Is Cleaning Required Between Different Inks?

[william2001]

Hi everyone,

 

I have many Parker pens, but I use the Sonnet and 75 as my everyday pen.

Do I have to clean these two pens every time I use a different color/brand ink? (Quink Black to Quink Blue, Quink Black to Waterman Serenity Blue, etc.)

If yes, do I have to have a major cleaning process OR can I just clean the converter and nothing else.

 

Thank you in advance.

-William S. Park

[PAKMAN]

I clean out between any ink color change, but if you don't care about mixing color for a while then you will probably be fine keeping with the same brand. Some inks are not compatible with other inks and will form a sludge if mixed.

[Runnin_Ute]

I'm in the flush it good between colors camp.

 

Once in a while from blue black to blue blac for instance I might not clean quite as thoroughly as if I were doing something like I did today. I changed my Konrad from Apache Sunset to Diamine Classic Red. Pulled the nib (it has a Goulet broad) even. Could I have spent even more time cleaning? Sure, but it was running clear and to me most of the time that is good enough.

[william2001]

I clean out between any ink color change, but if you don't care about mixing color for a while then you will probably be fine keeping with the same brand. Some inks are not compatible with other inks and will for a sludge if mixed.

 

 

I'm in the flush it good between colors camp.

 

Once in a while from blue black to blue blac for instance I might not clean quite as thoroughly as if I were doing something like I did today. I changed my Konrad from Apache Sunset to Diamine Classic Red. Pulled the nib (it has a Goulet broad) even. Could I have spent even more time cleaning? Sure, but it was running clear and to me most of the time that is good enough.

Thank you all for answering. I appreciate that.

[ac12]

I just realized another nasty problem.

You said converter, not cartridge.

That implies that you will stick the pen into the bottle of ink to draw the new ink in.

Well if you are like me, I draw the ink in, then I push it out and draw in a 2nd time, to get a good fill. I do this because the first fill is usually a partial fill. Well when you pushed out the ink, you also pushed out the old color ink into your bottle of ink. So your bottle of ink now has some of the old color ink in it...it is no longer pure.

 

Bottom line, I would give the pen a full cleaning when changing inks.

[william2001]

I just realized another nasty problem.

You said converter, not cartridge.

That implies that you will stick the pen into the bottle of ink to draw the new ink in.

Well if you are like me, I draw the ink in, then I push it out and draw in a 2nd time, to get a good fill. I do this because the first fill is usually a partial fill. Well when you pushed out the ink, you also pushed out the old color ink into your bottle of ink. So your bottle of ink now has some of the old color ink in it...it is no longer pure.

 

Bottom line, I would give the pen a full cleaning when changing inks.

Is it ok to mix inks with same brands but different color, such as Waterman Black with Waterman Green?

-William S. Park

[ac12]

Is it ok to mix inks with same brands but different color, such as Waterman Black with Waterman Green?

-William S. Park

 

While it might be OK, I would NOT. You are then contaminating the color of the ink in the bottle. Some inks will be affected by the color of the foreign ink quickly and others may not. I would likely see the effect of putting black ink into my turquoise bottle faster than blue into black, and I would not like that. If you do this enough, your bottle of turquoise ink would not look turquoise, or your bottle of red would not look red.

 

As for chemical compatibility, with standard brands (Parker Quink, Sheaffer Skrip, Waterman, Pelikan, etc.) I would say yes, you can mix the ink.

But NOT for Noodler's ink. This is because some of the inks are so different, that you do not know the compatibility of the different inks to each other.

Edited June 13, 2014 by ac12

[SeeksAdvice]

Changing between brands? I'd clean.

Changing between inks of the same brand? I'd clean. While it may not be an issue, for example, mixing Kiwa-Guro + Sei-Boku doesn't produce the expected result. Plus some inks by some manufacturers won't play well with inks from the same manufacturer.

 

Don't mix IG inks with other things.

[inkstainedruth]

Don't mix IG inks with other things.

And don't mix the Noodler's Bay State series inks with anything but each other, because they're so alkaline. There's a thread someone started a while back showing the sad results of the attempt to mix Noodler's Black with Noodler's Bay State Blue in order to get a different and interesting blue-black; the results were certainly interesting, to say the least -- but fall under the category of "Seriously Not Pretty". (I hope that person got the pen cleaned out without too much in the way of residual damage....

