Damaging Inks

[BT_Summers]

 

 

Any Diamine ink can be cleaned with a dishsoap/vinegar/bleach solution (not sure regarding Registrar's and of course shimmering inks, but any other can).

 

I am sure that you are not suggesting that pens can be filled with a dishsoap/vinegar/bleach solution to clean them!

[aurore]

 

MB replaced the barrel, I would expect that they would have tried to clean it first and failed presumably. I havent used Diamine Reds, Blues or Purples since then, or MB Lavendar for that matter.

 

No. They always simply replace, it's faster (=cheaper) than playing with it.

 

 

I am sure that you are not suggesting that pens can be filled with a dishsoap/vinegar/bleach solution to clean them!

Obviously well diluted. Personally I do not use ammonia. But water with a tiny bit of high quality dish soap or 9 water : 1 vinegar solution (especially in case of IG inks), of course I do (like thousands of the others, incl. repairers) Edited December 16, 2019 by aurore

[Uncial]

I keep forgetting how people on this forum love to nitpick for the sake of nitpicking.

 

Let me rephrase my questions. Perhaps a bit of clarification with help garner some actual answers -- or maybe just fuel a couple new reasons to disagree.

 

What inks tend to leave a stain after you've used attempted to clean out your pen with a basic rinsing of room temperature distilled water that is brought into and expelled from the pen using the pens own filling system, bulb syringe or needle and syringe, but NOT with an ultrasonic cleaner, bleach, pen flush, vinegar, turpentine, red ink, tarter sauce, Zout, Oxyclean or other chemical or natural additive.

 

What inks have you heard can cause a rubber sac to weaken / melt / corrode / granulate / harden / or other chemical reaction that could lead to ink dripping, leaking, squirting, sweating or any other method that causes ink to leave the sac and get all over the inside of a pen?

 

In terms of known staining inks, there are quite a few. Dr Martin inks are very nice - especially the blue one - but they leave very stubborn stains even though they were advertised with TWSBI's. Some of the Diamine reds and blues can leave stubborn stains, such as Red Dragon, Oxblood and Majestic Blue, Pelikan Edelstein's latest offering, Star Ruby, can be quite the pain to clean out and stains quite badly. Iroshizuku's Yama-Budo can stain demo's badly and is a nightmare to remove. I'm sure there are a hundred others. Maybe there is already a thread on staining inks that are stubborn stainers. I'm sure there most be one on this site somewhere. I can't say I worry too much about it. I've found most stains disappear with use over time and it's only when an ink is left in a pen for a very long time that I need to reach for Rattler's Red.

 

As to which inks damage rubber sacs is anybody's guess. Some will tell you it is red inks, some that it is saturation, others that it is 'boutique' inks, or IG inks or it might be a certain chemical or pH value. For my own part I keep a meticulous record of every ink that goes in every pen by date and there seems to me to be no rhyme or reason as to why some sacs turn to mush. It's certainly not a scientific approach, but I can tell you that one batch of sacs all went bad rather quickly - some even sitting in a drawer never seeing ink. Another batch of sacs bought from a different place are all still going strong. Ultimately a sac is easily and cheaply replaced, so I just don't worry about it anymore.

[TSherbs]

 

I am sure that you are not suggesting that pens can be filled with a dishsoap/vinegar/bleach solution to clean them!

Serious tone?

 

Are you familiar with the forms of "flush" available on the market?

 

I have not used vinegar yet, but I mix and use my own flush formula.

Edited December 16, 2019 by TSherbs

[aurore]

I have not used vinegar yet, but I mix and use my own flush formula.

