Pigment Black ink that is pigment only, no dyes?

[amper]

On 3/16/2023 at 1:05 PM, dragondazd said:

I don't think all dyes stain plastic. I don't know if all pigments do not stain plastic without binder. I also don't know if all pigments without binder are water resistant and lightfast. 

 

I think you can find inks that are water resistant, light resistant, and do not stain plastic that may use dyes or binders.

Yes, not all dyes will stain plastics, and some dyes that will stain some plastics may not stain others. The same is actually true of pigments; some pigments, like Dioxazine Violet, are highly capable of staining plastics. I learned this to my dismay when using Dioxazine Violet acrylic paints with synthetic brushes. Use that color once, and you will never get it out of the bristles. But, in general, pigments—especially inorganic pigments like Carbon Black and Prussian Blue (although, technically, carbon black is the very definition of "organic" chemistry, it is actually classified in use as an inorganic pigment)—are far less likely to stain.

[amper]

On 3/16/2023 at 1:05 PM, dragondazd said:

I don't think all dyes stain plastic. I don't know if all pigments do not stain plastic without binder. I also don't know if all pigments without binder are water resistant and lightfast. 

 

I think you can find inks that are water resistant, light resistant, and do not stain plastic that may use dyes or binders.

(deleted because duplicate)

[TSherbs]

roger roger

[A Smug Dill]

On 3/11/2023 at 9:51 AM, amper said:

my ink of choice has been Mrs. Stewart's Concentrated Liquid Bluing, a laundry bluing product …‹snip›… it's cheap, widely available, and doesn't clog pens. The only possible downside is that research by the Sheaffer pen company several decades ago claimed it can corrode gold pen nibs.

 

You may be genuinely happy with the performance of it as ink, and confident that it won't damage your pens; and I have no wish to change you mind on that.

 

However, to other curious would-be users of such, my advice is: don't, as it has proven to have the ability to clog, in view of what happened in my Pilot Kakuno fitted with a CON-50 converter, in which I put Mrs Stewart's Concentrated Liquid Bluing (at full strength, only adulterated by the tiniest amount of Kodak Photo-Flo clinging to the tip of a toothpick, which I then inserted into the converter and stirred the liquid therein around, because the pen kept hard-starting every day after being capped and unused for a few hours overnight). I wrote a little bit with the pen every couple of days since I filled it at the very beginning of April — not even three weeks ago — and, after the addition of Photo-Flo and (for whatever reason) a couple of days for the mixture to stabilise(?), the hard-starts ceased happening to date.

 

A couple of hours ago, when I wrote with the pen, the colour of the lines was looking a bit… odd, which I suppose meant there had been some ink evaporation. That was no surprise in itself, considering that the Kakuno is well known not to have the best cap seal effectiveness. I decided to see how much ‘ink’ remained in the converter, so I drove the piston forward and ‘primed’ the feed until I saw a bit of glistening where the feed started emerging from the grip section, then tried to draw it back to its former retracted position, while the nib was pointing up, to let the liquid fall to the ‘bottom’ of the tube and show the remaining volume clearly.

 

I almost ended up with liquid bluing all over my lap. The piston plug came off the forward end of the stem, and ended up getting lodged inside converter's tube at an awkward angle; and the liquid flowed into the part where the piston stem is, then leaked out around the piston driver handle as well as through the tiny lumen in its centre.

 

After soaking the entire converter in a beaker of hot water in the hope that the glued-down metal collar could be unscrewed (but, nope, no such luck!), then put through a couple of ultrasonic cleaning cycles in a bath of dilute ammonia and dishwashing detergent, I removed most of the blue liquid (goo?), enough to see clearly inside. The wall of the clear tube was coated with a thin, gritty film of light blue all the way up and down; and, once I got the piston plug to sit a bit less than securely back on the end of the stem, and pushed it (with some difficulty) forward towards the opening of the converter, I could see light blue solids clinging to the nooks on the piston stem.

 

So, effectively, what must have happened was that some of the liquid bluing leaked through a microscopic gap around the piston plug's rim, and ended up being behind the plug and where the stem was. (You know how, with dye ink, sometimes you end with a tiny bit of it on the wrong side of the piston plug inside a converter?) Not quickly enough to leak as liquid out of the driver handle end of the converter, but evaporated there, clinging to the wall of the tube as well as around the stem.

