You know what is really annoying? A brand new ball point pen or one with plenty of good ink that quits working suddenly. It doesn’t matter if the pen cost me 994 of 9$. 99. It’s still annoying to me.

IMage by EMiN OZKAN

In the past, I used to hold the lip of the ball point to a flame, like a candle or lighter flame for about 10-20 seconds. It always did the job but also had it’s consequences. For instance, the plastic would start to melt as the heat transferred from the metal to the plastic casing. Sometimes it also got messy. It did the job a bit too well and would start leaking or weeping at the ball point.

Recently, I had the same problem with my Livescribe pen. I used heat and it didn’t work too well. Then I read somewhere to try window cleaner and it worked! A lot better than expected. After a month or so the thing quit again. I won’t mention what escaped my lips. So off I went again in search of that window cleaner. No where to be found.

I did find some hand sanitizer – always tons of that in a house full of kids – I figured that it is alcohol based too, and should work. It sure did. Beautifully!