Pen Cleaning, Ammonia With Additives?

[austinwft]

https://www.acehardware.com/departments/home-and-decor/cleaning-and-disinfectants/all-purpose-cleaners/10184

 

When I was looking for non-sudsing clear ammonia I found this recommended on some Aquarium Community Forums as being a "surfactant free" aquarium safe ammonia product and am able to pick it up at my local ACE Hardware.

Edited October 24, 2018 by austinwft

[RayCornett]

I found this recommended on some Aquarium Community Forums as being a "surfactant free" aquarium safe ammonia product and am able to pick it up at my local ACE Hardware.

Fellow aquarist?

[Honeybadgers]

The main problem with surfactants, which are usually just soaps, is that some of us may be fine with *adding* something like Dawn dish soap to our DIY flush, but we don't know which soap they add to their ammonia as a surfactant. It could be a soap that is too strong/caustic. So, some avoid the ammonias with surfactants just to be safer. I, too, often use a stronger than the usual recipe amount of ammonia. Sometimes as high as 30% for stubborn or dried inks. Just a few minutes ago I finally got a Montblanc 149 clear of all the dried out Waterman Blue residue after flushing and soaking since Friday night.

 

If you're that paranoid about potentially getting -anything- in your pen, you shouldn't even be using ammonia. Ammonia will inherently cause a teeny tiny bit of damage all on its own to any surface or material that is not completely inert to its structure, even unanodized aluminum will suffer a TINY amount of pitting.

 

FWIW I'm a biochemistry major. I know that many of the fragrances and colorants are staining or saturating to rubbers and plastics, which is why these cleaning products always recommend to test in an inconspicuous area first. especially natural scents that use essential oils, they will get into latex or ebonite over time.

 

Again, I would stick clear of the scented and colored stuff, but if sufficiently diluted, you shouldn't see any problems. Ammonia should really only be used in ink-discolored or hardened ink situations, and as such, should be seeing a moderately well maintained pen so rarely that it won't cause meaningful damage to a pen in 100 years.

 

So, the simple fact is, the simpler the ammonia, the better. But I can confidently say that a general surfactant agent will not hurt your pen.

 

Here's a piece of information that we use in chemistry and machining. "You are the weakest thing in the shop/lab" . If they put a soap that is too caustic for sulfated or natural latex rubber, silicone, aluminum, etc, then that cleaning agent is too caustic for human hands to touch, which is generally considered a huge no-no in the consumer products world. It's one reason tide pods are so contentious, they're super basic and if the packaging is broken, they cause almost instant chemical burns. If you're REALLY worried, get some cheap PH paper and check how basic your solution is. But dilution of surfactants is EXTREME, we're talking tens or hundreds of parts per million to do the job as a wetting agent, and ammonia will clearly be the far more damaging component, despite it only being a weak base. Also, natural rubber (ink sacs) and plastics are pretty much completely inert to the micelles that make up soap. But they do tend to have micro pores that can really like a lot of different scents, and clear plastic may be discolored if the coloring agent in it happens to leave any residue whatsoever (which, with even dye based cleansers, may be possible if it happens to stick to the thin layer of silicon grease that most of us use to lubricate piston mechanisms)

 

So - use what you like. If you're restoring a 1960's vintage maki-e work of art worth ten thousand dollars, be careful and REALLY weigh the benefits of any and all solvents (I'd be concerned enough in that situation to use distilled water) but when I clean out my 149, if I accidentally left it uncapped for a week and it was dried up, even with the split ebonite feed, I don't mind a little surfactant in my ammonia. It's a 1:10 ratio to begin with, so even a 100 PPM becomes a 10 PPM solution. But as a general rule, unless you see a very specific need to use a solvent in cleaning a pen, just use water. And if it needs a little more, some agitation with an ultrasonic (obviously don't do this with urushi) cleaner will usually do the trick, or a soft brush. I really only break out my ammonia for discolored clear plastics in pens I don't particularly care about and restoring vintage pens that have so much hardened ink in them that they won't write properly after a simple water flush /and ultrasonic bath.

Edited October 25, 2018 by Honeybadgers

[Brianm_14]

Detergents like Dawn and soaps have related properties, but are chemically distinct. Dawn, as well as most other washing up liquids, ar detergents, but not soaps. Soaps can react badly with magnesium and calcium cations present in hard waters, and leave residues. Detergents do not generally have this defect. So the terms should not be used as if they were interchangable. They are not.

