Dilute For Bleeding?

[rr888]

Hi All,

Fountain pen newbie here with some questions on ink.

 

I am experiencing bleeding on inks that most people do not have bleeding problems with. Specifically, Diamine Majestic Blue, De Atramentis Magenta Violet and Rohrer & Klingner Cassia. I am using a Leuchtturm 1917. I have read different articles about dilution but several ink reviews for these inks do not mention any bleeding problems. I have added a photo of the reverse side of a Majestic Blue list and a ink sample page.

 

When I first started using Noodler's Black, I had problems with "ink transfer" (not sure if there is a term for this). Dried ink on one page A would transfer to another page B (Page A and B are faces of a notebook A|B where | is the spine) when I wrote on the reverse side of page B. A little dilution got rid of this problem but the problem comes back when the ink starts to dry.

 

Using ink seems pretty intuitive... Take ink from bottle, put in pen, write. Am I doing this wrong? Why am I having so many problems? Should I be diluting all of these inks?

I know Rhodia paper handles ink better but I would like to find a solution that works with the Leuchtturm -- which should still be able to handle fountain pens!

 

Thank you!!!

Edited August 8, 2016 by rr888

[Kenlowe]

You are using good quality inks and pretty good paper, you should not be having real problems, diluting the ink is not going to help, make things worse if anything. Are you putting a lot of pressure on the nib perhaps, lighten up on the pressure, and see if you still have an issue.

 

I am using an Diamine ink just now, this ink is known for its bleeding, the paper is Mnemosyne Light and I think that this amount of bleeding is just about acceptable. It looks about the same as your sample

Edited August 8, 2016 by Kenlowe

[rr888]

You are using good quality inks and pretty good paper, you should not be having real problems, diluting the ink is not going to help, make things worse if anything. Are you putting a lot of pressure on the nib perhaps, lighten up on the pressure, and see if you still have an issue.

 

I am using an Diamine ink just now, this ink is known for its bleeding, the paper is Mnemosyne Light and I think that this amount of bleeding is just about acceptable. It looks about the same as your sample

 

@Kenlowe, thank you for your post. When I use less pressure, the bleeding lessens but does not go away. What ink are you using? Diamine Denim does not bleed at all for me...

[amberleadavis]

Dear RR888, I see that you are using wet inks and probably wet writing pens. These are my favorites. Dilution may help with bleed through but before you try that, how are these same inks performing in these pens on other pens?

[pepsiplease69]

Although it's decent, Leuchtturm is not the best quality paper that's out on the market.

[he says that while avoiding eye contact with angry mobs holding pitchforks]

I've had mixed results with bleeding and feathering on this paper, but then I also insist on writing with a wet juicy nib.

Rhodia, Clairefontaine and Tomoe River are primo quality and hold up very well to any bleeding, you can be assured.

It's very plausible that dilution of ink will help with bleed through.

Ink after-all is nothing more than a solution of water, dyes, boicides for preventing fungi and bacteria to find a nice home in your ink bottle, and surfactants which cause the ink to flow better by breaking down surface tension of the fluid.

Once you add water to your ink, you're reducing the concentration of all of the solutes in your ink. The concentration of surfactants will become lower and therefore the wetting and coating quality of the ink will become reduced. This will make the ink drier and less prone to bleeding and feathering (or spreading) on the paper.

The other problem you mentioned, ink-transfer (I like your description of it), is commonly known as smudging.

If your ink is still wet on the paper and hasn't had a chance to dry, and you brush your hand accross it, this is called smearing. Once the ink dries, and if it doesn't completely set (and cure?) into paper 'A' and can still be lifted off by an object coming into contact (paper 'B'), it's called smudging.

I'm not very well versed on what causes an ink to smudge, but it does have a direct correlation with the amount of dye-load deposited to the paper. If the ink has been sitting and aging in your pen and dehydrating, it will likely deposit a lot of dye in a concentrated fashion, onto the paper, thus causing not only smudging but also bleedthrough (because the surfactants have had a chance to increase in concentration).

Some ink manufacturers in my experience, have a pretty good handle on smudging even when heaps of ink is deposited onto the paper, sailor and iroshizuku are good names in this area. I haven't had good luck with smudging when it comes to Noodlers; Apache Sunset, Army Green, and X-Feather all smudge for me and I have to employ your solution of diluting the ink to make it usable. This is just my perspective alone.

[said while still in imminent danger from angry mobs]

If I do want to continue using a smudging ink, I usually use a piece of scrap paper, low quality copy paper, to be placed between Paper A and Paper B to shield B from the ink of A. Once you're fairly certain that the ink on Paper A is no longer hostile, then you can take out the shield paper and use it between the next pair of pages.