 

I use vinegar rarely. It helps in cases of corroded parts (like section ring of Man 100) and in case of dried in IG inks. Usually I use distilled lukewarm water with a couple of high quality dish soap drops. It removes easily most inks but not all, particularly dried IG inks. I believe Sandy1 recommended here 1:9 vinegar : water solution for IG. Used it a couple of times in Pelikan and MB with great results (improved the flow a lot). A friend of mine bought a near mint Man 100, however there was a dried ink in (IG I suppose). He soaked it, used ultrasonic several times, but the ink didn't flow through. Then he soaked it in vinegar overnight and and some particles came out, the pen works perfectly since then. But we are talking about high end pen with a gold nib, no idea how Chinese 3 bucks pen would behave. Also it is a rather gentle method to remove oxidized layers from section rings/trims (such as Man 100), obviously it will not restore but at least cleans without any mechanical invasion.

Edited December 16, 2019 by aurore

[BT_Summers]

No. They always simply replace, it's faster (=cheaper) than playing with it.

 

Obviously well diluted. Personally I do not use ammonia. But water with a tiny bit of high quality dish soap or 9 water : 1 vinegar solution (especially in case of IG inks), of course I do (like thousands of the others, incl. repairers)

 

 

It sounds like we are veering back towards the discussion on what is damage, if a manufacturer replaces a part rather than cleans it would imply that the part is damaged.

[Karmachanic]

I don't have this ink "damage" problem with opaque pens.

Edited December 16, 2019 by Karmachanic

[aurore]

 

 

It sounds like we are veering back towards the discussion on what is damage, if a manufacturer replaces a part rather than cleans it would imply that the part is damaged.

 

No, it would not. The only thing it implies is the manufacturer is a businessman and it's cheaper to replace than to clean/dry/check/test old parts. Morever MB resin is soft and some customers may claim the pen arrived more scratched then it was (and there is no objective way to prove the opposite without harm to the company). So MB directly replaces, simply to get rid of troubles with weird customers who are hitting the roof without a reason.

Edited December 16, 2019 by aurore

[txomsy]

Actually, taking the argument to the extreme, any ink demanding cleaning would be inflicting a "damage" to the pen. If we take the argument to the extreme, then say, a piston filler, should wash out clean of any remnants of ink after all the ink has been used up in writing, and end up pristine, just as new (kinda those TV ads where the pan is turned to drop the contents and it stays clean). Taken to the extreme, if you need to wash/flush the pen with water, then obviously it is because it has been damaged (it no longer works as new for filling with a different ink without staining it, it is damaged).

 

That's what a naïve user might have expected 50-60 years ago (if s/he hadn't known better): buy a piston filler, fill it, use it, no remnants, fill it with a new ink, use it, etc... this naïve user would have sooner or later noticed that when switching inks, the new ink might come out contaminated with the old and protested it was a malfunctioning pen or ink. Bindeardondat. Maybe, in those old years when nobody cleaned their pens, that person would have left it for long periods unused. Maybe the ink would dry in... which obviously would be a failure of the pen. Maybe at some point the feed would be clogged...

 

It is not so uncommon to get vintage piston fillers with dried ink inside. Till now, all it has taken me has always been to flush them with plain water. Silly me, I didn't know they were damaged and I should have returned them. Pens are for ink, not for water. And if you need to put water in it to remove that nasty thing inside the ink window, then it is obviously damaged.

 

But wait, it gets even more interesting. Some inks are quite acidic or basic, or so I have been told. Many had phenol, surfactants and detergents to improve flow. One even had something called Solv-X. In the old times, they might be formulated with wine, tea or other components. However, if you flush them putting any other kind of non-neutral pH fluid, then that is surely bound to damage the pen as well, isn't it? No one would suggest putting anything but ink inside the pen unless insane. Not water, and certainly not soapy water, solvents, or a diluted solution of very mildly acidic or basic products like vinegar, ammonia or bleach. Those would utterly destroy the pen. Sure. Just look at what they do to plastic bottles or washing machine conductions. Crazy. Can't imagine how anyone would dare suggest such a hideous thing.

