Diagnosing ink starvation and nib drying

[Dione]

Fora great wealth of information on everything about inks check out this website belonging to Dr Leighton Davies-Smith. The man who designed Parker Penman inks and has now designed his own range of similar inks called Scribe. No affiliation. Just an avid reader.

[maclink]

5 minutes ago, nibtip said:

 "They have a formulation that makes the ink not cling to plastic."

 

I did some personal tests on permanent nano pigment black inks about 2 years.

Montblanc permanent black, De Atramentis document and archive, Sailor Kiwa Guro, Platinum Carbon black, Rohrer und Klingner dokumentus and a few others.

I lay down some ink on a piece of plastic surface with a brush and ran tab water on it some minutes later. Nothing scientific.

I can therefore fully confirm your assertion about Montblanc permanent black: It was the only one to wash away easily from the plastic surface. 

What some see as a weakness (not totally waterproof), may in fact be the best solution for not clogging a pen.

I don't know.

Since i don't care much about permanency, really never cared, i forgot about it. 

It is just a very enjoyable game for me.

Thanks for letting me know.  It was just my observation of how easy it would be to check ink levels since the ink doesn't seem clingy at all.  Unfortunately, when using a c/c pen, I often need to agitate the reservoir or use an agitator to get the ink to move from the top of the c/c to the business end.

[ParramattaPaul]

5 hours ago, dipper said:

But, with hindsight, that instruction was probably written by the sales and marketing department, not the research and development team.

That would be correct.

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

3 hours ago, maclink said:

Unfortunately, when using a c/c pen, I often need to agitate the reservoir or use an agitator to get the ink to move from the top of the c/c to the business end.

The diameter of the converter is too narrow....unlike the wider piston pens.

It is a very common problem.

 

Folks say put one of those little plastic balls from a Pelikan cartridge in it,or  part of a small spring....to break the surface tension.

I only have a few pens with converters; little used, so I don't notice that  problem.

[maclink]

24 minutes ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

The diameter of the converter is too narrow....unlike the wider piston pens.

It is a very common problem.

 

Folks say put one of those little plastic balls from a Pelikan cartridge in it,or  part of a small spring....to break the surface tension.

I only have a few pens with converters; little used, so I don't notice that  problem.

It’s a Platinum converter. Not the biggest and when I put an agitator in, the piston descend is stopped too far from the tip of the converter to make more than a half fill possible. I guess I could syringe fill it with the agitator in place. One up for a piston filler!

[sansenri]

When ink clings to the converter wall it often has to do with the converter material.

Try cleaning the converter with grease remover, this should at least get rid of any greasy leftovers from manufacture, which increase the surface tension.

[InesF]

On 4/26/2021 at 10:41 AM, Dione said:

This illustrates a good reason why using an ink and a pen made by the same manufacturer can assist. When a pen manufacturer designs a pen with it's ink flow system, filling system and ink to work well together the whole set up can be designed harmoniously. If the user decides to buy the pen then use other inks in there then they have to do their own experimenting to get the right combination that works for them.

Hi Dione.

Although, I can follow your point of view, I do not agree. To my experience, a Pelikan 4001 Black is a comparably dry writing ink while Edelstein Sapphire and Star Ruby are both extremely spreading and wet. All three are from the same manufacturer and should fit for their nibs. But they don't: my M600 works exceptionally well with the 4001 Black (and also with Edelstein Aquamarine, etc.) but fail to have acceptable ink lines with Sapphire and with Star Ruby.

Similarly, my Carene writes perfect lines with Waterman BlueBlack but lets the Waterman Purple run like a fire hose does with water. And there are some more examples.

No matter what, you have to find the perfect fit with try and error - and I agree that a Black or BlueBlack ink of the same brand as the pen may be a good starting point.

[InesF]

On 4/26/2021 at 3:50 PM, dipper said:

For general chewing-over, pasted below is my first draft variables list. Some on the list are inspired by the original post and the replies in this current thread.

 

List of variables observed in pen & ink performance ("results"):

Hi dipper,

I love your list! It is a great inspiration for a set of experiments permutating through all the possible variables and make this 2ⁿ plan with n = 26. Enough to do during upcoming retirement....

 

[maclink]

4 minutes ago, InesF said:

Hi Dione.

Although, I can follow your point of view, I do not agree. To my experience, a Pelikan 4001 Black is a comparably dry writing ink while Edelstein Sapphire and Star Ruby are both extremely spreading and wet. All three are from the same manufacturer and should fit for their nibs. But they don't: my M600 works exceptionally well with the 4001 Black (and also with Edelstein Aquamarine, etc.) but fail to have acceptable ink lines with Sapphire and with Star Ruby.

