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How Does Noodlers Determine Archival, Permanent


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I wonder also how IG content in a modern ink-l have Pelikan, TWSBI, a bit of Midnight Blue, and reasonably full bottles of Lamy(bought new in 2011 or so) and Mont Blanc round bottle bought used/open by me recently-compares to old inks like say Skrip. Skrip Blue-Black, in my use, only has just faint hints of blue that I see more sloshing around in the bottle than writing on paper-it's definitely on the "black" end of blue black, especially when dry.

 

I'm REALLY itching to regularly be back in the lab, even though I don't have the facilities I use to. It's not super difficult to measure iron content with wet chemistry, even though I want to go straight to AA or CV.

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5 hours ago, sgphototn said:

I learned a few months ago that there are various degrees of iron gall inks. KWZ, for instance says their IG Blue Black is the highest level while their IG Aztec Gold is at the lowest level of iron gall.

 

4 hours ago, sgphototn said:

… I can't find it now, but I did find this but it was not the source I found earlier.

 

Is this to what you were referring?

 

The range of Iron Gall KWZ Inks includes 3 types. IG Mandarin is Light Iron Gall - it means that the iron gall component concentration is very low and the maintenance doesn't differ from using standard ink. In the contrary IG Blue-Black is Archive Iron Gall, which means that the concentration of iron gall component is very high, thus it is the most water resistant and the most permanent of the whole IG KWZ Ink range. All the other IG KWZ Inks - blues, greens, violets, reds or brown are the medium type - iron component concentration is high enough to make the notes everlasting, but low enough to be highly convenient in daily use.
 
Source: Appleboom

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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That's very close, as the article I read specifically mentioned IG Aztec Gold, but that gets the gist of the matter. 

Thanks. Helps me to know I'm not completely addled.

'We live in times where smart people must be silenced so stupid people won't be offended."

 

Clip from Ricky Gervais' new Netflix Special

 

 

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Noodler's has a decent description of their properties on their website:

 

Noodler’s Durable Ink Classification — Noodler's Ink

 

The way you can think of these categories would be that Bulletproof is optimizing for solvent-resistance, whereas Eternal is optimization for longevity across time. Often both properties are targeted in a single ink.

 

In order to test for longevity, generally, you want resistance to light and humidity. Those are the two main factors. Additional solvent resistance comes in next. 

 

Notice that the language used here is "resists" that doesn't mean "ignores." Accelerating UV testing, water testing, and solvent testing, such as that done for ISO testing are good indicators of the longevity of an ink, and UV testing seems a pretty good one. However, it is often difficult to tell ahead of time how things are going to go down the road. 

 

For instance, IG inks are generally very long lived, archival quality inks, and the ones we have today are some of the best, non-paper eating formulations that we know. However, they are also not bleach resistant and they have similar accelerated UV aging behaviors. It is also known that a combination of humidity and UV light can break down IG over time. 

 

On the other hand, the same thing happens to dye-based inks, and most pigments as well. 

 

*Everything* except for Carbon Black breaks down eventually, more or less. They just break down at different levels. 

 

Noodler's inks have had a number of third party informal tests conducted that give some idea to their longevity, and they seem to hold up well, particularly a few standouts. I am pretty sure that Nathan tests his inks in much the same way that others do casually, simply because he is a small ink shop, so I doubt he is scaling up a large testing facility. 

 

Noodler's inks would probably meet many archival standards, because they are the same sorts of dyes that are used by other industries for archival properties (I strongly suspect). But there is no official standard for archival. ISO standards are not technically standards of archival quality, but of documentary quality. Documentary quality is closer to "bulletproof" than to archival in its requirements, but there is a fading element to documentary requirements. 

 

Governments have sufficient trust in stronger IG formulations for long term preservation of legal documents, and so most Blue Black IG formulations (In my tests Platinum did a little better than R&K, but they are of a similar class) will hold out for a good long time under "intentional storage conditions". 

 

At this point I think Noodler's inks are proven enough that if you can put up with their quirks, you can get a set of inks that will at least be competitive with and potentially outlast IG inks under "normal storage conditions". I'm not sure I would argue for them having the same longevity as pigmented inks "in principle" but there are Noodler's inks that are more long lived than some pigmented inks in some tests. 

