Over the years I have found old bottles of ink at antique malls, garage sales, etc. and most of the time use these inks in my pen collection.

A couple of years ago I found the mother of all ink bottles, a 32oz. bottle of Klar's Security Ink (blue black) make in NY, NY. It appears to be very old and uses a cork stopper (that I will never remove), but there is a small tube down the center of the stopper that is topped with a tiny screw top. Excellent for filling old ink bottles.

I still manage to find partially full bottles and enjoy trying them. My favorite is still a very old Art-Decco bottle of Quink that is a green. My stash of this is low so it is only used for special occasions.

Caspirin

I've acquired quite a few vintage inks. Quink, Skrip, Penit, and Carter's. Lots of fun to play with and I really like some of the colors. There's a wonderful brown, made by Carter's that's my favorite brown. And I love the Deco labels on their ink cubes. Some people use old Skrip bottles for other inks because of the way the bottle is made with a well on the side. I also have some newly made iron gall ink. Vintage in the sense that it's the historic formula - I use that only with a dip pen. The other inks I use with dip or fountain pens.

Too many bottles, not enough drawer space!

On a bookshelf is a bunch of bottles of old ink, some to use and some to look at. There are four different shapes of Montblanc bottles. There are two pyramids of ink: one of Waterman boxes back when they had pictures (Aztec, sailboat etc) the other of Parker Superchrome inks in the metal containers. Some Carter Midnight Blue (much nicer than the Noodlers Manhattan Blue), and a quart of Parker Permanent Royal Blue. There are also two bottles of vintage English ink sent by an FPN member in England.

There at the office: if they were home they would be the clinching proof to my wife that I'm way, way over the edge.

gary

I've heard that the general rule on using old ink - as opposed to just having it on a shelf - is whether it smells decent or not, and/or has visible sediment.

Am I missing anything (besides being sure it was meant for an FP, and not a dip pen)?

The vehicle in fountain pen inks is just water with very fine pigments suspended in it, so from what I know if you add water to a bottle of dried up ink and that dried pigment in it absorbs into the water everything should be fine. Sometimes it needs to be shaken well in order to absorb it all. Also I do dip tests and test it in a cheap pen to see how it works and to make sure it doesn't clog the pen or cause other damage.

So far my experineces with vintage inks have been good. You can get them for real cheap and in colours some ink manufactures don't make any more- like emerald green Skrip- which is my favourite, it's a lovely bright leaf green colour. My bottle is almost out so I'm going to have to hunt down another one. Does anyone know if they ever had emerald green Skrip in those large bottles?

Wow!

I'd love to have a 32oz bottle of ink. That would practically never run out for me. (Although that's probably a weeks worth of ink for some of our writers here )


I need to start collecting vintage ink. maybe i'll run into one.

I'd love to see a picture of it, if you have one.

I found a bottle of Quink (washable blue-black I think), reconstituted it and have begun using it. It's much lighter than it would have been, but not bad for a 40 year old bottle of ink. I put it through a paper coffee filter and before putting it in one of my pens. It's currently in my Duke Sapphire.

I need to do that with my Quink, there's this stuff on the bottle of the bottle that looks like the sugar on the bottom of a cup of tea.

Try here:

http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...st&p=338188

They're out there.

gary

I don't collect them (I've actually never seen any on sale here in the UK...), but I am absolutely fascinated by them. I like to write with good clones of vintage inks and am therefore always delighted to see scans of them on here. I do have one or two bottles of ink which are ca. 20 years old (e.g. my Montblanc Turquoise, which I bought when I was a student), but they were new when I bought them...

Vintage inks are wonderful, but best used with a certain amount of caution, most of which have been spelled out clearly above. Outside of India and Iron Gall inks, the ones I'd suggest staying away from are Parker "51" ink, and Parker Superchrome ink. Both of these are corrosive. You haven't lived until you've seen a sterling silver breather tube in a nice "51" shot to h*** from exposure to these inks .

Vintage Quink Permanent Blue Black is probably my favorite for daily use (I like Royal Blue, Green and Red Parker permanent inks too). I also enjoy vintage Washable Purple Skrip, Washable Persian Rose Skrip, and probably the best ink of all time for those of us that restore pens and need a safe ink for test drives: vintage Washable Blue Skrip (it's light and flushes very easily). I should post samples of some of these sometime, along with a few others on my shelves. Somewhere, I've got about 15 unopened Carters ink cubes. Might have to dig them out and offer up a few on the marketplace when it gets warmer. Mostly though, I just enjoy using older inks, and of course love old ink bottles, especially with clear labels. They're fun, and give me something to dust when I'm bored.


Cheers,
Tom

Andrew,

the Montblanc Turquoise is a lovely color, a bit like my favorite old one...the bottle of Permanent Green Quink from the '40's. It has degenerated into a very nice green-black, but sadly only a sixth of the bottle remains.

Caspirin

Another part of the rule is if it looks discolored, don't use it either. Besides sediment,
you don't want something furry or slimy that floats on the top, either. Since the really
old inks used preservatives that are now banned, a strong chemical smell might be
normal. I would not get my nose too close, though.

Click to view attachment

*Photo from Mr. Binder's website

Special Binderized nib for writing wide lines with indeterminate edges...

I'll try not to jump in the ink bottle, then.

How old is antique?

At a garage sale years ago I bought a boxed bottle of Waterman's red ink. Never opened it, but I wonder if there's a way to tell how old it is.