A Chromatographical Search For The Perfect Blue-Black

September 22, 2012

I recently found myself down to my last bottle of c. 1985 vintage “Parker Super Quink Blue Black with Solv-X”, made in Don Mills, Ontario.

I naively ordered a bottle of Parker Blue Black ink from Amazon to replace my dwindling supply. The bottle I received was much nicer than the rather cheap plastic bottle of my OOS. The bottle no longer said “Super” and bore no mention of “Solv-X” (whatever that may be - and it could just be some marketing genius’ idea of a new name for water). The new glass bottle just said “Quink”. However the graphics were greatly improved and the loss of verbage could just be a nod to better taste. But, alas, the ink turned out not to be the same Parker that I loved (with all it’s “Super”’s and “X”’s) but Waterman, and not blue black but a blue-grey-green that quickly turned to teal after sitting on a sheet of office notepaper. The bottle was correctly advertising it’s contents - it wasn’t Super any more.

And so my quest began. I ordered this ink. I ordered that ink. I ordered some ink in between the this and the that. Nothing looked right. My finances shrank. I became on good terms with Goulet and Jet. But there was no joy, only blue, the wrong blue. And my radio plays. And Emmy Lou sings “... the thing they don't tell you about the blues when you got em, you keep on falling cause there ain't no bottom, there ain't no end ...”. No end in site for my blues, for my bottles and bottles of blues.

* * *

But being an Engineer I decided a more rigorous approach was needed.

It was off to ebay this time, The Carolina Scientific Supply Company (just across the border from Meridian?), to order a 300 foot roll of chromatography paper.

I cut a slit in the top of a peanut butter jar, added a splash of distilled water, screwed the top on, waited for the humidity to build and started dropping ink on strips of Whatman’s No. 1.

Herewith, then, the results. First, the pair of inks that started it all:

http://www.nolindan.com/UsenetStuff/inkwnk.jpg

Though sold as blue black this pair of inks is/are blue-yellow/green. True, it looks blue-blackish when first applied to paper. However, if the paper is buffered alkaline, as most ordinary office papers are, the blue component turns to invisible ink and the resulting writing is a pale teal. I have already posted on this phenomena.

After dealing with Wink Teal, I began my search for a replacement for the original Parker Super Quink Blue-Black. Some of the inks I tried were indeed blue-black in their constituent parts:

http://www.nolindan.com/UsenetStuff/inkbbk.jpg

Super Quink had three blues of varying brilliance along with a dollop of black. The Sailor seems to be made of, well, blue-black and not much else - it isn’t a very exciting ink color, though. The Edelstein Tanzanite has some yellow in it and I think this ink, though very muted and a bit pale compared to the others, is rather nice; someone described it as having an antique look. Diamine Midnight is made from a large quantity of deep saturated blue and a bit of black, and there is no doubt about it’s color when put down on the page.

In contrast to the rather expected results above, there is a startling set of inks that seem to have been created by consulting a book on color theory - that there is no blue, blue is an illusion made by combining cyan and magenta and that this un-blue can be darkened by adding a bit of yellow:

http://www.nolindan.com/UsenetStuff/inkcmy.jpg

The top three are the artificial flavors of the blue-black world: there isn’t a smidgen of the real stuff in them.

The bottom three aren’t sold as blue black, but they are so saturated in their color that it approaches black. Billberry is purple-black and Sargasso is a very deep brilliant blue. I find myself drawn to the Sargasso in a TWSBI 540 with an italic nib where it puts down a deep blue that shades to black.

I have placed the chromatography strips from this group of inks in a UV exposure unit to see how the various components in the inks fade with exposure to light. I am also going to do some tests on the effects of pH on the ink color.

I should mention that the length of the plumes varies as I don’t always leave the strip in the jar for the same length of time, so don’t attach any significance to it. Although I try for a the same drop size of ink on the paper there is some variation there too.

So what happens if you take a bit of black ink and add it to a bit of blue ink. Well, I didn’t get any joy there, either. But after looking at the chromatography results it’s pretty obvious that what’s going on isn’t obvious at all.

First a selection of blacks:

http://www.nolindan.com/UsenetStuff/inkblk.jpg

The first thing that stands out is that though there is some black to the inks it seems the ink designers just couldn’t keep their hands away from the pots of colored pigment. Again it will be interesting to see the effects of UV on color change/fading.

One notable result is that Pelikan black and Aurora black are the same ink.

Finally there are the blues. And what a surprise, they really are blue:

http://www.nolindan.com/UsenetStuff/inkblu.jpg

My conclusion: there is no replacement for Super Quink Blue Black, and it doesn’t seem that it is possible to make one. Maybe adding a concentrate of one of the blues to Sailor blue-black might yield a workable clone. Just adding blue to the Sailor dilutes the ink too much and the results is a dirty blue.

The end result is that Edelstein Tanzanite and Diamine Sargasso are my picks from this selection. It’s time to move on: The Quink is dead; Long live the Ink.

Edited September 23, 2012 by Nicholas Lindan

September 23, 2012

Thanks Nicholas, it's really useful to see this. I think there ought to be a database of these images for all the inks...

September 23, 2012

Wow, that was a lot of work. I too am a fan of blue-black. I have used all of those above with varying results. Thanks.

October 24, 2012

Thank you for posting. I find this very interesting.

October 25, 2012

Excellent analysis. I've done some strips like this myself, but figured no one would be interested. Thanks for posting!

October 27, 2012

Great! First thing I saw here and registered for sure is that Parker's and Waterman's blue-blacks are likely identical. I've not yet done any paper chromatography on this -- although this was already planned (doh!) -- but my age-old scans of swabs show that these two inks are at least very very similar:

http://i654.photobucket.com/albums/uu264/peli46/5Blue-Blacks_2.jpg

MIke

October 27, 2012

The current Parker inks made in France appears to be the same as Waterman inks, I often wonder if the other facilities who also make Parker inks around the world use the same recipe though.

Oddly enough one of my favourite blue-blacks is the inexpensive Hero 202; it is a true blue-black which changes colour after writing and becomes quite water resistant. One of my least favoured is Pelikan 4001; the colour is a bit odd, and it never gives me the intensity that I like.

November 5, 2012

Wow! Great test! Thanks for putting it together!

November 21, 2012

Solv-X and Super Quink? Loved it!

Going vintage ink hunting.

And as I recall, those cheap plastic bottles were perfect for tossing in a briefcase/suitcase for traveling. I'm sorry I tossed mine out when they ran dry.

Thanks for all the hard work: a 300 foot roll!?!

gary