 

If you want truly long lived, durable inks that will be stored under reasonable conditions, only Carbon Black ink will guarantee that the ink will look the same as it was written as when the paper is falling apart. But even then, some Carbon Black ink formulations have suffered lift off issues, which means that the ink can conceivably flake off over time. This is the Carbon Black equivalent weakness to IG's "browning" over time. Long term evidence suggests that Carbon Black is still the overall king if you want Eternal ink. 

 

But for me, I'm just so much *happier* when I write with Platinum Blue Black, that I'm willing to accept the loss of some centuries of longevity. I think I can still probably get a good 1 to 3 centuries out of that ink if the writing is kept in good order, at the least. I would expect Noodler's KTC to last at least that long under similar conditions. 

 

Noodler's is a great set of inks, but, just like every other ink manufacturer that doesn't officially claim an ISO certification, you can't really be sure how they test their inks without making a formal request from the company, which I haven't done. 

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5 hours ago, arcfide said:

Noodler's inks would probably meet many archival standards,

 

With a particular batch, perhaps; but I don't think there's sufficient trust or credibility that Noodler's Inks — even if we only focus on bulletproof-and-eternal colours — would stay consistent enough from batch to batch, year to year to be considered the same ink chemically and performance-wise.

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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I've been letting this stew for a few days before responding again.

 

Truth be told, much of the drivel I write I don't care if it's around forever. It's nice to go back and read some things I wrote 10 years ago and have them be legible. It's also nice if I can spill coffee or sneeze on something and it not become illegible in a couple of minutes(although admittedly even good old Waterman/Pelikan/etc blue might just run a bit but is usually still readable after that). If I write a check, I want reasonable permanence at least until it's cashed. If I hand address an envelope, I want it to still be readable by the time it reaches the addressee, although there are ways around that(one I learned a long time ago was to rub the end of a candlestick over the address).

 

I don't have any active research now, but when in the lab there's a lot of concern surrounding permanence in notebooks. Some of that comes down to the construction of the book itself-i.e. it should have a sewn binding with numbered pages so that a page can't simply be removed without making it obvious, and the paper in theory should be of good quality that will last without any appreciable degradation for a hundred years or so. There typically aren't any specific requirements on the writing tool aside from it being reasonably "indelible"-thus pencils are completely off-limits and eraseable pens are frowned on. They, in theory, should last "forever", although it's likely no one is going to go back and look at them in 50 years. Still, though, from my graduate school days, I have at least one outstanding paper that's been ready to go for ~6 years now and my advisor still hasn't gotten around to getting it submitted, and you need records for a while after publication in case you are questioned on it. I know more than once, I couldn't reproduce an experiment I found in literature, emailed the author of it, and always got some kind of explanation. Usually it was some crucial detail left out(i.e. these reagents must be added in this order when the paper just gave a laundry list), and once addressed things worked. At least once, my answer was a scan of a couple of lab notebook pages(which surprised me, since they're often guarded carefully) but they answered my question.

 

In any case, when I was in graduate school, the majority of my notebooks were done in IG(specifically MB Midnight Blue). I wouldn't have lost any sleep over using a Noodler's bulletproof/eternal ink, but looking back if I didn't do IG I'd probably go with a nanoparticle ink. After all, since i was synthesizing nanoparticles in the first place, it seems a natural fit!

 

In that particular case, since the notebook is going to spend the majority of its time closed, lightfastness isn't a huge deal. Water and solvent resistance is just because of the likelyhood of accidents.

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12 hours ago, arcfide said:

Noodler's has a decent description of their properties on their website:

 

Noodler’s Durable Ink Classification — Noodler's Ink

 

The way you can think of these categories would be that Bulletproof is optimizing for solvent-resistance, whereas Eternal is optimization for longevity across time. Often both properties are targeted in a single ink.

 

In order to test for longevity, generally, you want resistance to light and humidity. Those are the two main factors. Additional solvent resistance comes in next. 

