Water and Light test of some resisty Inks

[KrA]

For this test, I wrote with the ink and did a water test after 7 days to give some time to iron gall inks to oxide. I deliberately wrote in such a way that IG and dye based inks were more wet at some part to see how much it will get affected. Furthermore I diluted the Noodlers ink to test the them as Noodlers ink are very saturated and I have read that they can be diluted. I also diluted R&K sketch emma to see how will it fare.

 

Water droplets were left for nearly 6 hrs for water test and then the page was attached to window where 4-5 hrs of sunlight is there every day and was left for 1 month. This being rainy season in India, the sunlight only came around 20 days 

 

After putting droplets if water-

 

Water test -

 

1 month sunlight test

 

 

Conclusion:-

 

You can look at the water resistance test to draw your own conclusions. I am not reiterating for the sake of brevity.

 

As for sunlight test the Krishna Lyrebird Water Sapphire was first one to fade in nearly 5-6 days, next was Pilot Blue in 10 days. Pelikan Blue Black also faded around same time but shows more resistant than Pilot Blue, it is still (very low) readable at some parts. Pilot Black held pretty good and is readable and even it's watered portion was readable (barely) for almost 22 days, I was surprised to see it fare better than Pelikan 4001 Blue Black and also very famous pilot G2 blue gel pen. Both Pilot Iroshizuku Yamaguri and & Rohrer & Kligner Sepia faded to lighter colour but are still readable, with yamaguri performing slightly better. Rohrer & Kligner Sketchink Lilly, Emma, Sailor Seiboku, Souboku, Noodler Anti feather Blue and Baltimore Canyon are all unaffected by sunlight and water as expected (even the diluted part were unaffected).

 

KWZ IG Turquoise held pretty good to sunlight (similar to yamaguri) but it got wet due to rain at around 22nd day and therefore it was washed out.

[Frank C]

Thanks for posting this. I'm a little surprised at the results. The pigment inks seem to have held up better during the fade test. 

[KrA]

@Frank CSome vendors recently started carrying Noodlers ink. It is quite expensive here.

Edited August 24, 2022 by KrA

[OCArt]

Thanks for posting these tests, I was surprised by the Pilot ink fading. I use Baltimore Canyon as my standard blue now. 

[KrA]

@OCArt Thanks, It was your review and high praise for the Baltimore Canyon that compelled me to buy it. It really is an awesome ink and has become my second favourite ink next to Sailor Seiboku. It is also easier to clean out of pens than X feather Blue but performs as good and is super office appropriate. 

 

Regards

KrA

 

[Frank C]

  On 8/23/2022 at 11:49 PM, KrA said:

@OCArt Thanks, It was your review and high praise for the Baltimore Canyon that compelled me to buy it. It really is an awesome ink and has become my second favourite ink next to Sailor Seiboku. It is also easier to clean out of pens than X feather Blue but performs as good and is super office appropriate. 

 

Regards

KrA

 

Expand  

Are Noodler's inks readily available in India? I guess that they are much more expensive than India-made inks.

 

[InkyColors]

Thanks for posting this.  I love looking at these tests!

[yazeh]

I love these types of reviews. Great job

[TSherbs]

ditto on the praise for this kind of review

[TSherbs]

My surprise was the Pelikan 4001 Blue-Black. I thought it would have done better in the sun. 

[Frank C]

  On 8/25/2022 at 3:32 PM, TSherbs said:

My surprise was the Pelikan 4001 Blue-Black. I thought it would have done better in the sun. 

Expand  

I agree. I would have thought that iron-gall inks would have done better. If you want fade resistance, you need to use pigmented inks. 

[IlikeInksandIcannotlie]

  On 8/24/2022 at 12:11 AM, Frank C said:

Are Noodler's inks readily available in India? I guess that they are much more expensive than India-made inks.

 

Expand  

They are now available in India, though at heavy mark-ups from the US prices. The price per ml is around that of Iroshizuku in the US. 

[Olya]

Iron gall inks are not at all lightfast.