Similarly, my Carene writes perfect lines with Waterman BlueBlack but lets the Waterman Purple run like a fire hose does with water. And there are some more examples.

No matter what, you have to find the perfect fit with try and error - and I agree that a Black or BlueBlack ink of the same brand as the pen may be a good starting point.

I agree. Additionally, manufacturers who make inks designed to work well with their pens quite often develop inks with properties desirable for any fountain pen.  Parker Quink is an example. The expounded properties that suit their pens would be good for any fountain pen. No surprise that Parker Quink is a well behaved, F-PEN friendly ink. 

 

MB have their permanent inks that are friendly to their pens, many of which are piston fillers and which aren’t easily serviced by the user. No surprise that their inks do not cling to plastic parts and therefore flush easily with minimal residue. Of course, this is desirable for any FP. 

[InesF]

11 minutes ago, maclink said:

I agree. Additionally, manufacturers who make inks designed to work well with their pens quite often develop inks with properties desirable for any fountain pen.  Parker Quink is an example. The expounded properties that suit their pens would be good for any fountain pen. No surprise that Parker Quink is a well behaved, F-PEN friendly ink. 

Yes, indeed, there are inks that behave generally better than others. Parker Quink is one of them.

And I forgot to mention, there are some pens that behave better than others: my Parker IM (2018) is one of them. It can handle my inks equally well, my wettest and my driest inks look all good when written with the IM.

[Bo Bo Olson]

4 hours ago, InesF said:

To my experience, a Pelikan 4001 Black is a comparably dry writing ink while Edelstein Sapphire and Star Ruby are both extremely spreading and wet. All three are from the same manufacturer and should fit for their nibs. But they don't: my M600 works exceptionally well with the 4001 Black (and also with Edelstein Aquamarine, etc.) but fail to have acceptable ink lines with Sapphire and with Star Ruby.

4001 is the older ink brand. They are all dry.....except of the new Dull Green, which don't even shade. I don't know if it's dry, but don't suspect it is, in it don't Shade. I'm glad I have a piston pen, so I can take much less than a full load.

Luckily I have some of the sadly discontinued 4001 Brilliant Green*** left and the tad better R&K Verdura and MB Irish Green.

So many folks hate green-green ink and wanted a forest green. And Pelikan did listen to them....sadly.

 

4001 ink is the ink that they matched their known to be wet writing nibs too. (One of the reason many complained for years how wet their Pelikans wrote, when using wetter inks, sometimes much wetter inks.)

 

Pelikan says and said from the start they added some stuff to Edelstein inks to lubricate them some and help clean the piston pen by use.

 

Any research in Ink Reviews would have shown up, that some Edelstein inks are dryer than other Edelstein inks, others wetter.

 

I don't go to Ink Reviews any more....outside of looking at the new Pelikan Ink of the year......I got too many inks as is...with over well over 70.

 

Otherwise I get this urge to buy....or even worse, I'll say, I have that ink, looks good like when I bought it, and ink a pen!

Often I had 17 pens inked. In order to use up inks, I've gotten down to 7 pens inked......and want to stay that low.

 

It should be obvious that nibs designed long before Edelstein a nitch ink,  and that still have to deal with Pelikans more wide spread 4001, would remain the same...........and not change for a less than standard, or actually not in any standard at all of LE and Ink of the Year that made the grade to remain available.

 

 

I like the color of Aventurine, but it feathers too much even on good paper. I'm a bit OCD on feathering (even have my own description system), no one else complains about Aventurine feathering.

 

I like Smoky Quarts and Oliverine enough to buy two bottles.

[InesF]

On 4/28/2021 at 5:40 PM, Bo Bo Olson said:

It should be obvious that nibs designed long before Edelstein a nitch ink,  and that still have to deal with Pelikans more wide spread 4001, would remain the same...........and not change for a less than standard, or actually not in any standard at all of LE and Ink of the Year that made the grade to remain available.

 

 

I like the color of Aventurine, but it feathers too much even on good paper. I'm a bit OCD on feathering (even have my own description system), no one else complains about Aventurine feathering.

 

I like Smoky Quarts and Oliverine enough to buy two bottles.

True words, thank you, Bo Bo Olson.

There is one more secret to share: I was able to domesticate Aventurine and Smoky Quartz by adding 0.3 g solid Gumm Arabicum to the (almost) full bottle ink.

Beautiful! Absolute perfect now - no loss in colour intensity, but even more shading and reduced spreading and feathering.

Other, more wet inks, such as deAtarmentis and some of the Rohrer & Klingner, required 0.5 to 0.75g Gumm Arabic to be tamed.

