The Technical Pen Experiment

[Teacher Man]

This started because I like fineliners, I had a dim memory of experimenting with technical pens way back, and I like the many of the colours in Rohrer & Klingner's Antiktusche line. So, a few weeks ago, I got really interested in the possibility of using acrylic inks, which is what they are, in technical pens. (I like self contained pens instead of dip pens. Personal taste.)

 

By the way, technical pens or dip pens or whatever, go and have a look at those Antiktusche colours. I higly recommend not only Rohrer & Klingner's website, but the swabs at http://www.kalligraphie.ch/store/index.php/cat/c113_Rohrer-s-Antiktusche.html. If you live in Europe, you might then want to buy your ink there as well, to support them for putting up these helpful swabs.

 

Anyway...

 

First, I searched this forum for useful information. Unfortunately, you mostly get people who do not really read the question and then give you advice they have heard somewhere. In other words: You ask, can acrylic inks be used in technical pens, and people will give you categorical advice like, only fountain pen ink should bne used in fountain pens! Ah. Quite. The technical pen is not a fountain pen. Also: As I have since learned, even fountain pens can take acrylic inks, provided you are prepared for extra work and care. If you use old and / or expensive pens, it makes sense to take no rists. If you are open to trying some weirder things, mess around!

 

Second, I mailed both Rotring and Rohrer & Klingner. Rotring, unsurprisingly, will tell you that only inks made by Rotring are safe for their pens. If you used anything else, you void the warranty. Rohrer & Klingner will tell you that, in principle, their Inks are fine for the Isograph, the Rapidograph, even the Rotring Art Pen. The important bit is the "in principle". Those pens are designed with highly pigmented ink in mind, so that is not going to be your problem. The acrylic bit is going to make things risky. If acrylic ink dries, it stops being water solluble. So, if you let a pen dry out, you could end up with a solid mass which cannot be cleaned from your pen.

 

Third, I have begun buying technical pens from various manufacturers, and not all of them have arived, yet. I have also begun experimenting with a few of those Antiktusche inks. What I have not yet done is let a pen dry out completely and see what can be done with the cleaner fluids from either Rotring or Rohrer & Klingner.

 

Once all the pens I ordered have arrived, I will write something about how they compare. And sooner or later, of course one will dry up. So I will then post about the experience of cleaning it.

 

Bottom line so far: You can get some techical pens for under € 10. There is no reason not to play around with acrylic ink in a technical pen, even if you fear it will kill the pen eventually. You can do a lot worse with € 10, I am sure. Also: Acrylic ink, unlike fountain pen ink, turns out to be amazing for writing postcards, which these days are often very bad at handling fountain pen ink. I kave some cards which turn into an absolute nightmare at the first drop of even my best behaved inks. Acrylic ink works like a charm!

 

*

 

Thanks to Rohrer & Klingner, as well as RoyalBlueNotebooks and fiberdrunk for help / advice.

[sidthecat]

My sister uses technical pens and she’s very careful about the inks she uses. The finer pens are terribly prone to clogging and have to be cleaned often and with great care.

I wouldn’t put acrylic ink in one, or paint.

[aderoy]

I have had good experiences using Platinum Carbon Blue in my 0.35mm Rotring Tech pen. Some times you need something other than a LBI (Little Black Ink).

 

The seal on the point works well so no dry outs, clean between fills as per normal so not to have any build-up.

[Teacher Man]

Okay, what I have learned so far.

 

I have been playing around with a couple of technical pens. I have filled them with Rohrer & Klingner Antiktusche acrylic ink, even though many people on this forum warned me that this was a horrible mistake. I have not tried the Staedtler Mars yet, because there was an amazon glitch, and I will have to order it again. I do have first hand experience of the Rotring Isograph, the Faber-Castell TG1-S, the Stano Professional and the Standardgraph Color.

 

 

The Stano seems relatively cheaply made, and the Standardgraph is a bit short for my taste. The Isograph seems the most well built, but closely followed by the TG1-S. They all write without a problem.

 

The Antiktusche colours I have all look really good in these technical pens. You even get some nice shading.

 

 

A few days ago, I cleaned two of the technical pens, and water was enough to remove almost all the ink from the pens. Some ink had dried up on the outside of the pen, so I tried Rohrer & Klingner's cleaning fluid, which claims to be suitable for fountain pens, so it should be fine for technical pens. It cleaned up the acrylic ink without a trace, and it left all the plastic parts intact.

 

So. So far the message seems to be: If you take care of you pens, you can safely ignore all the naysayers.

[paradigm]

  On 5/4/2018 at 8:01 PM, Teacher Man said:

So. So far the message seems to be: If you take care of you pens, you can safely ignore all the naysayers.

 

For me, technical pens have become a huge discovery recently.

I completely stopped painting with fountain pens. Figures with them looked faded, and the fill was uneven. And not black enough.

With a huge bottle of black drawn drawing ink of 250 ml volume and with 0.5 and 0.7 isographs it seems I can sketch all the pieces of paper completely black!

Faber-Castell 0.5 I gave to my son. It is interesting to draw and allows you to vary the thickness of the line, but at an angle the ink flow is very meager and for my hand somewhat uncomfortable.

Thank you for sharing your experience!

My wife asks me to start drawing with different colors!

And now I know for certain that I can!

[sidthecat]

Has anyone put these inks into 0.13 or .18 pens? That's the size the sister uses and she longs for a more permanent black ink.

