How Long Will Fountain Pen Ink Last If Stored Properly? (And Another Question)

[amberleadavis]

Does temperature even matter when storing ink? I say "temperature controlled", but I don't mean constant room temperature. It may fluctuate 10 degrees in either direction, depending on if it's summer or winter.

 

 

Laughing myself sillier.

 

I stored my inks for more than a decade in a NON temperature controlled caboose.

 

 

 

 

 

+1. This is the right answer. It is the only right answer above. Literally we do not know how long we may expect inks currently made under EU regulations to last. We can't know. The time has not passed that would enable us to know. Not all questions have immediate answers.

 

We have an idea that inks made in the 1950s may be used today. That is because the 1950s have already happened and the decades have passed. Inks made today in Europe are not the same as the inks made in long-past decades and the time has not yet passed that would enable us to predict the longevity of those inks. With Japanese inks made today, go for it.

However, I have tested inks in the bottle by putting them into a sunny window that gets afternoon sun in Las Vegas.

 

The detailed report is here in a thread, but you can see the photos here: http://www.sheismylawyer.com/She_Thinks_In_Ink/Tests/Fade/2013-Window/index.html

 

 

another caveat -- don't store your ink in the general vicinity of your houseplants, as potting soil is teeming with assorted symbiotic microbes, many of which are happy to infect your ink.

 

Iron gall inks will degrade as they are exposed to oxygen, but you generally only find such inks when you go looking for them.

The vintage IG inks I had (as in Pelikan Blue Black and Carter's ink) were some of the only ones to degrade.

 

AND when we were doing testing for powdered inks, we found that houseplants were a HUGE problem for inks.

 

I am far more interested to know what the O.P. (or anyone else) deems observable ‘signs of degradation’, and whether the premise is that the ink is put into storage unopened for five years, or being used to refill pens from time to time over that period.

I think degradation is where the color changes from orange to green (some of the older PR inks did this) or it develops STIB or it becomes unusable.

[1nkulus]

The proper degrees, the Celsius, of course!

 

[Pen Engineer]

 

+1. This is the right answer. It is the only right answer above. Literally we do not know how long we may expect inks currently made under EU regulations to last. We can't know. The time has not passed that would enable us to know. Not all questions have immediate answers.

 

We have an idea that inks made in the 1950s may be used today. That is because the 1950s have already happened and the decades have passed. Inks made today in Europe are not the same as the inks made in long-past decades and the time has not yet passed that would enable us to predict the longevity of those inks. With Japanese inks made today, go for it.

very philosophical, and absolutely correct... but like so many philosophies, not very practical

Is there a way to find out if current ink producers test their inks to certain standards, including durability in the bottle?

[A Smug Dill]

Is there a way to find out if current ink producers test their inks to certain standards, including durability in the bottle?

 

 

First you need to identify those certain standards, and not just take the approach of, "I want to know which standards the individual manufacturer may be using," as some sort of clean-slate fact finding. If you pinpoint the particular standards, you can always then send the question to the manufacturer for them to give a simple yes-or-no answer (and elaborate on what they do instead, if they so choose).

 

If there are no industry/technical/ISO standards for durability in the bottle, then in effect the question is moot.

[Pen Engineer]

 

 

First you need to identify those certain standards, and not just take the approach of, "I want to know which standards the individual manufacturer may be using," as some sort of clean-slate fact finding. If you pinpoint the particular standards, you can always then send the question to the manufacturer for them to give a simple yes-or-no answer (and elaborate on what they do instead, if they so choose).

 

If there are no industry/technical/ISO standards for durability in the bottle, then in effect the question is moot.

off you go. Find out if you are curious

[txomsy]

There are standards. And they are usually printed in the bottle or box when the ink has been tested. Document preservation is one of the most important issues for any company or government. It has been long tried and tested and there is knowledge enough to know what works and what doesn't.

 

If you can read documents 3000 years old on papyrus, you know there are inks that last that long. You know the recipes. You know how they were made. It's not rocket science.

 

Ditto. Google.

[Karmachanic]

Does temperature even matter when storing ink?

 

 

Freezing inks is not a good idea. It often leads to broken bottles. Which is why those who live in Northern climes tend not to order ink during the freezing months.

[A Smug Dill]

There are standards.

Not for durability in the bottle, as far as I'm aware.

 

Document preservation is one of the most important issues for any company or government.

Not every ink needs to be or would be tested against ISO 12757-2, but only those which the manufacturer intends to market as a standard-conforming 'document-proof' ink such as the Rohrer & Klingner Dokumentus Inks line. Furthermore, as far as I'm aware, that standard covers aspects such as erasure resistance, ethanol resistance, hydrochloric acid resistance, ammonium hydroxide resistance, bleaching resistance, water resistance, and light resistance of writing done (or marks made) with an ink on paper, but not whether the ink's colour would resist changing due to aging in the bottle from effects such as oxidation.

 

So, once again, it's up to interested consumers/parties to identify which standards are relevant to their query, then ask the ink manufacturer, who can then just answer yes-or-no as to whether a particular ink has been tested to a particular identified standard, instead of offering an ink testing run-sheet that was used for the particular ink of interest.

[amk]

I'm getting an impression that there are so many variables involved that it's difficult to give an answer other than for a specific ink.

 

FWIW I am using a 1950s bottle of Waterman blue and several 1990s Pelikan inks with no problem.

[amberleadavis]

 

Freezing inks is not a good idea. It often leads to broken bottles. Which is why those who live in Northern climes tend not to order ink during the freezing months.

 

Yes, that makes sense, and I would have thought that the heat would beak down the inks, but so far, it hasn't for most.

[Sholom]

The storage life of a particular bottle of ink depends not only on the particular ink but on how often it has been opened, what temperatures has it seen, has anyone sneezed nearby while the bottle was open, etc. I have a 20 year old bottle of Waterman Black that is still usable and am currently using bottles of Noodler's Green Marine and Ottoman Azure that are at least 12 years old. On the other hand, I had a several decade old bottle of Parker Washable Blue Quink that had faded to a pale blue gray although otherwise still ink-like. Adding tap water to inks creates a risk of SITB, as is dipping water-wet pens into ink bottles, but if your tap water is high quality, as is mine, you might get away with it. If I lived someplace with brownish water (e.g. parts of Florida) I would only use distilled water to dilute inks. There really are too many variables to answer the original poster's question and any particular bottle of ink may go bad prematurely, but with proper storage (fairly dark and not extremely hot or cold), most bottles of ink will last a decade or several more.

[RudraDev]

If stored properly, a bottle of ink should last you for more than a decade. But, no matter how controlled the environment is, the ink is bound to shift a little bit in color over that time period.

I have bottles of the old Parker Quink blue my grandfather used, and they still work decent enough, although I wouldn't put them in a super expensive pen. you can never be too careful.