Burn Notice: the Pilot Frixion ball pen
May 22, 2011 § 18 Comments
Pilot Frixion ball - the ink is meant to be erasable by friction
So here’s one of those writing supplies that drive me nuts.
It’s a Pilot Frixion (ball-)pen. It’s supposed to be erasable with the help of that little silicon point. And it actually is. Now everything would be dandy if that ink wouldn’t be erasable by any kind of heat just as well:
Faster than friction erasing
By the way, please use your lighter beneath the sheet of paper instead above or even better don’t do it that way at all, I just did it that way to get a nicer photo ;).
It’s enough if you just leave your piece of paper upon your heating or use your hairdryer to make the ink disappear.
So whatever you do with them never ever use them for signing important documents.
Yet in case you already wrote something with it and the ink disappeared magically, there’s a simple resolution to it: put the piece of paper into your refrigerator for a couple of minutes. The ink will reappear. It will be more faded in color, yet still readable.
I tried to emulate the refrigerator with an ice cube for the sake of a nice photo again, but it didn’t work just as good.
Don't use ice, just put it into the refrigerator for a couple of minutes 😉
: silviasblog.com : 
Thanks for the post. I recently bought this pen and have written about 20 key pages of the end of my current novel. I tried the hair dryer trick you suggested, and in less than 30 seconds, the ink disappeared entirely. I last wanted an erasable pen when I was 10, so it never even occurred to me. I really liked the pen too, but it’s definitely out of rotation…
That was a neat job. My essay was done accurately, precisely and exactly to the point.
essay
Hi, I want to know whether the ink vanishes on its own after a while ? I know about the heat thing,but other than that, will the ink vanish or fade away on its own? Please
I don’t think it will vanish on its own, at least the two years old samples I have here haven’t vanished yet. It’s just that I wouldn’t trust an ink like this one. At least not for any kind of important document.
Hello. It’s 2014 that means that maybe you have the samples of paper written with the ink and is now 3 years old. Could you tell me if the writting is still intact ?
Thank you so much!!
Hello, sorry for the late reply, but yes, the writing is still intact. (I also took good care to keep it away from any heat sources 😉 )
It will fade if you leave in a hot car or under a hot lamp. So if you are a college student who owns a car and tend to leave your books and papers in there, be aware, your homework would disappear! Fortunately, I didn’t use it to do homework; I used it as grammar checking pen. For important work, just used a regular pen. I haven’t seen a great erasable pen yet.
After seeing this post i recently bought this pen now and really love the way we can erase ink using this
Ha! I had no idea! I really love the Frixion ball pens and write a lot with them…
hi, i have a question not related to this post.
where do you buy your inks? snapdeal seem to quote crazy prices…
Well, my answer won’t be of great help, as I buy my inks at my local paper shop and they really aren’t expensive. Especially if you buy the ink bottles instead of the cartridges. But then I guess pens with ink aren’t that common in each country. May I ask where you are from?
Egads. I wrote a bunch of journal pages with this pen (loving the flow and feel of it, especially on a moleskine). Just crossing my fingers that storing it over the years will keep the ink intact.
Love this pen, I am just so worried that all of my work will disappear 😦
and I know they say that it won’t if I keep it away from heat, but I am still very cautious.
If you accidentally make the ink invisible by heat, just put the paper in the freezer for a while and it will reappear. (Anything that you have erased intentionally will reappear, too, but it is better than losing your work…
will the ink disappear, say if I have notebooks where I have used the pen, and they go into the cargo are of a plane, when I unpack will the pages be empty?!
I accidentally erased a student’s essay by leaving it in my hot car in the summer heat one time. Couldn’t figure out how he’d handed in a blank page (you could see faint scratch marks, and his name was identifiable this way), but this explains it. Oops!
If i write exam paper with the friction pen it will last for 3 to 4 month reply
Yes the ink DOES disappear on it’s own!! Even in an air conditioned office, it will disappear! A clerk used one on some important documents and guess what, the client called and said that the page was BLANK! He picked it up from our office and drove it straight to his and filed the document. Went back into the file a month later and POOF it was blank!