Dear Group, I have a bottle of this ink and I am trying to find a pen to use it with.
Please respond to this posted with a list of pens with which you have use this ink on a consistant basis without a problem

Many thanks

Harv

Parker Frontier
Pelicano- Blue plastic
Pelikan 150 & 200

It might be easier for you, Harv, to tell us in what pens you are considering using it!

I use it in a P51 and a cheap Sheaffer Calligraphy pen....no probs so far.

Waterman Carene, but only because I have two of them the same color...it has left some stains on the barrel which I'll need to take Amodex to, I guess.

Platinum Preppy Eye Dropper....i believe you can get them at Pendemonium (no affiliation), but I bought a 4.5 oz bottle of BSB and it came with the ink.

A cheap hero pen

That would be my suggestion as well. You can get them pretty easily and they are pretty good pens. Worst case you ruin a $5 pen.

Why would Bystate Blue ruin a pen? (question from a new pen person)


Gawain

It's been a suspect in the staining of, and possible demise of, some Lamy Safaris. Well, the staining was definite. I suspect a bad run of feeds on the latter.

I can tell you from personal experience that Baystate Blue stains like no other ink I have used. It is the most beautiful blue ink I have seen, but it is very high-maintenance. Luckily, there is an antidote for stains on counters and in sinks from this ink. Bleach (either liquid or in a cleaner, such as Comet) will take the stains out very easily. However, bleach and pens don't mix too well, so pen sacs and converters tend to get permanently stained by the ink. Because of this, opting for a cheaper and somewhat disposable pen without a visible ink sac, such as a Hero 329, is the best option, because the baystate blue will leave its permanent mark on most pens it touches.

Ehh, I just used it in a metal pen. Worked fine.

It's now in my Sonnet.

Waterman Phileas ($32USD)

Pilot 78G B nib.....this is my favorite! I bought two bottles of BSB when it first came out, but I , like so many others ran into staining problems. I use mainly vintage pens, some with ink view windows, that I would not dare put BSB in. The Pilot was $12USD from Speerbob and it has been amazing for me with BSB. The Pilot is a dry writer and the B nib is really a stub. Combining that with the vivid, "wet" flow of BSB is awesome, giving me great line variation with a nice saturated color. I love this color again! ....YMMV

Rick

I totally agree, Rick! I have that same Pilot 78G Stub and it writes beautifully. I have to shake it a bit to get it started after sitting up for about 3 weeks but once it starts flowing, it's fantastic.
I've designated that Pilot 78G to be Baystate ONLY. I don't want to chance mixing inks in it.
Note: I would probably have sold the Baystate had I not tried it in this pen. I tried it in a Parker 21 and it was great but tended to clog.

I use it only in two pens. They were new and had no other ink in them. The first was a Rotring Core B nib and the other is a Lamy Safari black with a B nib. Both have written after a week of no use and both have some blue color from the ink, but they were purchased for this ink which I love.

Be very careful when filling a pen with this ink, lest you get any on your hands--at least if you need to go anywhere within the next week looking presentable. Amodex helps, but only time gets rid of all traces.

I too bought a special pen. A Kohinoor Rapidographic technical pen. My reasoning was that these pens have a wire built in to allo unclogging when used with India Ink. No problems except staining and I was able to remove blue stains fomr the barrel ( acquired form my hands) with bleach. Inside the cap is still stained blue and of course the plastic ink capsule.
b

Now I will ask a dumb question. Can you write easily with one of those tech pens? I have never seen one up close and I don't know exactly how they work. j

I have in two Aerometric Parker 51's with no real issues.

Used it with a Translucent Blue Pelikan 200 (if it stained who could tell!) Also using it in a Parker 51 SE with no problems.

Absolutely
The finer the nib the more scratchy and becasue you cannot smooth the nib it stays that way. I find that a .7 mm and above is quite smooth
Much above a .8 mm and the line gets too wide for me. The wire prevents cloggin or maybe I should say unclogs the pen. There is often some tapping on the top of the pen to maintain or improive ink flow, depends upon the ink and size of the nib. The line is precise and until I discovered Japanese fines, they offered the finest lines I could get
b

Waterman Harley Davidson pen (looks like a Phileas, Harley style)
Platinum Preppy

I put it in a Hero 616. Within about a week, the plastic part that holds the jewel and clip to the rest of the cap crumbled into pieces and fell out. It had BSB on it. I can't say that the BSB caused the damage, but I'm wary enough not to put it in another 616. I'll happily put in in a new style 329 when I get around to it because I don't think its cap has any similar plastic part in it.

