Is there a scientific study of inks to determine their kindness, or cruelty, to vintage pens?

[Dione]

48 minutes ago, david-p said:

I  cannot see any reason to assume that an ink that has been on sale over many years has not been reformulated with unintended adverse long term consequences. A lot of people had to die of cancer before smoking was established as a major cause, and there are many other cases in other areas of life of collateral damage only being discovered down the line. That said, I think there is a better chance of old (though rather dull) favourite inks being safe. I have a 30-year old Parker 45 whose cartridges have dried out many times without any long term damage that I can detect; but I would not assume that pens manufactured from older types of materials are equally immune. Even regular cleaning will not prevent serious problems if you are going to refill the pen with a damage-causing ink.

 

David

Obviously inks haven't only been reformulated by using some ingredients that were considered to be safer than others. Even original manufacturers are now making inks that wouldn't have been made when vintage pens were around. I wasn't suggesting you should use anything but original standard style inks in your vintage pens and I wouldn't use shimmer or heavy sheen inks in them either. That goes without saying. They don't necessarily have to be dull. I consider Registrar's Ink dull but it is an old ink I don't use either.  I don't consider a Parker 45 C/C filler a vintage pen in the terms of what people normally mean when they say vintage. I thought you were talking about vintage pens with sacs or eye dropper fillers. Those that aren't easy to clean out. I would suggest there is no problem putting any inks in a Parker 45 as it easily dismantles for thorough cleaning. Not that allowing cartridges to dry out in one is a practice that I would ever do with any of mine.

[Estycollector]

I found where I read about Waterman inks for vintage pens. Inks: Good, Bad, and Ugly (richardspens.com)

[gyasko]

The generally safer "classic" inks in "dull" colors are the easiest to read.  If you're writing something to be read, these are the best choices -- even if you're only reading it yourself.  This is one reason they are classics. 

 

 

[IlikeInksandIcannotlie]

This was last month's. I couldn't find this month's, but it was just 2-3 days ago.

[IlikeInksandIcannotlie]

 

[IlikeInksandIcannotlie]

I would still advise against Noodler's ( batch inconsistencies).

[bunnspecial]

10 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

Keep in mind ‘vintage pens’ only speak to the age of the writing instruments — and, even then, there is no agreement among collectors and hobbyists as to what the cutoff for ‘vintage’ is — and not either the specific filling mechanism, or the materials used for different parts of the writing instrument. An old steel nib may be more susceptible to corrosion by iron-gall inks than a gold nib of the same age; an celluloid pen barrel would be more prone to deterioration or staining than one made of sterling silver; and an old latex sac could be compromised chemically by certain inks in ways an old eyedropper-filler pen's ink reservoir would not.

 

I agree that "vintage" is ambiguous.

 

For many US collectors or at least collectors of US pens, I think "Vintage" may be synonymous with "Latex in contact with ink." Of course there were eyedroppers and safeties that predated latex, and plenty of self filling pens without latex parts.

 

Most of these discussions seem to center around deterioration of latex parts, which is why I say that. In that, we can group together lever fillers, button fillers, Crrescent fillers, Parker Vacumatics, and Sheaffer touchdown/Snorkel pens. I may be missing some.

 

Of secondary concern to me is ink in contact with the barrel. I don't particularly worry about ebonite or acrylic. I do wonder if the wrong pH can lead to celluloid degradation, but at the same time we have 100 years of evidence that acidic inks are safe and I'd be inclined to think if pH were an issue it would be acidic inks. Of course on things like vintage piston fillers we have to worry about ink/celluloid contact, and Parker Vacumatics get a double dose of care since you have latex combined with celluloid contact.

 

As we know too, inks are mostly water, but in addition to dye we have surfactants and biocides. The possibility is also there that some of these, the surfactants in particular(since I think many of them are glycol ethers) may not play nice with either latex or celluloid.

 

For me, I look at pens like 60s and 70s Montblancs, which are resin(acrylic) piston fillers and for me, I comfortably use anything I'd also use in a pen made in the last decade. That means staining inks are out, but I do use some higher saturation inks.

 

The jury is out for me on the Parker 51 Aero. In theory, the PVC sac should handle a lot, but I always worry about clogging the collector even if the sac is safe. 51 Vacs are a different story since, again, you have latex in play even though the ink is in contact with the acrylic. Of course many of these when new were used with really, really nasty ink-a concoction that contains IPA among other things.

