Diluting Diamine Eclipse?

[Cerbervs]

Hello I just bought some Diamine Eclipse and was wondering if any one has experience with diluting it. I wanted to dilute it so not to harm my ink sac in my Parker 51 Vac, but keep its nice dark purple. This is my first time messing with inks should i use distilled water or what. Any help is appreciated.

 

[dragos.mocanu]

Adding water to ink will have side effects, like heavy feathering (though the ink dries faster). I would not put any kind of inks that contain pigments known to stain (reds, purples, browns) in a Vacumatic...Although Diamine inks are generally known as low maintenance inks, I personally encountered (and was disappointed by) 2 colors, namely the Imperial Purple and the Ochre (heavily staining inks). Better go with something like Aurora blue, which cleans out very fast and has a nice purple hue.

[Cerbervs]

Thanks I will look into other ink colors/brands.

[danleaf]

Hi I have sargasso blue and I think that it's really thick.. Does anyone know of a good dilution ratio for that ink...?

[Ted A]

Get yourself some small containers, sample vials work great, and some distilled water and experiment.

 

1:1 Ink to water may be more than you want to dilute it. Then do 2:1, 3:1 and so on. You should be able fairly quickly to find a ratio that fits your needs.

 

There are trade-offs in dilution and you have to evaluate how much you want to trade for the result you get.

 

The other thing that I do, when I find a ratio that I like, is that I only mix small quantities at a time. What I like today, I may not next week so I don't want to use up a whole bottle of ink.

[alexander_k]

Diluting inks is something I've tried with reasonable success so far, starting with PR American Blue (https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php/topic/174956-saving-private-reserve-american-blue/): by combining two in my view disappointing inks, I got one ink that satisfied me. Eclipse wasn't as troublesome as PRAM by any means but a bit too dark for my taste so I have been diluting it not with water but with another purple ink, in this case Akkerman's Voorhout Violet (also manufactured by Diamine according to FPN experts). Without any pretence to a method, as the Eclipse bottle becomes emptier, I top it up with a little VV. The colour is becoming lighter but otherwise I see no change.

 

Sargasso Sea is a tougher case. I love the colour but not the sheen, so it's Quink Washable Blue to the rescue once again: it's the ink that disappoints me most but it's an excellent cleaner for used pens, so why not use it to dilute other blue inks? So I do the same as with Eclipse: I top the SS bottle up with WB and the improvement is already noticeable after a couple of times. The good thing about this progressive dilution is that you can't go spectacularly wrong: as soon as the colour and behaviour of the ink become satisfactory you can stop topping it up and use it happily ever after.