I've taken a small vial (ie. one of Pear Tree Pen's sample vials), cleaned it, and filled it with Polar Black. (The ink was purchased in late 2007).

I then threw it into a deep freeze, with a temperature of about -15F for six hours - more than sufficient time to freeze the equivalent amount of water solid.

It's still liquid, though there are a couple of crystals of ice forming (which is consistent with freezing of a liquid containing water).

It is somewhat more viscous than at 70F, but it's still far thinner than milk, for example.

I'll report sometime in the morning, though considering it was only 2-3 ML at -15F for 6 hours, I'm not expecting the additional time to be much of a factor.

Incidentally, after seeing many different ice-cream themed statements about the hardness of ice cream at the temperature - when stored in this deep freeze, ice cream isn't quite rock solid, but more than hard enough to bend a spoon in half. In contrast, a "normal" freezer leaves the ice cream soft enough to scoop with a table spoon with no real amount of force.

Here's a post by Nathan reporting the successful performance of Polar Blue. He reports that his Polar Blue was able to sign for a UPS delivery at 8 degrees where the delivery guy's BPs had failed. Assuming that the pen wasn't itself in freezing conditions, but that the signing happened where it was, the free-flowing, non-freezing attribute of Polar ink is impressive. I'm guessing that this is the sort of conditions for which the Polar inks were designed.

Weather (in some regions) permitting, it would be interesting to see some comparisons of Polar and non-Polar inks in these conditions if any hearty volunteers are up to the task.

Doug

You know, we have members all over the world. Don't we have at least one in Antarctica?

Sometime, here, I feel in antartica...

Then, 48 hours later (i.e. today) we get 5-10 mm of freezing rain over 10 cm of snow that came through the night.

My thermometer reads -1.2 F right now. That's the outside temperature.

I decided to ink a Lamy Safari Vista with my Polar Black, and put it in my deep freeze (which are colder than a refrigerator/freezer) at -15F overnight.

I placed a sheet of paper next to the deep freeze, pulled my pen out of the freezer, and about 3 seconds later wrote with it. The pen started immediately, with no effort required to write.

The only thing to report is that the pen writes a bit dryer (which one would expect given the ink is more viscous when that cold).

My vial of Polar Black is in the same state as in my post at midnight - thicker but still fluid.

I am really impressed at the sacrifices FPNers go through in the name of science!

Now I feel I ought to replicate this experiment with Polar Blue. But that was a bold move putting your actual pen in the freezer! I'm not sure I have the nerve to do that.

I didn't feel like trying it with one of my Hero 100's - namely because the things are hard enough to start at room temperature; it would be impossible to tell if the pen wasn't writing because of the cold, or just because the pen is hard to start in general.

Either way, if I were to damage such a pen, I'd only be out $30 tops. My Lamy 2000's and Sheaffer PFM and Legacy Heritage didn't get to participate.

This thread is great! Splicer puts his ink in his freezer... Pariah Zero puts his pen in the freezer... you think this is about Fountain Pens, and it's really about science!

No ink or ice cream in my freezer. Just salmon and vodka. Maybe I'll toss this old Mont Blanc black in there, since I don't like the ink, anyway. Yeah, the freezer's a good place for that.

Hmmm... Now I feel the need to test mine out... Although I know the polar black and blue work fine with carrying outdoors in my work bag every day and sitting in my car for hours in temperatures of -18 Celsius (0 F). So should I really worry about the "exact" temperature the ink fails at?

And I suspect my freezer is colder than many of yours since I've had it make battery acid freeze, which typically requires at least -29 C... (A different experiment.)

Of course as a Canajun I needed to get Polar inks just because. Well OK it just seemed cool (pun) to me too.

Forgive me if I'm way off, which I probably am, but could the glass bottle have anything to do with the differences between the ink's behavior in a pen and in the bottle? I don't know why it would, but I do know that a plastic ice cube tray will feel a lot less cold in the freezer than say, a mug put in there for later use as an adult beverage container.

