Inky T O D - What Are Wet Inks?

[amberleadavis]

When I first started on FPN, I tried to describe the troubles I was having with my pens clogging. Turns out the inks I was drawn to, were sort of "dry" inks and wet inks worked better in my pens.

 

So, what exactly is a WET ink? And what are some examples. I've posted another TOD for Dry Inks.

[The Blue Knight]

J Herbin Bleu Myostis the wetest ink I have ever used! It's so wet that I get through a converter full of ink twice as quickly as with a normal drier ink.

[amberleadavis]

Yeah, come to think of it, I have some inks that run out the pen quite fast.

[Tas]

I don't understand "wet" inks.

Are they the same as "lubricated" inks?

 

An FPN member tried to explain but I didn't really understand.

[inkstainedruth]

A couple of weekends ago I was trying to describe this quality to a person who was not a pen guy and not a collector of any sort (started when my husband was saying "Ask her how many inks she has" as I had pulled out a pen (in that case a Vac Debutante) to write notes on a map our friend had drawn for us to go home, since he and his wife sort of live out in the boonies). It was hard for me to explain, since I'm not really a science-y sort of person. In trying to describe the difference between "wet" and "dry" there was sort of a meeting of the minds that we were talking about viscosity -- i.e., how well (rapidly?) the liquid in question moves from one container to another -- in this case, from pen to paper.

As examples, I find that a lot of the De Atramentis inks are fairly wet. I put Red Roses into a dry-writing Platinum Plaisir and it made me want to not give the pen away! OTOH, one of my Parker Vectors (an F) is a firehose that writes with a broader line than some of my M-nibbed pens. That pen is great with iron gall inks, which are dry (i.e., don't flow as well). But I put Diamine Damson (a dry ink) in one of my Noodler's Konrads (a dry writer, unlike my other three Konrads) and it was a less than ideal combination.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[dcwaites]

Serious answer this time...

 

if you simply dissolve dye in water, you get an ink that will flow through a pen like it was water. The water, because of surface tension, will 'stick' to the surfaces inside the feed and nib slit, and will flow relatively slowly.

However, if you add a little wetting agent (fancy word for detergent) the ink then wets the surfaces better and flows though the pen better. You get more ink on the paper, and hence, the ink is 'wetter'

[Dottie]

I like wet inks so I'm looking forward to suggestions. Diamine Florida Blue and Namiki Blue seems wet to me. Or maybe what I mean is that they flow well in all my pens, which is not true of other inks.

[torstar]

ink brands and colours within the brands vary in saturation

 

pens and paper have their own addition to the variations, trial and error is your best method.

 

people will give you one or two from their stable, which may or may not help

 

PR Tanzanite has been amongst the wettest of over 100 inks sampled and owned in my life.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Wetter inks often shade less well than dryer.

Not all my DA inks are wet. Golf, Sahara Green are dryer.

 

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

When I first came on the com some five years ago...Waterman Florida Blue was considered wet.....now, many users of Noodlers consider it a 'dry' ink. That seems to indicate Noodlers has many real wet inks. I don't know. I only have Apache Sunset and Golden Brown.

Golden Brown is a wet....

 

Or how fast an ink drys....is that part of wet/dry inks?

 

Golden Brown dries so slow, I can not write on the back of a sheet of paper...it takes one full sheet of the next written page to dry enough to use the back of the previous sheet.

Edited May 3, 2014 by Bo Bo Olson

[TheModernGent]

I find Noodler's Black Swan in Australian Roses to be quite wet.

[amberleadavis]

Serious answer this time...

 

if you simply dissolve dye in water, you get an ink that will flow through a pen like it was water. The water, because of surface tension, will 'stick' to the surfaces inside the feed and nib slit, and will flow relatively slowly.

However, if you add a little wetting agent (fancy word for detergent) the ink then wets the surfaces better and flows though the pen better. You get more ink on the paper, and hence, the ink is 'wetter'

 

 

Ah, let's go back to Taz's question and the other TOD on Lubricating inks.

 

Lubricating inks have an agent which lubricates the parts (the piston parts) ... BUT a lubricating ink is NOT necessary a Wet ink and Wet ink is not necessarily a Lubricating ink. However, just to muddy the issue. Glycerin is can be used to make inks wetter, and it can be used as a lubricant. Hence inks with glycerin might be both lubricating and wet.

[ac12]

Waterman is my wet ink.

My MOST wet ink is Noodler's Emerald City Green. It is so wet that it blots into paper that my other inks write on just fine. I need to put something into it to dry it down a bit, or find a REAL dry pen to use it in.

[Betweenthelines]

Diamine Midnight and PR DC Supershow Blue are very wet. The Midnight especially I have been putting in dry writing Japanese fine's to counterbalance them.

[torstar]

sorry, i didn't read it was you starting the thread, amberleadavis...

 

if you are truly asking this after all your experience, you are in the same boat as me, not really knowing what the strict definition is...

[amberleadavis]

sorry, i didn't read it was you starting the thread, amberleadavis...

 

if you are truly asking this after all your experience, you are in the same boat as me, not really knowing what the strict definition is...

 

At least we're in the lifeboat together.

 

I thought I knew ... but I didn't until the day I had Bilberry in one pen and Scabiosa in the other. BOOM....I GOT IT.

[arcadeflow]

I believe Pilot (Namiki) Blue, Black and Blue/Black are wet inks. I made a lot of mistakes judging pens and inks in the beginning because I didn't understand the concept of wet x dry pens and inks. New fountain pen users should try to learn about the pens and inks they have, considering wetness and dryness of them, so they can match correct inks that will probably fix a lot of complaints about scratchy nibs and baby's bottom. I misjudged my first 78G pen because I only tried it with dry Sheaffer inks, then I noticed that a Pilot Black cartridge made it work in a heavenly way. Later I bought a bottle of Pilot Blue to make sure and it also worked great. Now I am seeking wet inks, because all the pens I use are Pilot and they all somehow share this liking to wet inks.

[SeeksAdvice]

Part of it has to do with ink viscosity. Guessing that the other parts have to do with surfactants, etc. Not sure if anybody has done things such as testing surface tension, etc. of inks to compare "wet" v. "dry" ones.

Black Swan in Australian Roses is a very, very dry ink. If you put a good sized drop of it on paper, you'll see the black component and "red"/purple component separate out, and you will get a very distinct black inner circle with a red/purple fringe that extends beyond the black. I'm wondering if there's something about the interaction of the dyes with each other, or with the rest of the ink, that serves to make it "dry".

[ac12]

I posted this on the dry ink thread

 

For me:

- Dry ink has higher viscosity (thicker and flows slower), example Cross/Pelikan.

- Wet ink has lower viscosity (thinner and flows easier/faster), example Waterman.

 

I use both inks (Cross/Pelikan and Waterman) and select the ink to use based on the pen's ink flow characteristics.

- A WET pen gets the dry Cross/Pelikan ink

- A DRY pen gets the wet Waterman ink

This has worked for me.

 

Every once in a while I will get a pen that is REAL dry, and even Waterman ink won't flow well. Then the only solution is to adjust the nib to get more ink flow.

So far, I have not had (fingers crossed) a REAL WET pen. I do not look forward to that, because slowing down the ink flow would be more difficult to do, as that requires a more difficult nib/feed adjustment.

[79spitfire]

I find most inks to be "wet" when I'm wearing a white shirt....

[amberleadavis]

Spitfire.

 

And thanks AC!