Mont Blanc Green, Cross Blue Rollerball in Water

[beezaur]

Hello,

 

I write a couple of short notes on ivory-colored letter paper, folded them, placed them in envelopes, and dropped them in a bucket of tap water a week ago. The idea is to get some idea of how a document or letter would do in a realistic water environment. The "before" scans are pdf. I can upload those if there is an interest.

 

The Mont Blanc Green was from my Mont Blanc 149 (M) fountain pen. It is not that wet a writer, but it does lay down a fair bit of ink. It puts more ink on the paper printing than cursive, which is why the lower third of the page is in cursive. The note still can be read. The lower 2/3 of the page was folded writing-on-writing; the upper third had writing against the back of the sheet. There was some transfer of ink from the top front to the bottom back, producing a legible image of the writing. The rest of the writing just faded, the ink diffusing away from the paper. The letters themselves are still fairly crisp, but faded. No color remains.

 

The Cross blue rollerball (gel) did not fare so well. The letters enlarged and blurred some. The sheet is barely legible. There was a similar image transfer with this sheet as with the Mont Blanc ink, but it is less legible. Some of the fibers in the paper seem to have attracted the ink, and were dyed blue with fair intensity.

 

The paper was Wausau 24# "Exact Opaque" ivory acid-free premium type.

 

Mont Blanc Green after 1 week submerged in an envelope in a bucket of water:

http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/9090/greenhh5.jpg

 

Cross Townsend blue rollerball after 1 week submerged in an envelope in a bucket of water:

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/7422/bluerr0.jpg

 

Scott

 

Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting

Edited October 23, 2007 by beezaur

[Shelley]

if you were in the mood to repeat the experiment I would add and handful of mud, some leaves, a worm, and depending on how realistic you were feeling a few drops of gold to the bucket, just to see how the docs would do in an actual flood...or river water would be the other option...