India Ink - What am I doing wrong?

[Chris1]

I have a bottle of Pelikan India Ink. It is fifty years old and has stood undisturbed for the past twenty.

There is a pretty thick precipitate!

 

Even the best of us it seems cannot prevent it.

[grayautumnday]

Even if 50% of an ink were the most effective broad-spectrum (gram-positive bacteria, gram-negative, and fungi) biocide --which would be extremely dangerous if it ever came into contact with skin (wet or dried) -- no company could guarantee a shelf life of an unopened container of ink containing water beyond 2-3 years.

 

Just a heads up for anyone buying NOS ink or hoarding inks that are no longer being made. There's always going to be bottles that manage to avoid significant contamination or end up getting bottled at a very-well-sanitized-plant then get stored unopened, never exposed to oxygen, with lid septa that never degrade and let air or rust in, at consistently-very-cold-but-not-freezing temperatures, never exposed to sunlight, and at pH extremes that discourage microbial growth (but would almost certainly damage paper with acid/alkaline damage when used from a longterm document conservation perspective)...

 

Inks are not designed for preservation. The only way to adequately preserve ink is to wholly remove all water from it, thereby depriving microbes of the resources needed to grow.