 

Enough of the liquid bluing also evaporated from the forward compartment of the tube to form that thin blue film on the clear wall. When I drove the piston forward and ‘primed’ the feed, I was able to overcome the friction against the gritty film; but, on trying to draw it back, the friction pulled the plug off the end of the stem, thus ‘breaking’ the converter's mechanism.

 

So, it will stain the wall of the ink reservoir — which could be the barrel's interior surface for a piston-filler, vacuum-filler, or eyedropper-filled pen model — and can end up solidifying around the stem (of the piston mechanism, vac-filler mechanism, or shut-off mechanism) if there is one inside. For what it's worth, those blue solids will come off relatively easily with scrubbing using a brush or cotton-tipped swab, but you can't necessarily get to where the precipitate is (behind the plug), and you could damage the internal mechanism by trying to retract the stem and draw the plug back (in a piston-filler or vacuum-filler), before you realise it isn't going to work smoothly. Furthermore, you need to have access to, and be prepared to scrub, the ink reservoir's wall with something rough and which can possibly scuff or scratch the wall. You can't do that to, say, a Majohn T5 on which the nib and feed are friction-fit into the grip section with no readily unscrew-able collar around them, at least not without risky disassembly of the pen from the piston knob end. (Also, from my experience with two now-broken Majohn T5 pens, the piston knob will most likely break when you try to move the piston plug up or down against that blue gritty film on the wall.)

 

It maybe somewhat safe to use liquid bluing as ink inside refilled cartridges, or very simple eyedropper-filled pens with no internal mechanism (e.g. Majohn S7, or a Platinum Preppy sans converter), especially if it's a dedicated pen and/or staining does not bother you. But, with all the risk and caveats, it beggars the question: why bother, when there are safer pigment inks to use? Yes, (other pigment inks, such as) Platinum Carbon Black can leave stubborn ‘stains’ as well in thin streaks, but I've never seen it form a wide film like that.

[TSherbs]

@A Smug Dill You take an pics of the mess?

[A Smug Dill]

22 minutes ago, TSherbs said:

@A Smug Dill You take an pics of the mess?

 

No. Why? Pics, or it didn't happen? I was sitting in my recliner at the time semi-watching TV and scribbling, and it was stupid of me to mess with the pen's converter while doing that. It was just as well I didn't get any of the blue onto my clothes or the recliner's fabric, but my wife had to come to my rescue with sheets of facial tissue (of which there's luckily a box near us, but I just couldn't reach it from where I sat, especially while my hands were covered in liquid bluing). What would be the point of taking pics of the mess, by the time I've cleaned up enough to be able to get out of my seat?

[Ron Z]

5 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

No. Why? Pics, or it didn't happen? I was sitting in my recliner at the time semi-watching TV and scribbling, and it was stupid of me to mess with the pen's converter while doing that. It was just as well I didn't get any of the blue onto my clothes or the recliner's fabric, but my wife had to come to my rescue with sheets of facial tissue (of which there's luckily a box near us, but I just couldn't reach it from where I sat, especially while my hands were covered in liquid bluing). What would be the point of taking pics of the mess, by the time I've cleaned up enough to be able to get out of my seat?

However entertaining pictures bluing all over you might be your description was graphic enough.   I think his point is that he'd like to see pictures of the damage done to the pen by the bluing. 

[TSherbs]

2 hours ago, Ron Z said:

However entertaining pictures bluing all over you might be your description was graphic enough.   I think his point is that he'd like to see pictures of the damage done to the pen by the bluing. 

 

@A Smug Dillyes, this

[TSherbs]

2 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

... What would be the point of taking pics of the mess, by the time I've cleaned up enough to be able to get out of my seat?

 

the education of the community, and perhaps an elevation in our amusement to counter ennui?

 

The tissues scene might be funny, too!  Or perhaps one of your illustrations of your grimace at the moment??

[A Smug Dill]

6 hours ago, TSherbs said:

the education of the community,

 

Sigh. Was what I voluntarily shared of my experience — tied back to exactly where/why I was inspired to try in the first place — as well as my analysis and advice, not precisely for that?

