Extreme Evaporation In Noodler's Demonstrators

[unigami]

I haven't accurately measured it yet, but I'd guess that about 15 - 20% of the ink in my Noodler's demonstrators (both Konrad and Nib Creaper) evaporates in about a week. I have four of them and they all do it. However, my ebonite Konrad does not.

 

I mentioned this on Reddit and others have told me that they have the same problem.

I'm guessing that the vegetal resin material must be permeable to air, and this allows the ink to evaporate, which is an annoyance, even more so because it also changes the saturation of the ink.

 

Have you noticed this with your vegetal resin demonstrator Noodler's?

Has anyone noticed it with the acrylic versions?

 

I don't know what to do about this...maybe keep the pens in sealed glass test tubes or something

 

 

 

 

 

 

[WaskiSquirrel]

I did notice this. My inks were great when I first put them into the Konrads, but then they would suffer evaporation. It sounds counterintuitive, but they would get so that the ink would take a day or two to dry on the page. I don't see this issue with the acrylic and ebonite models.

[Hadders]

Yeah I definitely see this. To test, I filled an ahab demo up with very diluted quink, and just left it in a drawer. After a couple of weeks, about half of the fill was gone... I don't really care about ink loss, but I've had the same issues with ink never drying as waski_the_squirrel, and that makes the pens pretty unusable for me

[inkstainedruth]

Hmmm. I haven't noticed this so much as that after a few days the ink doesn't flow as well -- I have to play with the piston knob to make sure that there is ink getting to the feed.

But is it evaporation, or the pens behaving like eyedroppers if they're not fully filled? Because I do often end up with ink on my fingers because it's burped into the cap and ended up on the threads and/or section. It's particularly bad when there are changes in weather and the pressure changes. Unfortunately, in Pittsburgh, that can be fairly often (the old joke is: Don't like the weather around here? Wait an hour...).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[unigami]

Well, I'm performing a little test. I've obtained an airtight tube (used for storing cigars) and I've put one of my fully loaded Konrads in there, and I have an identical one that is also full ink and will be stored outside of the container. After two or three weeks I will post about how much each pen has evaporated.

 

I also have an Ebonite and recently bought an Acrylic Konrad and neither one of them evaporates at all. So I suspect it is the vegetal resin that is allowing this to happen.

 

 

 

 

 

But is it evaporation, or the pens behaving like eyedroppers if they're not fully filled?

[unigami]

Update:

It has been one week since I began my test: I have two identical clear vegetal resin Konrads which were completely filled on May 5th and put in a drawer. One pen is in a sealed tube (they are sold as cigar storage tubes) and the other pen isn't.

 

As of today, the pen in the sealed tube has not had any evaporation.

The other pen has lost about 1/4th of it's content.

 

So far, it is becoming clear to me that the vegetal resin is allow evaporation thru the pen.

To be sure, I am going to switch the pens are repeat the test.

[inkstainedruth]

Are you using the same ink or different inks? And if the latter, are you using ink each in both pens at the same time, or ink 1 in the "control" pen and ink 2 in other one? And swapping inks for each segment of the test?

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Jamerelbe]

I've found my Noodler's Ahabs Konrad and Ahab pens are fairly prone to drying out - but I don't think it's due to the vegetal resin. The feed is fairly open to allow ink flow - but it also makes it easier for evaporation to take place. Especially if the pen cap doesn't have a tight seal - which I'm guessing is the main problem.

 

I don't use my Noodler's as much any more - I find the FPR flex pens much more to my liking - but when I DO ink them up, I keep them stored in a zip-lock bag to help minimise evaporation. It's not ideal, but it's workable - and I have to confess, I've still got a soft spot for my Ahabs (more so than my acrylic Konrad), as some of the earliest pens I picked up when reconnecting with the fountain pen 'habit'...

[unigami]

Are you using the same ink or different inks? And if the latter, are you using ink each in both pens at the same time, or ink 1 in the "control" pen and ink 2 in other one? And swapping inks for each segment of the test?

