Why Go Past Waterman Inks?

[Trebster]

Inking a pen with something allegedly "scary" (or "not so scary", YMMV) is not the equivalent of giving a Fabergé egg to a toddler, or running a Ming vase through the dishwasher

[andru]

"Frequent maintenance" is a substitute for frequent heavy use of the pen (which is less and less common these days, alas). If you do just let the ink sit around, BSB will get "gooey", iron galls and carbon inks will drop an insoluble precipitate, and waterman will leave an acidic film [emphasis added] -- none of those are great for your pen, and the only difference is how long it takes to get to the end state. So the habits to keep any ink safe are: use it frequently and run it through the pen in a matter of days or dump and flush the pen when it's been loaded "too long" (color or behavior change).

It only recently came to my attention that Waterman are among the most acidic inks on the market. And this is the first I've heard of an "acidic film". Can you point me to a source for this information? I use Waterman inks in the pens I wish to be most careful with, because (as you point out) most people don't get a chance to write out all their inked pens every few days. But I'm beginning to wonder if Waterman is a good choice after all with it's extreme acidities in the 2-3 pH range.

[georges zaslavsky]

waterman inks work pretty well in my older MBs, I also user private reserve and MB inks, which are other very good ink brands

[wangjianwei]

Perhaps because Waterman inks are more expensive and less available in some places?

In Singapore, Parker Quinks and Pelikan 4001 are more plentiful and they offer just about the same colours as Waterman's