What Liquefied This Sac?

[Richard]

  On 3/24/2013 at 6:47 AM, FarmBoy said:

Phenol based dyes would give latex a run for the money. The Latex formulation is also at play.

There is no phenol in modern inks, at least not if they're sold in the U.S.A. Phenol is regulated as a class B poison and is not permitted in ink.

 

I've addressed the latex formulation in my earlier reply.

[framebaer]

I also have encountered recently serviced pens with the gooey sac problem where it has been clear to me that inks have caused the issue.

 

More than the sac problem, I have lots of repair jobs involving removal of particulate matter from feeds, tubes, collectors etc. where the pen is totally clogged. These problems are always due to pens drying out with ink in them. I can't pin it down to a particular ink but the heavily saturated ones seem much worse and fact is many pens just don't get regular maintenance.

 

You change your car's oil, people--- is it so hard to flush out your pen once in a while!!!

[lcoldfield]

After about 15 years worth of experience in the UK repairing customer pens I have seen few gooey sacs, but the ones I have seen apparently came about as a result of one of three causes:- 1. Defective formulation for the sacs (not from the Pen Sac Company) 2. Use of Diamine ink (similar to Noodlers?). 3. Use of red ink.

I only use Pelican or Sheaffers ink in pen testing as neither of these has given any indication of reaction with rubber or plastic.

Incidentally, I have suspected Quink as a problem for some time because it was the only ink used for one of my pens for some 10 years and now the plastic section has gone soft. Quink is almost certainly responsible for all the gooey Parker 61 connectors that I have seen.

I wonder if anyone else has doubts about Quink? - it does claim to contain (dis)solve X!

Laurence

[welch]

A principle of product testing: never take one instance of condition A and match it against one instance of condition B. If you sell widgets and several fail, it proves nothing that someone, or many someones, use your widgets without a failure.

 

Several failures ought to make anyone cautious. One success does not balance one failure.

[viclip]

Following up on Richard's comment respecting the need for latex sacs to contain metal inhibitors, I suspect that many fountain pen inks contain metallic ions for coloration purposes. Some of the more interesting boutique inks may thus owe their coloration to some unusual metallic content. I found it surprising that untreated rubber reacts with steel(?) pressure bars & can't help wondering whether red ink relies upon iron for its coloration ergo the observations of some that red ink more readily attacks sacs.

[ethernautrix]

Oh wait... I don't have to worry so much, because I prefer c/c and generally don't like pens with sacs.

 

Also, I've come to realize that I change inks more frequently than I'd have thought, so my pens get flushed frequently.

 

Still... it's mystifying, this gooey sac phenomenon.

[JohnnyT]

Have "51" Aero PVC sacs been observed to fail secondary to use of boutique inks?

[nagod]

please excuse my possible ignorance,but is it possible that whatever was used to clean didnt get completely removed and had an adverse reaction over time?

[Ron Z]

  On 3/26/2013 at 6:11 PM, viclip said:

Following up on Richard's comment respecting the need for latex sacs to contain metal inhibitors, I suspect that many fountain pen inks contain metallic ions for coloration purposes. Some of the more interesting boutique inks may thus owe their coloration to some unusual metallic content. I found it surprising that untreated rubber reacts with steel(?) pressure bars & can't help wondering whether red ink relies upon iron for its coloration ergo the observations of some that red ink more readily attacks sacs.

 

Good point.

[welch]

  On 3/26/2013 at 5:35 PM, lcoldfield said:

After about 15 years worth of experience in the UK repairing customer pens I have seen few gooey sacs, but the ones I have seen apparently came about as a result of one of three causes:- 1. Defective formulation for the sacs (not from the Pen Sac Company) 2. Use of Diamine ink (similar to Noodlers?). 3. Use of red ink.

I only use Pelican or Sheaffers ink in pen testing as neither of these has given any indication of reaction with rubber or plastic.

Incidentally, I have suspected Quink as a problem for some time because it was the only ink used for one of my pens for some 10 years and now the plastic section has gone soft. Quink is almost certainly responsible for all the gooey Parker 61 connectors that I have seen.

I wonder if anyone else has doubts about Quink? - it does claim to contain (dis)solve X!

Laurence

 

Ha!

 

Someplace on EBAY is a copy of a Parker advertisement from 1942: "Help win the war! Use Parker Quink with Solv-X to protect your rubber ink sac! Save rubber for the war effort!" (approximately)...with picture of a dead sac, and a statement that 2/3 of dead sacs could be saved if pen-owners had used Quink (with Solv-X). Might advertising copy-writers overstate something??

 

Incidentally, Laurence: fine books...the main repair and the Onoto book. I've been meaning to ask someone about the tipping, if any, on the K pens...

[mhosea]

Anybody else think 3 sentences is just a little too quick to be blaming the ink per se? At least the second ink? What do we know about Platinum Aurora Blue? What happens when you mix Platinum Aurora Blue and Noodler's Black? Was the pen flushed with only water? Water and something else?

[Fiddlermatt]

  On 3/26/2013 at 10:36 PM, mhosea said:

Anybody else think 3 sentences is just a little too quick to be blaming the ink per se? At least the second ink? What do we know about Platinum Aurora Blue? What happens when you mix Platinum Aurora Blue and Noodler's Black? Was the pen flushed with only water? Water and something else?

 

As far as mixing the two, I've got a sample vial mixed with Aurora Blue and Noodler's Black 2:1 ratio with no problems. The pen was flushed thoroughly with only water.

