Platinum Pigment Blue - Pigment Ink

[inkyfingr]

The following is a review of Platinum's Pigment Blue Ink (INKG-1500 #60). The ink comes in a nice squat glass bottle that is easy to dip a pen or syringe into. Through the bottle, the ink appears to have a deep purple hue. In my demonstrator, the slight purple hue is also evident.

 

I purchased this ink because I needed a suspension of colored microparticles for a completely unrelated purpose. Having the remainder of this ink for fountain pen use was simply an added bonus!

 

On to the ink...

 

I have made comparisons using two pens that, in my hands, reflect a wet writer (Pelikan M200, fine nib) and a dry writer (Lamy Studio, fine nib). With a wetter writer, the ink goes down smoothly and dries a nice classic blue. It is not eye popping bright, but rather a more muted blue that borders on 'chalky' blue. In a drier writer, the ink appears more of a light blue. For me, it reminds me of the blue cartridge ink that I used as a school boy in the late 1970s -- though I have no idea what that ink was. Below is a writing sample from both pens on HP laserjet 24 lb paper.

 

The dry time for this ink on HP laserjet 24 lb paper is a little on the long side. With the Pelikan, the ink took over 30 seconds to dry. With the drier Lamy, the ink dried between 20 and 30 seconds. On slick papers, you will want to be careful with this ink unless you don't care if it smears on your hands and clothes...

 

On cheaper copier paper, the ink soaks in and dries very quickly. Below, I circled a dry time test using the juicy M200 -- the ink was fully dried by 5 seconds. I don't typically use cheap copier paper, but I was still very impressed with how little feathering I saw. Like many inks, the character of this ink on cheaper paper is largely lost for me.

 

One of the suggested benefits of the pigment inks is the resistance to water, alcohol, etc. Below is a writing sample (Lamy Studio, fine nib) on HP laserjet 24 lb paper. The ink was allowed to dry for two hours before the water test. The right side of the paper was dipped in warm water for about 20 seconds -- long enough to fully saturate the right side of the paper. The left side remained dry as a comparison. During the soaking, there was no evidence of any ink lifting off the paper. After the soaking, I saw no difference between the water-treated writing sample and the dry control sample. In a separate test, I soaked a writing sample in 70% ethanol to determine the resistance of the ink to organic solvents such as would be common in a lab (or a bar fight). Ethanol also had no perceivable effect on this ink. In my experience, THIS INK IS PERMANENT.

 

With pigment inks, there is a concern about clogging fountain pens. So far, I have had it in two pens for about 2 weeks and have yet to have problems with clogging. However, evidence of clogging might take considerably longer to appear -- I'll update after a few months use on this issue.

 

For those interested in a well-behaved permanent blue ink, I would highly recommend Platinum's Pigment Blue. It's a great blue for when you are looking for a professional and nicely readable ink without retina-scorching color. While the pigment seems to be playing nicely with my pens so far, I don't plan to use this ink in my nicer pens until I have had more experience with any potential staining or clogging issues.

[inkyfingr]

I've begun a test to determine the clogging potential of this ink. I first thoroughly cleaned a Lamy Safari using a sonicator and plenty of warm water. The nib and feed were imaged for later comparison (see below). Note the clean channels of the feed with the nib removed.

 

 

I then filled the feed with Platinum Pigment Blue and left the section uncapped to allow the ink to dry in the feed and on the nib.

 

I'll let it sit for a week or so like this to simulate fairly severe neglect. Once the ink has dried, I'll see what it takes to clean the feed and restore good flow.

 

I'll update the experiment in a week or two...

[amberleadavis]

I love experiments! I'll follow up.

[VivienR]

Its a nice regular blue, I brought it because its permanent, like the Carbon Blue too. Will come back later to check up how the experiment turns out.

[Lloyd]

Oooooo....the tension is killin' me!

 

Actually, I'm more concerned with how this ink handles longer uncapped pauses in writing. My pen hygiene is pretty good....better than my personal hygiene.

[inkyfingr]

Oooooo....the tension is killin' me!

 

Actually, I'm more concerned with how this ink handles longer uncapped pauses in writing. My pen hygiene is pretty good....better than my personal hygiene.

 

Lloyd,

 

Uncapped in my Pelikan 200, there is no skipping for up to about 3 minutes. After that, there is some skipping upon first writing, but it flows pretty quickly thereafter. I've attached an image showing the writing before and after a 46 minute uncapped period.

[inkyfingr]

After 5 days of leaving the section uncapped to dry, I removed the nib from the feed to allow another day of ink drying in the channels underneath. I considered this to be a fairly good representation of "neglect". Uncapped for a week -- anything worse and you should be ashamed of yourself!!! Notice that there is some ink that appears dry, while some ink is quite congealed but still wet.

 

 

 

I then removed the Lamy nib and placed both nib and section into some warm water. No stirring, just simple diffusion. As you can see, the ink very quickly began to rinse away -- even after almost 1 week of direct air exposure.

 

 

After inspection of the feed after an overnight soak and very mild flushing with water, the feed appeared pretty clean -- but not perfectly clean. The channels looked spotless; however, there were some areas of very fine blue sheen on the plastic feed. I made no attempts to rub away this inky stain since I was interested in how easily it could be removed from regions inaccessible to physical methods (such as within the channels of the feed).

 

 

The next step was to place the section in the sonicator...

[inkyfingr]

And the feed after sonicating for about 30 min... Sonication helped a little with the staining, but did not completely remove it.

 

 

 

From this series of experiments, it seems that Platinum Pigment Blue may have the potential to stain plastic if allowed to dry. However, would this dried/neglected ink contribute to feed trouble? In my opinion, it seems very unlikely that this miniscule layer of sheen would have any real impact on flow.

 

I still highly recommend this ink as a readable blue with fantastic water and solvent resistance. As with any ink, consider the staining potential when pairing with a given pen and flush the ink out before storing.

[jandrese]

Nice review Dr. M. There are several pigment inks that I like, but this isn't one of them. Color is too weak. Try Sailor Sei-Boku blue black or Sailor Kiwa-Guro, both nano pigment inks like the Platinum. If I recall the Sei-Boku also has a sheen. I always keep a Visconti Eco-roller filled with Kiwa-Giwa and never clean it. Works great.

[Rob77499]

I stumbled on this article and I will add that I used this ink at work for about 1.5yrs exclusively in several pens including a Pelikan 600, Lamy 2000, and my Aurora Optima 365. All received the slightest bluish pink looking irridescent hue to the feeds which for the most part does not come completely off. That said none clogged and I never cleaned them only filling as they would run low.  It wasn't until I decided to change some colours that I actually cleaned each pen. I did not notice any staining in the 2000 or Pelikan. My Aurora had the very faintest of a purple/blue tint to the ink window. After cleaning thoroughly with pen cleaner and a Q-tip it's all but gone. The piston has retained some slight tint of the colour which does not bother me. The ebonite feed like the plastic feeds of the other pens has been left with blue/pinkish sheen but I actually kind of like it. I always found the ink very well behaved otherwise and enjoyed its performance. I've got it back in a different Pelikan 600 on Maruman Mnemosyne and it performs really well.