 

DISCLAIMER NOTE: do NOT do it unless you know what you are doing and if you do not feel confident, avoid it. Some materials may indeed be affected by chemicals (including water), humidity or its lack, temperature, and whatnot. Always make sure you know what your pen is made of and what it may stand. Ditto for any ink you use on it. And if you fear the ink may damage your pen, do NOT use it. That is what disposable ballpoint pens and computers are made for.

 

My deepest apologies for any irony. I hope no one feels offended by this exercise. I do not know what has crossed my mind. Even though I had my tin hat on, some weird radiation must have affected my empty skull (for, I can guarantee you, mine must be empty or close to) to make me write this. So, please, consider my stupidity and discard my message as the ramblings of a crazy old man. You can't go wrong if you ignore me, but you can if you take me seriously. Just check the facts for yourself.

Edited December 16, 2019 by txomsy

[Bibliophage]

I do use ammonia to clean pens. Mainly on feeds - I just used an ultrasonic cleaner with a bit of dish soap and a cap full of ammonia on a lever filler Sheaffer Fineline. By holding the pen section in the water (not completely submerging the entire thing), it cleared out all of the 50+ year old ink, which also allowed the section to come out of the barrel without damage. It also allowed the nib unit to unscrew easily.

 

Of course, I promptly rinsed everything with water, including using a syringe bulb as a flush.

 

I do not consider discoloration to be 'damage'. It's "Normal wear and tear".

 

Keep in mind that warranties always make that distinction. They'll protect against damage and failure, but not normal wear and tear.

 

Does the discoloration affect the ability of the pen to write? If not, it's wear and tear. Does the normal maintenance cycle for the item return it to use? If not, it's damage. Complaining about discoloration is like complaining that your car paint is scratched after driving it through the West Texas and New Mexico desert.

[BT_Summers]

 

No, it would not. The only thing it implies is the manufacturer is a businessman and it's cheaper to replace than to clean/dry/check/test old parts. Morever MB resin is soft and some customers may claim the pen arrived more scratched then it was (and there is no objective way to prove the opposite without harm to the company). So MB directly replaces, simply to get rid of troubles with weird customers who are hitting the roof without a reason.

 

 

Not sure where you are going with this.

 

If I use Parker ink in my MBs then the pen doesnt get stained. If I use Diamine Grape then on past experience the pen will become stained, so i dont use Diamine Grape.

 

If MB chose to replace a $90 part rather than clean it then that suggests to me that it is damaged beyond economic repair.

 

No offense but you sound as if you have an attitude, no offense but the last thing I want in my life is to answer someone who has some angry attitude problem who wants to nitpick over minutiae that I just dont care about.

 

I hope you wont mind if I block your messages and bow out of this conversation, Thank you for your understanding.

[TSherbs]

Bagdatapolus (Smiffy?), Aurore gave no "attitude" at all. Disagreement isn't "attitude." I don't get your pique.

 

But of course, you are free to enter or exit a conversation whenever you wish.

Edited December 16, 2019 by TSherbs

[BaronWulfraed]

 

If MB chose to replace a $90 part rather than clean it then that suggests to me that it is damaged beyond economic repair.

 

If a technician getting $50/hour has to spend two hours dismantling a pen, manually applying cleaning solutions, rinsing, evaluating, and repeating vs spending 5 minutes glancing at it and substituting a new part (which probably costs peanuts at the wholesale level), which action will the company take?

 

Pretty much every industry these days swaps out components rather then actually work on the returned item itself (at best, the swapped out part will /later/ be refurbished and put into rotation for the next swap).

 

As far as the company is concerned, it is cheaper to swap out, say, an entire engine, then to tear it down to replace failing main bearings at the service center. (Example based on what happened to a a fairly new car my brother's wife was driving -- symptom: clunky engine noises; dealer recommendation: replace engine)

[Bibliophage]

I work as an IT consultant. I'll chime in that the labour cost involved in many repairs is far higher than the actual replacement cost would be. In fact, most of my customers, even if a computer is under warranty, will pay me to replace a hard drive and have the computer back up and running within a day _with all their programs_, rather than wait three days (or a week or more) to replace things with the manufacturer - then have to pay me to get everything reinstalled.