 

I am more surprised by people's astonishment of IGs fading than the actual result!

 

In very very old documents IGs have faded (or eaten through the paper).

 

Truly lightfast are only pigments and graphite.

[TSherbs]

  On 8/25/2022 at 4:31 PM, Olya said:

Iron gall inks are not at all lightfast.

 

I am more surprised by people's astonishment of IGs fading than the actual result!

 

In very very old documents IGs have faded (or eaten through the paper).

 

Truly lightfast are only pigments and graphite.

Expand  

 

I am surprised by your surprise at my surprise. So, I am surprised*2! 

 

I learned something today (old dogs, new learns)....

[Olya]

  On 8/25/2022 at 5:35 PM, TSherbs said:

 

I am surprised by your surprise at my surprise. So, I am surprised*2! 

 

I learned something today (old dogs, new learns)....

Expand  

🤣

Good one! 😁

 

I have followed ink experiments for a while and will continue to do so (I love water and UV tests!), it's just that IGs never perform well and very old documents written with IGs show fading as well, so I am surprised that this "myth" is still so strong that IGs are somehow super lasting... It kinda falls into "common fp myths" to me (that just popped into my mind, for lack of better phrasing).

 

I am though sad to see Pilot Blue fade so terribly, but it isn't a very lightfast ink to be fair.

At least Pilot Black holds up well, blacks seem to be most fade resistant across the board anyway.

[arcfide]

  On 8/25/2022 at 6:21 PM, Olya said:

🤣

Good one! 😁

 

I have followed ink experiments for a while and will continue to do so (I love water and UV tests!), it's just that IGs never perform well and very old documents written with IGs show fading as well, so I am surprised that this "myth" is still so strong that IGs are somehow super lasting... It kinda falls into "common fp myths" to me (that just popped into my mind, for lack of better phrasing).

 

I am though sad to see Pilot Blue fade so terribly, but it isn't a very lightfast ink to be fair.

At least Pilot Black holds up well, blacks seem to be most fade resistant across the board anyway.

Expand  

 

I think the surprise comes because IG *are* technically considered UV resistant and they are often recognized as archival inks, or at least, permanent inks that lean towards archival. The disconnect, I believe, comes from the habit of taking archival and permanent to be binary qualities, rather than existing on a spectrum. It also doesn't help that the state of dyes and fountain pen inks has changed significantly since IG was the primary ink. 

 

When applied heavily and wetly, as often found in some older applications, with a strong IG ink, such as Diamine Registrar's, the IG inks tend to be pretty resistant over time, but they will fade eventually. But compared to many dye-based inks that were widely available at that time, they are *much* more UV resistant. If you compare, say, Herbin's traditional ink line performance against most more traditional IG inks (including 4001), then the IG inks will probably end up on top, except perhaps against Perle Noire, though even there I think they'll do okay if applied in the same quantities. 

 

In the past, where IG got its reputation, our carbon-based inks in dip pens of the era were not able to adhere to the vellum surfaces nearly as well, and so they could be manually erased, much like pencil graphite. IG, on the other hand, was more permanent in this regard, and thus more archival. Moreover, it was reasonably UV resistant, though always recognized as less UV resistant than carbon ink. 

 

And then, today, we have a wide range of hyper saturated inks that use dyes which might be considered more stable than in the past. This means that some inks, particularly some dye-based black inks, tend to do remarkably well against UV. We also have mainstream adoption of pigmented inks that are finally able to work in fountain pens reliably over time as well as adhere reliably to the papers we are using. This has shifted our expectations of what a UV resistant ink means. In an era of Platinum Carbon Ink and Noodler's Bulletproof inks, seeing *any* fading when exposed to UV suddenly makes that ink "fugitive," when in fact it might just be that it is less archival than those very archival inks, while still being pretty permanent all things considered. 

 

For me at least, the surprise is more that people keep expecting inks to exist with binary attributes (non-archiva, archival), especially as it relates to permanence. 