[Teacher Man]

  On 5/10/2018 at 9:26 PM, sidthecat said:

Has anyone put these inks into 0.13 or .18 pens? That's the size the sister uses and she longs for a more permanent black ink.

 

I have not gone below 2.5 yet. But if she is only looking for a solid black, is the Rotring black not permanent enough? (Paradigm above seems to have gone a lot narrower than me, and with good results.)

Edited May 11, 2018 by Teacher Man

[sidthecat]

She likes to combine it with water color and it's not as dark or permanent as she'd like.

[Teacher Man]

Okay, I now had the chance to play with the Staedtler Mars matic a bit. Seems to be very well made,

[Teacher Man]

Have now been working with these pens for some time, using acrylic inks. No clogging, no problems whatsoever. I have also cleaned four using only water, and they havce cleaned up fine as far as I can tell. I have used Rohrer & Klingner Reiniger on two others, simply because they had small acrylic ink stains on the outside which did not come off with water. The stains came off, the pens did not dissolve.

[Teacher Man]

So, based on a bit over a month of experience, I cannot confirm that filling acrylic inks into a technical pen will make it clog up and die. If you take reasonable care of your pens, you should be fine.

[Teacher Man]

Footnot: The white plactic of the Stano Professional has a tendency to stain. So the inside parts which come in contact with your ink might take on its colour.

[Drawing61]

I used technical pens for years in my artwork and the constant clogging, skipping, clogging nearly drove me to take the bitter pill. Needless to say I have a love/hate relationship with them. Recently I donated my sizable collection of Rotring Rapidographs to someone who may use them. I kept my Isographs because who knows?

 

Fountain pens are better. Fountain pen inks are better. Acrylic inks can be lovely but best used with a dip pen or a brush.

[Teacher Man]

  On 5/20/2018 at 12:15 AM, Drawing61 said:

I used technical pens for years in my artwork and the constant clogging, skipping, clogging nearly drove me to take the bitter pill. Needless to say I have a love/hate relationship with them. Recently I donated my sizable collection of Rotring Rapidographs to someone who may use them. I kept my Isographs because who knows?

 

Fountain pens are better. Fountain pen inks are better. Acrylic inks can be lovely but best used with a dip pen or a brush.

 

Very sorry to hear that. I keep hearing these stories, and I keep thinking I must be doing something wrong. So far, none of my pens, from 0.8 to 0.2, have had any issues with clogging or skipping.

Edited May 20, 2018 by Teacher Man

[sciumbasci]

Can these use India ink, like J. Herbin lawyers'?

How easy are these pens to write with in a office environment?

[Teacher Man]

  On 5/20/2018 at 7:51 AM, sciumbasci said:

Can these use India ink, like J. Herbin lawyers'?

How easy are these pens to write with in a office environment?

 

Technical pens are designed to use very higly pigmented inks. Since they are basically a thin needle, there is no feed to clog up. You have to take care of them enough so the thin needle does not dry out, because cleaning that (depending on width) can be rather difficult. So, India ink should work fine.

 

They are designed to be used vertically, which is an odd experience. However, I find that 0.5 technical pens can be used like fineliners.

 

I hope this helps.

[paradigm]

  On 5/20/2018 at 8:04 AM, Teacher Man said:

They are designed to be used vertically, which is an odd experience.

 

Nope.

 

As far as I know and as my little experience shows, all Rapidographers and isografs can be written at an angle. At least 90 to 45 degrees exactly.

It's another matter whether they all easily start at 45 degrees to the paper and what thickness the line is given in this position.

 

The declared thickness of the Rapidographs is guaranteed in the vertical position (the greater the deviation from the vertical - the thinner the line).

And the isographs write about the same thickness at both an angle and vertically.

 

Although the isografs at the declared thickness of the knot are more than 0.7, a noticeable factor is the thickness of the metal rim around the tip of the tip tube. Because of this, large thickness isographs, it seems, also start to give a thinner line than with an upright position.

[superfly]

I have spent my student days (studying architecture in the period between the industry transitioning from hand drawing to CAD), and know them well. They are in fact meant to be used vertically, and won't optimally write other way because the tip of the pen is basically a tube with a needle in it, you can imagine the problems with the geometry if you use it angled.

 

The only ink that went into mine was the Rotring Drawing Ink (Encre de Chine, India ink), and I used 96% Ethanol to soak the nibs in when dried with ink...

 

basic primer on technical pens here:

http://artonthefridge.com/2016/09/15/technical-pen-101/?i=1

[Teacher Man]

  On 5/22/2018 at 4:02 PM, paradigm said:

 

Nope.

 

As far as I know and as my little experience shows, all Rapidographers and isografs can be written at an angle. At least 90 to 45 degrees exactly.

It's another matter whether they all easily start at 45 degrees to the paper and what thickness the line is given in this position.

 

The declared thickness of the Rapidographs is guaranteed in the vertical position (the greater the deviation from the vertical - the thinner the line).

And the isographs write about the same thickness at both an angle and vertically.

 

Although the isografs at the declared thickness of the knot are more than 0.7, a noticeable factor is the thickness of the metal rim around the tip of the tip tube. Because of this, large thickness isographs, it seems, also start to give a thinner line than with an upright position.

 

 

 

They are designed to be used vertically. Some can also successfully be used at an angle. They are still ment to be used vertically. No real contradiction.

[Teacher Man]

Just realized with a shock that I'd left my technical pens uncleaned and unused for about four months. Went back to them fearing the worst. Not one is clogged or dried up.