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Pens That Evaporate Ink, Pens That Don't


AmandaW

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The Parker Sonnet is one of the high end pens that dries out as fast as could be. Sorry to hurt the feelings of Sonnet lovers.

Yes! In mine ink also becomes more concentrated and dark over few days. After 4-5 days nib starts to dry out and skipping becomes an issue.

 

Never had these problems with Lamy 2000 and Pelikan M600.

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interesting post

my experience is similar and I would not be surprised that parameters involved are many including climate (temperature/humidity), type of ink, position of the pen (upright/horizontal) type of pen and cap, filling system, etc.

comparison is however fun and interesting

just a few personal experiences

Jinhao: direct comparison, the x750 dries out quickly, the 500 does not!

 

converter vs piston, my converter pens dry out much quicker than my piston fillers...

my plastic feed pens also seem to dry out faster than my ebonite feed pens

 

ink does get darker and more dense of course due to water evaporation, I often revive pens by dipping the nib in water and drawing a tiny amount of water into the filling system, some slight shaking, drying of the nib to get rid of excess water and the pen will continue writing for quite a while still

 

I cannot say that annoys me though, it's in the nature of the tool...

of course when I need to make sure my pen will write 100% (at work!) I make sure the day before it's cleaned and fully filled!

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I'm surprised more people aren't bothered by this. It is actually one of (but not the only) the main criteria I use for buying a pen. Because I don't use every pen every day. Ink can be expensive, and it's not that hard to make an effective inner cap. Hard to do? Look at the Preppy. I don't want to use a pen if it gives a hard start after sitting for a week, or needs to be refilled after using it twice because it dried out.

 

In any case great thread!

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I have had great luck with most of my Modern Japanese pens. Sailor, Platinum, Pilot with Platinum and Sailor being particularly good and Platinum probably being the best overall. Not just the Century 3776 but even the lowly Plaiser seals up like a champ.

 

I recently uncapped a Pilot Varsity from the early 1990s. It wrote. I kid you not.

 

Lamy has done well on this front too. I don't have big issues there though the cap on the Studio is prone to get loose and wiggly.

 

 

My 90s MB 146 is also fantastic. It is always inked. It always starts up right away. The ink never gets gummy or weird. Never needs a dip in the water to get started. My Pelikans all do really well too.

 

 

Worst: A lot of my vintage pens, I imagine due to lots of cracked inner caps. Slip caps are especially bad: The vintage Aurora 88s (I have 6 of them) all are terrible as are all the slip cap 50s Omas pens. Vintage Slip Cap Watermans are dreadful too.

 

Much as a ADORE the P45. ... not only will it dry out fast but the cap clutch rings deform the section.

Looking for a cap for a Sheaffer Touchdown Sentinel Deluxe Fat version

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Of the pen brands that I own Parker is one that dries out quickest. That is Parker Sonnet and Parker Duofold (modern). My Parker Duofold Centennial Black & Pearl dries out despite the fact that I have stuck tape over the breather hole in the cap. Next up on my list are Aurora Optimas that dry out after the Parkers, then Kaweco, Pelikan, Omas, and Montblanc all come joint best for not drying out. I have Montblanc pens that don't dry out for many months. :)

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Of my pens, pretty much my Waterman Perspective seems to be the quickest. After that might be the Parker Sonnet and a little bit with the Pilot Legno89s. The rest really don't have much of a problem. Montblanc 145, Platinum 3776 (this one is great, I never need to use it, always ready), Sailor Procolor, Platinum PGB3000, Kaweco AC Sport, TWSBI 580. All these have no issues for me. I just recently got the Montblanc 22/24/31 but I don't know about those yet.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I noticed a thread about the Lamy Z24 converter changing to a Z28. https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/307919-z24-converter-now-called-z28/

 

In one of my posts in this thread I commented that my Lamy Safari appeared to have evoraporated from the back of the pen, rather than the nib, because it could write a little even though the ink in the converter was reduced to a dried residue.

 

The plastic in the Z28 appears to be different - changing from translucent to a crystal clear. I am wondering if the new version might not be so prone to evaporation.

 

Has anyone used the new converter and able to comment? (I will probably order one and see for myself, but with postage and exchange rates it's going to cost me $20+ which is a lot to waste if it's no different.)

Will work for pens... :unsure:

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Generally screw cap pens are better in this regard than slip on caps.

Generally more expensive pens (i.e. > $70US) are better than inexpensive pens.

There exceptions both ways to both generalities.

 

I'm surprised at the inclusion of the Pilot Prera in the drying out list, as I have one, and it is one of the few slip on cap pens I have that doesn't dry out when not used. It may simply be an inconsistent design.