[Olya]

  On 8/25/2022 at 9:28 PM, arcfide said:

 

I think the surprise comes because IG *are* technically considered UV resistant and they are often recognized as archival inks, or at least, permanent inks that lean towards archival. The disconnect, I believe, comes from the habit of taking archival and permanent to be binary qualities, rather than existing on a spectrum. It also doesn't help that the state of dyes and fountain pen inks has changed significantly since IG was the primary ink. 

 

When applied heavily and wetly, as often found in some older applications, with a strong IG ink, such as Diamine Registrar's, the IG inks tend to be pretty resistant over time, but they will fade eventually. But compared to many dye-based inks that were widely available at that time, they are *much* more UV resistant. If you compare, say, Herbin's traditional ink line performance against most more traditional IG inks (including 4001), then the IG inks will probably end up on top, except perhaps against Perle Noire, though even there I think they'll do okay if applied in the same quantities. 

 

In the past, where IG got its reputation, our carbon-based inks in dip pens of the era were not able to adhere to the vellum surfaces nearly as well, and so they could be manually erased, much like pencil graphite. IG, on the other hand, was more permanent in this regard, and thus more archival. Moreover, it was reasonably UV resistant, though always recognized as less UV resistant than carbon ink. 

 

And then, today, we have a wide range of hyper saturated inks that use dyes which might be considered more stable than in the past. This means that some inks, particularly some dye-based black inks, tend to do remarkably well against UV. We also have mainstream adoption of pigmented inks that are finally able to work in fountain pens reliably over time as well as adhere reliably to the papers we are using. This has shifted our expectations of what a UV resistant ink means. In an era of Platinum Carbon Ink and Noodler's Bulletproof inks, seeing *any* fading when exposed to UV suddenly makes that ink "fugitive," when in fact it might just be that it is less archival than those very archival inks, while still being pretty permanent all things considered. 

 

For me at least, the surprise is more that people keep expecting inks to exist with binary attributes (non-archiva, archival), especially as it relates to permanence. 

Expand  

Excellent post, I think you're spot on.

 

It's also worth bearing in mind that we don't quite know how 1 month in the sun translates to how many years/decades/centuries in a (closed) notebook.

I love these tests very much and sometimes I do consider longevity based on these tests and then use inks, which have performed better in UV tests, but 1 month in the sun might as well translate to 1000 years in a closed notebook, at which point the paper might've disintegrated after 500 years. And, well, my writing is certainly not interesting enough to last that long anyway 😁

[TSherbs]

  On 8/25/2022 at 6:21 PM, Olya said:

🤣

Good one! 😁

 

I have followed ink experiments for a while and will continue to do so (I love water and UV tests!), it's just that IGs never perform well and very old documents written with IGs show fading as well, so I am surprised that this "myth" is still so strong that IGs are somehow super lasting... It kinda falls into "common fp myths" to me (that just popped into my mind, for lack of better phrasing).

 

I am though sad to see Pilot Blue fade so terribly, but it isn't a very lightfast ink to be fair.

At least Pilot Black holds up well, blacks seem to be most fade resistant across the board anyway.

Expand  

 

I don't like Pilot Blue to begin with, so no tears here. I'm going to have to look into that Noodler's Canyon Blue, tho. I've yet to meet a permanent blue that I like in color tones.

[TSherbs]

But then there is another part of me that likes the idea of writing that would disappear after having been opened and read by the recipient. Mission Impossible kindathing.

[TSherbs]

  On 8/26/2022 at 11:16 AM, Olya said:

Excellent post, I think you're spot on.

 

It's also worth bearing in mind that we don't quite know how 1 month in the sun translates to how many years/decades/centuries in a (closed) notebook.

I love these tests very much and sometimes I do consider longevity based on these tests and then use inks, which have performed better in UV tests, but 1 month in the sun might as well translate to 1000 years in a closed notebook, at which point the paper might've disintegrated after 500 years. And, well, my writing is certainly not interesting enough to last that long anyway 😁

Expand  

great points, both of you