Baystate Blue - horrible!

[kiavonne]

What scribbler77 said... all of it. Nathan gets involved with the fp communities far more than any other manufacturer. It's his life, really. I don't know of any other manufacturer that would respond to an email campaign such as our own recently where he developed La Reine Mauve taking into consideration all our suggestions and wants for a new bulletproof ink - and within just a few months, not years. I even spoke with him at length on the phone. He was hand bottling an order of ink as we spoke. That's pretty cool and great involvement with FPN. He knows that folks like us are what keep his business going, and he's not afraid of controversy. A look at several of his ink labels will reveal this little tidbit. He speaks his mind, and he makes a great line of inks.

 

As for Baystate Blue, I love the color. I really enjoy the ink. And, like many, I have a pen dedicated to BSB. It's too good an ink not to use it. The converter of my pen is stained after prolonged contact with BSB, but I can get converters just about anywhere. The nib of the pen is doing just fine, and the ink flow starts immediately, no matter how long it sits in between uses. The pen also begged for BSB. It has big, bold BSB colored stripes.

[WhosYerBob]

I wish I'd never used it on three of the four pens it destroyed for me. They weren't valuable, but I liked them and was angry that the ink cracked the plastic that the nib was embedded in, rendering them useless.

 

Beware!

[WhosYerBob]

Utopia is Vienna right now...

Vienna, Austria?

[Possum Hill]

I wish I'd never used it on three of the four pens it destroyed for me. They weren't valuable, but I liked them and was angry that the ink cracked the plastic that the nib was embedded in, rendering them useless.

 

Beware!

What brand and model were those pens?

[WhosYerBob]

I wish I'd never used it on three of the four pens it destroyed for me. They weren't valuable, but I liked them and was angry that the ink cracked the plastic that the nib was embedded in, rendering them useless.

 

Beware!

What brand and model were those pens?

All four of them were Sheaffer NoNonsense italic pens, which is what I was using at work; 3 were Old Timers - the ones with the gold-plated nibs (custom ground for me into EF italics) - and the 4th was a stainless steel nib. They all cracked in roughly the same place, in the plastic at the base of the nib.

 

The nib would be fine for approximately three days and then I would notice BSB on my fingers where there hadn't been any a few moments before. And if I left it alone, the crack would widen over a period of several hours and the ink would pool out into a puddle. Not cool.

 

Absolutely LOVE the color, but not what it did to the pens.

 

I should add that I remain a devoted Noodler's customer, just not for that specific ink. I still use Antietam (my favorite red), Golden Brown, Kiowa Pecan and Gruene Cactus - all without any issues whatsoever.

Edited December 25, 2008 by WhosYerBob

[Pen Nut]

Still gives me concern that people who purchase high end pens without knowledge of inks may just stumble across BSB and, as said earlier in this thread, the bottle contains no warnings of possible problems.

[Pippin60]

I use it only in my Lamy Al-star with a 1.1mm nib. I would have to say I use it because I love the saturated blue color. I should say that I've used it in this one pen for a least a year now with out any problems.

 

 

edited-oops a year seems sometimes like a lifetime......

Edited December 25, 2008 by Pippin60

[Bill Smith]

As I have posted in another BSB thread somewhere on FPN, this ink has been scapegoated from melting Lamy Safari nib feeds, the American real estate crash , the worldwide financial meltdown to the resurrection of Britney Spears singing career.

 

This ink works best in a cheaper pen with a durable plastic resin construction with a F to XF dry writing nib and and it's great. I tried in broad nibbed pens, write one line did not like the results, emptied the ink out of the pen and flushed it and moved on.

 

I am defending BSB because 1) I really love this shade of blue and 2) it's an old school ink from the 1940s created with modern ingredients and manufacturing practices. On the PH scale it's one or two off neutral which is nothing like Parker 51 and Superchrome ink which is somewhere near 16 PH wise.

Edited December 25, 2008 by Bill Smith

[I am not a number]

I should say that I've used it in this one pen for a few years now with out any problems.

I thought it was not quite a year since it was launched...

[Lloyd]

I should say that I've used it in this one pen for a few years now with out any problems.

I thought it was not quite a year since it was launched...

Yup.