[Bo Bo Olson]

I've heard the word Gumm Arabicum whispered in dark alleys of yore before.....

....but this is the first time I've heard of actual use that I could use..................so I'll have to put this on my wish list.

I have no trouble with smoky Quartz, but would like to use Aventurine; one of my feather kings.

 

Where did you get it?

 

My first thought was my pharmacy; in I do get glycerine and 25% ammonia and needles to fill cartridges with from mine.

[InesF]

14 minutes ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Where did you get it?

At Boesner (artist shop) in Vienna. I'm sure there are shops in Germany as well.

Gumm Arabic (Gummi Arabicum) is a frequently used ingredient for (self made) pastel and aquarell paints.

It is very well water soluble. However, if adding solid G.A. to an ink, give it some time to fully dissolve and distribute!

[maclink]

On 4/26/2021 at 9:35 PM, sansenri said:

When ink clings to the converter wall it often has to do with the converter material.

Agreed.  However, when you expose the same converter to different inks and get different effects it becomes clear that ink properties also factor in since a different ink will not cling to the converter, coating it, or require an agitator to get it flowing from one end of the converter to the other.

[sansenri]

Different materials have different surface energy (the equivalent of surface tension for liquids, but related to solids).

When you get one of those bad converters that uses a plastic which has high surface energy, there isn't much you can do, best solution is dump the nasty converter and get a new one from a reliable brand...

Before doing that, make sure you wash the converter with an aggressive grease remover, just to ensure that the high surface energy was not caused by grease left over from manufacturing processes.

Different ink can make a difference, as different inks may have different surface tension, so if you find a low surface tension ink, that might just be enough to overcome the high surface energy of the converter material.

The other approach is add a surfactant to the ink, which reduces the surface tension between liquid and converter.

That is the theory, the rest is trial and error...

 

[dipper]

On 5/3/2021 at 6:43 PM, sansenri said:

When you get one of those bad converters that uses a plastic which has high surface energy, there isn't much you can do, best solution is dump the nasty converter and get a new one from a reliable brand...

.... however even reliable brand converters can exhibit the problem described so well by sansenri.

 

I find Sailor Black ink in a Sailor converter ( both items purchased over the counter at a specialist pen shop ) frequently stops working when half full of ink sitting up at the back end of the converter and an empty air space down at the pen feed end.

The same ink used to refill an empty Sailor ink cartridge wets the walls of the cartridge much better, and the problem goes away.

Different plastic, different surface energy, different ink behaviour.

 

By the way, (some fun for science nerds), the interactions between solid surface energies (cartridges, converters, feeds, nibs, and papers) and fluid surface energies ( a.k.a. surface tension) can seem confusing.

But those interactions can be summarised in the one simple and observable property, "Contact Angle".

 

Take any given fluid, say "Quink Blue ink", and choose a solid, say "clean 14Ct gold". Then a drop of that ink resting on that gold will always flow into a stable form where the angle at the edge of the ink drop, between ink surface and gold surface is close to the characteristic "Contact Angle" for those two materials.

 

That angle is the nett result of the interactions between the surface energies of those two materials.

 

That angle determines the "wetability" of the given solid surface by the given fluid.

 

That angle is directly observable by eye, but its accurate measurement needs expensive laboratory equipment.

 

That same angle occurs at all boundary edges between the Quink Ink and a clean 14Ct gold nib..... at the wet edges of the feed fins under the nib, also in the capillary slit between the nib tines (two boundaries on top and two more on the nib underside), and also at the top edge of a ring of ink around the contact patch between the nib tip and the paper.

 

These things are very small, and difficult to see, but are vital to the entire workings of a fountain pen, from the back end of the converter all the way down to the ink touching the paper.

 

Contact angles rule inside a fountain pen!

 

[Bo Bo Olson]

Someone might have some gold plated piano spring wire handy to sell in mailing for free costs money.

That spring has been rated as best.

 

Second best is a snip of a ball point spring, and replace it when it rusts.

 

Ball's require  slipping the pen up and down every once in a while.

 

Best is buying a piston pen....I've never had that problem with them.

I've only a couple pens that have a converter, and those two Lamy ones seem to work just fine.

 

I have some three-four cheap flea market convert buys...have never gotten into any of my CC pens, in I have some cartridges to use up.

In I don't use them I don't know if they are any good or not. At the chap price, I doubt it.

[Karmachanic]

Then there's the dreaded air bubble at the feed nipple/converter that restricts flow. Either have to advance the piston, or give the pen a tap with the nib skywards.

 

Read all about it.

[Bo Bo Olson]

I seldom, or never read about cartridges having vapor lock.