I've found that after some time this shield paper has a lot of ink marks on it and builds a lot of character, and is interesting to tag along with your writing, every time accumulating random ink marks.

As you use your pens and ink more, you'll start developing your own solutions to things, and your own unique preferences and you'll learn about qualities of various inks, nibs, papers and the combined effect of all three. It's just a learning process that everyone goes through, I'm still learning new things and I've been at it for the past 4 years.

[amberleadavis]

@Pepsi, that's a nice explanation and good advice.

[rr888]

@Pepsi, Thank you for you thorough reply!! Rhodia paper is great but the longer dry times and lack of numbered pages are annoying for work. I have been using the paper between the sheets method to avoid smudging but am very intrigued by the whole concept of smudging. Do you find you have more or less smudging as you go from XF to B nibs? Will all inks smudge as the water content decreases? Will water content decrease cause more of the ink to sit/dry on top of the paper?

 

@amberleadavis What would you recommend as a dry writer? The Lamy F writes wetter than the Pilot F and TWSBI F but the nib is also much larger (even though it is a fine). The inks I have tried in more than one pen are usually in the Pilot Metro/TWSBI and then in the Nemosine Singularity 0.8 stub. If an ink is bleeding in the fine, I usually see bleeding at the start and stop of letters with the stub, where there is more ink. I might not see it during the stroke of a letter (ex: the R&K Cassia line in my pen test).

[amberleadavis]

RR888, I think you might like an iron gall ink - for example R&K Salix or Scabiosa. They are a little dry for my tastes, but others like them a lot. The Cassia is a very wet ink, which is why I like it. Keep in mind that recycled papers are far more likely to have bleed through and feathering. As for pens, my TWSBIs were dry writers out of the box, but I have had all my pens tuned to be wet writers. I hate dry writing pens.

 

I have found that I enjoy my pens and ink so very much, that it is worth it to me to buy paper which is FP friendly. I use my Miquel Ruis notebooks heavily. For $10 at Barnes and Noble that's a steal. I also use the MR notebooks for my classes, the paper was one of the few that didn't have ghosting with gel pens.

 

I don't know that any of this helps. If you want to mail me a sheet of paper, I'll write you a letter with my currently inked pens and you can see how those inks and pens perform on your favorite paper.

[pepsiplease69]

RR888, I think you might like an iron gall ink - for example R&K Salix or Scabiosa. They are a little dry for my tastes, but others like them a lot. The Cassia is a very wet ink, which is why I like it. Keep in mind that recycled papers are far more likely to have bleed through and feathering. As for pens, my TWSBIs were dry writers out of the box, but I have had all my pens tuned to be wet writers. I hate dry writing pens.

 

I have found that I enjoy my pens and ink so very much, that it is worth it to me to buy paper which is FP friendly. I use my Miquel Ruis notebooks heavily. For $10 at Barnes and Noble that's a steal. I also use the MR notebooks for my classes, the paper was one of the few that didn't have ghosting with gel pens.

 

I don't know that any of this helps. If you want to mail me a sheet of paper, I'll write you a letter with my currently inked pens and you can see how those inks and pens perform on your favorite paper.

+1 for Salix.

 

It's one of the best performing inks I've seen on absorbant paper.

 

Salix and Sailor Kiwa Guro work best for me on regular copy paper.

[amberleadavis]

Okay, I just did a quick test. I had a brand new, never used nib and I inked up with Robert Oster Dark Chocolate. The first two pages were heavily diluted.

 

http://www.sheismylawyer.com/2016_2_Ink/08-August/slides/2016-08-11-Ink_01.jpghttp://www.sheismylawyer.com/2016_2_Ink/08-August/slides/IMG_20160811_134915.jpg

[amberleadavis]

ARGHHH, my answer was wiped when I clicked away accidentally. ARGH.

[amberleadavis]

Anyway, as you can see the ink is dark, and TR is some of the lowest weight paper available, thus we would expect some "Show Through" - so even though it is hard to get BLEED through on Tomoe River paper, it happens that you can often see the dark inks from the other side.

 

And sure enough, this ink "shows through" ...

 

http://www.sheismylawyer.com/2016_2_Ink/08-August/slides/2016-08-11-Ink_06.jpg

[amberleadavis]

What I had not anticipated is that the heavily diluted ink bled through:

 

http://www.sheismylawyer.com/2016_2_Ink/08-August/slides/2016-08-11-Ink_07.jpg

[amberleadavis]

Now, this doesn't mean that you will get bleed through from some amount of water, only if you get too much water.

 

I'd like to see the OP add a little water to his already filled pens and compare the results.