 

There was a problem with early model Parker Sonnets where the inner cap cracked when the cap was being assembled, resulting in drying out. I don't know if this was fixed in later models. There is a simple fix (search for it on the interwebs) but gurus like Richard Binder will warn against using it.

 

I can't complain about a $5 pen drying out when not used, but I would certainly complain about a $100+ pen.

fpn_1412827311__pg_d_104def64.gif




“Them as can do has to do for them as can’t.


And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.”


Granny Aching

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  • 3 weeks later...

Update on the Zinhao experiment.

 

As commented earlier, I noticed there was a tiny wobble on the caps of both Zinhao 750x - evidence of a not tight fit - and wondered if that was enough to cause them dry out when sitting untouched in a drawer. To find out I fitted an o-ring to the red one, cleaned both pens, filled them with ink and put them back in the drawer together to see what would happen.

 

I didn't expect to see much difference yet because it's autumn here now, it's cool, we've been getting some rain, the humidity is up and It's only been a couple of weeks. Curiosity won, so I checked today and found the black pen does not start with lots of scribbling, while the red (with the added o-ring) wrote at the first touch to the paper. Obviously I will be able to get the black one going with the usual flicking, shaking, dipping and more scribbling, but with the addition of an o-ring maybe wouldn't have to.

 

It will be interesting to repeat my original summer experiment with o-rings added to see if it's enough to prevent the total evaporation I was seeing. I have my fingers crossed because in every other measure - looks, nib, feel in the hand - I like them very much. Fingers crossed.

 

post-132839-0-27388700-1496121928_thumb.jpg

Will work for pens... :unsure:

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  • 1 month later...

Unfortunately I've had to amend my list of bad pens to include the Lamy Safari.

 

 

 

 

I was going to point out on that. I have two Lamy Vistas turned to eye dropper by exchanging the barrels with the gel pen version and then sealing the bottom of it with glue. One Al-Stars with the regular Lamy Z-26 converter, one white Safary also turned to eye-dropper using the same method as the Vistas. And two Safaris I use with their regular Z-26 converters. and all of these pens evaporate ink like crazy. The Lamy cap has a breather hole on the top. The barrel has an open ink awareness level window, and a set of openings at the bottom, and its converters aren't really air-tight. This is why it's impossible to have a Lamy that doesn't evaporate. Take notice that even the eye-dropper converted Lamys that are actually more hermetic than the regular ones evaporated like crazy, and one had the breather hole sealed with glue yet show no signs of improvements. So clearly, the cap of the Lamy is also at fault.

 

You could try putting the pen in 30 x 200 MM Screw-Cap test tube when you store it to make it water tight, and that should aid a little, I doubt it will solve the problem though.

 

I'm currently conducting a massive research on ink evaporation on pens, and happen to be planning to post results on these forums when I'm done with the experiment. My experiment consists on filling the pens with water (to alienate ink formula out of the equation since I want to know how quickly these pens evaporate water, not how much any ink can resist it) and storing them on different water-tight containers and leave them there for a month and a half to see how they compare vs been left normally on their own.

 

Be aware that since I already run into this I can tell you that many people will deny (for unknown reasons to me) that this is a problem that plagues many fountain pens (even expensive ones). I already did preliminary postings about this in the fountain pen group I post, and while many people reported the had the same experiences, there was a chunk of the posters that claimed to have been using these pens for years and never had any issues with evaporation. I have tested this with well over 30 different pens of different brands and I know for a fact that evaporation is still a serious issue on most fountain pens. This is something I can (and had) verify extensively.Yet many people claim not to have noticed this. This led me to theorize about why they feel like that in that;

 

1st. Most people don't notice evaporation because their pens use relatively small capacity converters, and they confuse the effects of evaporation with consuming ink levels through regular usage. This means these people can go on for years without noticing that their pens are evaporating ink. The ink levels will get smaller and smaller on the converters, and they would think it's happening because they are actually consuming that much ink. A Lamy Z 24/26 converter takes approximately 0.7ml of ink. I have a large handwriting, write in cursive, and use medium, broads, and stub nibs. And I can write dozens of pages of regular A5 notebooks before consuming that ink capacity. Most people usually don't write that much before they have to refill because evaporation hits them without them noticing, yet they correlate the passing of time rather than the pen's usage with how often they would have to refill, furthering limiting their perception of the problem.

 

2ndly. There is an erroneous believe that ink evaporation is what happens when your pen dries up the nib, so therefore if your pen doesn't dry up it's nib, then it must not be evaporating at all! This is totally erroneous. The nib drying up is one of the possible symptoms of ink evaporation, but it's NOT the whole of it. The main thing happening with evaporation will happen at the converter/cartridge or whatever ink storage mechanism your pen uses. Your pen won't likely dry up if you use it frequently, but ink evaporation won't stop its course. Basically, your ink capacity will get smaller with the passing of every day!