 

I certainly doubt that there's a single part, other than _maybe_ a true gold nib, that costs $90 on a MB pen. I've seen and handled a number of MontBlancs In fact, I think I have two of them within 3 feet of me (which I don't use). If any part of the pen cost $9, I'd be shocked. You're paying for the name, the service, and the cachet.

[wallylynn]

 

I keep forgetting how people on this forum love to nitpick for the sake of nitpicking.

 

Let me rephrase my questions. Perhaps a bit of clarification with help garner some actual answers -- or maybe just fuel a couple new reasons to disagree.

 

What inks tend to leave a stain after you've used attempted to clean out your pen with a basic rinsing of room temperature distilled water that is brought into and expelled from the pen using the pens own filling system, bulb syringe or needle and syringe, but NOT with an ultrasonic cleaner, bleach, pen flush, vinegar, turpentine, red ink, tarter sauce, Zout, Oxyclean or other chemical or natural additive.

 

What inks have you heard can cause a rubber sac to weaken / melt / corrode / granulate / harden / or other chemical reaction that could lead to ink dripping, leaking, squirting, sweating or any other method that causes ink to leave the sac and get all over the inside of a pen?

I think the answer to your clarified question is: All of them.

[tonybelding]

Diamine: Some have accused certain Diamine inks of being prone to staining. I can attest that Diamine Presidential Blue permanently stained a plyglas sac in one of my Parker 51s. However, those sacs are notorious for being stained easily by almost anything. If you find a clear one, it's probably never been used.

 

Waterman: Acidic and known to sometimes corrode metal parts and plating.

 

Noodler's Baystate Blue: Doesn't "stain" as such, but can leave behind a stubborn blue film. This once turned my TWSBI 530 very, very blue. However, it did totally clean up with bleach. Also, years ago there was reputedly one batch of Lamy Safaris with substandard feeds that were physically damaged by BSB.

 

Noodler's in general: Some pen repairers swear that Noodler's is hard on rubber sacs, but it's been difficult to actually prove the correlation. (And recently Noodler's has become so inconsistent that I've decided to look for alternatives anyhow.)

 

Herbin: Years ago this brand has had some incidents with mold. Supposed to be fixed, haven't heard about any further problems.

 

Private Reserve: This is the ink brand with everything, absolutely everything. It stains, smears, turns rubber to goo, grows mold and hardens like varnish in the bottle. I've had more problems with PR than all other brands of ink put together.

 

If you want something totally safe, your best bet is probably Sheaffer Skrip. You may find that rather limiting, though.

 

Personally, I trust Diamine, Herbin and Pilot Iroshizuku without hesitation. And realistically, aside from Private Reserve, problems caused by any fountain pen ink are rare.

[A Smug Dill]

If one's primary concern is the integrity and condition of the ink sac, which by the way is as much a 'consumable' and replaceable part as converters are, surely it's easy enough to buy a spare/replacement sac, stick it in a small test tube filled with whichever ink you're keen to use -- never mind whether that ink costs $0.10/ml or $1.00/ml; knowledge and peace-of-mind surely must be worth something to acquire -- and see what happens to the sac in a fortnight or a month?

It's not like trying to find a piece of celluloid that is the same material, age and condition in one's prized vintage piston-filler pen with which to experiment.

Usually any 'staining' I see is on the inside of the clear hollow tubes in ink converters, and that's a loose use of the term. After disassembling a Sailor or Platinum (or Wing Sung or Jinhao) converter and soaking the tube in water, in most cases remnants of ink colour can be removed by gentle swabbing/rubbing of its interior using a q-tip. I don't imagine the same treatment wouldn't remove the colour from the walls of the ink reservior inside a piston-filler demonstrator pen; whether one can access the interior of such is a different question. (I know, for example, that I can fully disassemble a Wing Sung 3008 or an Aurora 88 for cleaning, including removing the piston mechanism completely giving clear access to the interior of the pen barrel.)