[david-p]

12 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

So, are you talking about the lowest common denominator among vintage pens there, the most frail, most delicate, most easily damaged? Or some subset of vintage pens with particular specifications other than their age?

I thought that I had replied to this, but there is no evidence here that I actually did. Sorry.

 

As a user rather than a collector, I am not concerned with really old pens; but with pens like Parker 51, 61 and 75, into which I do not think one can pour any old ink with impunity

[david-p]

3 hours ago, Dione said:

I don't consider a Parker 45 C/C filler a vintage pen in the terms of what people normally mean when they say vintage. I thought you were talking about vintage pens with sacs or eye dropper fillers. Those that aren't easy to clean out. I would suggest there is no problem putting any inks in a Parker 45 as it easily dismantles for thorough cleaning. Not that allowing cartridges to dry out in one is a practice that I would ever do with any of mine.

Sorry. I thought I had specified what pens concern me. The example of the Parker 45 was given as a pen that is much harder to abuse, though I would agree with you that allowing any pen to dry out is not a good idea and it has happened to me rarely in 30 years.

[david-p]

2 hours ago, Estycollector said:

I found where I read about Waterman inks for vintage pens. Inks: Good, Bad, and Ugly (richardspens.com)

Thank you! This link and those to which it itself links, are highly valuable and pretty comprehensive.

 

David

[Dione]

1 hour ago, david-p said:

Sorry. I thought I had specified what pens concern me. The example of the Parker 45 was given as a pen that is much harder to abuse, though I would agree with you that allowing any pen to dry out is not a good idea and it has happened to me rarely in 30 years.

When FP users discuss ink problems (or kindness/cruelty) in vintage pens they usually mean those inks that can have an adverse reaction to latex sacs. You're right when you say a Parker 45 is harder to abuse. Much harder. If I want to use shimmer or high sheen inks I tend to select a Parker 45 for the job because it's not going to suffer any damage.

[lapis]

5 hours ago, david-p said:

Well, Registrar's Ink is known to be bad news if used for a long time in any pen.....

That's a good one.  No harm meant, but IYAM, that ink is bad news in any pen for any time because it's the driest ink I've ever met. IMO It's not unkind to my pens but unkind to me.

[david-p]

49 minutes ago, Dione said:

When FP users discuss ink problems (or kindness/cruelty) in vintage pens they usually mean those inks that can have an adverse reaction to latex sacs.

That is only one kind of damage that can occur. There's also clogging of the collector and eating away of of the feed and nib, as shown in Richard Binder's article Inks: The Good. the Bad and the Ugly.

[sansenri]

I doubt there will be any multicenter, double blinded, randomized studies to prove ink kindness or cruelty to vintage pens...

a lot of experience though and an amout of horror stories...

[Estycollector]

33 minutes ago, sansenri said:

I doubt there will be any multicenter, double blinded, randomized studies to prove ink kindness or cruelty to vintage pens...

a lot of experience though and an amout of horror stories...

who needs one when you have Mr. Binder?

[sansenri]

I would consder him an old tradition practicing doctor...

[david-p]

31 minutes ago, Estycollector said:

who needs one when you have Mr. Binder?

 

Those who find it hard to navigate his website?

[Estycollector]

16 minutes ago, david-p said:

 

Those who find it hard to navigate his website?

Oh!!! I am sorry. That never occured to me. 

[Estycollector]

27 minutes ago, sansenri said:

I would consder him an old tradition practicing doctor...

Perhaps.  When I was restoring vintage Esterbrook FP's, I found him truly benefical. 

[bunnspecial]

BTW, I'm glad to see the above Reddit experiment, but the scientist in me wouldn't necessarily place a ton of trust in just a single test.

 

For one thing, I seem to recall that there are 2-3 manufacturers of ink sacs out there. Since they all seem to charge about the same price for their sacs, I'm assuming all are probably ab out the same quality, but that doesn't necessarily mean that their rubber is exactly the same. It's entirely possible that an ink is completely fine in one brand of sac and will cause nearly immediate issues in another brand.

Second, testing a single pen with a single ink from a given manufacturer doesn't necessarily allow us to draw a valid conclusion. Not every ink is the same within a given line, and every brand can have batch to batch variation. Noodlers is especially known for it, and IIRC the "Bad" Warden series inks are mixed by the bottle with some intentional slight variation so that an ink can be tracked back to one particular bottle.

 

The repair guys who have repaired premature failure from certain brands or types of ink are still working on anecdotes, but their anecdotes are based on a fairly large sample size rather than a single pen.