How To Make Your Own Fountain Pen Flush

Posted on July 17, 2014 Updated on July 29, 2014

Hello and happy Thursday to everyone!  This is going to be a real short blog post to show you how to make your own fountain pen flush for pennies on the dollar when compared to the commercial stuff.

Here are the things you are going to need:

1 Gallon (128 ounces) or 4,000 milliliters of distilled water

     1/2 Gallon (64 ounces) or 2,000 milliliters of unscented ammonia (or gallon size if they have it)

     1 Measuring cup

     Another container to hold excess distilled water

     Some math skills

     5 minutes of your time

Begin by removing 20 ounces or 625 milliliters of the distilled water from you gallon or 4 liters.  This will leave you with 108 ounces or 3,375 milliliters of distilled water.  You can either discard this or save if for the next batch of pen flush or other household uses, which is what I do.

To your one gallon container that now contains only 108 ounces of distilled water, add 12 ounces of the unscented ammonia.  You can get ammonia at almost every grocery store.  What you end up with is a solution that totals 120 ounces, 12 of which, or 10% are ammonia.  For the metric equivalent you would add 375 milliliters of ammonia to your 3,375 milliliter container of distilled water to bring the total volume to 3,750 milliliters, 375 of which, or 10% are ammonia.

No matter how many ounces or milliliters you begin with, what you want to end up with is a mixture of 10% ammonia and 90% distilled water.  Remember that it’s important to use the unscented version without any other additives in it like lemon or whatever.

Whether you are doing the Imperial or Metric version of this potion, add three to five drops of blue colored Dawn dishwashing liquid to your batch to increase its lubricity.  Shake well.

Enjoy your pennies on the dollar pen flush!

~ Glenn Atkins