Some New Old Ink!

[gopernoper]

I blew all my savings today, and am very happy with the purchase.

Stopped in at a local antique mall hoping to find some pens. Didnt, but I walked out with two new bottles of ink! Found in two different cases, I bought a bottle of Parker Blue-Black Quink, and a bottle of Sheaffer Skrip #92 Melon Red. Both came with original boxes. Both bottles are pretty full, and the ink inside looks OK. Havent tested it yet. The Quink was $5, and the Skrip was $4. Overall, I think I came away pretty well. The Skrip bottle has this really cool inkwell feature where you tip the bottle while closed to fill a small resivoir. Like I said, there goes my savings, but I think it was worth it

[gopernoper]

Here is a picture-

Edited September 5, 2018 by gopernoper

[Runnin_Ute]

Enjoy! I have a bottle of Skrip Emerald Green #72 in the same bottle.

[ErrantSmudge]

Show us some writing samples! That Melon Red sounds interesting.

[amberleadavis]

VERY NICE!

[npweston]

I blew all my savings today... The Quink was $5, and the Skrip was $4.

 

How long have you been saving?

[amberleadavis]

OH wow, I missed the prices, those were STEALS! What a great find and yes, pretty please show those to us.

[inkstainedruth]

It's always fun to find vintage ink in good condition. Last week I found a roughly 3/4 full bottle of Quink Permanent Royal Blue (similar in size and shape of bottle, although the box wasn't in good condition), and unlike some of my other vintage inks it doesn't appear to have been diluted or reconstituted. And is now gracing the vintage Parkette retrofitted with a no-name lever filler's 14C music nib. Although I'm not sure but what the ink is a bit too wet for that nib (if the credit card receipt from dinner last night is any indication... ).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[kestrel]

Old inks are always a gamble. I bought an almost full quart bottle of Royal Blue Quink last year (dimly lit antique shop ready to close) and was disappointed to find that it had faded to a pathetic shade of gray. Every bottle of Sanford Penit I have tried has been so washed out as to be unusable. The bottles are cute, though.

I found a bottle of Skrip Blue-Black in an antique store out in the middle of nowhere in Western New York last June. The store owner said it was useless because, "Nobody uses those pens anymore," and charged me fifty cents for the bottle. The ink was free. My new nickname is nobody.

In another out in the boondocks antiques shop, on a dark shelf, I found one glorious bottle of Paul Wirt Fountain Pen Ink that had evaporated to powder. Someday I will work up the nerve to try rehydrating it. Then I can use an ink used by Mark Twain in a Wirt fountain pen similar to one used (and cursed) by Mark Twain.

[AreBeeBee]

Great find! Your Quink bottle is from 1939 or 1940 to 1948. You can date it if you turn it over and look at what is molded into the bottom. At the 6 o'clock position will be a single digit, plus perhaps a dot or two.

 

The digit is the last number in the year the bottle was made (probably in the 1940s), and the dots correspond to the quarter of the year. There were three dots for the first quarter, two dots for the second, one dot for the third, and no dots for the last quarter. Parker used the same date coding for their pens and nibs. (Google Parker date codes and you'll see examples for pens and nibs.)

 

The cap is less of a clue to the bottle's date because Parker used various caps during the war years as metal was a restricted commodity for part of the time; they used bakelite for some years.

 

Edit: Just checked my collection of these squarish bottles. 1942 3Q: bakelite cap, 1944 4Q: metal cap, 1945 3Q: metal cap, 1948 4Q: metal cap (gold-colored on a 2 oz, regular black and white on a 4 oz).

 

As for the usable quality of the ink in the bottle, that's less certain. Assuming it doesn't have goop in it when you stick a popsicle ("craft") stick in and stir, and it doesn't smell bad, it'll still be good to go in a pen.

 

The next question concerns the color. I have been buying some vintage blue-black Quink on the Bay, and find that the 1930s through 1950s bl-bk ink tends to dry gray. The blue seems to disappear. The vintage Quink that I find holds up best is what came in the distinctive "blue diamond" bottles with the white caps, which come from the 1960s. That blue-black looks like what I think a blue-black should look like. (Opinons may differ, however.)

 

The current blue-black Quink is too teal for my taste, so I have started mixing my own using a recipe I found here on FP Net. It's mixing blue Quink with black Quink in a 5:1 proportion (5 blue : 1 black).

 

Unfortunately, I can't tell you anything about the Skrip, although the label design appears to be 1950s or earlier. The specific color — melon red?? — may be a better indicator of age. Perhaps someone here can say?

Edited September 7, 2018 by AreBeeBee

[chromantic]

Great find! I'm also interested in seeing the Melon Red.

[AreBeeBee]

A post from about five years ago shows what Melon Red looks like when used in a flexi-nib pen (a nice hard rubber Wahl-Eversharp with a red woodgrain pattern). Another post mentioned that the ink seems to have gone out of production around 1960. Anyway, you've got two vintage inks to try.

 

What I have done with various vintage inks is to take a sheet of ordinary copier/printer paper, note down the name of the maker, the ink, and any info I have on its age, and put down a small swatch of the ink using a Q-tip. You can get a dozen or more swatches on a single sheet, which is what I did with the samples of vintage blue-black Quinks. This lets you easily compare the survivng color quality according to age.

 

(Since vintage ink is an ever-shrinking supply, this led me to look into ways to recreate the blue-black I want.)

Edited September 9, 2018 by AreBeeBee