Finding The Tipping Point - Vexingly Various Viscosities And Why It Sprays But It Never Pours

As a frequent decanter, I must say that I can't be doing with washing funnels. I own four metal ones and a handful of plastic funnels of varying dimensions, which I try not to use, precisely because they are only suitable for one-time use - or multiple uses involving the same scent. I do in fact have a bag of plastic funnels dedicated to different scents, but rarely find a need to redeploy them. Oh, I have just spotted in the photo the one for Michel Comté's Shared Water! That's ironic, given that the whole point of the funnel is to prevent that very phenomenon...

So for the most part, I decant using metal funnels and wash them in the kitchen sink. That is one of the few perks of my going away as often as I do on work trips, according to Mr Bonkers. When he does the dishes he doesn't catch his hand on an assortment of metal objects lurking like submarines at the bottom of the washing up bowl, along with the obligatory teaspoon or two. For it is an infallible law of nature that there is always at least one teaspoon in the dirty water when you go to empty the bowl...

Yes, I wash and soak and sometimes re-wash and re-soak the funnels - I squirt neat Fairy Liquid in and swoosh it around with my finger, before putting the funnel back in to soak. Overnight, often. Or whole days if the coast is clear. Yet certain scents resist the most determined detergents and retain a trace of the decanted fragrance for a long time afterwards.

Given the palaver involved in funnel care, it is hardly surprising that when I set about consolidating my various bits and bobs of samples of the same scent the other day, I decided to go commando and just tip from receptacle A to receptacle B wherever possible. I was mostly trying to transfer 1ml and 2ml glass vial samples - together with the remnants of minis and small splash bottle decants - into 3ml and 5ml atomisers, with a view to taking some of these scents on my next trip.

Upending a 1ml sample vial and tipping it into the wider mouth of an atomiser is usually straightforward, assuming you have a half-steady hand. The procedure becomes very tricky, however, if you are emptying one of those glass vials with a lip, like the ones you get from Les Senteurs. Tip the sample upside down till you are blue in the face, tap it against the side of the receiving atomiser as hard as you like, but not a drop will come out. Or not until about 10 minutes of concerted shaking and tapping have elapsed will the vial grudgingly yield its contents.

This all seems counter-intuitive though, because at the end of the day, it is still A HOLE, and you would think the laws of gravity would apply. Well, a "lay decanter" like me would think that, anyway. I have the same problem with two of my funnels, which have a markedly smaller diameter of the funnelly bit. You spray a goodly squirt of your chosen perfume and wait for a moment, but the darn liquid won't go down! Again, I repeat - a hole is a hole - or should be. But there again, maybe not. It may be all about the meniscus. Menisci moving in mysterious ways.

So aperture is one thing, but even when I was tipping samples from and to identical vials, I noticed marked differences in the pourability of some scents. I should have been paying more attention at the time, but I recall that Jo Malone White Jasmine & Mint was a very compliant pourer, while Tom Ford Neroli Portofino was like recalcitrant magma! Which I wouldn't have expected from what I perceive as a light, "get up and go" scent. I would have placed scents like Ormonde Jayne Tolu or Patou Joy or Micallef Hiver at the magma end of the bell curve - you know, plush and overtly perfumey scents with the sluggish gait of motor oil.

I tried to google "perfume viscosity" and its relationship to decanting and pouring, and came up with surprisingly few citations of note. Though I did find this nugget on the "pour point":

"Pour point: The temperature at which a viscous liquid becomes pourable is called the pour point."

Temperature is also involved? Perhaps it is standard though across all perfume, but actual motor oil may have a different pour point, say. Or maple syrup, for argument's sake. Or sake, for that matter... : - )

The nugget continues:

"If diluents are present in the supplied viscous liquid then the pour point is reduced."

As in the temperature?? Does Jo Malone contain diluents? I am sure those nice people at Estée Lauder wouldn't thank me for speculating on the matter. For that way lies orange squash...

"Pour points are generally not very accurate as they vary with every consignment noticeable in resinoids."

I don't doubt it! So could my perfume collection be construed as "a consignment noticeable in resinoids", I wonder? Very likely - for I fancy a resinoid has got to be just some gunkier version of oil, and my slowest pourers must surely have a bit of those in them?

Still, I can't help thinking that this pour point and temperature lark may be a red herring. I would like to know what else affects pourability, and is it in any way a marker of quality, or not? You know, the double cream principle...

Has anyone else experienced problems relating to narrow apertures and/or variable viscosities? (There I go again, uncharacteristically asking a question!) And was it with the same style of vial? And can you recall which scents poured with glacial torpor? Tip me the wink about what goes on in your sink... ; - )


Photo of woman pouring perfume from art-prints-on-demand.com, photo of Les Senteurs sample from shop.lessenteurs.com, photo of frog pouring perfume from bibliodyssey.blogspot.com, other photos my own

Widow's Oil Worries And Will I Wear The Wearings Challenge?

Ever since reading this disturbing post by Kevin of Now Smell This here, in which he sets out a highly credible method for calculating the projected lifespan of one’s perfume collection, I have been intermittently haunted by the all too real prospect of my sloshing fragrance lake outliving me by a factor of...oh, too many to contemplate.

A current nightly habit has only served to confirm me in my pessimistic outlook. Yes, from the end of July I have taken to spritzing on Agent Provocateur edp from my 5ml miniature. This was originally prompted by a mild concern about the age and condition of the scent – the animalic notes have become more pronounced of late – but it soon developed into a regular bedtime ritual. You should know that this mini was by no means full when I started wearing it to bed, and although its opaque design precludes inspection of the fill level, the light splishing sound I hear when I shake it suggests it isn’t approaching empty either. Though I have been wearing it every night (pretty much) since July 27th. That’s about 95 days, give or take! To use…what…3ml, maybe? Admittedly I am only squirting it on my neck area and not on my wrists, which must easily be halving my rate of consumption, but still...50 days at full spray rate equivalence remains a sobering statistic.

Given the gourd/amphora-like shape of the AP mini, I am worryingly reminded of the Biblical prosperity parable about the widow whose tiny remaining quantity of oil miraculously stretched to filling lots of other jars, thanks to the prophet Elisha's timely intervention. She was then able to sell the surplus oil and pay off her late husband’s debts. (For anyone for whom the tale is a fuzzy Sunday School memory, read it again here.)

My dismay is compounded by the fact that in my case I didn’t believe I only had a teeny bit of perfume in the first place. I knew I was awash with the stuff – and yet it still seems to grow exponentially, as fast as I try to consume it...And the other difference between me and the widow is that I would much rather the perfume wouldn't mushroom in this manner, on the basis that freshly conjured oil is an easier commodity to offload than perfume that has been around the block a bit...

To get a proper handle on this consumption rate issue, I decided to devise my own measuring method. You see, Kevin actually took a number of empty perfume bottles, refilled them with water and sprayed them till they were empty again. (I am not sure I would have the stamina for that.) Then he divided the total number of sprays in the bottle by the number he favours on a daily basis for that style of scent, to come up with an estimate of how long his various bottles will last. That is probably a more sophisticated method than I require, as I spray all perfumes the same way, unless they are very weak, in which case I might reapply them in the course of the day. That might explain the distinction between Kevin’s 10 spray-ers and his 5 spray-ers (ie the 5 spray-ers sprayed twice), although there is no 6 to go with his 3 spray-er category, which would have equated to a top up application.

So anyway, I thought I would take a 1ml vial (standard Perfume Court issue) and wear that and only that for as long as it takes to drain it. Armed with the this key fact of the "number of days to empty" (not unlike the fuel gauge on Mr Bonkers' Ford Focus, come to think of it), it just remains to tot up how many ml I own across the 60+ full bottles, dozens of decants and hundreds of samples, and multiply one figure by t’other.

All very well and good in theory...However, problems began to surface as I surveyed my collection of samples to find the perfect 1ml candidate. Clearly I want to use up a 1ml vial I already own – decanting something specially into a clean vial seems wasteful, even if there might be a particular scent I feel I could wear for days on end that is not currently in a 1ml format.

It is also important that the 1ml vial is not my only example of that scent, otherwise I won’t have any left for reference once the experiment is over. And it shouldn’t be one which I had earmarked to give away, which knocks out several more.

And the fill level must be exactly 1ml, and not something that might be 0.9ml or 0.8ml, like so many vials in my sample collection. That’s the tricky thing, because the vast majority of samples I own I have tried once or twice already. Then there are the manufacturer’s samples and others gathered in swaps that are more than 1ml but not a precise figure either - 1.5ml or 1.2ml, 2ml even - again mostly partly used. Then there were some other 1ml vials which might have been contenders, were it not for the Luckyscent or Posh Peasant label obscuring the fill level. Of the few where I decided to rip the label off, none was an exact 1ml measure either.

And finally, assuming all other criteria are met, the crunch question is whether I am prepared to wear this particular scent day in, day out, for as long as it takes to use it up?

Extraordinarily, out of hundreds of samples, only Safran Troublant and Perfect Veil were left standing at the end of the screening process. Oh dear - I am going out tonight to dinner with friends and don’t think my companions would appreciate spicy sillage, but at the same time I would like to make a bit of a statement with my chosen perfume. And Perfect Veil is, well…too veil-like really.

Right then, in order to conduct this test, it is clear to me that I will have to pick a week where I am not going out socially. Now believe me when I say that I am no gadabout, no glad rag-clad girl about town, but on balance I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for this experiment to happen any time soon...


Photo of widow from biblestories4kids.com, photo of Agent Provocateur from cheap-perfume.co.uk, photo of a bottomless well from apforums.net, photo of samples my own.