I was a drafter when the rapidographs were used exclusively to put ink on mylar. There was no computer aided design programs. Heck, there were no computers then. So I've spent a lot of time using rapidographs. They work best when held almost vertical. Heck, the nib is a pipe or tube with 90 deg. cut to the writing end. If you tilt it too much, only the corner of the tube is in contact with the paper. The rapidographs were designed to put down a consistent line width using a straight edge. Just thought you should know all this before you ran out and bought one. They are fun to write with if you don't mind holding the pen almost perpendicular to the paper. You are suppose to shake the pen every once in awhile to move the pin thing up and down inside the tube to keep the india ink from clogging.

Hope this helps.



Gawain

Plain old rubbing alcohol dissolves BSB quite well.

I got a bottle of Baystate Blue from Swisherpens a few weeks ago and tried it in one of my Pelikans. Since I read some of the posts that warned of staining, I mixed it with some diluted blue ink in an attempt to minimize this. I was glad to discover the mixed ink retained its waterfast qualities.

After washing it out for the first time found it still stained the transparent part of the reservoir a little, but it wasn't too bad though I would never use Baystate Blue in a demonstrator. Some drops of ink fell in the sink and didn't wash out until I used rubbing alcohol and put some muscle behind the scrubbing. I can only imagine the task would have been more arduous had the ink come out straight from the bottle with no dilution.

What sort of diluted blue ink?

Nathan seems to suggest not mixing BSB with anything other than the Concord Grape and Cranberry colors in the 1946 line. I'm glad somebody is trying it out anyway, but I wanted to be sure you were aware of the warning so you can try any new mixes in a vial or something to make sure nothing precipitates.

I'm not exactly sure. I keep a bottle of diluted dark blue ink and mixed this with one of my turquoises, Mont Blanc, Pelikan, or Schaeffer. I then added in the Baystate Blue and after filling the pen, left the remainder of the mixture in an inkwell for more than 2 weeks and didn't observe any precipitate forming during this time. Luckily...

I thought I only read that the ink reverts to "normal" when mixed with other inks in terms of waterfastness, but was glad this wasn't the case. I didn't think much about the chances of precipitates!

What I found strange was that the ink looks a bit on the purplish side to me, but when I was at the post office and signed a receipt, it turned out looking like a true blue. I guess the kind of paper you write on really influences the color of the ink.

BSB, the 1946 purple, and the red are all different from all other Noodler's inks. They're supposedly vintage (or vintage inspired) and have a very alkaline ph level. That's what makes precipitates even more likely with them if I understand it right.

Hi,

I am using this ink since today in my Pelikan M215 Black Lozenge with RB 0.5mm stub nib.

Wonderful experience! I liked PR American Blue so far, but this one is even more eye-catching.

However, reading the articles on this forum, I am a little concerned.
Lamy Safari is no good match as stated.
Moreover, Richard Binder advises not to use it in celluloid pens, including the Pelikan Souveräns (M150 - M1000 I suppose).
Bad news for our celluloid heroes here.

So, I guess we need metal pens or pens with attached converters, right?

Any suggestions?

E.g.
Parker Sonnet?
Pilot Vanishing Point?
.....

Question: do these issues also apply to Noodler's Concord Grape and Cranberry inks?

The Legend

After reading all the drama over broken Lamy Safaris and BSB, I must have been feeling just a bit masochistic, because I went out and got an Ocean Blue Al-Star for that specific ink color. Wow, what a combo! The color of the pen matches the ink wonderfully, and so far the pen's been loaded for two weeks with only a little use and no problems at all. Maybe QC has gotten better on Lamy's (or Noodler's) end, but I couldn't be happier with my electric blue pen/ink set.

I bought a blue Safari with a bottle of Bay State Blue, and put a 1.1 mm italic nib on it. It's so much fun to write with I almost feel guilty.