Jump to content

Experimenting With Gold (Powder)


TheRealScubaSteve

Recommended Posts

This is really exciting :) Thanks ScubaSteve and Vossad01 for being the sacrificial lambs.... er.. I mean intrepid inky explorers :D

 

Just to put it out there -- If either of you were to try this powder with a teal or turquoise I would be very interested in the results. Those blue-greens are my favorite :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 265
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • TheRealScubaSteve

    70

  • amberleadavis

    32

  • Sailor Kenshin

    27

  • klundtasaur

    16

Look harder - they're on top of the thing, but under the do-dad that's covering the thingamabob.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a quick experiment I tried mixing some purple mica, the stuff that is used in cosmetics, into black ink and used a glass dip pen to test (wanted to test the mica first before putting it into a fountain pen) and it worked very well. The mica mixed with just a few shakes of the sample vial. This is going to be fun.

 

And for anyone else who wants to try mica (an inert mineral) this place has more colors than you will ever want to try:

http://www.tkbtrading.com/category.php?category_id=12

 

No affiliation and all that - I simply bought mine there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Having written the above too quickly, I should add that the micas' colors come mostly from metal oxides, so they aren't pure mica. But metals are minerals too :) . And there are some exceptions as well, like carmine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a quick experiment I tried mixing some purple mica, the stuff that is used in cosmetics, into black ink and used a glass dip pen to test (wanted to test the mica first before putting it into a fountain pen) and it worked very well. The mica mixed with just a few shakes of the sample vial. This is going to be fun.

 

And for anyone else who wants to try mica (an inert mineral) this place has more colors than you will ever want to try:

http://www.tkbtrading.com/category.php?category_id=12

 

No affiliation and all that - I simply bought mine there.

 

We want pictures, we want pictures, we want pictures! :bunny01:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Atrocious quality, as my camera isn't much and it was just on a scrap index card lying nearby, but -

(by the way, it does show up one the writing as well, it just doesn't show that in the picture.)

 

post-110792-0-80362600-1415833129_thumb.jpg

Edited by LindaM
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can't tell in the writing sample, but the two swabs look pretty cool. Maybe there's hope for black ink after all! :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll try to do a better job of the picture tomorrow, but all the blue you see in the picture is the sheen. It's looks great in person, very shimmery.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If possible, please consider doing a side by side with the original black ink. That may help us mentally auto-correct for artifacts of the photography.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I've been trying to do a better job on the pictures with purple mica added to black ink. The problem is that my camera absolutely will not focus on anything too close to it. It seems to have developed presbyopia too. So, while I can't show you the sheen in the letters because of the focusing issue, I can show it to you in the swabs - I hope. The picture I put up yesterday looks better here than it does online.

 

So - cheap Higgins India black ink (since I knew I was going to use a dip pen, and purple mica. The first picture is the plain black, the second is with the mica. Something unexpected - each time I tried this, the ink with the mica was much wetter and darker than the original. Not sure what's going on there. The mica is the only thing I added to it. Also, it now being most of a day since adding the mica, thus far there's no strange behavior from it - no gelling or any such.

 

I hope you can see these better. If not, maybe I could send a mica sample to someone with a better camera.

post-110792-0-73125200-1415911049_thumb.jpg

post-110792-0-95531300-1415911062_thumb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I see what you mean about looking darker. The top swab and the bottom swab don't look drastically different, but the swab to the right in the first photo looks like a completely different ink. That's a pretty cool effect.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The top swab was 3 or 4 layers of ink to darken it down to where it would photograph better. The upper center swab is a single layer. The really dark swab in the upper right is the one in the second photo.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I ordered the 6-pack of dust from amazon and got gold, silver, bronze, copper, pearl, and chestnut. I figured this would give me lots of amusement. My first test was using the chestnut mixed with Noodler's El Lawrence. I apologize that I'm not able to get a picture of it that shows the effect, but it is pleasing and subtle. It doesn't produce any big color shifting effect, it just adds sparkles that show in bright light. It isn't too showy but really turns a kind-of-dull black into something eye catching.

 

It flows easily and writes well and we'll see how it cleans soon.

 

I want to try the silver in a blue next.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very cool - I didn't realize they sold a 6 pack. Silver powder in blue ink would look really nice, I think. The gold seems to be a bit overpowering for my tastes. Red might be cool too - I wonder if the sheen would make it look purple?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I tried the silver in some bad blue heron (just happened to have some handy and didn't pick it for any particular reason). I mixed it in a small plastic sample vial which was about ½ full. I added about ⅓ tsp and found the effect to similar to what I saw with the El Lawrence;some nice sparkles in bright light, but no real color shifting. So I added more dust. At about 1 tsp I got the obvious shimmering character with shifting the angle of view in ambient light in the office. YMMV

 

So of course I added more dust because if a little is good more must be better. That's when the real flow problems start (around 1.3-1.5 tsp). This clogged the feed. So I flushed the feed well and everything is fine. As you add more dust the mixture definitely thickens. I think this will probably work best with very wet nib/feed combinations and may be better with wetter inks. Still, the effect here is very nice and I can hardly wait to do some Christmas cards.

Edited by Medsen Fey
Link to comment
Share on other sites

CORRECTION

I looked at my measuring spoon and realized it is a ½ tsp so the measurements above need to be cut in half.

