Is It The Pen Or Is It The Ink?

[BobGast]

My Platinum 3776 is inked with Noodler's Polar Blue. I write on Clairefontaine notebooks and Apica notebooks. It never fails to ghost on me. Actually sometimes there are bleed throughs. This is annoying to me. Which should I be looking to change to eliminate this problem? As for blue ink, all I have at the moment is the Noodler's. I know very little yet of pens or ink. With payday coming up I am looking at more ink, probably a Sailor ink to go with my newly ordered Sailor pen, but it will be a green color or the Edison group buy. I don't know anything about Edison pens either and think this might be a good opportunity to get one and try them out. I am kind of shying away from this one though because it doesn't have a clip and I really don't want to send it back out for a roll stop. (Actually I wouldn't do that anyway. I already have a couple of solutions in mind.)

[Randal6393]

I haven't tried Polar Blue but have used a lot of Noodler inks, blue, black, red, green, and brown. Most of the inks have high levels of surfactants, since they are high-saturation inks (lots of dye per milliliter). So this means they tend to spread a little, feather some, and you have problems with ghosting and bleedthrough. Sound familar? A bit (10 to 20 %) of water may reduce the problem factor by a goodly bit. But don't overdilute, that will lighten the color quite a bit. Try, say, 40 ml in a vial, with 4-5 ml of water, load into the pen, and see what that does for your writing.

 

Clairfontaine notebooks are very smooth, slick almost, and the ink sits on the surface. So a lesser amount of ink is desirable. Apica notebooks, as I recall, absorb more ink and ghosting/bleedthrough may be a problem with them. Both companies make notebooks that are fountain-pen friendly and that is about as good as you can do. Wouldn't change anything there. But, less ink is better.

 

A Platinum 3776, from what I hear about them, are not overly fast-flowing pens, but it's a real bear to change the flow rate. Wouldn't want to mess up a pen, trying to lessen the flow. Sailor pens? They seem to have decent flow but not excessive. So Noodler inks may do well for them. I know nothing about the Edison pens, suspect you may have some flow problems there. The most recent group of inks that I have tried that seem drier than Noodler's are the R & K inks, Black and Blau Permanent.

 

The two pens that might help you with lessening the flow, and are fairly easy to adjust, are Noodler's Ahabs/Konrads. And Nemosyne Singularities. Great pens for experimenting with, since not a great lot of money tied up in them. Oh, and can't forget the Fountain Pen Revolution pens. Really inexpensive, some variability in them. But easily adjusted and fun to write with when you get a winner.

 

Enjoy,

[ac12]

What do you mean by "ghost" ?

 

Without trying it myself, it could be both the pen or the ink.

 

Examples:

 

Noodler's Emerald Green. This ink is sooooo WET that if feathered and bled on every paper that I tried it on, where my other inks did not feather or bleed. I was using my standard ink testing pen and test papers, so I could compare it to my other inks. I could use it in only ONE pen, a very DRY Pilot 78G.

 

Parker 51. This pen writes WET with any ink I put in it. I tried to tame the ink flow with a dry ink, but had very little success. Next step is to remove the hood and adjust the nib to slow down the ink flow.

 

When I have a troublesome situation like yours, I switch to my standard inks (Waterman and Cross/Pelikan blue) to test the pen.

If the pen is writing WET, as your is, I would clean it and load up with Pelikan ink, a dry ink. If the ink flow does not slow down, then the pen needs to be adjusted.

If the pen does not want to write (hard start, skipping, etc), I load up with Waterman ink, a wet ink. If the ink does not flow, then the pen needs to be adjusted.

 

If I really want to use the ink that is giving me trouble, I would adjust the pen to the ink.

Edited October 8, 2015 by ac12

[RudyR]

I haven't tried Polar Blue but have used a lot of Noodler inks, blue, black, red, green, and brown. Most of the inks have high levels of surfactants, since they are high-saturation inks (lots of dye per milliliter). So this means they tend to spread a little, feather some, and you have problems with ghosting and bleedthrough. Sound familar? A bit (10 to 20 %) of water may reduce the problem factor by a goodly bit. But don't overdilute, that will lighten the color quite a bit. Try, say, 40 ml in a vial, with 4-5 ml of water, load into the pen, and see what that does for your writing.