I always clean when changing inks. But then I'm pretty OCD about getting the pen completely clean, so as to not have any sorts of cross-contamination of color in the bottle (refilling a pen with Old Manhattan Blackest Black when I mean to refill it with Manhattan Blue was an accident that made me sort of hyperventilate for a few hours) or bad reaction between seriously different pH ranges in the pen.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

edited for typos

Edited June 13, 2014 by inkstainedruth

[I like mango cheesecake]

For converters / cartridge pens, I bulb flush for sure. If the nib can be easily removed I would do that too. For pistons, I would rather not do it as often as I don't always want to be opening it up all the time, especially for my 149's and 146's. My last ink in the 149 was just rinsed today with a sucking in of water through the piston nob about a dozen times or so in a solution of pen flush and a few times with tepid water to remove all pen flush from the piston. It's good to go for another colour now.

[ac12]

BTW, since we are talking about different colors.

I am now filling the pen from an ink vial.

 

I use a pipet to move ink from the ink bottle to an ink vial.

I load the pen from the ink vial.

 

The ink vial provides me a "buffer" so dust and other "stuff" on the nib does not get into the bottle.

But more important, it provides a buffer for when I do something STUPID, like putting a pen with black ink into a vial with turquoise ink and topping off the pen The worst that happens is I have contaminated a 3 or 4ml vial of turquoise ink with black ink, I have not contaminated an entire 50ml bottle of ink. This mistake is not too painful on cheaper ink, but is very painful on expensive/hard to get inks. Imagine contaminating a bottle of Sheaffer Peacock Blue ink that cost you $40 on eBay, or some other expensive ink

Edited June 13, 2014 by ac12

[PatientType]

I typically flush my fountain pens with water between every fill - not when I change colors or brands but every time I fill the pens with ink. I don't want ink residue to accumuate in the feed or nib. I also don't want to spread bacteria to my ink bottles that could potentially ruin the ink. Naturally, if I'm in the middle of a writing project and need to refill a converter twice in a day, I don't do a rinse. More typically I have 3-4 inked pens about and use them over a couple of weeks and those are always flushed before refilling.

[Buzz_130]

I always flush between color changes. I don't like the thought of nib and feed with a different color placed into the bottle of a different color. Additionally, I don't like the idea of writing with a mixed color (unless I specifically mixed it). I like my ink log to reflect a specific paper, a pen with a specific nib, and the ink I'm using. I like to have a reliable record of ink/nib combinations as my collection becomes more diverse.

 

If I'm just filling with the same color, I typically don't flush the pen. Although I may adopt ac12's suggestions with moving over to a small vial.

 

Good pen hygiene does not require rituals. Use water and cycle your filling mechanism until the water runs clear. For a cartridge/converter filler, you can use the bulb method for easy cleaning by pushing water through the feed and out the nib. Some pens allow you to remove the nib, and you can easily flush this way as well. For more information, Richard Binder has a good page on taking care of your pen at: http://www.richardspens.com. Go over to his reference pages and look up the care and feeding section.

 

Buzz

[ac12]

Buzz

I only recently started using vials.

Until recently I only used ONE ink, so mixing up inks was not a problem when I only had one bottle.

Playing with different inks is a new thing for me, and I know I have my "senior moments."

 

Even with the vials, first thing is, what the heck ink is in this pen, Waterman or Cross?

Then I read the label on the vial 3 or 4 times, to make sure I grabbed the Waterman blue, not the Cross black.

I labeled the cap with a W (Waterman) or C (Cross) to give me another hint.

Next task is to somehow color code the label with the ink color.

Any little trick to reduce the probability of me screwing up. Murphy is my uncle, and I know him well.

[Buzz_130]

ac12

 

I completely understand the relationship with Murphy! When I had a bunch of sampler vials, I wrote the names of the inks (with some abbreviations) on top of the cover. That way I could look at the small drawer of inks without having to pull up each one to check the label. I've been able to wipe off the original markings, so I've been able to keep these vials around. That's what sparked my agreement with your method. Many of my vials are awaiting ink, and some already have the markings I need. It's a very interesting method, and I'm going to give it a try.

 

Buzz