 

I just tried ½ tsp of the pearl mixed with a full sample vial of !old Manhattan blue. That causes a huge effect and is at the borderline of being too thick

Edited by Medsen Fey
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The nice thing about this is that you can simply add more ink to offset too much added powder. I slowly inverted my sample vial of Kon-Peki and gold powder and the gold clung to the cap for quite some time. It seems that the gold will stick to itself and cling to whatever surface it is on, provided it is pretty dry. A quick shake saturated the powder enough with ink that it all ran down the side of the vial again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Okay, here's the results from leaving the pen nib down and uncapped for just over 5 days (122 hours). Very picture heavy.

 

Before writing, I disassembled the section, nib and feed. The ink and gold mix had completely dried. There were no signs of crusting on the feed, but the nib was pretty ugly looking. It appeared as though there could be some signs of rust. In the picture take notice of the dark crud at the nib's mid-section. In person, this looked very brown.

 

IMG_20141114_191426.jpgIMG_20141114_191437.jpgIMG_20141114_191520.jpgIMG_20141114_191655.jpg

 

The breather hole in the section was heavily caked with gold powder, but did not look clogged as the gold was only resting on the "rod" rather than in the entire hole.

 

IMG_20141114_191308.jpg

 

 

The cartridge converter suffered from some serious evaporation. There was only about .5 centimeters of ink left from a 3/4 fill. There was not enough ink left to make the pen write even after flooding the feed. I mixed the bottle before adding more ink. After a second flooding and some slight nib pressure (to presumably drag trapped gold powder from the nib slit), the pen wrote. It was very dry and slightly scratchy.

 

IMG_20141114_194000.jpg

 

Skipping became an issue, needing to tap the pen every couple of letters. A second flooding of the feed (this time, without backing the piston off) the pen wrote very wet and smooth again.

 

IMG_20141114_194118.jpg

 

The writing had intense gold sheen - much more than prior tests of leaving the nib inverted for a day. I presume this is because much of the ink had evaporated, leaving all of its gold in suspension behind. Adding more ink was enough to resuscitate the pen's ability to write, but left it a much more saturated mix.

 

IMG_20141114_195735.jpgIMG_20141114_195749.jpgIMG_20141114_195758.jpg

 

Cleanup was significantly more difficult than standard ink. The gold powder did not present much of a problem, but the ink had became so dried and saturated that it took a significant amount of water to remove most of the color.

 

IMG_20141114_193154.jpgIMG_20141114_193204.jpg

 

After disassembly, ink could still be seen on the nib. Held to the light, small amounts of gold could still be seen stuck in the feed. I put the section, feed, and nib into a sample vial filled with water. Shaking it removed much of the gold and dried ink. After a soak and further rinsing, it should be completely clean.

 

IMG_20141114_193537.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I should also note that I've dedicated a syringe to fill inks that have gold powder in them. It appears that it rinses out thoroughly. This pictures shows the excess water squirted onto a paper towel. No gold particles are visible when held to a light source. The circle was drawn around the water spot with the nib prior to cleaning the pen.

 

IMG_20141114_192713.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Most Contributions

    1. amberleadavis
      amberleadavis
      43844
    2. PAKMAN
      PAKMAN
      33494
    3. Ghost Plane
      Ghost Plane
      28220
    4. inkstainedruth
      inkstainedruth
      26624
    5. jar
      jar
      26101
  • Upcoming Events

  • Blog Comments

    • Shanghai Knife Dude
      I have the Sailor Naginata and some fancy blade nibs coming after 2022 by a number of new workshop from China.  With all my respect, IMHO, they are all (bleep) in doing chinese characters.  Go use a bush, or at least a bush pen. 
    • A Smug Dill
      It is the reason why I'm so keen on the idea of a personal library — of pens, nibs, inks, paper products, etc. — and spent so much money, as well as time and effort, to “build” it for myself (because I can't simply remember everything, especially as I'm getting older fast) and my wife, so that we can “know”; and, instead of just disposing of what displeased us, or even just not good enough to be “given the time of day” against competition from >500 other pens and >500 other inks for our at
    • adamselene
      Agreed.  And I think it’s good to be aware of this early on and think about at the point of buying rather than rationalizing a purchase..
    • A Smug Dill
      Alas, one cannot know “good” without some idea of “bad” against which to contrast; and, as one of my former bosses (back when I was in my twenties) used to say, “on the scale of good to bad…”, it's a spectrum, not a dichotomy. Whereas subjectively acceptable (or tolerable) and unacceptable may well be a dichotomy to someone, and finding whether the threshold or cusp between them lies takes experiencing many degrees of less-than-ideal, especially if the decision is somehow influenced by factors o
    • adamselene
      I got my first real fountain pen on my 60th birthday and many hundreds of pens later I’ve often thought of what I should’ve known in the beginning. I have many pens, the majority of which have some objectionable feature. If they are too delicate, or can’t be posted, or they are too precious to face losing , still they are users, but only in very limited environments..  I have a big disliking for pens that have the cap jump into the air and fly off. I object to Pens that dry out, or leave blobs o
  • Chatbox

    You don't have permission to chat.
    Load More
  • Files






×
×
  • Create New...