[TSherbs]

🙄

[XYZZY]

I agree that the picture would have been fun, particularly of his wife helping him mop up the mess with the tissues while he was pinned in the chair by puddles of ink.  However, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then Dill has already provided us with equal value 😉  

 

For what it's worth, I personally consider "Pictures or it didn't happen" just part of fun internet slang, and not an accusation that I think somebody is fibbing.  Much like LOL doesn't really mean I laughed out loud.

[TSherbs]

6 hours ago, XYZZY said:

I agree that the picture would have been fun, particularly of his wife helping him mop up the mess with the tissues while he was pinned in the chair by puddles of ink.  However, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then Dill has already provided us with equal value 😉  

 

For what it's worth, I personally consider "Pictures or it didn't happen" just part of fun internet slang, and not an accusation that I think somebody is fibbing.  Much like LOL doesn't really mean I laughed out loud.

 

😀

 

I fully believed the event (I don't know where Dill got any idea otherwise). I just craved a visual, you know, like show and tell. 

 

Wait. You mean "LMAO" doesn't actually mean.... 

 

 

[A Smug Dill]

7 hours ago, XYZZY said:

However, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then Dill has already provided us with equal value 😉  

 

I thought so. 😇

 

1 hour ago, TSherbs said:

I fully believed the event (I don't know where Dill got any idea otherwise).

 

 I was being sarcastic.

 

1 hour ago, TSherbs said:

I just craved a visual, you know, like show and tell.

 

On 4/19/2023 at 4:33 AM, TSherbs said:

the education of the community, and perhaps an elevation in our amusement to counter ennui?

 

My priority, while I was dealing with the incident once I was able to get out of my recliner, was to assess the damage and see what could be repaired. I eventually got the piston plug back onto the stem in the converter, but it's a bit wobbly and looks unreliable, in part due to the blue gritty film left on the interior wall of the clear tube; and so the next priority was to scrub inside it, and I managed to scratch the plastic in the process, and now some pigment is stuck in — or on the jagged edges of — the scratches.

 

You'd think I'd be desensitised to how today's social media culture generally is, but I still think it's outrageous those who have no skin in the game would imagine, then openly allude to the view, that I would regard my crisis as an opportunity to either amuse or educate others by filming my incident management process (cf. “the mess”), to prospectively illustrate it for others if I choose to share information about it online.

 

The best way to not be in that mess is “no be there”. So, as a “TL;DR” for my “community service announcement”, there's my characteristically smug, “don't.” If someone doesn't want the details, they don't need to know anything pertaining to any observations or the handling of the problem situation, if they've been told what to avoid wholesale. Not getting oneself into that situation means less for one to learn, if one isn't inclined to take the time and/or be in the position to be educated.

 

Those who actually want to know more, perhaps because they think it can happen to them one day, can choose whether to tackle the wall of text that follows; that presentation was a deliberate. I didn't try to make it a decidedly fun read, or make light of my predicament, or easy to digest; and I didn't want it to have particular visual impact or make it memorable thus to those who are just idly browsing, or otherwise “attract eyeballs”. I put it in a place that is logically linked (since this thread was a key part of why I decided to experiment with this in the first place) and findable, for FPN readers who may be interested in using liquid bluing as writing fluid.

 

If I'd wanted it to be a blog article or a piece of casual entertainment, perhaps to cultivate an interested audience and or following for myself, I'd have put it in one of my blogs. As it is, I've disabled the ability for others to follow my account, on every social media platform where that option is available to me.

 

There's nothing for me to gain personally by sharing my experience; I'm doing that for the benefit of others who choose to read stuff, either casually but actively file information is prospective relevant in the back of their mind; or when they need information to better handle a situation at hand, and only then make an effort and test their ability (under psychological and/or time pressure) to find, filter, and digest what has been posted by others who tried and/or encountered similar things. I take both of those approaches, so you could consider that empathy — without preemptive ‘sympathy’ for faceless individuals who may not actually find themselves in similar stressful situations.

 

You asked for more amusement, so I countered with both a sarcastic comeback and a bit of self-deprecation (“it was stupid of me to…”), as well as given a description of the predicament in which I found myself upfront, because “comedy is tragedy that happens to someone else.”

 

[TSherbs]

Is this "sarcastic" and "self-deprecating" too?  ^^^