Ink Dilution Recipes

[zenrabbit]

I just discovered this thread and noticed multiple mentions of diluting PR Midnight Blues. I have had a bottle of this ink for a couple of years and rarely used it because of the long dry time and smearing issues. Just mixed a batch of 2 parts ink to one part water and it looks great and dries quickly on Rhodia paper. Just like having acquired a new ink! Have always loved the color and now it is much better behaved. Thanks for all who contributed to this thread. Next I'll have to try this on some PR Sherwood Forest.

[WestLothian]

I ran out of J.Herbin Cacao du Bresil - and the replacement that I ordered was the wrong ink in the right bottle.

I decided to make my own by experimenting with red/green/black and watering down to get a good match.

My final solution looks very close and feels nice and smooth on extra fine fountain pen and dip pen nibs.

 

The recipe to fill a 30 ml bottle was:

10 ml of Black Swan in Australian Roses - Black/Red (Noodler's)

10 ml of Zhivago - Green/Black (Noodler's)

9.9 ml of distilled water

0.1 ml of liquid Gum Arabic

[Ad_Astra]

The recipe to fill a 30 ml bottle was:

10 ml of Black Swan in Australian Roses - Black/Red (Noodler's)

 

Is that 5 of each? Or 10 of either?

[WestLothian]

The recipe to fill a 30 ml bottle was:

10 ml of Black Swan in Australian Roses - Black/Red (Noodler's)

 

Is that 5 of each? Or 10 of either?

 

Oh I see what you mean! No, I was merely explaining where the shades were coming from so:

10 ml of Black Swan in Australian Roses

10 ml of Zhivago

0.1 ml of liquid Gum Arabic and then top-up with distilled water, it suits being a bit paler.

 

I have used a full pen's worth so far and I am still enjoying it so I refilled with more.

[Ad_Astra]

Ah, that makes way more sense. Definitely looking forward to mixing this up a bit and seeing how I like it.

 

Thanks!

[JimB]

Private Reserve Sepia was clogging everything in sight! I added 6ml of tap water and 2 drops maybe 3 of dish detergent to the bottle from which I'd taked maybe 3 penfuls (not a very exact recipe, I know, but it worked wonders). Now ink flow is just like my other inks, does not seem to feather, but I'll test further.

[WestLothian]

I think that many inks are more concentrated than they need to be. It is useful to try and add water to dry and dilute, detergent to reduce surface tension and increase wetting, gum arabic to lubricate and add body.

What other additives have forum members tried and what were the properties that were beneficially altered?

[mrt77]

I've always loved Noodlers Blue-Black, though often times it still looked too black for my tastes. But I recently filled a TWSBI bottle (50 mL) with an 80:20 mix, ink to distilled water. Now it looks prefect! Kind of reminds me of the color of Uniball blue-black Vision Elite. It especially looks good in my fine nib TWSBI 530.

[mhphoto]

I like to dilute my blacks when using a flex pen to get a little shading. With Noodler's BBM I dilute 2:1, and with Waterman Black I usually dilute 1:1. I also like diluting Baystate Blue very heavily (2:11), but it's not really for any reason other to soften the color and introduce more shading, and it has a really interesting short term side effect. At that level of dilution the BSB goes on the paper as a light violet and dries to a slightly darker blue. Very cool to watch it change.

Edited April 2, 2012 by mhphoto

[deherrerajames]

Noodler inks seem to lose water by evaporation over a period of time, regardless of how well-sealed the bottle is. When I notice the ink taking too long to dry and smudging easily, I add ~2 ml of water to a 45 ml bottle of ink. Then try the ink in a clean dip pen. Repeat process until the ink dries in a reasonable period of time and does not smudge after drying for a minute. Usually takes about 10 ml of H2O to 40 to 45 ml of ink. Inks successfully treated this way are Heart of Darkness, BP Black, a mix of Polar Blue with Midnight Blue, and Navajo Turquoise. (My usual inks for fountain pens.)

 

This procedure also works well with Private Reserve inks. Think it may apply, in general, to any ink with high saturation levels. PR inks treated in this way include Velvet Black, DC Supershow Blue, and Black Cherry. Never needed to treat Dakota Red or Blue Suede for this.

 

Enjoy,

 

Thanks for the Tip. Will try something with DC Supershow Blue and Laban 14k nib. --- Jim

[schechter]

Excellent thread!!!

 

I have multiple tones of Montblanc bottles (burgundy,lavender,midnight blue, etc.) and disappointly they all look almost black when writing, but give nice colors on waste water when I clean the pens.

 

I will start some dilution exoeriences now.

[EricT]

Hi all,

 

I apologize if I go off-topic a little, but my application is to dilute some India ink (carbon black) with some water and then use this dilute solution as a sunlight-absorbing medium. That is, solar energy will be absorbed by the carbon particles and in turn the water in which the carbon is diluted into will heat up. I don't know how dense the carbon is in India ink, but I imagine the dilution factor that I'll apply will be very high, like at least 10 parts water to 1 part ink (just a wild guess).

