Hello everyone!

This is both my first post and my first review, I hope its informative!

Being an Organic Chemist in my spare time and having a fair few reagents to hand I decided that I would test the permamance of Diamines Registrars ink. 15 small sheets of paper and 1 typical bank cheque were tested. The phrase 'Diamine Registars Ink' was written on each with a dip pen.

Each piece of paper then was subjected to a few drops of each of the following solvents and violent scrubbing.

Acetone
Isopropanol
Hexane
Water
Ethanol (denatured)

NONE of which did more than faintly smudge the ink.

I am very very impressed!

I will post up pictures as soon as possible.

Regards,

Angeldust

God, how did you get your hands on this kind of stuff?

Not to be taking this personally (cause I loathe it when someone new on a forum gets lippy with someone who's been there longer) but that is of no relevance or concern.

As I said in my original post I am an organic chemist.

That being said I will edit my original post.

Regards,

Acetone is the main ingredient of most nail polish removers.
Isopropanol is used for lens cleaning, and can be bought in camera stores.
Water, well, this doesn't need explaining.
Ethanol is your normal alcohol, you can buy the 96% one in pharmacies, even supermarkets.
The only thing I don't know where I would get off the top of my head is hexane.

I use it to make a killer martini.

It's an alkane hydrocarbon with six (hex-) carbon atoms in the molecule. (Octane (oct-) has eight.) Hexane is largely unreactive, being nonpolar, and is used as a solvent in many industries. One of those industries is textile manufacture, where it is a solvent for dyes; this, I presume, is why Angeldust chose to include it. (Fabric dyes are mostly aniline dyes, the same stuff used to color ink.)

(Edited to add the following line)

My father was an organic chemist.

My father was an organic chemist.
[/quote]

He sure got the formula right with you!! Miss you both, Beau.

Squelch:

Most of these are readily available at the local hardware store here in the US -- you could substitute paint thinner for the hexane with very little difference.

Don't expect Registrar's ink to survive bleach water, though -- gone in an instant.

Peter

In all fairness to SquelchB the original list was ALOT longer and did feature many more chemicals.

I can repost the full list if no one will take any offence.

Regards,

Since AngelDust is doing us all a service, no one should take offense at the list. Clearly the tests were as to the permanence attributes of the ink. So a more complete list of the reagents would be instructive and of interest, including whatever discretion AngelDust feels is appropriate.

I take it from your summary comments that the Registar's ink passed your tests with flying colors. "'Nuf said!"

Chlorine bleach will remove the iron from the gallic acid, causing the ink to vanish. Strong reducing agents may also reduce the ferric ion to the colorless ferrous gallate, making the ink both soluble in water and transparent.

The black color is precipitated ferric gallate -- strong chelators may also remove the iron from the gallate, again causing the ink to vanish.

I don't think any ordinary solvent, aqueous or organic, will dissolve it.

Peter

Have you considered running these tests on a Noodlers Bulletproof ink?

Indeed!

I have a bottle of the noodlers Blue Ghost which is supposed to be bulletproof, but due to my lack of a UV light; verifying the tests may be difficult.

As soon as I have the aforementioned light however I will indeed run some tests.