Is Water Resistance Of Any Importance For You?

[khalameet]

Good morning (or evening or day, where ever you are )

 

I tend to only use inks which are water resistant to some point, At the moment I use a lot of Pilot Blue Black. This ink is so good looking and just a joy to write with. I am a student and care a lot about water resistance, even though I did not have an accident with water to this point.

Which lead me to think: there are so many beautiful inks out there which are not water resistant at all - the full Diamine line (excluding Registrar's) or most of the R&K inks (which, fortunately, are unbelievably cheap here in Germany). I even own 12 R&K inks (including the two beautiful IG inks, which are actually pretty water resistant), but as soon as I begin to use an ink like Leipziger Schwarz, I think about how easy it is to completely wash this ink away with a few drops of water, and I go back to Salix or Pilot's inks. I can't actually use other inks for a long time because I don't want to damage my notes (which are important to me).

 

How do you feel about this? I can imagine to journal with those inks, as my journal is at home at my desk and is very unlikely to get in contact with water. But at the moment I am not very confident in using these inks at university or work.

 

Best regards!

[Karmachanic]

These days I buy ink for colour and shading characteristics. I have one water resistant ink, but it was not purchased for that reason.

[praxim]

No. I never consider it for an ink purchase. I could not tell you which, if any, of my inks are water resistant. I can imagine it matters yet it has never quite been an issue in practice.

 

Way back when I was at school and university, it was the same. At that time I think I was using Skrip blue and sometimes Quink blue, not a blue-black or black. I still prefer blues and other colours although Sheaffer and Parker are not current presences in my ink drawers.

[A Smug Dill]

How do you feel about this? I can imagine to journal with those inks, as my journal is at home at my desk and is very unlikely to get in contact with water. But at the moment I am not very confident in using these inks at university or work.

In my book, for the purposes of journalling, fair-to-good water resistance trumps sheen (which is at best a passing novelty to me) and even shading any day. I put things down in a journal because I want to be able to review and/or refer to the content later; it doesn't have to look beautiful, and if I wanted it to look beautiful I'd work on improving my handwriting and my prose first, instead of looking to line variation, shading and sheen in my writing to make up for my personal shortcomings. Resistance to fading and water/moisture is foremost, then resistance to feathering (not because of 'beauty', but writing/print with fuzzy edges give me a headache and I cannot bring myself to read for too long when that happens), and then colour itself.

 

Early on when I first delved into this 'hobby', I selected and bought a whole lot of Noodler's inks because the manufacturer made a selling point out of the water resistance or whatever-proof-ness of those colours. Of course they had to be in colour families to which I was drawn, but back then I didn't know enough to worry about feathering, bleed-through, etc. until I saw it on the pages of my Rhodia and Leuchtturm1917 notebooks/journals. Most of my Noodler's inks now have fallen into disuse. (All the same, Green Marine, Golden Brown and Kiowa Pecan are good enough not to make it onto my instant giveaway list.)

 

Thankfully, these days there are many 'fountain pen safe' pigment inks from which to choose.

Edited November 9, 2018 by A Smug Dill

[lapis]

 

Is Water Resistance Of Any Importance For You?

 

No.

[senzen]

No. I never consider it for an ink purchase. I could not tell you which, if any, of my inks are water resistant. I can imagine it matters yet it has never quite been an issue in practice.

 

 

 

+1

[AlohaLani787]

"Is Water Resistance Of Any Importance For You?"

 

Only when addressing an envelope and I've taken to using a Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pen, 1.5 with a bullet nib. It's India ink and waterproof.

[JakobS]

Nope, never.

 

I do use a good many Iron Gall inks, not because they provide permanence to my writing, but due to their oxidation characteristics.

 

I tend to keep liquids and writing separate from each other, all my years of chemistry taught me something I suppose!

 

I live in a pretty humid, and rainy environment, our past August felt like one long rain storm, but have never had an issue with envelopes getting to people in the mail, usually all my mail travels 1500 miles or so as I usually only write to family. I have never had rain ruin writing in my notebooks as I carry them either. Perhaps I am just lucky, and put tons of faith in the USPS....so far so good!

 

I do feel that permanent inks have been over sold quite a bit in the fountain pen community, possibly beginning with the ascendence of a certain ink company , but the vast majority of ink will stay around for decades if not given to wild variations in their day to day states of being.....

 

In regards to using regular inks for university or work, I used about 15-20 standard Diamine inks for college notes, and all remain as vibrant and legible as the day I wrote them 10-11 years ago (started using FP's in the last two years of college). I have also used a variety of regular Diamine, KWZ, and J. Herbin inks for work at a university research lab for 8 years, and have yet to lose anything in lab notebooks to water or other liquids, but again because I separate my use of liquids and writing. The liquid used most for me is 75-100% ethanol for temporary storing and preserving insects, in my time here we have probably used 65-70 gallons of ethanol, yet not a single letter has met its doom by it, so it's certainly possible to use regular inks in this setting. The larger concern for me is finding a good quality paper in my research notebook that can handle fountain pen ink without feathering and bleed through!

Edited November 10, 2018 by JakobS

[bass1193]

I didn't care about water resistance until I was required to use ballpoints in lab notebooks during a research internship. I balked at this, of course! So, I bought a bottle of Heart of Darkness, showed the professor permanency data, and was allowed to use that 😄 Now I'm more interested in water resistant inks because, though HoD is intensely black, I tire of it and want some more color options.

[Freddy]

Is Water Resistance Of Any Importance For You?

 

Boarding through Graduate School....'Twas Inconsequential and still is...{Military Service only ballpoint}

 

Fred..

non sibi............