 

3rdly. Many people don't like the idea of having many pens inked up at the same time. They would keep one or two pens inked and limit themselves to them. They would have many FPs but won't ink a lot of them at the same time and since they would be burning through the relatively small ink capacity of those pens with speed, they feel whatever ink evaporation they are getting it's not a big deal.

 

I have three fundamental problems with this:

 

A. The very fun of having an arsenal of FPs is precisely to have many of them inked with different inks ready and handy to be used at a whim. That's the very fun of the hobby! Anything shorter than that feels mundane, boring, and perhaps pointless. Having to constantly clean and flush your pens every single time you want a new ink is neither fun nor practical. So having many FPS inked is the only way the hobby can make sense, at least for me and for people who think like me.

 

B. You are feeding the air with your precious ink! maybe you don't care about wasting the cost of your expensive ink. Maybe you are loaded, or maybe you just don't mind. The ink industry needs more consuming right? Well, some of us find this idea ludicrous, and 100 years after the invention of the FP is totally unacceptable. The only thing that justifies my ink levels shrinking is me using them! Anything else that can make those levels smaller is not acceptable!

 

C. It changes the color of your ink. As the water component inside the ink container evaporates, your ink becomes more saturated, darker, and in many cases the result when you put it on the page will be something radically different than what it should be. This could very easily turn a beautiful ink into a fugly mess!

 

Here are some common things you hear people saying to you about this:

 

1st. Just add water to your converter/cartridge/eye-droper/piston filler/vac pen to replace the evaporated water. Sure! That would work, but the problem is that you need to know exactly how much water has evaporated, and pour in exactly that amount in your pen. Pour too much of it and you will lighten up the ink, causing it to be significantly wetter (which can lead to burps), slow the drying times on the page effectively changing the behavior of the ink, and potentially causing the ink to lose brightness. If you have many FPs inked up, it will be VERY difficult to be able to tell much water has each pen lost.

 

2ndly. It's your weather! Dry weather evaporates more! Sure, but the fact is most people (at least in the US) are living in air conditioned homes, where the room temps would be more or less between 60-75 Fahrenheit degrees and AC sucks up a lot of humidity. So in disregard of weather, most of us aren't really storing our pens in places that are too different from each other. I live in Miami, FL. And here we get like 85% humidity year round, and my pens still evaporate like crazy.

 

3rdly. Buy X brand of super expensive pens and you won't have that problem! Amazingly, some people find it a logical advice to give in a conversation clearly targeting problems with budget pens to simply say that the solution is to buy pens orders of magnitude more expensive! Oh genius! Who would have thought of that... For whoever may have run into this, ask these people if they have ever heard of the TWSBI Eco, Pilot Prera, Wing Sung 698, Platinum Preppy/Plaisir, Pilot Petit1? Because those are pens under $30 that evaporate very little ink. So I know what you would think. If so, then why not just stick to them? Well, yes! That's what those of us aware of this problem would do. However, I do find this problem fascinating, and I think that if there is any way to solve this problem for the pens that suffer from it, it would be beneficial we as a community experiment and talk about it. That's all this is all about!

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...TWSBI Eco, Pilot Prera, Wing Sung 698, Platinum Preppy/Plaisir, Pilot Petit1? Because those are pens under $30 that evaporate very little ink. So I know what you would think. If so, then why not just stick to them? Well, yes! That's what those of us aware of this problem would do. However, I do find this problem fascinating, and I think that if there is any way to solve this problem for the pens that suffer from it, it would be beneficial we as a community experiment and talk about it. That's all this is all about!

 

I'm voting with my dollars - Platinum, TWSBI and Rotring passed my own testing and I've ordered more of each of those. I like to have lots of pens inked up because I want to have lots of different inks available to use - what's the point of keeping the good stuff in the bottles - I want to draw with it.

 

I haven't yet given up on my other pens...

 

Lamy - I ordered one of the new Z28 converters hoping they might be better than the Z24. Have two pens loaded - one of each - and waiting to see what happens.

 

Jinhao X-750 - only needed an o-ring which I already covered above. Still going fine. Very happy. They join the good guys.

 

Hero 86 - I found the cap is air tight but not the barrel. It leaks where the plastic joins the metal. It takes SI so I've put a Rotring cartridge in it to see if was the Hero's converter.

