My Bay State Blue Eradication Story

[jhylkema]

For those of you just tuning in, two of the first three inks I bought were Noodler's (the third was Iroshizuku Shin-Kai). One of them was the infamous Bay State Blue. While I liked the colour, it had several problems: Nib creep, staining, leaking from nibs, bleeding through Leuchtturm1917 paper, and feathering on cheap paper to the point that anything written with it was illegible. Last night, I decided I'd had enough of this beautiful but very high-maintenance, ill-behaved diva and decide to purge it from my petrol blue Lamy Al-Star. This is how I did it:

First, I attempted to purge the pen the normal way using the converter. This caused horrible staining everywhere the ink touched - sink, countertop, hands, etc. It was awful, it looked like I tried to dump paint down the sink. After a fair bit of cursing, I put a small amount of undiluted common household bleach on a paper towel and wiped the stains up from the surfaces. They came off immediately - yes, it is true, bleach will get rid of BSB stains on hard, nonporous surfaces like kitchen sinks and countertops. For any other ink, the pen would have been ready to re-ink now, but BSB was not giving up so easily.

Undaunted, I then turned to the Goulet purging method using an ear bulb syringe (link below). That metod worked beautifully to get the ink out of the grip, feed, and nib. Any other ink would have been completely gone gone and the pen would have been ready to re-ink, but not BSB. Note that I had to decapitate a Lamy blue cartridge to use as an ear bulb adapter as Brian described in the video. When I saw the Lamy Blue ink issuing from the cartridge into the sink, I was expecting another horrible mess, but this ink simply washed down the sink with water as if it had never been there. "Hmm", I mused, "this is what well-behaved ink is supposed to do!" That cruel teacher? She is called "experience". She gives the test first and the lesson later.

Now I was rock solid in my resolve to get rid of BSB, but everything the ink touched was still that electric purplish blue. Time to bring out the big guns.

In a Pyrex glass kitchen measure, I mixed 1L of lukewarm tap water with 100mL of the bleach and mixed well. Then I completely disassembled the pen's grip section and dropped each component - grip, feed, nib, and converter - into the bleach solution and left it sitting overnight.

The next morning, the BSB was gone as if it had never, ever touched my pen. Success! No apparent damage to the feed or grip section, but I found a nib-shaped bit of rusty-looking discolouration on the bottom of the glass where the nib had been sitting. There is no obvious damage to the nib, however, no flaking chrome or anything of the sort. The only other thing I noticed was that the converter is now a bit hard to turn and squeaks a lot. I figure the next inking will restore the converter's smoothness, but if not, Lamy converters are cheap unlike Pilot ones, which cost as much as the bloody pen!

The pen is now inked up with a Lamy Blue cartridge pending my next Iroshizuku ink purchase (I'm thinking Kon-Peki, but I'll take suggestions here) as I am currently going through an out-of-cash experience. After sitting nib down for an hour or so, the nib is still quite dry so it's a bit hard starting, but once it starts, it doesn't feather, has a beautiful shading to it, and doesn't bleed through the pages of my Leuchtturm1917 Master. This is, of course, one of the many key advantages of converters - you can completely saturate the nib with the converter when you fill the pen. The shadowing is equivalent to the Iroshizuku Shin-Kai in my other Lamy, an Lx.

The last thing? I threw the bottle of BSB down my trash chute. I smiled when I heard the satisfying sound of glass smashing when it hit the bottom. It's been real. Again, while I liked the colour, the ink was so poorly behaved that it just wasn't worth the effort. The Iroshizuku, OTOH, has never given me a lick of trouble. It looks very professional, but it's a tad boring and dries slowly.

Any throughts/shrieks of horror would be appreciated.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipwFvY0PUqs

Edited March 31, 2018 by jhylkema

[Carrau]

In about a month there will be a news story about a local body of water (downstream from your local landfill) that has turned the most amazing color blue, in addition to boats, fish, turtles, etc. In about 3 months, you will read that oceans around the globe appear bluer than ever before.

[inkstainedruth]

In about a month there will be a news story about a local body of water (downstream from your local landfill) that has turned the most amazing color blue, in addition to boats, fish, turtles, etc. In about 3 months, you will read that oceans around the globe appear bluer than ever before.

 

Note to jhylkema -- here's another one of those teaching moments (aka "hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20 vision"). Instead of chucking the bottle out, you could have sent the remaining BSB to FPN member amberleadavis -- she dotes on the stuff. Okay, well, she dotes on any eye-searing ink out there.... Me? I like BSB okay (it's actually a little too purple-leaning a blue for my taste) -- but limit its use to cheap pens dedicated to it and it alone (and pens I don't mind getting stained) because no matter how OCD I am about flushing, I'm convinced I can't get it all out. And that ink does NOT play well with others. Including other Noodler's inks that AREN'T the other Bay State Series ones.

My original "BSB pen" was a Guanleming clear demonstrator, but I broke the finial off the cap when the clip got caught on the elastic in a pen case. Now I use a Noodler's Charlie, which came free with a bottle of some other Noodler's ink. This has the added bonus of the clear(ish) barrel making it easy to top off a fill of BSB with a little distilled water (that will help with the feathering).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[The Good Captain]

I've only used Baystate Blue in a Kaweco Dia2 since I received the bottle and not flushed it once. Just keep refilling and have had no issues at all. The pen works fine and I suppose if I did decide to flush it out, I'd take it with me on a visit to my brother-in-law's place...

[Chrissy]

I have a part-used bottle. It came to me part-used and so far I haven't inked up a pen with it. This could be partly due to the fact that I was also sent two samples of Baystate Cranberry and Baystate Concord Grape. These stained their ink vial tubes so badly I never got them clean. Now I will try bleach though.

 

For Lamy converters, if you are patient and careful, you can completely dismantle them, then add a little silicone grease to the plunger. They come up really nicely

[jhylkema]

How do I dismantle the converter?

[ErrantSmudge]

How do I dismantle the converter?

 

 

Here's a thread on the topic: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/211481-lamy-z24-and-z26-converters/

 

This post from the thread has the details you're looking for: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/211481-lamy-z24-and-z26-converters/?p=3927361

[amberleadavis]

 

Note to jhylkema -- here's another one of those teaching moments (aka "hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20 vision"). Instead of chucking the bottle out, you could have sent the remaining BSB to FPN member amberleadavis -- she dotes on the stuff. Okay, well, she dotes on any eye-searing ink out there.... Me? I like BSB okay (it's actually a little too purple-leaning a blue for my taste) -- but limit its use to cheap pens dedicated to it and it alone (and pens I don't mind getting stained) because no matter how OCD I am about flushing, I'm convinced I can't get it all out. And that ink does NOT play well with others. Including other Noodler's inks that AREN'T the other Bay State Series ones.

My original "BSB pen" was a Guanleming clear demonstrator, but I broke the finial off the cap when the clip got caught on the elastic in a pen case. Now I use a Noodler's Charlie, which came free with a bottle of some other Noodler's ink. This has the added bonus of the clear(ish) barrel making it easy to top off a fill of BSB with a little distilled water (that will help with the feathering).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

 

Yes - send it to Amber. She shares inks with others and rehomes unwanted inks.

And my ultimate BSB story involves a TWSBI, an ex-husband and vintage Sheaffer ink.