YAZWAT

August 19, 2006

What I did is outlined in the scan below. I think it's safe to say that you can use Zhivago for your checks, for addressing envelopes going to the Pacific Northwest between November and May, or for any other purpose where you want the ink to stay legible no matter what, including letters to your goldfish.

In the originals, you can tell which piece of paper had been in the water (it's bumpy), but otherwise you can't see much difference.

I let the ink dry for 90 minutes. Rather than soak the paper in a pan or tray, I ran water from the cold tap over the writing in the bottom half of the sample, from side to side, for thirty seconds. The paper was thoroughly soaked. I then let the paper dry again in room air (about 88 degrees F at the time).

This test was inspired by recent questions about the standards for water resistance, envelope addressing, and the fact that it was Friday afternoon and time hung heavy on my hands. It probably won't advance encaustumology (ink science) very much, but it did kill a few minutes that might otherwise have been wasted on productive pursuits.

ADDENDUM: The samples were written with a DaniTrio Densho Eye Dropper pen, flexible fine nib. The nib is gold plated. No nib creep after twelve hours (with the pen in use for writing for about six or seven of the twelve hours), and I don't think there's going to be any. I notice some posters have been concerned about nib creep with Noodler's inks and plated/unplated nibs. So here's another data point for you.

Edited August 19, 2006 by BillTheEditor