 

My question is do you think that the ink will stay dissolved in this highly dilute solution, or do you think the carbon particles will separate and sink as sediment? Are there substances that one adds to keep the carbon well-dispersed so the solution is homogeneous?

 

Thanks, I appreciate any help you can give.

[cvdgdfas]

Noodler inks seem to lose water by evaporation over a period of time, regardless of how well-sealed the bottle is. When I notice the ink taking too long to dry and smudging easily, I add ~2 ml of water to a 45 ml bottle of ink. Then try the ink in a clean dip pen. Repeat process until the ink dries in a reasonable period of time and does not smudge after drying for a minute. Usually takes about 10 ml of H2O to 40 to 45 ml of ink. Inks successfully treated this way are Heart of Darkness, BP Black, a mix of Polar Blue with Midnight Blue, and Navajo Turquoise. (My usual inks for fountain pens.)

 

 

_______________________________

Gafas De Sol Bvlgari

[Dioxazine]

Noodler's X-Feather in Lamy Safaris

 

1 X-Feather

1 Water

 

Does exhibit weird behavior - it might get bubbles that don't float to the top (this influences flow sometimes), it will refuse to flow from particular individual points, but overall it is very well-behaved when it agrees with a point and when there isn't a bubble in the way. Comes out broad sometimes, depending on the paper.

 

1 X-Feather

3 Water

 

Overall behaves much more normally, as far as I can tell. Does sometimes get bubbles, but they tend to float away. Ink might come out looking scratchy and thin, but it dries quickly, is less prone to smearing, and of course does not feather or penetrate very deep. It makes my Safari's chrome EF truly fine (like an Asian fine) on most papers.

 

It looks to me like X-Feather is different from standard Black, and much more dense.

[Obsidian57]

..

 

For the last year or more, I have been using Pilot Mixable Color inks, mostly the purple color, a shade I really like...in various in expensive FPs, including reloaded V-Pens and a JinHao 750....and never any problems with the combination...will soon try it with one of the cartridge-loaded Zebra R-301 Rollerball pens I picked up.

 

Currently $2.10 Cdn + tx for a 6-pack, in large sized cartridges.

Water based too, I seem to remember reading somewhere.....

 

When I first tried it out, the ink is very dense and intense, feathered and bled through badly, on any paper I tried it on.

 

Read some dilution threads here, and so figured that had nothing to lose, so tried it out.

 

Took all the ink out a cartridge and put it into a small glass test tube.

Filled the cart with water, drained it and into the tube, for a 1-to-1 mix.

 

A toothpick test write showed no improvement...and so repeated the proceedure....and I found that 3 parts water to 1 part ink was optimum, with dish soap added to it by the needle/toothpick method.

A 4-to-1 mix worked as well, but then the color saturation fell off enough to be noticed...not a lot, but there.

 

Feathering problem disappeared, dried out faster, and bleed through mostly disappeared, depending on paper used.

 

Tried out this 3-to-1 mix in a clean fountain pen...success! Been using this mix/dilute ever since...and am quite happy with it.

 

This ink has no waterfastness, unfortunately, but then, I use it for just everyday use, doodling, notes that are not important or kept...just 'cause I like the color.

 

I am not recommending to anyone that they use this ink in their own pens, just reporting what works for me...use your own judgement in this matter.

 

Obs57

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Edited August 27, 2012 by Obsidian57

[amyx231]

You know, maybe ink should be shipped at 2X concentration, for dilution at home. We can have fountain pens with 2 reservoirs, ink concentrate and water! Seriously though, why do some inks perform better with dilution? One would think they are optimized in manufacturing.

[SBinMT]

I've been diluting PR Black Magic Blue with distilled water. I wasn't completely happy with the ink's almost extreme saturation, and watering it down helped bring out the interesting purple highlights. I haven't applied any scientific rigor to this experiment, but rather, I've just added capfuls of water to the bottle on occasion (with good results).

[daTomoT]

I always dilute my PR Ebony Blue in a 1:1 ratio with distilled water. My bottle seems to be a lot darker than all the samples I have seen, and this increases the shading very well.

[Buschmeister]

so no one sells ink that is more concentrated, to save of shipping? flakes would be wonderful, you add water, and only use what you need. bulk discount, anyone?

 

Ink is very reasonable... how many letters or thousands of words can you get from a bottle... why dilute it? The manufacturers know what they are doing. Now blending is another story!

[richardandtracy]

Pelikan 4001 Turquoise dilution 1:1 with boiled water. Makes an ink that can be photocopied away with no residue visible on the photocopy if photocopied light, and gives 100% black if photocopied dark. Very useful!

 

Diluted 1:2 and all lubrication breaks down. This can be restored by evaporation on a radiator.

 

Regards,

 

Richard.