My fingers are stained, but I am happy.

Well I decided I was going to be brave and attempt to refill my ink cartridge to help save me some dough on buying a new one....and wiht times being tough who can blame me right? After reading the instrutction and actually following them I realized one thing...the instruction booklet left out a few key things....like the process of what to do first. Other than that all went fine, except I have stained black fingers now.

So to all of you out there who has never done this, or did before with disastrous results (that was me in the past) here is what you do.

1. CLean the printhead on the cartridge before you refill. This is to get the dry ink off of the printhead....like I said the instructions of the particualr product I used did not say to do this first. After I refilled it and I overfilled it-not a pretty sight- and let it bleed out a bit I put it into the printer and ink went everywhere and then it did not print black at all.

2. Make sure you cover your work area...the instructions did emphasize this very well and now I understand....personally I would suggest using gloves when refilling because you do need to blot the top of the carridge frequently.

3. After all is said and done and you place back into the printer....make sure you clean your print nozzles....I did not even know how to do this and thank God my computer is smarter than me.

So, this was my first successful refilling of the black cartridge and I may attempt to do the color cartridge as well when it runs low. I know the cartridges I use for my printer run around 35-40 dollars for the black and color cartridge....so after all the painstaking complaints I reminded myself I am saving a big amount of bank on this do-it-yourself project.

SO anyone out there who has refilled their cartridges give your horror stories, your success stories, or best advice.

Thanks in advance.