Inky T O D - Pigmented Ink? Do You Use It? Would You Use It Instead Of I G Inks?

[Bookman]

 

I don't really need a "permanent" fountain pen ink but I was intrigued too by its color (as seen in reviews) and just ordered a bottle to see it in real life. Planning to test it in a cheap unloved pen first though

 

I like it and I use it regularly. But I play it safe. I use it in pens I can take completely apart to clean. And when I clean Platinum Pigment Blue or Sailor Sei Boku out of a pen I use a toothbrush, liquid handsoap, and cold water to scrub the nib and feed. After rinsing, I use a separate "rinsing" toothbrush to scrub the nib and feed while the cold water runs over them. This second toothbrush remains soap-free, and so when I'm done I'm fairly assured of having gotten all the soap out. Good luck.

[fledermaus89]

My only experience with a pigmented ink (or one advertised as such) is organix studio Mendel; I really wanted that soft green color. Turns out that it is not only pigmented but also has a strong mint smell, and is made with chlophyll! When I put a fonutain pen inked up with Mendel in water, creates a slimy string emanating from the nib, and is actually pretty cool. it does not dissolve away like inks, and that property is somewhat similar to Noodler's Black. Anyways, it turns out that when I use it with a very wet pen the color is a rather muted pea-like yellowish green (no wonder it was named Mendel), which I like very much too. It explicitly warns against putting in a pen without cleaning every few days, but I've put it in a pen for about two weeks now and there is no flow problem.

[jcm499]

I have used pigment inks and dislike them. In situations where such ink is heavily applied-- for instance, lines drawn with a very broad and wet pen, or the shades in flexible pointed pen writing styles-- it appears to leave some micro-pigment residue unabsorbed on the paper. When I run my finger over the ink, even weeks after it has dried, it will smear. This behavior is consistent across every pigment ink I've tried. I much prefer iron gall.

[napalm]

I received today my Platinum Pigmented Blue and I'll second Bookman's opinion that it is very similar in color to Waterman Florida Blue.

[Algester]

If the price is the main thing turning you off then have you tried Hero's carbon black ink (works pretty well, about $5 a bottle and no problems with it yet)? I like it a lot and it's not clogged any pens that I know of (I only used it in pens I can toss or disassemble though), if you want to try a cheaper carbon ink I recommend it as a good place to start, you can find it on eBay.

much as I hate I dont like to use ebay because clearly I dont have the funds to deal with ebay credit wise... so I normally deal with B&Ms for my inks

[Alexandra]

Though my experience with each is limited, I've been left wanting more of each. I'd really like to try both Organics Studio Accident and Platinum Pigmented Blue.

 

Not only do they have the potential for permanence, shading AND sheen (Sailor Sei Boku) but I'm now thinking of them as zombie inks that will survive the Apocalypse.

[fiberdrunk]

I've used quite a few pigmented inks. The more permanent they are, the better I like 'em:

 

• Platinum Carbon Black (used with the Platinum Carbon fountain pen-- it works so I well I haven't even had to flush the pen in over a year!)
• Higgins Fountain Pen India (used in a Platinum Preppy and worked fine)
• Pelikan Fount India (currently have a Platinum Preppy inked -- works quite well, with only occasional flushing necessary)
• vintage Rotring ArtistColor (pigmented acrylic ink which I only use in a Rotring ArtPen-- love it!)
• Magic Color (pigmented acrylic ink from the U.K.-- very similar to Rotring ArtistColor. I only use it in the Rotring ArtPen and love it. It does require daily use to keep the pen flowing or else you'll have to flush the pen more often.)

Edited June 18, 2014 by fiberdrunk

[VivienR]

I have only Platinum Carbon Black but its a kind of love situation between us... The only way to destruct it is destruct the paper is written on it. If I could get similar or pigmented one in purple... hm.. that would be love forever... In the next week will buy the Platinum Pigment Blue too.

I used the Carbon Black in my Sonnet with fine nib, no problem what so ever, but it have wonderful flowing abilities, and after its dry its stays on the paper no matter what.

Actually, just thinking about to get the Pigment Red/Pink to and try to mix some purple from those....

