Re-inking printer ribbons

Has anyone had any luck re-inking printer ribbons? I spent a few minutes looking at this Vic 1525 printer that I got the other day - turned out that the carriage was just gummed up and there was a blown fuse in the PSU section (probably related to the former problem). Of course the ribbon is completely dried out. I'd originally intended for the printer to be a static "Hey, that looks neat" item, but looking at it briefly, it's a good example of how to make a printer as cheaply as possible, so I'm wondering if there's a way of breathing life back into the ribbon so that it can print again in all it's noisy, glacially-slow glory :-) I don't care if it's not as black as an original ribbon would have been - it just might be nice if it was able to print something legible. cheers Jules