[amberleadavis]

Also, on the bottom sheet from the OP,

 

 

The De Atramentis Magenta Violet and Diamine Majestic Blue were the only two to bleed through, so those are the only inks to address on that paper. The show through happens unless you use a heavier weight paper.

[pepsiplease69]

I've trained myself into accepting that show-through is not neccessarily an undesirable phenomena.

 

Bleed-through and feathering is a no-go for me, but show-through I can live with.

 

On tomoe river paper, which is decidedly translucent, I use a guide sheet underneath to give me ruling lines and margins only when I write, and once I remove the guide sheet, voila! My prose is perfectly structured, constrained inside neat margins, and my text is in perfectly straight lines as if by magic. (look ma! no lines)

 

On the reverse of an already written page, I see a fair amount of show-through (I use fairly saturated inks and 1.5 nibs by jowo or bock). It allows me to break through my writing block because I'm working in a somewhat non-pristine environment so the ideas flow more smoothly, it seems.

 

The following link from Nanami paper talks about ways to deal with show-through.

 

http://www.nanamipaper.com/pages/thin-paper-show-through.html

 

Be sure to scroll down and look at point number 7. It's interesting, Dave mentions that show-through can be not all that distracting if you tune it out. It can be like white noise.

[pepsiplease69]

@Pepsi, Thank you for you thorough reply!! Rhodia paper is great but the longer dry times and lack of numbered pages are annoying for work. I have been using the paper between the sheets method to avoid smudging but am very intrigued by the whole concept of smudging. Do you find you have more or less smudging as you go from XF to B nibs? Will all inks smudge as the water content decreases? Will water content decrease cause more of the ink to sit/dry on top of the paper?

 

 

 

 

Q: Do you find you have more or less smudging as you go from XF to B nibs?

I haven't really dealt with finer nibs all that much. I started with Broads and 1.1 stubs and went my way up to 1.5 italics whith gobs of ink flow. Hypothetically, I would think depositing less ink on the paper would cause less of a smudging problem. But I could be wrong. Best way is to try it first-hand.

Q: Will all inks smudge as the water content decreases?

Well I've had NO smudging whatsoever with Iroshizuku and Sailor inks no matter how dehydrated my ink became. So clearly something else is at play here.

Q: Will water content decrease cause more of the ink to sit/dry on top of the paper?

Again a hypothetical answer: I would think dehydration would cause the ink to absorb more readily into the paper and not sit on top of the paper.

Pure distilled water has the higest surface tension, and is considered the starting point. As you add more surfactants, the surface tension breaks down further and further and the solution becomes wetter and wetter.

Try this:

- Take two clean glasses, and put pure distilled water in both.

- Take a clean dinner plate.

- Add dish soap to one of the glasses of water and mix it with a spoon.

- Wash your hands with soap and make sure all the soap is removed.

- Now dip your finger in the pure water and wipe it across the plate. You'll see that the water beads up or follows along your finger, coating very little of the plate's surface.

- Now dip your finger in soapy water and wipe it across the plate, you'll see that it coats a lot of the surface. This is because of reduced surface tension.

You can maybe take a dropper and drip the pure water onto a sacrificial piece of your Leuchhturm paper, and then try the same with soapy water and see which one stays on the surface and which one absorbs down into the paper.

It's all because of surface tension.

There's a school of thought around FPN that liquid viscosity has to do with ink performance, but I don't ascribe much to viscosity. Maybe there's a link, I just haven't observed it firsthand.

Hope all this helps.

[amberleadavis]

@Pepsi, that's another great resource.

[Arkanabar]

What you describe as "ink transfer" sounds more like smudging -- basically, the ink doesn't dry on the page in a reasonable level of time, such as 20s. This is an issue I have had from time to time with Noodler's Red-Black, and dilution has helped resolve the issue.

Japanese fine point pens, such as low-end Pilots (78G, Metropolitan, Varsity, Prera) and Platinums (Plaisir, Preppy) write pretty dry.

[Sasha Royale]

The ink is not drying before it contacts with another page of paper, or your skin. Heavier writing pressure puts down more ink. That takes longer to dry. Less writing pressure, or a finer nib, will lay down less ink. Try both. More absorbent paper will carry the pigment into the paper fibers, leaving less to be "transferred". Reducing writing pressure is the first thing to try. It costs nothing, and your nib will last longer.

 

"Bleed-through" is the ink pigment penetrating to the back side of the page. The faster the ink dries, the less deep the pigment will penetrate. Thicker paper will reduce "bleed-through". Ink diluted with water will penetrate faster and farther than without water. However, with adequate dilution, what "bleeds-through" will be less visible.

 

Personally, I allow sufficient drying time for the conditions. "Bleed-through" is not much concern, since I do not use the back side of the paper.

 

Good luck.