Biocide Shootout Tests

[SamCapote]

Cool. I asked Sean to comment on how he mixed his for the inks when he made them just to make sure everyone had a "tried and true" method of safely using Dowicil. Have not heard back from him by PM in a good while.

[saskia_madding]

Thanks for the tip, Sam. I've got some pink and red sailor inks from store exclusives that came with long stringy scary things in the bottle, so I've held off using them. I'm going to sang some of the Dowicil.

[amberleadavis]

When you hear back about the instructions, we'd love to know. Thank you.

[mhosea]

It takes so little to reach the Dow-recommended concentration of 0.2% to 0.27% by weight for ink that I don't think most people have any way of measuring it precisely. Fortunately, the stuff is fantastically water soluble. I doubt there's any need to be very precise.

[amberleadavis]

Good to know.

[drmom777]

I read this and other similar threads a couple of years ago with interest. Like other people I really missed the smell of phenol in ink- and Dettol was mentioned, kind of half jokingly, I think. I bought some and was disappointed that it didn't smell like phenol.

 

Then my bottle of Diamine Hope Pink became full of slimey threads. Ewwww.

 

So I took the full bottle of ink and put in a cc of the Dettol. I expected nothing. About a week later, I picked up the bottle. It was clear and fully liquid, except for thin sediment of tiny white flakes. I took the stuff and ran it through a paper cone coffee filter. I tried it in a dip pen- no problems. Then I ran it through a few cheap Chinese pens- no problems. The flow and consistency are fine. I now use it like any other ink.

 

Since then I have been adding Dettol to any suspicious inks, and all inks from PR. There seems to be no deterioration in performance at all.

 

I found some old style plain Lysol, which does smell like phenol, and tried adding that to some Poussiere de Lune. It turned the ink into a gusher. I don't recommend it.

[amberleadavis]

Oh, that too is good to know. Lysol + Ink = Bad

[mhosea]

Since then I have been adding Dettol to any suspicious inks, and all inks from PR. There seems to be no deterioration in performance at all.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dettol , dettol = pine oil, isopropanol, castor oil, soap, and water. I've never used pine oil on a pen before, so I don't know about that one. Castor oil is often used in rosin thread sealant preparations. It's the isopropanol that raises the brow, since it is a solvent for a lot of vintage pen plastics. Maybe the concentration is low enough in the final analysis, but I'd sure want to know about that before using it in a vintage pen.

[drmom777]

Well, I am using a 1:50. Dilution of the Dettol, so the alcohol content will be even less than that. Pretty low proof, I think. The manufacturer says the oils emulsify and remain in fluid, which seems to be the case. The castor oil isn't in oils form, but is a soap, having nothing to do with rosin thread sealants. It's actually a pretty gentle soap. The germ killing ingredients are chloroxylenol- which is closely related to phenol, and the pine oil.

 

Phenol, aka carbolic acid, was the first antiseptic used way back in the day by Joseph Lister. It worked to kill things, but also chewed up human tissue pretty badly. So you didn't get infected,which was a huge advance, but you didn't heal all that well either. Better than gangrene though.

 

The chloroxylenol still kills bacteria and fungus very nicely, but is much easier on human tissues. Dettol seems to be intended for use in open cuts and scrapes, as well as on surfaces. Obviously I can't vouch for its safety, not having done big trials, but I have had no damage to my pens, all of which are 1980 or later. I haven't put it in anything really vintage.

 

Dettol's ability to clear moldy slime out of ink is quite impressive, though. It feels like a magic trick. And the smell is interesting. At the time Natural pigments was all out of their phenol spray and I wasn't prepared to reconstitute the pure phenol, which was all I could get hold of. Now I have the phenol spray, and am happily adding that instead. Maybe the extra soap in the Dettol is all to the good- kind of like Solv-X.

[mhosea]

The castor oil isn't in oils form, but is a soap, having nothing to do with rosin thread sealants. It's actually a pretty gentle soap.

 

 

My point was simply that I wasn't worried about that particular ingredient being deleterious to vintage pen plastics because it is often used in preparations that are in contact with vintage pen plastics. The MSDS I found online for what must be the simplest form of Dettol only has pine oil, isopropanol, and chloroxylenol, anyway.

[Drone]

I found this document on Phenol rather interesting. It is freely downloadable in.pdf format:

 

Ambient Water Quality Criteria For Phenol
EPA 440/5-80-066, October 1980
National Service Center for Environmental Publications (NSCEP)

 

http://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPURL.cgi?Dockey=2000LNAI.txt

 

Enjoy, David

[amberleadavis]

So, 34 years ago, what did they say about phenol in the water supply?

[oshizemi]

This is an amazing resource. Thanks for the work and time put into this, everyone.

[Intellidepth]

Is this the Sporicidin product being discussed please? Trying to track down an Australian supplier. Sporicidin seem to have a couple of different products.

http://www.ccwonline.com.au/prod1209.htm

[Intellidepth]

I've tracked down the MSDS and it appears it is not the same product.

[abastian]

Learned a lot with you all.

Thanks for this impressive amount of information.

[SamCapote]

Learned a lot with you all.

Thanks for this impressive amount of information.

 

¡De nada!

[Brianm_14]

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dettol , dettol = pine oil, isopropanol, castor oil, soap, and water. I've never used pine oil on a pen before, so I don't know about that one. Castor oil is often used in rosin thread sealant preparations. It's the isopropanol that raises the brow, since it is a solvent for a lot of vintage pen plastics. Maybe the concentration is low enough in the final analysis, but I'd sure want to know about that before using it in a vintage pen.

No, no, No!

 

You missed the most important active ingredient, Chloroxylenol. It a pretty good germicide, but it's entire and specific spectrum of action remain to be seen. We use it a lot in microbiology labs, as a pre-activity wash, and also before leaving the lab. I keep a bottle of surgical scrub as the main active ingredient, at home and wash well up the forearms.