I found a Geha piston-filler pen from 1970 among my late father's pile of junk stationery he kept in a drawer. No doubt he used a common and 'safe' ink of that era to fill that pen, but my guess is it was three or more decades since that pen was last filled, and it was never properly cleaned afterwards. Yes, there was 'staining' of the ink window from whichever blue ink it was that was left to dry and stayed inside the pen for thirty-odd years. Or does that not count? If an ink will not 'stain' if left in a pen for three weeks, but would do so if left for three months, does that count? What about three quarters, or three whole years?

I'd say discolouration or wearing off of ruthenium plating on the nib counts as damage, as exhibited by @sansenri's Sailor Professional Gear Imperial Black and my Pilot Capless matte black Vanishing Point. But then, if instead of Sailor kiwaguro I had kept just clean water in my Vanishing Point, would the nib creep have cause similar damage to the nib plating anyway over the course of four years, even in the absence of other solvents, dyes or pigments? I'll never know, but I have never seen Sailor kiwaguro "damage" anything else in that manner.

A pen you choose to write with is just that, not a museum display piece, not a family heirloom which one would hope to maintain good resale value or even appreciate in the collector's market. If you don't worry about minor cosmetic marring of your car that you choose to drive often, which in all likelihood would be more expensive than your pens by many multiples, I just don't see any reason to be overly concerned about slight discolouration of the pen barrel or ink window on the inside through normal use, wear and tear, to the point of regarding it as 'damage' to the writing instrument. The pen is only going to stay plausibly 'virgin' until you fill its ink reservoir and start writing with that feeding the nib.

Edited December 19, 2019 by A Smug Dill

[Mercian]

Just an aside about regarding Waterman Serenity Blue as the ‘safest’ ink in the world...

 

A few years ago I had a NOS, clear, pli-glass sac put in to my aerometric Parker “51”.

I initially used Rohrer & Klingner Salix in the pen (a ‘scary’ iron-gall ink), with no problems. The next ink I tried was the ‘safe’ Waterman Serenity Blue. The WSB stained the sac. Neither water, nor dish soap, nor dilute ammonia removed the stain.

 

After saying not a few nastyrudesailorwords, I re-inked the “51” with some Salix.

When I had used up that fill, I noticed that the WSB stain had been removed by the Salix

 

I live in a ‘hard water’ area, so perhaps that affected how the ink behaved in my “51” - but I must add that it has never stained any other pen or converter that I own.

Noodler’s Black (a ‘scary’ ‘bulletproof’ ink) has not caused any staining in my “51” either.

 

The conclusion that I have drawn is that staining is a process that occurs (or not) based solely on the whims and caprice of the Ink Gods, and that, yea, passeth all understanding.

 

(Also, I now use only Salix or Noodler’s Black in my “51” )

[como]

Ahhh, that’s horrible. I have never used Iron Gall inks because I don’t like how the ink colors would change from their original state once written on paper. This is good to know, as I am surely not going to put these through my pens. Thank you for sharing.

 

iron gall nib damage-

 

https://kencrooker.com/igink-redux/

[tonybelding]

Noodler’s Black (a ‘scary’ ‘bulletproof’ ink) has not caused any staining in my “51” either.

Actually, in my experience Noodler's Black is one of the least-staining inks you can get. It bonds permanently with cellulose in paper, and you better not spill it on cotton cloth, but otherwise it doesn't stick to much of anything. It comes off skin easily. It didn't even stain the plylgas sacs in my Parker 51s, which makes it probably one of the few inks that you can put it them and keep it clear. (However, that particular sac is permanently deep purple now, since I put some Diamine through it.)

Edited December 23, 2019 by tonybelding