[pen2paper]

my aching eyeballs...read all 10 pages of original thread.. [bless you A.F.]

the bottle of ink always within my reach is Luxury Blue..(which is why I cared enough to keep reading)..

btw-glad to see on Nathans website it's still available:)

I've yet to open my Eternal Fox Red.. but after this thread think my red Lamy Safari will become 'my eternal fox red pen'..

..sure solves the obvious issue..

 

Right from my fp collecting get-go advanced collectors advised not to use super-saturated inks in demonstrators or light colored pens..

think that giving consideration to ink color, ink formula type, and pen material, [searching fpn ink reviews] before inking an antique/vintage, light colored, or very expensive pen is prudent.

A slight alteration to this formula's label might be practical, considering new users may/did not understand the ph info..but do understand the glass/lawyer/3page example.

 

It did cross my mind whether the yellow ABS, or that run of it, might have been at least part of the resulting issue, besides the cited alternative/vintage type-ink formula..

In my 'other' collectible focus, some plastic items, made in the same mold, but different colors do deteriorate at different rates... imhe

Also, thought the quick response by Swisher was esp commendable..

Edited December 26, 2008 by pen2paper

[gigipurple]

And above all - it stinks - chemically - like an old garbage can.

 

 

Anna, just knowing that it has a strong and bad smell is enough deterrent to keep me from trying this ink. After reading the comments it seems that this doesn't bother most users. Obviously, each of us value different qualities. For me, the presence of a strong or bad smell in the ink would be enough to not like it, without even considering any other problems. Gigi

[pen2paper]

..

 

 

Edited December 31, 2008 by pen2paper

[wiglaf]

I too love the color, but it almost brands a sloppy user. The only ink I will use when sending a letter in the rain.

 

Tony

[Jared]

Is BSB the new Parker Penman Sapphire? Loved by few, despised by many?

 

 

[Bill Smith]

Baystate Blue is the 21st Century answer to Parker Penman Sapphire.

[SquelchB]

Okay, let's give this thread a couple more pages and we find out it melts gold and turns diamonds to graphite, right?

 

I'm going to find for myself in couple days

[pen2paper]

Baystate Blue is the 21st Century answer to Parker Penman Sapphire.

now that you and jared mention it-in my hiatus from the pen world, all the penman debates seem to have vanished.

sitb a rarity too! you know what 'martha' says..itza'.... .....' :blink:

[TonyWong]

I think that if you have a pen that you do not use much.And you have sufficent money budget and particularly courage.You can try this ink.

Surely, you must face some problems when useing this ink.

The more you pay the more you gain. The colour is so specfic and special that mean you have to pay more.

[skeezicks]

Funny how the mind works. I'm new up here -- I've been reading FPN for the past couple of weeks at most (with great pleasure, I should add) -- and I found myself in Art Brown's earlier this week, shopping for a couple bottles of ink. They've got a fabulous book of samples, all made from the inks themselves, and I was totally wowed with BSB. Now, one of the tenets of advertising is the importance of exposure, and from a number of perusals up here, BSB was nicely embedded in my brain. So I bought it.

 

It's a beautiful ink, and I don't really care that it stained the converter of my Cartier Diablo a few shades darker over the course of two days. What I couldn't abide is the way it feathers like no other ink I've ever known. As a teacher, I don't get to choose the paper I'm writing on -- that's in my students' hands -- so it's just not going to cut it for me. And yes, this thread is so worn and frayed, I'm surprised it hasn't been donated to Good Will long ago. But I'm throwing these two cents in because after you've factored everything else -- yes, it's a good idea to dedicate a single pen to a controversial ink, and all that -- it's the quality of the line on paper that counts. On high quality stock, I love this ink, but I live in a real world -- that is to say, one beyond my control -- and I need something that's more forgiving.

 

One final philosophical note; as a parent, I eventually learned that you've got to let kids make the mistakes you did. They've got to get burned and they've got to skin their knees and they've got to fall in love with that guy or gal who'll break their heart, and there's nothing you can do about it besides hug them hard when it's over. Same thing with this ink; I didn't experience anything I haven't read before in the multiple threads on BSB; I just experienced it for myself.

Edited February 8, 2009 by skeezicks