenoxyethanol is a slightly oily and sticky liquid used as a preservative in cosmetics. We will use Benzly Alcohol to dissolve gummed-up ballpoint ink. The addition of Phenoxyethanol slows down the drying and gumming up of the ink.
Fill the jar about 1/2 inch high with a mixture of Benzly Alcohol and Isopropyl Alcohol.
Set the old ballpoint pen refills into the jar and close the lid.
Take them out after a few hours and try to write with them on some scratch paper. At first only diluted ink may flow but eventually the ink should flow easily and the ballpoint pen refills should write like new. Some of the more dried out refills may be stubborn and it can help to dip the tip of the refill for a moment into boiling water. This warms the ink up and loosens it. It helps also in case air got into the area behind the steel ball. Set the refill again into the Benzly Alcohol/Propanol mixture and try again a few hours later.
It may take a few days until the older refills are working again. I have brought totally tried out refills back to life. The steel balls were locked in place by dried ink and it took two month of soaking in Benzly Alcohol until they were fully restored.

If you have spare refills that you don't use immediatly then seal the tip with a bit of bee's wax. Bee's wax is more sticky than parafin wax and seals the pen well. It slows down the drying process and prevents air from getting in. That's important if you store the pen refill horizontally or even upside down. Take a tiny chunk of bees wax between your fingers until it is warm and soft. After that stick it onto the tip of the ballpoint pen refill. You need to take the wax off before you install the refill back into a pen.

Sealing spare ballpoint refills with bee's wax

Benzyl Alcohol is a common techincal solent available at any lab-supply store. If you have difficulties getting Benzyl Alcohol then you can also try just Isopropanol or Ethanol however Benzyl Alcohol works better. Note that it has to be an alcohol. Paint thinner will e.g not work. This procedure works for real ballpoint pen ink. Gel ballpoint refills contain a different kind of ink and this procedure will not work for them.

For a chemist alcohol is not a problem. It's a solution !

References

Ballpoint inks are proprietary and it's rarely disclosed what's inside but over the years some of that information has come out. It's also possible to simply test if a given solvent dissolves the ink by drawing a line on a short paper strip and then dipping one end of that paper in the solvent you would like to test. If the ink moves as the solvent climbs up to the line then it's a solvent that works.

https://www.wired.com/2016/09/whats-inside-blue-ballpoint-pen-ink/, What's Inside Blue Ballpoint Ink? Fatty Acids and Alcohol (local pdf copy)
https://patents.google.com/patent/EP1473342A1/en, patent: Oil base ballpoint ink composition and oily ballpoint pens
https://patents.google.com/patent/EP1595924A1/en, patent: Oil-based ballpoint ink composition, process for production thereof, and ballpoint refill
Solvents that I have tested and found to work:
- Benzyl Alcohol (best, use this if you can)
- Isopropanol
- Ethanol (aka Alcohol)
I have not come across any ballpoint inks that dissolve in mineral spirits or mineral oil.
Stay away from anything that contains more than 2% water. An alcohol water mixture may appear to dissolve ballpoint ink at first but the water part causes the ink to separate and gum-up partially (the ink is not one homogeneous substance).