[Dillo]

Hi,

 

I actually did enjoy using pigmented ink in my Nakaya. I used Platinum carbon ink. It was a lot like drawing ink in some ways like the dark sheen, crisp lines, and opacity. I don't think I would use it again though. It was a huge undertaking to clean the pen afterwards, and I didn't like the hassle. Fountain pens are not like technical pens that can be very easy to completely disassemble and clean. Also, the carbon ink wasn't as waterproof or smudge proof as the drawing ink I have in my technical pen. It was very very good, and worlds better than regular fountain pen ink, but you could remove it from the paper somewhat with an ultrasonic cleaner. Drawing ink doesn't really come off paper all that easily in an ultrasonic cleaner, and it won't run at all since it is often shellac or acrylic based. Nowadays, when I want to use pigmented ink, I just grab one of the technical pens I have instead. It's a little less hassle since they can actually be cleaned a little more easily than a fountain pen when using something pigmented. The pigments themselves aren't water soluble and are held in suspension and it makes a world of difference in cleaning. I can take a fountain pen filled with a dye based ink and rinse it under water, and all the dye that the water touches, as long as it hasn't stained the pen or worked its way into the plastic will rinse out. I can't do the same thing with pigmented inks. The colour intensity of pigmented inks is something I really enjoy though. It has a very different effect compared to a dye based ink which can be somewhat more delicate and transparent.

 

Dillon

[mhosea]

FYI, I've just inked up a couple of cheap pens, a Wing Sung with an aerometric-like filler and a C/C pen, with Sailor Sei Boku, uncapped them, and left them for dead on my desk. I want to see how much trouble it will be to deal with the Sei Boku when it completely dries out.

[napalm]

FYI, I've just inked up a couple of cheap pens, a Wing Sung with an aerometric-like filler and a C/C pen, with Sailor Sei Boku, uncapped them, and left them for dead on my desk. I want to see how much trouble it will be to deal with the Sei Boku when it completely dries out.

 

This will be interesting.

 

I was thinking about filling a Prera, using it with no maintenance other than refilling, and watching what's going on inside.

[PaulT00]

I've used both Kiwa-Guro and Sei-Boku quite extensively. Kiwa-Guro is invariably loaded in at least one pen - currently my Sailor Pro Gear Imperial Black; I usually have something with Sei-Boku in it as well - at present a Sheaffer vac-fil Tuckaway Crest.

 

Maintenance issues:

- I find that both will dry quite quickly in the nib and feed if the pen is left uncapped for more than a minute or so. This can sometimes lead to hard starts - I work around it by always immediately recapping the pen.

- I have a Sheaffer PFM which was continuously loaded - and in daily use - with Kiwa-Guro for more than a year with no special pen hygiene precautions and no flushing between fills. No problem experienced, despite the intricate nature of the PFM feed system.

- Flushing Kiwa-Guro can be time-consuming, because of its very nature - it's a suspension of carbon particles in water. Unless you wish to disassemble or run water through the nib section of e.g. a c/c filler, a typical self-filler will simply progressively dilute the remaining ink and remove more deposited carbon particles from the reservoir lining and feed with each flushing cycle, until the user gets bored and decides it's clean enough.

- Similarly I have a Parker '51' Vac which was my daily writer for over 18 months using Kiwa-Guro with only regular refilling; I had occasion to look at the innards after an encounter with a washing machine unstuck the shellac holding the hood in place - there was no sign of any clogging in the collector after all that time.

- Sei-Boku has always seemed to me to be the less forgiving of the two - it is 'stickier' if that makes any sense.

- Given the fast dry-out in the nib and feed, I restrict use of both inks to pens with very tightly sealed caps and no breather holes; an experiment with Sei-Boku in a Conway Stewart 58 (vintage), with its breather hole in the cap, was doomed to failure - the ink went positively gloopy within 48 hours and the pen required considerable flushing, but survived unscathed.

- A Waterman Phileas (one of mine which my partner has appropriated) is in permanent use with Sei-Boku and has had no other ink for several years. On one occasion Sei-Boku was allowed to dry out in it during a period of low usage. It was cleaned using plain water (cue little solid fragments in the glass!) and then responded quite well to being thoroughly flushed with JB's Pen Flush (left the solution in there for 48 hours point downward after flushing thoroughly) and has been returned to service without needing disassembly. That doesn't mean I'll be pushing my luck a second time, however, and the miscreant who allowed it to happen has been firmly chastised.

- In c/c fillers with transparent converters, both these inks will stain the converter. Avoid using either in demonstrators, would be my advice.

 

In summary: with regular use, they're great inks - just apply a bit of care and, ideally, use the pen every day. If you use a pen infrequently, or forget it and let them dry out, be prepared for a significant and quite difficult cleaning job.

