Wednesday, January 24, 2007

reusable highlighter

Some time ago, I was lamenting the number of highlighters I tend to kill throughout a semester in some of these classes that require a lot of reading. It seems such a waste to have to throw away the whole pen when it's drained.

Well, now I've discovered an alternative and am trying it out. Noodler's Ink makes a line of highlighter inks for fountain pens. I'm using their fluorescent yellow Firefly Ink (which looks yellow on the page but an unearthly green in the jar.) I've loaded it into a pen normally used for Italic-style calligraphy which has a nice, broad nib.

So far, it's working pretty well. The pen's not really designed to flow this much ink at once, so I'm still playing with the technique. I like the fact that I have more control over where the highlighting goes and can refill the pen when it's empty, but on the other hand the pen's a little long for the pen pockets in the backpack. I'll probably post an update once I've had more time to use it.

Update: follow-up post here.

3 comments:

Philosopher Dog said...

Hi, Could you give a bit more detail about this idea. I'm trying to move to a reusable highlighter and this seems like a great idea. Could you say what pen you are using and whether this has worked out for you in the long run? Thanx

False Data said...

The pen is a Bic Brite Liner, and it's been working out great so far--I'm still refilling the same highlighter.

False Data said...

By the way, just to be clear, the italic nib in a fountain pen was more trouble than it was worth. A broad metal nib just doesn't follow the curves of the pages in a book, for instance. I wound up refilling a commercial highlighter instead. If you follow the links marked "follow-up post", you can find out more on the pen and the refilling process.