Penbbs Smell

[Honeybadgers]

Acrylics will smell until they're fully, completely cured.

 

Leave it, completely disassembled, somewhere with GOOD airflow (not a drawer) for a few days to a week and the smell will go away.

 

I would be un-f**king-believably surprised if any fountain pen ink could actually chemically damage acrylics in such a way that caused them to create a new noxious volatile.

 

There is a simple saying in chemistry - "like dissolves like"

 

Acrylics are nonpolar. Water based inks are polar. The two should be completely inert to one another. Unless you're mixing your dyes with toluene or acetone, or cut your inks with dichloromethane, it's basically impossible. Either that or my Ochem professor just lied to me for a year.

 

Staining is different from what I'm talking about.

 

They shouldn't smell like camphor, mech-for-i. They should smell more like acetone, which is much more common a carrier solvent. Camphor was used in celluloid and takes months or years to even reach a level of cure that can be used.

Edited July 18, 2020 by Honeybadgers

[Mech-for-i]

Well ok acetone then .. Kind of hard to accurately describe but all that smell if there is ; is but faint and cannot be noticed unless one specifically looking for it.

 

Some ink smell for sure but I had yet to find any ink or pen smelling garlic .. lol

Edited July 18, 2020 by Mech-for-i

[sapient]

Acrylics will smell until they're fully, completely cured.

 

Leave it, completely disassembled, somewhere with GOOD airflow (not a drawer) for a few days to a week and the smell will go away.

 

 

As I have already stated, I have left them to air (yes, completely disassembled) for weeks now, and they still reek, stronger than ever. I left the Dawn 2 days outside, but the sun darkened the acrylic, so I just left it a few more weeks on my desk. The smell did go down considerably after that, but when I inked it back up, the smell came back as strong as ever, if not stronger. I have repeated this several times in the year I have the pens, but the odor is undiminished, if not stronger now than before. The odor of my sister's new 355 is also getting stronger by the day.

 

And it is not an acetone-like odor: it is an acrid garlicky odor. The most likely culprit for that odor is acrylonitrile, which is highly toxic (and actually rather polar, reference). Another possibility is 2-Ethylhexyl acrylate, which is "just" harmful (though its odor is sweeter than what I am smelling, reference). I am guessing the polymerization process they use leaves a significant proportion of free monomers that are polar and get dissolved in the ink's water.

Edited July 20, 2020 by sapient

[MuddyWaters]

Would it be something with sulfur?

[TSherbs]

 

As I have already stated, I have left them to air (yes, completely disassembled) for weeks now, and they still reek, stronger than ever. I left the Dawn 2 days outside, but the sun darkened the acrylic, so I just left it a few more weeks on my desk. The smell did go down considerably after that, but when I inked it back up, the smell came back as strong as ever, if not stronger. I have repeated this several times in the year I have the pens, but the odor is undiminished, if not stronger now than before. The odor of my sister's new 355 is also getting stronger by the day.

 

And it is not an acetone-like odor: it is an acrid garlicky odor. The most likely culprit for that odor is acrylonitrile, which is highly toxic (and actually rather polar, reference). Another possibility is 2-Ethylhexyl acrylate, which is "just" harmful (though its odor is sweeter than what I am smelling, reference). I am guessing the polymerization process they use leaves a significant proportion of free monomers that are polar and get dissolved in the ink's water.

 

Where is your ink actually contacting the material of the pen body? Are these piston or converter pens? (your op doesn't say)

[sapient]

 

Where is your ink actually contacting the material of the pen body? Are these piston or converter pens? (your op doesn't say)

As I said I have 2 pens of the 456 model which is a vacuum fill. And my sister has the 355 which is the bulkfiller. Edited July 20, 2020 by sapient

[TSherbs]

As I said I have 2 pens of the 456 model which is a vacuum fill. And my sister has the 355 which is the bulkfiller.

 

roger roger

[Antenociticus]

I've got two dozen or so PenBBS pens, representing nearly all their models and a variety of different acrylics. None of them smell, unpleasantly or otherwise.

[MadAsAHatter]

Maybe it's not the pen body itself, but something that is part of the filling mechanism that is reacting and causing the odor.

[sapient]

Maybe it's not the pen body itself, but something that is part of the filling mechanism that is reacting and causing the odor.

 

Nope, from disassembling the pens, I know the smell comes from the acrylic parts only.