 

Clairfontaine notebooks are very smooth, slick almost, and the ink sits on the surface. So a lesser amount of ink is desirable. Apica notebooks, as I recall, absorb more ink and ghosting/bleedthrough may be a problem with them. Both companies make notebooks that are fountain-pen friendly and that is about as good as you can do. Wouldn't change anything there. But, less ink is better.

 

A Platinum 3776, from what I hear about them, are not overly fast-flowing pens, but it's a real bear to change the flow rate. Wouldn't want to mess up a pen, trying to lessen the flow. Sailor pens? They seem to have decent flow but not excessive. So Noodler inks may do well for them. I know nothing about the Edison pens, suspect you may have some flow problems there. The most recent group of inks that I have tried that seem drier than Noodler's are the R & K inks, Black and Blau Permanent.

 

The two pens that might help you with lessening the flow, and are fairly easy to adjust, are Noodler's Ahabs/Konrads. And Nemosyne Singularities. Great pens for experimenting with, since not a great lot of money tied up in them. Oh, and can't forget the Fountain Pen Revolution pens. Really inexpensive, some variability in them. But easily adjusted and fun to write with when you get a winner.

 

Enjoy,

 

 

Actually you have

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/21164-noodlers-polar-blue/

See post # 13

 

It seem to me that the reviews do indicate this to be a somewhat problematic ink so show through (ghosting?) is probably the inks fault. Repeated reports of nib creep, excessive feathering, ink spreading, bleedthrough etc., would leave me to believe that it is excessively wet and any pen is going to give similar issues. In this case I would use it only with a very fine japanese nib if I had to absolutely use this ink.

 

OH, and be sure and rinse your pen very thoroughly if you are using another ink. It seems this one is more on the alkaline side so any mixing of other inks may produce very undesirable side effects. It may even damage your feed.

 

I've ran quite a few different inks through my Platinum #3776 and have had no issues though my inks do tend to come from Montblanc, Pilot (and their Iroshizuku line) and J. Herbin with an occasional Iron gall ink from Platinum and R&K. I don't use Noodlers anymore.

 

So, my opinion........ it's not the pen, it's not the paper (unless poor quality); it's the ink.

[Bo Bo Olson]

You have to go to the Ink Reviews.

Echo/Ghost....easy enough to write over with no problems?

Showthrough....can read parts of words.

Bleed through....can't write because you can read the front.

 

Yes on that paper you need a different ink. R&K is great, MB, Pelikan, Herbin, Waterman, Aurora (only two colors)...they are not super saturated. (some waterman like teh Brown are more saturated than others, I like the old south Sea blue that has some stupid new name I can't remember.)

 

They are mostly shading inks....two toned.

Some who are new, and wish only deep vivid colors, think them wishy-washy or pastel. It will eventually grow on you.

You do need both the shading inks and 'a few' dull boring bright inks....so sayth the shading ink addict.

I don't like the English Diamine....it feathers.

 

Noodlers makes so many different inks, there is bound to be some that are shading inks, that do not feather or bleed through. Again, look in the Ink Reviews.

By the way any ink review written by Sandy 1, is so worth reading.

[Alma]

Maybe it is the pen with the ink. Just a bad combination. Most of the time it is trial and error.

 

Some of my Lamy inks work really bad in some of my Lamy pens, but it is never the same ink in the same model (blue Lamy ink in different Lamy Safaris works every time differently).

Every pen is different. And there is also the paper... Not all my pens work with the same ink on the same paper. Most of the time I try to find the "perfect" ink for a pen and it never suits another pen. So I got a lot of inks for a lot of pens.

[rwilsonedn]

Without straying too far into controversy over a particular brand of ink (which is pretty much forbidden here) I think I can say that many people who know more then I about pens prefer to use mainstream pen manufacturer's inks, for both performance and maintenance reasons. Having one standard ink--Waterman is often cited--that is known to behave well under most circumstances allows you to evaluate and if necessary adjust a new pen before you introduce other variables. Once you are familiar with the pen's behavior you can experiment with other inks.

ron

[deepak23]

My 3776 bleeds through on some kind of papers. No sign of ghosting so far. Inks used have been the pel 4001 turquoise and bril royal blue.

The only place where i have seen this happen is in my son's current set of school note books, which though are smooth to write with has some residual acid or chlorine from the original bleaching process, which in a few days time ends up bleaching the ink itself...