I recently picked up a bottle of vintage Quink Blue Black on eBay. I have no experience with vintage inks, got it mainly for the Solv-x content, for use in old pens to help clean them out. Well, the first pen I tried it in is a newly resacked Skyline, and it takes a LONG time to dry, despite the claim on the bottle that it "dries 31% quicker than average inks". The bottle was nearly full, the ink produces a very dark line with the pens medium nib, much more black than blue. But it takes over 45 seconds to dry without smearing.

The nib and feed were soaked in Rapido-Eze, and thoroughly rinsed before filling the pen, so I am confident that it was clean to begin with, but I just wanted to give this ink a try.

I thought perhaps it was over concentrated through evaporation over the years, and topped off the bottle with distilled water. The bottle wasn't very low to begin with, the level being within about 1/8" below the shoulder line of the bottle (see below). This had no noticeable effect, as the dry time recorded above was with the diluted ink. It is hot and dry in the house, at least 80*s. I don't think this pen is excessively wet, but have not tried it with any other inks to compare.



Can anyone tell by the bottle or box what the approximate vintage of this ink is? The color of the box is significantly lighter in the photo than in real life, had to do that to get the bottle to show properly. What should the expected drying time be? Thanks for your input.

Dan

I bought a bottle of vintage Quink from a fellow FPN member. Mine was royal blue, though. It looks a heck of a lot more like a blue-black though - it hardly has any blue to it at all.

On regular/cheap 20LB copy paper, with a Lady Duofold fine, dry nib, it takes just about 7 seconds to dry - same with HP 32LB premium laser paper. On moleskine paper, it takes upwards of 15 seconds to dry. Also tried it with my 52V to see if how fast it would dry at wider lines - same 6-7 seconds on copy paper.

My ink is probably the driest (along with the vintage Skrip that I go) that I have yet to come upon.


I'm still relatively new to vintage inks. The bottle of permanent red skrip that I have has a tendency to create a layer of sediment at the bottom if the bottle has been sitting for more than half an hour or so. Give the bottle a good shake before you fill your pen. Might help :|

I don't have any PQ Blue-Black with Solv-X of that vintage, but I do have some from the '80s. I don't know that the formula changed, though, until it was re-jigged to remove the Solv-X. The dye mix changed at the same time.

The PQ Blue-Black I have is more wet (runny) than the PQ Permanent Blue that I have of the same vintage. The same applies to modern Blue-Black and Perm. Blue, although, as I said above, the dyes and colours are different from the older inks.

I haven't done any dry time tests with either inks, although the Blue-Black does take longer than the Perm. Blue because it lays down a thicker and wetter line.

It can also depend on your paper. A dense, hard quality paper will make the ink take longer to dry than a cheap copy paper, where the ink sinks into and spreads through the paper fibres.

As well, if your pen writes a very wet line, leaving a lot of ink on the paper, it can also lengthen the drying time. The fact that your pen is leaving "a very dark line with the pens medium nib, much more black than blue" indicates that this might be happening.

So, a wet, free-flowing ink, written using a wet pen leaving a lot of ink on the paper, and perhaps a very hard, non-absorbent paper could result in such long drying times.

I use the more modern bottles of this ink for the same purpose as you, to clean out old pens. Usually when I start out, the pens leave a thin bluish line that dries quickly. As the Solv-X does its magic over a few days, the line gets thicker, darker and takes longer to dry. When it stabilises, then I know that the Solv-X has done as much as it can.

I would guess that you don't need to use it in your Skyline any more. It seems to be clean enough.

That seems like a really long drying time. I'm doing some drying time tests right now with vintage inks and most of my Quinks have dried in less than 15 seconds. I have not yet tested Perm Blue-Black. I'll try to get that one today and let you know.

Thanks for the replies so far. The dry time given was on ordinary copy paper from work. Still hoping someone has a clue of how old this bottle might be.

Dan

I bought a 4oz bottle of blue-black today, and the design is exactly like yours. No box, though. I did a bit of searching and found the bottle design on VintageInks.com - it appears that these are circa 1939-48.

Bottles - VintageInks.com

Thanks for that!

Dan