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

To keep it simple, I just loaded both pens with tap water. The amount of water that evaporated in the unsealed pen is consistent with the evaporation that I have seen with ink.

[unigami]

I've found my Noodler's Ahabs Konrad and Ahab pens are fairly prone to drying out - but I don't think it's due to the vegetal resin. The feed is fairly open to allow ink flow - but it also makes it easier for evaporation to take place. Especially if the pen cap doesn't have a tight seal - which I'm guessing is the main problem.

 

I also have Konrads in Ebonite and Acrylic. They have the same feed. They don't evaporate.

I guess it's possible that the cap is more airtight on those but I doubt it, the cap on my vegetal resin pens can be screwed down really tight and I don't worry about it cracking because the plastic is quite springy.

[mhosea]

The evaporation issue with the vegetal resin Konrads was the reason I retired mine. I fought hard. I started off assuming that it was just that the cap wasn't air tight, so I worked on the cap. I tried lots of other things, too. One of my Konrads was sealed up so well that I could shoot water several inches out of the nib by turning the piston knob. Maybe some of it helped a little, but nothing fixed the problem. If the root cause is that the vegetal resin allows water vapor to pass through too easily, then that would explain all. A little research tells me that this is plausible. The MVTR (moisture-vapor-transmission-rate) is something that is measured for a lot of materials, including plastics. I have no idea what the MVTR is for the vegetal resin used in Noodler's Konrads, but, for example, I found in one table that the MVTR for polystyrene is 20 times the rate for HDPE or polyproylene. So a high MVTR for that plastic is a possibility, and since no other pen smells like that, maybe no other pen makers are using that particular plastic.

[zenephi001]

Thanks to all for posting on this topic. I have not particularly noticed this in my Ahabs & Konrads - except for the very odd occasion when I have 'ignored/forgotten' a pen with ink in for a long time.

 

Having said that, in the last few weeks I've started noticing a feint, misty clear condensation inside the cap of my Ahab Clear Demo. I am living in the UK and we are moving to what, for us, are higher temperatures as we experience Spring. My house is run as a 'cool' house (put a jumper on rather than the heating etc.) but the general temps are rising. Looking at the locations of the posters above I would hazard a guess that the temps / humidity in those places are much greater than we normally experience where I am in the UK (the Pennines in Yorkshire) - so there may be these factors to take into account.

 

Anyway - it got me wondering. The ink is in the cylinder. The cylinder is comparatively small and is easily accessible. Is there a substance that could be used to coat the external surface to provide a vapour barrier (one that would not harm the 'plastic')? Something like the clear varnish used when painting 'plastic models'. Preferably transparent. Or, is the problem area in the feed/section element inside the cap? Ponder, ponder, ponder! Time to do a little research perhaps. Anyone else have thoughts / possible solutions? If I dig anything up I'll post back here.

[unigami]

I mentioned that I was going to swap the two pens I was testing, and see if I had the same results (thereby eliminating the pen, as the variable) and yes, I did this and had the same results. So it is not the pen. I also see condensation in the caps of both pens, the one in the sealed test tube and the one that is unsealed. Also, I notice that when I pick up the pens (they were being stored in a flat position), and hold them nib down, a couple air bubbles rise up into the ink chamber from the feed. So I believe that the condensation in the cap means that the ink is evaporating into the cap, and then evaporating out of the cap into the surrounding environment.

 

I was wondering too, if a clear-coat might help. Krylon makes a clear-coat spray that is formulated for plastic. It is their Fusion brand. I might sacrifice one of my clear Konrads and try this out.

[wastelanded]

I found with my Ahab (and resin Konrad) that there wasn't a good seal with the cap finial: there was some excess material from the molding process. A light sanding of the top and a thin coat of shellac did the trick, and no more dry pen after three weeks.

[david-p]

Did anyone else try this trick?