[Helen350]

I would suggest the same method I use for removing the smell in the Noodler's Ahab. I put

enough baking powder/soda in a small zip lock bag--enough to cover the pen parts. Put the

pen cap, body and section in that bag and leave it there for about 14-21 days. I have found

it to remove about 85% of the smell in my Ahab. Over time another 10% of the remaining smell

is gone. I own 4 Ahabs, and that obnoxious acrylic smell is gone. I would have to hold it to

my nose to smell anything. i have kept that zip lock bag filled with baking powder for future

acrylic pen purchases which might have that strong smell. My PenBBS pens, I have not

noticed that issue. For your PenBBS issue it might be worth a try. Hope it works like it

did for my Ahabs.

[Honeybadgers]

 

As I have already stated, I have left them to air (yes, completely disassembled) for weeks now, and they still reek, stronger than ever. I left the Dawn 2 days outside, but the sun darkened the acrylic, so I just left it a few more weeks on my desk. The smell did go down considerably after that, but when I inked it back up, the smell came back as strong as ever, if not stronger. I have repeated this several times in the year I have the pens, but the odor is undiminished, if not stronger now than before. The odor of my sister's new 355 is also getting stronger by the day.

 

And it is not an acetone-like odor: it is an acrid garlicky odor. The most likely culprit for that odor is acrylonitrile, which is highly toxic (and actually rather polar, reference). Another possibility is 2-Ethylhexyl acrylate, which is "just" harmful (though its odor is sweeter than what I am smelling, reference). I am guessing the polymerization process they use leaves a significant proportion of free monomers that are polar and get dissolved in the ink's water.

 

scents are subjective. It is possible (though extremely unlikely, as it would mean he blank would be so structurally unsound that it would disintegrate during machining) that the acrylic itself was a bad batch, but again, super unlikely.

 

That's also not how this type of acrylic polymerization works. These are standard acetate resins. Neither of the references you listed are what is used in acrylic resins. acrylonitrile is used primarily in fabricating fibrous resin structures, not pour-mold resins. There are hundreds of different types of acrylics used in industry, but the specific one used in our style (even the special form used in pens like the LB-5) are all acrylic acetate.

 

They're made from an extremely simple carboxylic acid group with a vinyl group instead of a nitrile group.

 

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/6452271

 

 

 

Again, if your logic was correct, the free monomers that are water soluble would be very rapidly removed from the pen with a water soak. They are not slow-permeating, they're going to either be trapped in the polymer or come out very quickly. And if there was a large enough quantity of free monomers permeating the acrylic, it would have discolored the blank badly and it would have almost certainly shattered since the monomers would have interfered with the polymer chains linking, and the machining process is not a gentle one.

 

I would wager you're just much more sensitive to the scent. If you can't handle it, there's nothing wrong with that. But I will say that maybe only one of my dozen or so penbbs models had any acrylic odor at all out of the box, so I wouldn't be worried.

Edited July 26, 2020 by Honeybadgers

[TSherbs]

honey-stoichiometry

[Pendarion]

Finally an upside to my covid anosmia of the past 4 months!

[TSherbs]

Finally an upside to my covid anosmia of the past 4 months!

 

ha!

[sapient]

I would suggest the same method I use for removing the smell in the Noodler's Ahab. I put

enough baking powder/soda in a small zip lock bag--enough to cover the pen parts. Put the

pen cap, body and section in that bag and leave it there for about 14-21 days. I have found

it to remove about 85% of the smell in my Ahab. Over time another 10% of the remaining smell

is gone. I own 4 Ahabs, and that obnoxious acrylic smell is gone. I would have to hold it to

my nose to smell anything. i have kept that zip lock bag filled with baking powder for future

acrylic pen purchases which might have that strong smell. My PenBBS pens, I have not

noticed that issue. For your PenBBS issue it might be worth a try. Hope it works like it

did for my Ahabs.

 

The Noodler's pens are not acrylic. They use a vegetable resin that smells completely different. So I doubt if the same method will work, but I will give it a try. Just to make sure I understood it, though: you put the pen parts in the solid powder?

 

 

I would wager you're just much more sensitive to the scent. If you can't handle it, there's nothing wrong with that. But I will say that maybe only one of my dozen or so penbbs models had any acrylic odor at all out of the box, so I wouldn't be worried.

 

As I already stated, neither did my pens smell out of the box. The smell developed after inking them. They also all smell slightly different from each other, leading me to think that the coloring agents might (also) be involved. The newest of them, my sister's 355 is now very stinky, too. The worst of them, though, is the Dawn one - just uncapping it stinks up the whole room. I find it very difficult to believe that I am that much more sensitive to a smell, to the point that I can't tolerate it even at a distance, whereas other people do not smell it at all! All my family members can smell it too.

[TSherbs]

 

The worst of them, though, is the Dawn one - just uncapping it stinks up the whole room.