[Ron Z]

This isn't about just one pen, though that is what started the thread. What I am saying, as are Richard, Jim and other professional restorers is an apparent pattern of failure related to inks that we have been seeing with greater frequency. That pattern is failure when a boutique ink is used in a pen, vs. an ink made by a pen manufacturer. I at one time used the popular boutique inks, and quit when I encountered mold problems, ink not drying on the page, ink separating in the bottle, and finally saw the number of failed sacs when they were used. I do not have the problem with the Pelikan blue that I use, nor with Sheaffer or Aurora inks when I have used them.

 

Note that Jim, Richard, Lawrence and I all use sacs from the Pen Sac Company. The only other option that we would consider are silicone sacs from David Nishimura, and at the moment they're available only in #18 size.

 

By all means, use the boutique inks if you want to. But don't be surprised if you do and sacs fail prematurely.

[reval]

Since the topic starter had almost instant problems with Noodler's Black and a sac from the Pen Sac Company, it should be easily be reproducible using a (part) of a sac and, in this case, Noodler's Black.

 

What puzzles me, is that in some cases an ink is suspected to damage a sac in minutes, and in other cases that ink can be used for years in a pen with a sac without problems.

[Ron Z]

Perhaps. When we had problems with the ureathane for head gaskets, simply throwing the material in a bottle of ink didn't reproduce the problem. It took the exposure to ink (any kind - the water in ink really) and air as ink in the pen was used, then the action of cycling the the plunger to fill the pen for the problem to be revealed. The rubber would lose it's tensile strength, and then tear into bits as you cycled the plunger.

 

I didn't discover it until I went to fill a pen to take with me to the Sheaffer factory. I replaced the head gasket and left on my trip. I found that it had failed again within a month. But again, it took exposure to moisture, and then the partially empty barrel to cause the material to fail. Complete immersion didn't do it, and my understanding is wouldn't if air weren't in the mix.

 

I suspect that it will be very difficult to isolate all of the parameters to make an exhaustive test. I know what my practice is when I restore a pen, and Richards are much the same, so the repair procedures aren't the problem. But repairmen do see an awful lot of pens, and I make it a point to ask what the ink was when I run across a failed sac. As a radio engineer before I got into pen repair I got into the practice of looking for patterns that cause failure. You get pretty good at seeing them. The common thread of the ink rises to the top again and again.

 

I would like to be able to say that the boutique inks aren't a factor. But until demonstrated that they aren't, or no longer are, I recommend using an ink made by a pen manufacturer where more resources are likely to be used in testing and verifying safety in your pen.

Edited March 27, 2013 by Ron Z

[pajaro]

Pen sacs seem to eventually fail, so ink in the sac must be the problem. Use a C/C or Piston filler?

 

Today I was using my MB 163R rollerball, contemplating buying a fountain pen section and putting a spare nib and feed in the section and screwing that into the rollerball barrel. Reading this, I think I'll keep the rollerball, because the refill is disposable. The heck with fountain pens, ink and sacs, but maybe the piston fillers will last. I enjoyed using the rollerball more than the Esties I had been using.

[mhosea]

  On 3/27/2013 at 12:04 AM, Ron Z said:

This isn't about just one pen, though that is what started the thread.

 

I simply choose not to address the larger issue because I have nothing to offer on that subject. As a trained scientist I am concerned about the lack of corroborating, repeatable experiments, but I've already said so in the past, others had already said as much in this thread, and I did not think it would be helpful to say it again.

 

My only point is that I don't get how Noodler's Black could have precipitated the failure if it was only in the pen for moments before complete sac failure. The OP didn't make it clear, but it doesn't seem that he used Platinum Aurora Blue for months or anything. The previous owner says he used the sac only lightly. So what's the simplest explanation that covers all the facts in this case?

[FarmBoy]

  On 3/26/2013 at 3:23 PM, Richard said:

  On 3/24/2013 at 6:47 AM, FarmBoy said:

Phenol based dyes would give latex a run for the money. The Latex formulation is also at play.

There is no phenol in modern inks, at least not if they're sold in the U.S.A. Phenol is regulated as a class B poison and is not permitted in ink.

 

I've addressed the latex formulation in my earlier reply.

I didn't intend to imply modern inks contain phenol. Rather there is an entire class of dyes that contain the phenol sub-unit in a more complicated molecule. Bromcresol Green comes to mind.

 

In the absence of a list of materials in the inks, all is speculation. The culprit may not be the dye but the carrier or a preservative or a buffer. Until someone shares a list of possible compounds in the inks in question we may never know.

[JonSzanto]

Where is he when we need him?

 

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/degrees-of-freedom/files/2011/09/page3_1.jpg

[pajaro]

  On 3/27/2013 at 2:34 AM, FarmBoy said:

  On 3/26/2013 at 3:23 PM, Richard said:

  On 3/24/2013 at 6:47 AM, FarmBoy said:

Phenol based dyes would give latex a run for the money. The Latex formulation is also at play.

There is no phenol in modern inks, at least not if they're sold in the U.S.A. Phenol is regulated as a class B poison and is not permitted in ink.

 

I've addressed the latex formulation in my earlier reply.

I didn't intend to imply modern inks contain phenol. Rather there is an entire class of dyes that contain the phenol sub-unit in a more complicated molecule. Bromcresol Green comes to mind.

 

In the absence of a list of materials in the inks, all is speculation. The culprit may not be the dye but the carrier or a preservative or a buffer. Until someone shares a list of possible compounds in the inks in question we may never know.

I am plus one on the last paragraph. It is easy to accuse, and how can it be tested?

The term "boutique ink" is sufficiently derogatory as to be a pejorative. It is used to dismiss an ink as unworthy, and I personally feel it is just about a curse word.

 

It appears all sacs will eventually deteriorate. How do you know any ink isn't a component of the deterioration? How do you really know any ink is safe, and that the use of ink in pens doesn't in and of itself destroy pens slowly?

Edited March 27, 2013 by pajaro