Can Ink Eat Away The Gold ....

[sirmartin]

Hello everyone,

 

I have done some searching but could not find the answer on the FPN forum. So that is why I post the question.

Does anyone have experience that ink can corrode away the gold on a gold plated nib?

 

In my case it is a about a Parker 45 I bought, the pen has been used. The sellers tells me the acidity of the ink has eaten away the gold.

I give him the benefit of the doubt, but I have much doubts. My doubts are that the nib is not the original nib.

 

My thought about it is that not the whole nib is in contact with the ink, so there should be some gold left on the nib. I can not find a trace of gold, not even under a microscope.

And the ink I tested at the lab where more neutral ..so pH of around 7. Ok I do not know which ink was used in the pen. I saw some residue of blue ink. The pen has been used frequently.

I do not have enough long term experience with gold plated nibs and ink. I have a Sheaffer from 1998 and one who is from more recent times I do not use them every day but both nibs seem fine.

 

 

Thanks,

Martin

[JefferyS]

Gold is pretty resistant to corrosion, but gold plated metals may have an extremely thin layer of gold on them. I have had gold-plated parts of electric guitars become tarnished with very little coming in touch with them. With cheaper guitars, my guess is that the gold plating is just enough to give the metal a gold appearance...for a little while.

 

Like you, I suspect that if the gold is completely gone, something seems fishy. Does this mean that even a gold nib would succumb to the acidity of ink?

[mirosc]

In short: he is wrong.

 

There are very few liquids that dissolve gold. But no known ink is made of them.

Ink does not eat away gold. However, if the plating gets scratched liquid can get to the base metal and over time the gold plating can wear off. But to rub off completely on a nib... well, that's hardly the case.

 

Anyway: the plating only changes the look of the pen. If it has ever been on it or not, doesn't matter. You have a steel nib without the look of a gold plated nib. 14K gold nib units (solid gold, not just plated) are readily available if you want something better. Still the seller is telling strange things, in my opinion.

[sirmartin]

Gold is pretty resistant to corrosion, but gold plated metals may have an extremely thin layer of gold on them. I have had gold-plated parts of electric guitars become tarnished with very little coming in touch with them. With cheaper guitars, my guess is that the gold plating is just enough to give the metal a gold appearance...for a little while.

 

Like you, I suspect that if the gold is completely gone, something seems fishy. Does this mean that even a gold nib would succumb to the acidity of ink?

 

Yes I can relate to guitars, but I only had that with chrome. My sweat is very acidic. I am not as bad as a alien in Aliens ..but I am getting there

But as you say Gold is very resistant, that is also why they use it in electric contacts too. This is a old 1963/64 pen I thought back then they did a good job, not a thin layer and well connected to the underlaying metal.

 

The nib seems to be a older nib, I have a newer gold plated nib and it only says Parker. The older one also tells me where it is manufactured. I also seen photos of nibs that tell me the country of manufacturing and Parker and the gold amount I think it was 22k.

 

Martin

[sirmartin]

In short: he is wrong.

 

There are very few liquids that dissolve gold. But no known ink is made of them.

Ink does not eat away gold. However, if the plating gets scratched liquid can get to the base metal and over time the gold plating can wear off. But to rub off completely on a nib... well, that's hardly the case.

 

Anyway: the plating only changes the look of the pen. If it has ever been on it or not, doesn't matter. You have a steel nib without the look of a gold plated nib. 14K gold nib units (solid gold, not just plated) are readily available if you want something better. Still the seller is telling strange things, in my opinion.

 

Thanks, you confirm my idea too. I told the seller that too in nice words that I doubt the story he told me. Something that is also unknown to me since gold is a soft material and a nib is very sturdy what materials are added to make it so sturdy? One question answers raises two new ones to find answers to. There is so much science to fountain pens as there is beauty.

 

Martin

[lapis]

No ink will eat away any gold. Not even if the gold is a very very thin coating, and even if that is anywhere under a conventional 58% alloy. Two reasons why no "more" gold cna be seen are:

(1) There was never any gold there in the first place. But even stainless steel nibs (with or without rodium, iridium, ruthenium etc.) are still resistent to corrosion by any "normal" ink.

(2) If there ever was any gold there, it was likely scratched off with any abrasive, even going down to a lot of brown paper bags.

 

Mike

[mirosc]

Something that is also unknown to me since gold is a soft material and a nib is very sturdy what materials are added to make it so sturdy? One question answers raises two new ones to find answers to. There is so much science to fountain pens as there is beauty.

 

That has nothing to do with fountain pen nibs in special, but is rather a universal idea of gold processing. The way of treating gold for jewellery is the same like for fountain pens.

Gold is only soft if it is pure, but usually you don't see it in it's pure form but as an alloy. If you have 18K gold you have 75% gold, 12,5% silver, 12,5% copper. With that you will get some sort of yellow gold. If you vary the ingredients (stannic, zinc, other metals) or the percentages you will get gold with different colors and different characteristics. For 14K yellow gold you have 58,5% gold and usually 30% silver and 11,5% copper, for 14K red gold you have 58,5% gold and 31,5%copper. And so on. There are lots of varieties possible, even when most of it follows some international standards. This makes gold sturdy and good for nibs.

But there's even more to it: The way how a nib is shaped - the geometry of a nib. That's also important in order to balance elasticity and rigidity. And the actual nib point that you are writing with, the tip: it isn't gold / gold alloy, but rather a so called "iridium" tipping (even when there is not very much Iridium in it): very strong and hard metals to withstand all the daily rubbing and scratching and grinding.

 

Have fun with learning more! It's exciting!

[sirmartin]

No ink will eat away any gold. Not even if the gold is a very very thin coating, and even if that is anywhere under a conventional 58% alloy. Two reasons why no "more" gold cna be seen are:

(1) There was never any gold there in the first place. But even stainless steel nibs (with or without rodium, iridium, ruthenium etc.) are still resistent to corrosion by any "normal" ink.

(2) If there ever was any gold there, it was likely scratched off with any abrasive, even going down to a lot of brown paper bags.

 

Mike

Thanks Mike, I think there was never any gold. To me it seems unlikely that someone scratches of the gold of such a small nib as the Parker 45 has. Then you need to take the tip out and try to somehow hold it to crape of the gold. It sounds like a silly thing to do.

 

Martin

[sirmartin]

Something that is also unknown to me since gold is a soft material and a nib is very sturdy what materials are added to make it so sturdy? One question answers raises two new ones to find answers to. There is so much science to fountain pens as there is beauty.

 

That has nothing to do with fountain pen nibs in special, but is rather a universal idea of gold processing. The way of treating gold for jewellery is the same like for fountain pens.

Gold is only soft if it is pure, but usually you don't see it in it's pure form but as an alloy. If you have 18K gold you have 75% gold, 12,5% silver, 12,5% copper. With that you will get some sort of yellow gold. If you vary the ingredients (stannic, zinc, other metals) or the percentages you will get gold with different colors and different characteristics. For 14K yellow gold you have 58,5% gold and usually 30% silver and 11,5% copper, for 14K red gold you have 58,5% gold and 31,5%copper. And so on. There are lots of varieties possible, even when most of it follows some international standards. This makes gold sturdy and good for nibs.

But there's even more to it: The way how a nib is shaped - the geometry of a nib. That's also important in order to balance elasticity and rigidity. And the actual nib point that you are writing with, the tip: it isn't gold / gold alloy, but rather a so called "iridium" tipping (even when there is not very much Iridium in it): very strong and hard metals to withstand all the daily rubbing and scratching and grinding.

 

Have fun with learning more! It's exciting!

 

I keep answering everyone who helps me, but soon have to find my bed. Thanks for your clear explanation. Yes it is exciting to learn more. I never looked into the alloys with gold. Only into some of the alloys of my pocked knife. I was about to google it tomorrow. But now you explained it a bit. What my question about ink, acidity and gold can bring up.

 

Great and exciting,

Martin

[Bo Bo Olson]

Could well have been gold on the nib, then some one cleaned it...and having seen he wiped the gold off, cleaned it fully.

 

I had a cheaper gold plated nib, I hardly touched it with a polishing cloth and the gold took a plane to California....I ended up cleaning the whole nib.

Still wrote writes fine.

[Shaughn]

Any ink capable to 'eat away' gold, would probably eat away your paper in a matter of hours. Gold quality is tested with a mixture of nitric acid and sulphuric acid (aqua regia) which dissolves gold.

[..lol..]

I am a chemist, and I can confirm that to dissolve gold is needed really strong acidity (the one that makes holes in tables xD), like mr. Shaughn said a post above, or Mercury in the ink. Mercury dissolves gold very well but it pollutes envitonment and makes people sick as well, so I do believe it's not used in inks or in stuff directly related to humans, if so it must be sealed because mercury evaporates very good.

 

TL;DR nope it's surely mechanic abrasion

[Tweel]

I think ink can take the gold plating off of nibs, although inks that corrosive must be outliers in today's marketplace.