[mhosea]

Interesting that Sei Boku dries out more quickly in the feed for you. I would have reported the opposite, actually. I've been using it for a couple of years. For me, it's been in the top tier of inks giving reliable start-up. It is very "sticky" though, when it dries. Most recently I've been using it in a Sheaffer Flat Top. The cap has breather holes, but there are no holes in the inner cap of a Sheaffer. I wonder if the difference in our experiences depends on how wet the pen is. Possibly Sei Boku dries out quickly when the pen is relatively dry-writing? This I wouldn't know, because if I have a dry-writing pen, I turn it into a wet-writing pen at my earliest convenience, and in any case, Sei Boku wouldn't be my first choice for such a pen because I only like the color of this ink when it goes down wet.

[PaulT00]

Actually I'd agree with you that Kiwa-Guro dries out quicker in the feed than Sei-Boku, but S-B does go very sticky and gloopy and becomes quite badly behaved if you let it dry out; I tend to treat both with a bit of care and recap the pen immediately. I too like wet-writing pens, but usually quite fine nibs which may have something to do with my experiences. The Phileas is a fine, and I've also used S-B in a Waterman Perspective which has a very similar nib and feed to the Phileas. It works in a L'Etalon too - all fine nibs. As I stated, my experience is that unless one does something daft (like letting the ink dry out completely), these inks aren't the maintenance nightmare they're sometimes made out to be. YMMV!

[majorworks]

If the price is the main thing turning you off then have you tried Hero's carbon black ink (works pretty well, about $5 a bottle and no problems with it yet)? I like it a lot and it's not clogged any pens that I know of (I only used it in pens I can toss or disassemble though), if you want to try a cheaper carbon ink I recommend it as a good place to start, you can find it on eBay.

 

I have a bottle of the Hero carbon black. My experience with it is 180 degrees opposite yours. It clogged every pen I ever put it in. So it sits on a shelf, mostly. I do like its blackness, though. It's very black. I got it in NYC's Chinatown and it was very inexpensive indeed. I think I paid between $2 and $3 for it.

[mhosea]

 

I have a bottle of the Hero carbon black. My experience with it is 180 degrees opposite yours. It clogged every pen I ever put it in. So it sits on a shelf, mostly. I do like its blackness, though. It's very black. I got it in NYC's Chinatown and it was very inexpensive indeed. I think I paid between $2 and $3 for it.

 

I never get clogs as such with any ink because I don't let things progress that far. Once an ink gets hard-starting, it won't be in the pen much longer, and that is my experience with the Hero carbon black. Now mine is unused as well. I guess I could use it as long as I flush it out on the same day. I don't recall ever having a problem with it on the first day.

[mhosea]

I too like wet-writing pens, but usually quite fine nibs which may have something to do with my experiences.

 

Perhaps wet versus dry writing is not so much difference as the (absolute) flow rate through the feed, i.e. ml/s. Whether a given flow rate makes for a wet or dry pen depends on the tip size.

[napalm]

I have Platinum Pigmented Blue in a Pilot Elite for one month now and haven't noticed hard starts. I do write at least every 2 days with it though. Unfortunately this pen is not easy to disassemble or to otherwise see what's going inside.

 

I ordered a Prera and will be switch to it as soon as it arrives. Then I could get a better idea of what's going on, and disassemble/clean if needed.

[Jared]

I'd trust the pigmented carbon inks to last far longer than any IG.

 

Carbon black & red inks have lasted thousands of years on papyrus paper. The papyrus below dates from 1500 BCE.

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Edwin_Smith_Papyrus_v2.jpg/1280px-Edwin_Smith_Papyrus_v2.jpg

[fiberdrunk]

I'd trust the pigmented carbon inks to last far longer than any IG.

 

Carbon black & red inks have lasted thousands of years on papyrus paper. The papyrus below dates from 1500 BCE.

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b4/Edwin_Smith_Papyrus_v2.jpg/1280px-Edwin_Smith_Papyrus_v2.jpg

 

That's so amazing! I wonder what the red ink was? I have read about iron gall inks that had carbon in them, too, from medieval times that are still very black and dark (and no holes in the parchment). I plan to test this out in the near future and see if they have more UV fade resistance (the trick will be to see if I can keep it from precipitating out; that, and whether the particle size will be too big for a fountain pen feed).