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Baystate Blue - Cleaning Test


Komitadjie

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After doing a fair bit of reading about the tremendous staining properties of Noodler's Baystate Blue, I decided that some highly-unscientific testing was called for. To this end, I picked a Platinum Preppy with an eyedropper conversion. This is the pen that came supplied with my large bottle of Heart of Darkness. I filled it completely with BSB, wrote a few lines until it was writing well, then capped it and left it to sit on my desk for approximately three months. ... Yeah, totally meant to do that, all part of the test... Honest...

 

For the record, all photos were taken at the same time, under the same lighting conditions, with a Canon 7D using the built-in AWB, then subsequently processed through the "auto" balance setting in Adobe Lightroom. They appear on my monitor and to my eye to be roughly the same as what I observed with the naked eye.

 

This is taken directly after I poured out the remaining ink, as you can see, the entire pen is quite blue at this point!

 

http://i1158.photobucket.com/albums/p603/Komitadjie/PEN-1_DxO_zpsa3153226.jpg

 

 

I gave it a shot of my usual 1-part-in-10 unscented ammonia flush, to see what it would do

 

http://i1158.photobucket.com/albums/p603/Komitadjie/PEN-2_DxO_zps9aa58cbc.jpg

 

 

Well... it took out the bulk of the ink, I suppose! Still a lot of blue there, as you can easily see! So, upped the ante by adding some Dawn dishwashing detergent to the flush, and giving it about five minutes of soak.

 

http://i1158.photobucket.com/albums/p603/Komitadjie/PEN-3_DxO_zpsafb48be7.jpg

 

 

Still not much effect. How about a bit of swabbing? Using the same flush, I scrubbed the inside of the barrel thoroughly with a pair of cotton swabs.

 

http://i1158.photobucket.com/albums/p603/Komitadjie/PEN-4_DxO_zps77b55fc2.jpg

 

 

You can see the swab in the background showing that the first scrubbing did remove a fair bit more, but that barrel is still darn blue! So, with no more real ideas to try, I decided to do something that should really get my fountain pen card revoked entirely for even thinking, much less doing. I filled up my ear syringe with straight denatured alcohol, and gave 'er a shot of that.

 

http://i1158.photobucket.com/albums/p603/Komitadjie/PEN-5_DxO_zpse31559a5.jpg

 

THAT did the trick! Clean as a whistle, barrel and collector both. Probably will have some negative effect on the plastic down the road, I certainly wouldn't do that to a pen worth MORE than this, but it did show me that what the effect I was seeing is was truly NOT a stain of the plastic, but a persistent residue on the surface that is resistant to the usual cleaning agents that you'd use in a pen. No particular point to this, except that I wanted to show what kind of results I got from the whole thing. Perhaps someone else will find it interesting too!

 

From this, I've more or less concluded that I will not be using BSB in any pens I particularly care about, that residue can't do ANY good for the internals of the pen... but immediately after these photos were taken, I re-inked the Preppy with the BSB. I'm just too hooked on that awesome, eye-popping colour not to have a pen for it around! I can sacrifice some cheap-os for that kind of colour.

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I love this ink. I keep it in a blue TWSBI 540. I can't see the staining.

Proud resident of the least visited state in the nation!

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I love Baystate Blue, but it definitely doesn't clean up as nicely as many other inks. But my pens tend to be <$10, so whatever.

 

That said, I've found that *all* inks are a pain to get out of eyedropper pens. Generally a convertor or filling system helps force the ink out much, much more effectively.

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Nice test! I've been on the fence with this ink for a while, I can never seem to fill up a pen without getting ink everywhere.

@arts_nibs

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Probably a good idea to just put it in a blue pen and not even notice it! I just love the absurdly bright blue colour it has, I think it's completely worth having a dedicated pen for. I've found by far the easiest way to fill ANYTHING (and I like refilling cartridges more than converters, for the extra volume) is to buy one of the cheap, industrial 50mil syringes that can be had on Amazon. I think I paid $3.50 including shipping for ten just a bit ago (they last forever in this use), and slap the largest blunt needle you can find on it. Lets you fill anything with no mess at all, then just clean it out by cycling some water through it. Beats the heck out of eyedroppers and pipettes, for me anyway.

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I've only tried a sample of BSB, but I found it cleaned up pretty easily with a 10:1 bleach dilution. The standard ammonia flush didn't make it budge.

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Hmm, might have to try that next time. I kind of cringe to put a chlorine product into a pen, though, that stuff is murderously reactive!

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I'm not surprised alcohol worked, 'cos the little swabby pads are great at wiping off stray BSB drops in my stainless steel sink. :)

 

For the record, I love BSB but only use it in a Reform 1745 whose piston was already busted (so I had nothing to lose)—the ink window is already blue in those pens, too.

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Great job. Thank you.

Fountain pens are my preferred COLOR DELIVERY SYSTEM (in part because crayons melt in Las Vegas).

Create a Ghostly Avatar and I'll send you a letter. Check out some Ink comparisons: The Great PPS Comparison 

Don't know where to start?  Look at the Inky Topics O'day.  Then, see inks sorted by color: Blue Purple Brown Red Green Dark Green Orange Black Pinks Yellows Blue-Blacks Grey/Gray UVInks Turquoise/Teal MURKY

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Great experiment, great write up, well done :thumbup:

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/606/letterji9.png

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Thanks for posting this.. been on the fence about getting BSB and then if I should put it in my TWSBI 580 - the blue is hypnotic!

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I have my dedicated BSB pen right now, and have thought about buying a new BSB only pen because I am wanting a different nib. I always just give it a hot water flush with a bulb syringe and let it air dry, then refill when ready to go. The dedicated pen has worked just fine for now, and it's not even a Preppy. :D

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