 

Pilot I'm experimenting with. I was pretty sure my Prera was evaporating, ink but another poster here declared theirs did not. Happy to be proven wrong, I re-inked it and watched - I could see the condensation in the barrel - the ink was definitely evaporating out of the con-50 converter. I bought another Prera locally because it came with the newer con-40 and currently watching that to see what happens, with fingers crossed. If it's better I'll order more con-40. They may be just fine with a cartridge, but crikey half the charm of a demonstrator is seeing all that machinery!

 

I've plugged up the Pilot Kakuno air holes to see if it makes a difference. Doing so was a bit of a disaster, turned it into lemonade, and I now have a Kakuno Desk Pen... will post photos tomorrow when the varnish is dry. :D

Will work for pens... :unsure:

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Lamy - I ordered one of the new Z28 converters hoping they might be better than the Z24. Have two pens loaded - one of each - and waiting to see what happens.

 

Jinhao X-750 - only needed an o-ring which I already covered above. Still going fine. Very happy. They join the good guys.

 

I too wonder if the new Lamy Z28 converters would be better. But since I have this problem with not one but three hermetic barrel Lamy eye-droppers as well, I doubt the new converters will make much difference. Try to test it with water, that way you are dealing with the element that evaporates directly and alienate ink from the experiment. Fill it up with water, store it, and leave it for about 4 weeks and check how much water has evaporated. If you can measure up how much water you lost in total by comparing it with 0.7 ml loaded up on a measure up syringe, you would be able to divide the total by 4 and this would give you how much water you lose per week. This would enable you to add that exact amount of water to the converter every week to keep the ink levels healthy.

 

I need to give Rotring a try, I'm very curious about it! And as for the O-ring idea on the Jinhao X750, what size O-ring you use? And are you using the garden variety found at Home Depot or the ones made for FPs?

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And as for the O-ring idea on the Jinhao X750, what size O-ring you use? And are you using the garden variety found at Home Depot or the ones made for FPs?

 

Unfortunately, I don't know what size it was because it came out of a cheap box of assorted sizes bought at a hardware store. You need one that's big enough to fit tight at the top of the black grip section and skinny enough for the cap to slide over it and click on comfortably. It just makes the cap seal better which stops it drying out or even hard starting. I am still surprised it works so well, but on mine it does.

Will work for pens... :unsure:

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My Twsbi consistently dries out after 1 and 2 pages. I have to either scribble for a while or twist the piston(the crankshaft) to start it up again.

 

Not really noticed any other serious out issues apart from a Lamy from the other day which had dried up after maybe a week or so. Maybe a little longer.

Edited by Bluey
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I had to come back to this thread as I now need an inexpensive ($50ish) reliable pen that doesn't evaporate for Ama Iro, which changes colour dramatically.

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

 

B. Russell

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My Twsbi consistently dries out after 1 and 2 pages. I have to either scribble for a while or twist the piston(the crankshaft) to start it up again.

 

Not really noticed any other serious out issues apart from a Lamy from the other day which had dried up after maybe a week or so. Maybe a little longer.

 

My ECO with the 1.1 stub sat for several weeks nib up and still had a wet nib and has no issues running dry when using it, maybe my TWSBI is just a good one. I do understand TWSBI normally uses feeds that are wetter on the stub models.

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Best luck i have had with ink not drying out are TWSBI 580's. Worst has been the Conklin Duragraph and Pilot Metropolitan.

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My ECO with the 1.1 stub sat for several weeks nib up and still had a wet nib and has no issues running dry when using it, maybe my TWSBI is just a good one. I do understand TWSBI normally uses feeds that are wetter on the stub models.

It's the 1.1 stub that I have. It's not particularly wet.

post-124227-0-69042600-1499285389_thumb.jpg

Edited by Bluey
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It's the 1.1 stub that I have

Hi Bluey. Hey man, I have a theory about your problem. I believe the fit of your pen isn't tight enough. Completely flush out the pen, disassemble it (make sure to remove the piston mechanism), clean the whole thing including the piston, and put it together again, this time using silicon grease on every part that screws in. This would include the grip section as well as the piston parts. And see if the problem persists. TWSBI Ecos don't really evaporate a lot. So if the problem persist then you have a lemon.

 

I hope that helps!

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Hi Bluey. Hey man, I have a theory about your problem. I believe the fit of your pen isn't tight enough. Completely flush out the pen, disassemble it (make sure to remove the piston mechanism), clean the whole thing including the piston, and put it together again, this time using silicon grease on every part that screws in. This would include the grip section as well as the piston parts. And see if the problem persists. TWSBI Ecos don't really evaporate a lot. So if the problem persist then you have a lemon.

 

I hope that helps!

Hey. Done, done, done, done, done, done.

 

I do those things with the flushing etc routinely with every pen I buy before I ink it up. It's a Twsbi mini

Edited by Bluey
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