Thicker, More Viscous Inks Better In Some Pens?

[JohnM]

I've been into fountain pens for over thirty years and have found that, in general, thinner, more watery inks (e.g., Sheaffer Skrip) work well in most pens. In contrast, thicker, more viscous inks sometimes pose problems, such as clogging or premature drying.

 

That said, I just bought a Conway Stewart Churchill with an Italic Medium nib. With thinner inks, such as Sheaffer or Waterman, the nib runs on the dry side and will skip. With thicker inks, such as Diamine, or Iroshizuku, the pens writes quite well, with pretty good, steady ink flow.

 

I'm trying to figure out why this is -- have any of you had similar experiences? The only thing I can come up with that may explain this is that the tines on the CS IM nib are a bit more spread apart (especially at the tip) than on some of my other pens. Maybe a more viscous ink is better able to navigate down to the end of the nib than a lighter, more watery ink?

 

Your thoughts and input are appreciated.

John

[Ego Id Veto]

I have pens like that too. Some of my pens don't care what ink I put in them (my Lamy ones, waterman expert and phileas, pelikano, and pilot V Pens), but others, like my Waterman Graduate, absolutely hate thinner inks and only perform well when I use a more saturated ink.

 

But in all honesty, I don't mind, as I don't really like unsaturated inks anyway!

[SharkOnWheels456]

Sounds like my Rembrandt. I've gotten beautiful, wet flow when I used PR and other very saturated, thicker inks, but putting in Sheaffer made it dry out very quickly.

[ac12]

I use 2 inks Waterman and Cross (made by Pelikan). The Cross ink is dryer (less runny) than the Waterman ink.

 

For me, if a pen is dry with Waterman ink, I start tweaking the nib to increase ink flow, I don't switch to the dryer Cross ink.

 

My normal routine is

 

I normally start a new pen off with Waterman ink, and evaluate how the ink and pen behaves.

If the pen is too wet, I switch to the dryer Cross ink, and usually that tames down the excess ink flow.

And similarly if a pen is too dry with Cross ink, switching to Waterman gets the ink flowing.

 

I have a Parker that used to drip ink when loaded with Parker Quink.

I switched it to Cross ink, and no more drips.

 

I have a Papermante XF pen that was scratchy with the Waterman ink.

I switched to Cross ink, and the scratchiness went away. This I think is due to the thicker ink providing a better lubricating surface for the tip.

 

Did you take a look at the slit in your nib with a loupe?

With a 10x loupe I can see if the slit is getting wider towards the tip, as you think yours might be, or if it is getting narrower, as it should be.

[amberleadavis]

John, don't take it personally, pens can be finicky. Certain pen / ink / paper combos just work best. Good luck!

[inkstainedruth]

A couple of my Konrads really do better with thicker inks (Kung te Cheng and El Lawrence). When I put less saturated inks in them (the supposedly "well-behaved" brands like Iroshihzuku) they are drippy (you have not *lived* till you have experienced the horror of a droplet of ink nearly the size of your thumbnail rolling down that #6 size nib... especially if it's a really expensive ink... ).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[amberleadavis]

A couple of my Konrads really do better with thicker inks (Kung te Cheng and El Lawrence). When I put less saturated inks in them (the supposedly "well-behaved" brands like Iroshihzuku) they are drippy (you have not *lived* till you have experienced the horror of a droplet of ink nearly the size of your thumbnail rolling down that #6 size nib... especially if it's a really expensive ink... ).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

 

My Ahab is a finicky pen, and one of my favorite ink colors, Tsvetayna works only the Ahab.

[stopher]

I was wondering the same in another thread. The change in viscosity would have different effects on pens depending on the tolerances that they are manufactured to. A looser fitting assembly would readily accept a thicker ink and a tighter assembly would work better with the thinner less viscous ink.

[Sinistral1]

Okay, so the rule to use when matching inks to pens for the perfect line is this: There is no rule. You just have to put the ink in the pen and if it is too dry or too wet and the nib is fine, you flush the ink and try the next one until you find the ink that was "made" for that pen and does what you want the ink to do. I can live with this process, because the adventure or "hobby" activity is in great part the fun of tinkering with all the moving parts, for me at least.

 

My question to everyone is this - is it okay to add a tiny bit of gum arabic to a too wet ink that otherwise has just the right shading and color properties, or will this cause problems with the nib and other pen parts? This is something I'm not willing to tinker with and maybe ruin a pen or nib, or both.