I think it would be more meaningful for one of our arctic volunteers to take two pens into the cold. One loaded with Polar, and the other with a non-Polar ink and test for any difference between them. While the experiments performed so far in this thread are interesting, there is no way of determining that Polar ink behaves any differently from non-Polar inks.

Doug

Why on earth abuse fish by freezing it? I mean yeah, by all means, freeze the Mont Blanc black if you don't like it (might make it easier to clean out the bottle and use it for an ink you do like), but fish should be fresh.

What you're describing has little to do with the actual temperature - but in the ability of that material to change temperature (called the specific heat).

It's more accurate to describe the human sense of temperature as a "rate meter" - it detects the rate heat is being added or removed, not the absolute temperature. If you take a block of glass, a block of plastic, and a block of aluminum, all at 0C, the aluminum will feel coldest, with the glass or plastic feeling quite a bit "warmer" than the aluminum - in spite of the fact they are all identical in temperature. This is why the metal legs of a chair feel cold, while the padded seat feels warm - in spite of the fact they've been in the same room for ages. A 70F room feels pleasant; a 70F lake will cause hypothermia in about an hour.

Can the bottle have a reason for the difference? To a point, yes. But regardless of the insulative properties of the holding material, the ink will eventually assume the temperature of its surroundings. A good vaccum thermos could take weeks or months to chill, but it WILL get there. A simple glass bottle or plastic pen isn't anywhere near as insulative - only slowing the freezing process by an hour or so.

The quantities of ink, the size of the bottle, etc. used in my tests are very small - meaning it takes very little time for ink inside match the temperature of the freezer. Consider the Lamy Safari - its "ink window" is really a set of holes in the barrel; the 'window' is the surface of the converter/cartridge. Cold air from the environment is able to circulate around (and cool) the converter freely. The (metal) nib also reaches the cold temperature quite quickly, and removes the heat from the ink.

Probably not. I actually do trust that the ink has been tested down to -110F (-79C). If you're concerned about it, put the bottle in the freezer and see what happens. It's likely that a bottle is either faulty or not, that there probably aren't any "halfway-freezeproof" Polar inks out there. And I'm sure the vast majority of the bottles are not faulty.

I can't have anything around that's more fresh than I.


That was funnier in my head.

I have to freeze the fish. I buy a side-of-beef-size cut of salmon from Costco... I can't eat all that in even one week.

And here I am, thinking that our 250kg Southern Bluefin tuna were large...

Nah, it was pretty funny.

I hope we get to the bottom (as it were) of Splicer's ink thing.

Perhaps to kill parasites so it can be eaten safely while raw? I do that occasionally but some less oily fish doesn't hold up to freezing so well. Of course, a lot of fish will have been frozen already when you get it, often onboard the ship.

At least we don't have to worry about parasites in ink, do we?

I only ever abuse fish when it has disappeared over the horizon carrying my latest, greatest lure...

Just as a test I put a small vial of Polar Blue in the freezer overnight. In the morning it was frozen solid.

ut-oh

That can't be a good sign.

Nathan posted in much more detail in a separate thread here in Inky Thoughts (as well as messaging me personally to explain), but I thought it was worth mentioning here.

The 1996 2006 Edition Polar Black is not freezeproof. It is freeze-resistant, but it will freeze if left cold enough for long enough.

The earlier (original) formulation of Polar black was indeed freezeproof to -79C, but it seems the ink was not very well behaved at room temperature and so the newer formulation was developed.

So my bottle of Noodler's Polar Black is not faulty.

You mean 2006, right? Noodler's wasn't around in 1996 was it?

That makes a lot of sense because I know I have seen information about how Polar Black was reformulated to work in a broader range of pens.

Actually, I don't understand the same thing as you on this one.

Freeze resistant means that some part of the ink will freeze (make crystals). But the ink still must be usable. His 2006 bottle seems to stay in the freeze permenantly, and still not frozen.

So, I would check you bottle. Have you tried to crack the ice? I mean I can expect that the crystals have all formed on top and made a "protection layer" making people believe that it is frozen solid... but what if it is only a small think layer of ice, and everything is perfect under it?