Whaaat? That's weird. And you're sure the inks are ok?

[A Smug Dill]

My reasons for this rant are twofold:

First as a warning to anyone considering buying their first PenBBS, since no one else seems to mention that horrible little detail.

I find it very difficult to believe that I am that much more sensitive to a smell, to the point that I can't tolerate it even at a distance, whereas other people do not smell it at all! All my family members can smell it too.

So what are you trying to achieve or prove? That everyone else — including all the others buyers who aren't owners, shareholders, employees or agents of PenBBS, but simply fellow customers who spent their money (irrespective of how hard-earned or easy to come by their wealth is) buying the brand's products — is part of a big conspiracy to bury the truth that only you dare speak out against? Or that PenBBS or some other hidden power is suppressing or censoring all talk of the smell on forums and social media?

 

You raised the issue for open discussion on a forum with your equals and peers in the hobbyist community. Many of us replied in good faith. Nobody is doubting your subjective experience or questioning your motives for bringing it up; and equally nobody is unduly taking your – or alternatively, the manufacturer's — side. It certainly appears that you're in the minority that is adversely affected, and if the "community service"' aspect is to raise it to prospective buyers' awareness so that they can make an "informed" assessment whether they might also perceive and hate the smell if they commit to purchase, then the right thing — the best thing — would be to help the community form an estimate of just how large or small that minority is, for someone who had not bought PenBBS pens before to evaluate their chances/risk.

 

We can't make that smell go away for you. Nor do we want anyone else to have to deal with that olfactory affront, but the "solution" cannot be premised on pretending there is a systemic or widespread problem when there is no evidence of such, or try to force PenBBS to do something about it when apparently it doesn't appear to be even be common. I'd happily let you smell my pens if you were living next door to me, or sniff for myself and see whether your PenBBS pens do indeed register on my nose; but you don't actually live next door to me, or even in the same suburb or city. I don't have a pen in the Dawn acrylic, and I was never going to buy one in the first place and now even less likely than ever. On the other hand, you seem to be fighting "everyone else" who say their pens in their preferred acrylic colours and patterns with their choice of inks don't smell, so the likelihood of someone else (you're trying to warn) in the community encountering the problem is low — as opposed to nil or non-existent — and that is a very plausible reason why nobody has mentioned "that horrible little detail" that isn't happening to them.

[sapient]

Whaaat? That's weird. And you're sure the inks are ok?

Yes, I have tried many inks, some even from new bottles. The same inks do not smell either in the bottle or in other pens. I am sure the smell comes from the acrylic parts of the pens.

 

I am currently soaking them in an ammonia solution to see if that accomplishes anything. If that does not work, I will try the baking soda. If I find something that works, I will let you know.

[Honeybadgers]

 

The Noodler's pens are not acrylic. They use a vegetable resin that smells completely different. So I doubt if the same method will work, but I will give it a try. Just to make sure I understood it, though: you put the pen parts in the solid powder?

 

 

As I already stated, neither did my pens smell out of the box. The smell developed after inking them. They also all smell slightly different from each other, leading me to think that the coloring agents might (also) be involved. The newest of them, my sister's 355 is now very stinky, too. The worst of them, though, is the Dawn one - just uncapping it stinks up the whole room. I find it very difficult to believe that I am that much more sensitive to a smell, to the point that I can't tolerate it even at a distance, whereas other people do not smell it at all! All my family members can smell it too.

 

Odor sensitivity can be incredibly heritable. That's like saying based on your family's experience, 100% of people think cilantro tastes like soap (it's a genetic thing) or that asparagus makes your urine smell horrendous.

 

I have never in my life come across an acrylic resin - failed or not, that "stunk up a whole room" simply by uncapping. That's just not how volatiles work in concentrations we would be describing. Even the foulest, strongest smelling compound I have ever had the displeasure of synthesizing - 4-methylcyclohexene - was only potent within about three feet of an uncapped vial at nearly 100% purity. Some people think the odor of KWZ or sailor ink is utterly intolerable at several feet away. Odors are intensely subjective.

 

Again, I'm not arguing that there's something wrong with you or that you're stupid or that you're even wrong for thinking whatever you are smelling is bad - I'm just arguing that I am intensely suspicious of the claim that there is anything dangerous or that the issue you're having is related to a chemical reaction with nonpolar, damned-near-completely-inert-for-consumer-purposes acrylic with polar water and dye, unless you put a moldy ink into the pen - but the ink would smell foul as hell out of the bottle, too.

 

Sherbs, what do you mean by stoichiometry? I don't see how stoiciometric ratios could be at play. Or were you just being facetious?

Edited August 2, 2020 by Honeybadgers