torture test of 25 inks

[mstone]

I finally got around to my water/alcohol/bleach test of various inks. Here's what's in the list: from noodlers, bulletproof black, baystate blue, midnight blue, ottoman azure, legal lapis, navajo turquoise, squeteague, verdun, polar blue, burma road brown, gi green, eternal brown, ottoman rose, tiananmen, apache sunset; from private reserve, american blue, tanzanite; from diamine, registrar's and midnight; waterman florida blue; levenger pinkly; higgins fountain pen india; lamy blue-black, montblanc racing green, and pilot blue. Each of these was applied and left to dry for about two days prior to the testing. I used a heavy card stock to try to keep the page intact through the whole process. The page was allowed to dry and was scanned between each phase of the testing.

 

Here's the "before" picture (click for hires):

http://mstone.unixcab.org/fpn/inksheet-a.png

They are all swabs except for the pilot blue, which came from the cartridge included with my M90. I tried to swab them so the right side is a single layer and the right side is two or three layers deep.

 

The first test was to dip the left side of the page quickly into standing water; this should give some idea of how the ink will react to a quick spill:

http://mstone.unixcab.org/fpn/inksheet-a.dip.png

About 1/3 of each swab was dipped. Bulletproof Black was, unsurprisingly, unaffected. Also shrugging off this round were Baystate Blue, Legal Lapis, Verdun, Polar Blue, Burma Road Brown, GI Green, and Eternal Brown. Montblanc Racing Green has some light green feathering, but the edges remain fairly distinct. Most of the rest at least began to smear, and things are not looking good for Florida Blue. Interestingly, several inks that do well in later tests did smear a bit in this one: Higgins Fountain Pen India, Lamy Blue-Black, and Diamine Registrar's. In future tests I may try to identify how readable these remain when they encounter only a little water.

 

Extended soaking in water confirms the results of the initial dip test:

http://mstone.unixcab.org/fpn/inksheet-a.soak.png

Florida Blue, Midnight Blue, Ottoman Azure, American Blue, Navajo Turquoise, Squeteague, GI Green, Ottoman Rose, Tiananmen, Apache Sunset, and Pinkly are basically gone. Pilot Blue has some light blue haloing, but is still solidly on the page. Racing Green is hanging on, but only barely in spots. Burma Road Brown has turned purple, but remains quite legible. Diamine Midnight is Diamine blue sky, but is legible. Bulletproof Black, Baystate Blue, Legal Lapis, Verdun, Polar Blue, Registrars, Eternal Brown, Fountain Pen India, and Lamy Blue-Black are all untouched at this stage.

 

A soak in rubbing alcohol is next:

http://mstone.unixcab.org/fpn/inksheet-a.alc.png

This phase killed off the Diamine Midnight, obliterated the Pilot Blue, and began to fade the Baystate Blue. The other inks remain mostly as they were, with some inks which were in the "mostly gone" category moving to "tabula rasa".

 

The last phase was bleach:

http://mstone.unixcab.org/fpn/inksheet-a.bleach.png

This was impressive to watch: the Baystate Blue, Lamy Blue-Black, and Diamine Registrar's vanished as the bleach hit them. Burma Road Brown and Racing Green faded away, as did the last traces of most of the other inks. Legal Lapis, Verdun, and Polar Blue lightened noticably, and Eternal Brown changed to a sickly yellowish green, but all were still plainly visible. There remains a very faint yellowing of the paper where Lamy Blue-Black used to be, and Diamine is a possibly-legible, somewhat darker yellowing. Noodler's Black and Higgins Fountain Pen India were unaffected. Here's where I made a tactical error--the gross effects of the bleach soak were apparent within a minute or two of adding the bleach. At that point I pushed the sample aside and got distracted for a good hour. The way I had set up the tests, the left side of the page was flat in the liquid, and the right side was up in the air and dry. I lifted the paper by the dry edge, flipped it over to see the back, dumped the bleach, and put the page back in. Then I began to rinse the sheet, and the force of the water ripped through the paper over the Legal Lapis, down to the Polar Blue. It seems that the extended soak had caused the card stock to delaminate, and very thin sheets of paper started to slough off. I don't know if that's because of the bleach, or whether extended water soakings would have eventually done the same thing. At this point the dry side of the page separated from the wet side.

 

Closing thoughts: It's clear why Bulletproof Black got its name. The Noodler's Eternal series seems durable enough for most purposes, lightening and in some cases changing colors with bleach, but remaining fully visible. Higgins Fountain Pen India is as durable as the Noodler's Black, but I'm uncertain how Fountain-pen-friendly it is, despite the name; given the lack of reports on the safety of the FPI, I'm inclined to stick with Noodler's. The two iron gall inks, Diamine Registrar's and Lamy Blue-Black, need more testing. There is definite smearing with these inks in the dip test, presumably as the blue component washes out, and they are severely faded in the bleach test--Lamy becoming almost invisible. I'd like to test these further with some actual writing samples to see whether a common water spill would render the writing illegible, and whether the writing would still be readable after the bleach test.