 

One can easily see this if you try using Zest, which is a detergent-based body cleansing bar, and regular soap, in a clean shower for a few weeks. The soaps leave much more film and "scum" to be cleaned off.

 

MSDS sheets need to be used with great care. They are safety sheets, and not guides to the formulations of proprietary products. They can leave wide holes in our knowledge of the non-hazardous components, and are written so as to be less than informative to competators and to prevent reverse engineering of a product. Often, the most important information we'd like to know is simply not made plain or expressed in a useful way in an MSDS sheet.

[RayCornett]

 

If you're that paranoid about potentially getting -anything- in your pen, you shouldn't even be using ammonia. Ammonia will inherently cause a teeny tiny bit of damage all on its own to any surface or material that is not completely inert to its structure, even unanodized aluminum will suffer a TINY amount of pitting.

 

FWIW I'm a biochemistry major. I know that many of the fragrances and colorants are staining or saturating to rubbers and plastics, which is why these cleaning products always recommend to test in an inconspicuous area first. especially natural scents that use essential oils, they will get into latex or ebonite over time.

 

Again, I would stick clear of the scented and colored stuff, but if sufficiently diluted, you shouldn't see any problems. Ammonia should really only be used in ink-discolored or hardened ink situations, and as such, should be seeing a moderately well maintained pen so rarely that it won't cause meaningful damage to a pen in 100 years.

 

So, the simple fact is, the simpler the ammonia, the better. But I can confidently say that a general surfactant agent will not hurt your pen.

 

Here's a piece of information that we use in chemistry and machining. "You are the weakest thing in the shop/lab" . If they put a soap that is too caustic for sulfated or natural latex rubber, silicone, aluminum, etc, then that cleaning agent is too caustic for human hands to touch, which is generally considered a huge no-no in the consumer products world. It's one reason tide pods are so contentious, they're super basic and if the packaging is broken, they cause almost instant chemical burns. If you're REALLY worried, get some cheap PH paper and check how basic your solution is. But dilution of surfactants is EXTREME, we're talking tens or hundreds of parts per million to do the job as a wetting agent, and ammonia will clearly be the far more damaging component, despite it only being a weak base. Also, natural rubber (ink sacs) and plastics are pretty much completely inert to the micelles that make up soap. But they do tend to have micro pores that can really like a lot of different scents, and clear plastic may be discolored if the coloring agent in it happens to leave any residue whatsoever (which, with even dye based cleansers, may be possible if it happens to stick to the thin layer of silicon grease that most of us use to lubricate piston mechanisms)

 

So - use what you like. If you're restoring a 1960's vintage maki-e work of art worth ten thousand dollars, be careful and REALLY weigh the benefits of any and all solvents (I'd be concerned enough in that situation to use distilled water) but when I clean out my 149, if I accidentally left it uncapped for a week and it was dried up, even with the split ebonite feed, I don't mind a little surfactant in my ammonia. It's a 1:10 ratio to begin with, so even a 100 PPM becomes a 10 PPM solution. But as a general rule, unless you see a very specific need to use a solvent in cleaning a pen, just use water. And if it needs a little more, some agitation with an ultrasonic (obviously don't do this with urushi) cleaner will usually do the trick, or a soft brush. I really only break out my ammonia for discolored clear plastics in pens I don't particularly care about and restoring vintage pens that have so much hardened ink in them that they won't write properly after a simple water flush /and ultrasonic bath.

Not paranoid, just like to know what is in the bottle. Surfactants in general are not bad but some can be. So, I get pure ammonia and add my own, known soap.

[Honeybadgers]

That's fine and entirely not inappropriate, but for the majority of people, they don't ever even need ammonia to start with.

 

It'd be hard to put a real proper "soap" into a jug of ammonia. true non-detergent liquid "soap" is not common. Most people are going to use dish soap, as that's the cheapest, and when the term "detergent" is used, people tend to think laundry detergents, which do not make good surfactants for this purpose

Edited October 25, 2018 by Honeybadgers

[RayCornett]

That's fine and entirely not inappropriate, but for the majority of people, they don't ever even need ammonia to start with.

 

It'd be hard to put a real proper "soap" into a jug of ammonia. true non-detergent liquid "soap" is not common. Most people are going to use dish soap, as that's the cheapest, and when the term "detergent" is used, people tend to think laundry detergents, which do not make good surfactants for this purpose

I only use it in situations where the ink is very stubborn or had been dried out for quite sometime, or sometimes in the disassembly process and when I do add "soap" it is plain blue Dawn.