I would like to have the results from you on this one.

Thanks,

nick

Um. Yeah. Sorry for the dain bramage.

It's true that it is not all frozen. I was able to push the top layer down a little more than an inch, forcing liquid ink to the top. Certainly more than a thin layer--I'm guessing the frozen portion is between an inch and an inch and a half thick, more than a third of the bottle.

I have to go wash my hands now. (the things I'll do for science....)

To comment on why the work described in this thread is important, I offer the following. There was a question in this thread about why does it matter at what temp an ink might freeze. After reading this thread the other day, I went home and had a meeting with some workmen about stuff outside my house. The temperature was a balmy 33 degrees +/-. After a 15 minute conversation, when the time came for signing of papers, the generic ballpoint would not write, it was too cold and the ink had coagulated/hardened/conjealed (sp?). Out came another BP from the pen case built into the clipboard...same result. So I whipped out my trusty FP, the needed signatures were afixed, and the business was quickly concluded.

This practical episode is reason enough for me for the "science" described in this thread. If only I had the scientific/chemistry background to help in these trials!!!

Great work..Carry on!

BTW, at approx. what temps do regular inks freeze?

I just stuck 3 bottles of ink into my freezer (lids loosened on all bottles to prevent ink explosion!):

1) Noodler's polar black (purchased ~6 month ago)

2) Noodler's aircorp blue black

3) Private Reserve black cherry

Will report back after several hours.

Mmmm... I think freezing liquid will expand in all direction... including lateral. So even with the lid loose... I'd be very careful...

nick

Just checked, after ~5 hours -- poked around with a knife to check the consistency of the ink.

The Private Reserve black cherry was frozen absolutely solid and dry.

The Noodler's aircorp blue black was frozen solid, though there seemed to be a tiny amount of some kind of highly viscous liquid around the edges of the ice block.

Noodler's polar black was frozen, but was not a solid block. The resulting mix was about the consistency of a snow cone -- lots of packed ice crystals in a viscous ooze, which I could easily penetrate and dig up with the knife.

Additional note: After sitting out at room temp. for ~20 minutes, the black cherry and aircorp blue black are still solid chunks of ice, with a little melted ink now showing up around the edges. The polar black, however, is already completely melted, and with it's usual viscosity (as best I can tell).

I should add that the black cherry bottle is ~60% full, the aircorp blue black and the polar black ~85%+ full.

It would be interesting to see if the polar inks have a lower expansion rate with freezing than the non-polar inks. This would lead to less bottle explosions in icy conditions.

I suspect it has more to do with the crystals forming and "floating" in a solution so they are free to shift rather than just expand, so the level rises (slightly) rather than the bottle exploding.

Your average kitchen freezer will not go below zero degrees F. A sub-zero freezer is a specialty item, and is not usually attached to a refrigerator. I have two sub zero freezers, and -10 F to -15 F is about the best they can do. I would bet your freezer hovers near zero to +10 F.

In fact, in another thread, Nathan posted pictures of just exactly that feature of the polar inks.

Edited to add: linky link

I just placed a cc of "Winter 2006 Edition" Polar Blue in a -22 C freezer, and it was solid when I checked an hour later. I'm too lazy to work out the heat transfer problem for the insulin syringe the ink was in, but it was probably close to the ambient air temp of -22 C. So, you better keep you pens in a warm pocket vs. relying on this ink to save you.

I bought the PB due to its true indestructible nature. I use it for my laboratory notebooks and find that it works great on the paper used by Eureka Lab Books (good quality 24 pound 100% sulfite made by Neenah I believe), and it is completely smudge proof after a minute of drying. The standard black of course is not due to the lack of total penetration into the paper. Here in steamy FL, the smudge proof quality is priceless to me for my permanent research records!

I like the ink so much I stocked up on it just in case Noodler's quits making it!

I was going to replicate the experiment in a florida freezer. I couldn't figure out what flavor Hagen Daaz I was supposed to eat, so I just drank the unfrozen Vodka and called it a night.
Dreams of snowcones.