 

Stay tuned also for the results of a fade test involving these same inks.

[Lloyd]

Great job. Thanks.

[ofpwriter]

These are always a pleasure to read. Thank you for doing this! As for the results, I'm happy because I just placed an order for N's Black and Legal Lapis.

 

-O

[bardharlock]

Thanks for the torture!

[OtterNZ]

Thanks very much, can't wait for the fade test

[pen2paper]

Well Done :clap1:

Thank You!

[jde]

Did something happen to the images? I can't see any of 'em.

[BerneseMtDogEatsArco]

Bookmarked - thanks for this great reference!

[mstone]

Did something happen to the images? I can't see any of 'em.

drat, they were too popular and I exceeded my daily quota where I was hosting them. I'll see about moving them somewhere else; if nothing else, they'll be available again the next day. I've temporarily disabled the hires downloads, which account for the bulk of the traffic, and will reenable them in a few days when the topic slides down into obscurity.

 

One thing that would improve this site would be to increase the storage capacity for images; it's easy to put them somewhere else and link them, but that leads to a lot of reviews with broken image links that can't be edited after so long. I ended up putting these pictures somewhere that should stay fairly stable, but it's got transfer limitations. I've considered adding redirects so that the stable site can just point to something like imageshack which is more transient, but that starts to enter the "too much work" zone. Ah well.

Edited August 19, 2009 by mstone

[JakobS]

Kinda surprised with you getting smearing from Diamine Registrar's. All my tests with it under full blast facets of water showed no, not one spot of smear or run off. Excess blue pigment could be the cause of it doing so in your tests, or having it pool up with excess ink and not attach very well to the paper could be another. With actual writing you will see different result for sure.

[mstone]

Kinda surprised with you getting smearing from Diamine Registrar's. All my tests with it under full blast facets of water showed no, not one spot of smear or run off. Excess blue pigment could be the cause of it doing so in your tests, or having it pool up with excess ink and not attach very well to the paper could be another. With actual writing you will see different result for sure.

Yeah, I'm trying to think of test scenarios for this. I'll probably load it into some pens, but I want a good mix of dry and wet writers to see whether that affects the results. And that's going to be a trick because I rarely have that kind of a mix uninked and ready for testing. Maybe dip pens are the way to go for that. At any rate it's likely that any kind of pen will put down less ink than the swab; on the other hand, that likely means that the remnants after the bleach test will also be less visible.

[Viseguy]

Fantastic test! I'm surprised at the changes in Legal Lapis, Verdun, Polar Blue, and Eternal Brown when exposed to bleach. I'd thought that these inks all had the bulletproof rating, but none matches the rock-solid performance of bulletproof Black. I suppose they fall into the lesser, eternal/contract category (well, duh, Eternal Brown). Apparently, there's more of a gap between bulletproof and eternal/contract than I had thought.

[mstone]

Fantastic test! I'm surprised at the changes in Legal Lapis, Verdun, Polar Blue, and Eternal Brown when exposed to bleach. I'd thought that these inks all had the bulletproof rating, but none matches the rock-solid performance of bulletproof Black. I suppose they fall into the lesser, eternal/contract category (well, duh, Eternal Brown). Apparently, there's more of a gap between bulletproof and eternal/contract than I had thought.

The eternal brown changes color the most, and the most quickly. With a little bleach, the others don't change much, if at all--the scan was after an hour with 100% bleach, and the paper started to fall apart. I think part of the definition of eternal stipulated that such inks may change color with solvents such as bleach, but there will be a readable remnant. Also, the legal lapis looks much worse than it was because of the peeling away of the paper in that area; I don't recall it being quite so bad when I first looked at it (so some of the actual paper it was written on may have washed off, even in the area which wasn't completely lost).

[Blade Runner]

Very helpful, especially the water tests. Hope to see other inks tortured.

Thanks.

[Viseguy]

The eternal brown changes color the most, and the most quickly. With a little bleach, the others don't change much, if at all--the scan was after an hour with 100% bleach, and the paper started to fall apart.

Good to hear. If the writing survives when the paper begins to fall apart, then the ink provides meaningful protection against fraudulent alteration, and so earns its eternal/contract stripes, AFAIC.

[Canoodler]

Impressive set of tests, and a lot of work. Please don't stop. Thanks.

 

Another bookmarked post.

[psfred]

Iron/gall inks are known to vanish in the presence of bleach -- the iron changes oxidation state. None of the others are a surprise, even in the vary strong bleach solution (5% in the bottle).

 

I have found Navajo Turquoise to be a bit better than Skrip Peacock in that a gently washed page will have a faint image left -- with Peacock (or PR American Blue) there will be no evidence that ink was ever on the paper! Great for kids getting ink on their clothes, but not for important writing and a coffee spill!

 

I would be interested in seeing how the old Permanent inks withstand this sort of treatment -- Quink black, Skrip black and blue-black, and the modern equivalents (Noodler's Borealis, Dark Matter, and so forth).

 

Peter