 

I tried Hero "Advanced Carbonic" ink in a Waterman Harmonie with a gold-plated nib, and went through a full converter. When it was empty, I took the point assembly apart, and the gold was gone everywhere the ink had been in continuous contact with the nib -- inside the section, and on the underside of the nib where it contacted the feed. It must have been a case of the ink's corrosive component penetrating the plating and loosening the bond with the base metal, because there were gold flakes all over inside, and a few loose ones still partially clinging to the nib. I've used a number of ordinary inks in the pen since then, and have not had any more gold loss.

 

I imagine it's at least possible for the same thing to happen to an entire Parker "45" nib, since its area is so small and the chance for ink contact correspondingly greater -- for example, if the user habitually "pumped" a converter to prime the pen, and ink ran down onto the nib.

 

A related thought: I don't think pen manufacturers prepare stainless steel nibs for gold plating as well as they should.

[hari317]

Hello everyone,

 

I have done some searching but could not find the answer on the FPN forum. So that is why I post the question.

Does anyone have experience that ink can corrode away the gold on a gold plated nib?

 

In my case it is a about a Parker 45 I bought, the pen has been used. The sellers tells me the acidity of the ink has eaten away the gold.

I give him the benefit of the doubt, but I have much doubts. My doubts are that the nib is not the original nib.

 

My thought about it is that not the whole nib is in contact with the ink, so there should be some gold left on the nib. I can not find a trace of gold, not even under a microscope.

And the ink I tested at the lab where more neutral ..so pH of around 7. Ok I do not know which ink was used in the pen. I saw some residue of blue ink. The pen has been used frequently.

I do not have enough long term experience with gold plated nibs and ink. I have a Sheaffer from 1998 and one who is from more recent times I do not use them every day but both nibs seem fine.

 

 

Thanks,

Martin

 

Martin, there can be some wear to a gold plated steel nib due to exposure to ink. I have posted some pictures in this 2009 thread of how the gold plating wore on a supposedly good quality GP steel nib. link.

 

HTH

 

Hari

[lapis]

Any ink capable to 'eat away' gold, would probably eat away your paper in a matter of hours. Gold quality is tested with a mixture of nitric acid and sulphuric acid (aqua regia) which dissolves gold.

FWIW, aqua regia is a mix of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid (1:3). Results in a mix of nitric oxide and, lesser so, nitric dioxide. Sulphuric acid won't fill the bill.

 

Bill

[handwriter]

The reason why nibs made of sttel were gold-plated was to avoid their corrosion; so, NO, no ink would dissolve the gold layer. As others said, the gold plating would eventually peel off over time (usually, a very long time) due to mechanical wear.

 

To dissolve gold one can use aqua regia, the 1:3 HCl/HNO3 mixture, in which HCl acts as source of chloride anions to form AuCl4- complex anion ( so, no sulfuric acic would fit the bill). Or mercury, as done in the gold metallurgy of the XV century. Or cyanide (which is not acidic at all), as is done in most of current gold metallurgy.

[pharmacist]

Any ink capable to 'eat away' gold, would probably eat away your paper in a matter of hours. Gold quality is tested with a mixture of nitric acid and sulphuric acid (aqua regia) which dissolves gold.

FWIW, aqua regia is a mix of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid (1:3). Results in a mix of nitric oxide and, lesser so, nitric dioxide. Sulphuric acid won't fill the bill.

 

Bill

 

 

That's right: the reason is gold can only be dissolved by using an extraordinary oxidative acid (nitric acid) under simultaneous chelating the gold ions away from the oxidation process, which is accomplished by the chloride ions of the hydrochloric acid. Sulphuric acid will not work. From a chemist/pharmacist.

[Shaughn]

And so it is. I checked the translation for 'koningswater' (dutch for aqua regia) and the rest I did from failing memory. My last chemistry class was 40+ years ago, if that is an excuse...

 

Thanks for correcting, folks!

[lapis]

I knew about the function and reaction of "Königswasser" because the last time I used it in my lab (honestly) was only 35 years ago. I just did a Google check (no, not to see if everything above was correct or not) but to have a look at the history. Very interesting, that stuff about World War II and Nobel Prizes (which I didn't know about):

History

Aqua regia first appeared in the work of medieval European alchemist Pseudo-Geber, dating from the 14th century.^[10] Antoine Lavoisier called it nitro-muriatic acid in 1789.^[11]

When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of German physicists Max von Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925) in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from confiscating them. The German government had prohibited Germans from accepting or keeping any Nobel Prize after jailed peace activist Carl von Ossietzky had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935. De Hevesy placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation. They re-cast the medals and again presented them to Laue and Franck.^[12][13]

 

Mike

[lapis]

Never did understand how cum a posting sometimes appears twice...

Edited November 17, 2012 by lapis