[inkandseeds]

Water resistance is incredibly important to me. My journals travel everywhere with me. They spend a lot of time outside, camping, in the garden, on trails and next to a coffee, beer or hard cider at one of my favorite neighborhood establishments. Rain drizzles sometimes, things get spilled. Life happens. While i enjoy color, permancy and contrast is more important to me than shading, sheen, etc. (It may be the journals that i use, but bleed through has not been an issue for me.)

 

For those who have nice handwriting, i understand their ink interests are different than mine. My cursive writing is terrible and my attempts to improve it have only convinced me that my cursive writing is terrible and getting worse.

 

Fortunately for all of us, our choices in inks and their different qualities has been increasing to meet our different wants and needs.

[inkandseeds]

Sorry for the double post. My iPad and/or Internet connection was slow and i was impatient. Very sorry.

Edited November 9, 2018 by inkandseeds

[ElinMS]

I do use a good many Iron Gall inks, not because they provide permanence to my writing, but due to their oxidation characteristics.

 

Aren't Iron Gall inks corrosive and tend to damage fountain pens? I use it with steel dip nibs sometimes and have seen some early signs of corrosion on the nibs I use it with.

 

That being said, I often address envelopes with a dip pen in Iron Gall ink because I know it won't get damaged if it gets wet in the mail on a rainy day or something.

 

But in general, I just try to keep water away from my handwritten documents. That's the downside to most fountain pen inks: not water resistant and not archival. But the upside is that I'm pretty boring, so nobody is likely to want to read my journals 100 years from now Plus I wouldn't relish the task of cleaning water-resistant ink out of my pens...

Edited November 9, 2018 by ElinMS

[JakobS]

 

Aren't Iron Gall inks corrosive and tend to damage fountain pens? I use it with steel dip nibs sometimes and have seen some early signs of corrosion on the nibs I use it with.

 

That being said, I often address envelopes with a dip pen in Iron Gall ink because I know it won't get damaged if it gets wet in the mail on a rainy day or something.

 

But in general, I just try to keep water away from my handwritten documents. That's the downside to most fountain pen inks: not water resistant and not archival. But the upside is that I'm pretty boring, so nobody is likely to want to read my journals 100 years from now Plus I wouldn't relish the task of cleaning water-resistant ink out of my pens...

 

 

Fountain pen friendly iron gall inks are not as acidic as traditional iron gall inks that have been used for centuries. Those traditional iron gall ink mixtures are the precursors to what you are using with your dip pens. Not only are they more acidic than the fountain pen friendly inks (Diamine Registrars, KWZ IG inks, R&K Salix, Scabiosa, ESSRI etc.), but also contain gum arabic and other particles which may gum up the works within the pen. Fountain pen friendly IG inks are also more likely to be chemically balanced by using lab grade chemical compounds versus traditional components such as oak galls, logwood, iron vitriol etc. which are found in some modern dip pen iron gall inks, producing a less corrosive ink when placed on paper. The only IG ink that was sold as"fountain pen friendly" that was unstable in this regard was Organic Studio's Aristotle, which not only corroded nibs, but degraded quickly in the bottle leaving a rusty brown color shortly after oxidizing. This ink was created by someone who at the time had a lot going on, and perhaps did not have the time, or realization of the need for a balanced chemical reaction in order to create a stable, non corrosive fountain pen friendly IG ink.

Edited November 9, 2018 by JakobS

[ElinMS]

Thanks JakobS. I might pick up another Lamy Safari and have a go at some of the FP-friendly IG inks. Are they at all difficult to clean out of converters?

Edited November 9, 2018 by ElinMS

[JakobS]

Thanks JakobS. I might pick up another Lamy Safari and have a go at some of the FP-friendly IG inks. Are they at all difficult to clean out of converters?

 

 

Not generally, as long as you don't let them sit unused for a long period of time, or let dry out in the pen which could cause the iron to precipitate out of the ink solution. I used Diamine Registrars in a Lamy Safari for four or five years straight, and the converter had a little blue transparent color patches to it from precipitate, this precipitate was not significant, and did not effect the functioning of the pen, and can be cleaned out with a little bit of diluted ascorbic or citric acid. Also, this was a pen that was lost in a soybean field for a week in summer, and had a really loose cap for ~1 year so probably not a great example! I generally use lever or touchdown fillers with my IG inks, and never had an issue with them.

Edited November 9, 2018 by JakobS

[aurore]

Fade resistance is important, moreover it says a lot about quality of the pigment used. Water resistance is appreciated. Water-proofness is not necessary.

[Lomi]

Is Water Resistance Of Any Importance For You?

 

Yes it is for me, but only because i need it to use with watercolors, so usually one waterproof/water resistant color is enough, for general writing purposes any ink is fine, it's good that we can use vibrant colors and not care about how they perform with water.

Edited November 9, 2018 by Lomarion

[white_lotus]

No. Completely unimportant to me.

[inkstainedruth]

The importance of water resistance depends on the use. If I'm signing checks or addressing envelopes, or if I'm doing something that runs the risk of being lost if it gets wet, then yes. And I have a nice range of colors of those: I was paying bills yesterday, and for that it was Noodler's Kung Te Cheng (which is pretty much everything proof -- plus it's close enough to blue that my old bank didn't blink an eye (just as it didn't blink an eye when I used Noodler's El Lawrence, which is close enough to black without actually *being* black. If I'm making a to do list or writing in my morning pages journal, then not really (this morning's entry was with Waterman Mysterious Blue, which is not remotely water resistant...).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth