Filling Vials

Here is a pictorial of the process used to fill vials for the NNAPA perfume course evaluation kits. The first time I did this, there were twice the number of evaluation materials, somewhere in the neighborhood of 104 different essences. This time it was pared down to the most useful for a beginning perfumer, and some rare little gems that for reasons of cost a beginner might not have the opportunity to study right away. Like that gorgeous tuberose . . . this kit contains 57 essences from 12 categories; floral, rose floral, orange floral, citrus, woods, animalic, mint, herbal, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It took about 10 days of 4 to 6 hour sessions to finish up that earlier vial filling escapade -- so far, it's taken only two days -- two-and-a-half days, really -- to fill this batch, in part because I followed Marge Clark's advice on how to fill a lot'a vials at once without getting a blister on thethumb and getting through it in a timely manner. Drill a bunch of little holes into a piece of wood, make sure they're just a titch bigger than the vials and deep enough that about 3/4ths of the vial is in wood, fill them up, set the closures on top and use another piece of wood (or in my case, the bottom of a bottle) to push the closures into the vials. I drilled holes into my unfinished perfumer's organ, which I was thinking of tossing but now have reconsidered and may turn it into a shelf and use for when students come to the studio. And then there is the next session of vial filling that needs consideration . . . anyway, this time around the filling went off without a hitch (thanks Marge!) and it's fairly well on its way to being done. Enjoy the process.