 

Notice that the language used here is "resists" that doesn't mean "ignores." Accelerating UV testing, water testing, and solvent testing, such as that done for ISO testing are good indicators of the longevity of an ink, and UV testing seems a pretty good one. However, it is often difficult to tell ahead of time how things are going to go down the road. 

 

For instance, IG inks are generally very long lived, archival quality inks, and the ones we have today are some of the best, non-paper eating formulations that we know. However, they are also not bleach resistant and they have similar accelerated UV aging behaviors. It is also known that a combination of humidity and UV light can break down IG over time. 

 

On the other hand, the same thing happens to dye-based inks, and most pigments as well. 

 

*Everything* except for Carbon Black breaks down eventually, more or less. They just break down at different levels. 

 

Noodler's inks have had a number of third party informal tests conducted that give some idea to their longevity, and they seem to hold up well, particularly a few standouts. I am pretty sure that Nathan tests his inks in much the same way that others do casually, simply because he is a small ink shop, so I doubt he is scaling up a large testing facility. 

 

Noodler's inks would probably meet many archival standards, because they are the same sorts of dyes that are used by other industries for archival properties (I strongly suspect). But there is no official standard for archival. ISO standards are not technically standards of archival quality, but of documentary quality. Documentary quality is closer to "bulletproof" than to archival in its requirements, but there is a fading element to documentary requirements. 

 

Governments have sufficient trust in stronger IG formulations for long term preservation of legal documents, and so most Blue Black IG formulations (In my tests Platinum did a little better than R&K, but they are of a similar class) will hold out for a good long time under "intentional storage conditions". 

 

At this point I think Noodler's inks are proven enough that if you can put up with their quirks, you can get a set of inks that will at least be competitive with and potentially outlast IG inks under "normal storage conditions". I'm not sure I would argue for them having the same longevity as pigmented inks "in principle" but there are Noodler's inks that are more long lived than some pigmented inks in some tests. 

 

If you want truly long lived, durable inks that will be stored under reasonable conditions, only Carbon Black ink will guarantee that the ink will look the same as it was written as when the paper is falling apart. But even then, some Carbon Black ink formulations have suffered lift off issues, which means that the ink can conceivably flake off over time. This is the Carbon Black equivalent weakness to IG's "browning" over time. Long term evidence suggests that Carbon Black is still the overall king if you want Eternal ink. 

 

But for me, I'm just so much *happier* when I write with Platinum Blue Black, that I'm willing to accept the loss of some centuries of longevity. I think I can still probably get a good 1 to 3 centuries out of that ink if the writing is kept in good order, at the least. I would expect Noodler's KTC to last at least that long under similar conditions. 

 

Noodler's is a great set of inks, but, just like every other ink manufacturer that doesn't officially claim an ISO certification, you can't really be sure how they test their inks without making a formal request from the company, which I haven't done. 

 

This strikes me as very thoughtful and wise, so thank you for it.

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Interesting topic.

 

Can a chemist or physicist explain if, technically, a short-term but higher UV energy exposure on ink is the equivalent to a longer-term lower-level UV exposure? In other words, is it actually possible to have an accurate experimental result by removing TIME as one of the variables in the experiment? 

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4 hours ago, Quentin said:

Interesting topic.

 

Can a chemist or physicist explain if, technically, a short-term but higher UV energy exposure on ink is the equivalent to a longer-term lower-level UV exposure? In other words, is it actually possible to have an accurate experimental result by removing TIME as one of the variables in the experiment? 

 

It's not necessarily directly equivalent, but let's say a dye is UV sensitive, as many are(many times the color arises from extensive π bond conjugation, and π bonds themselves tend to be UV reactive). Let's say also that every photon in the range of UV energy has the ability to break a bond in one molecule of dye. That's actually probably not correct, but let's go with it.

 

Once the ink has been deposit and dried on the paper, there are a finite number of dye molecules present.

 

In a sense, the break-down is dependent, then, on the number of photons hitting the ink. In theory, if it's a huge dose of them over a short period of time, or a low level constant dose over say a couple of years or decades, it shouldn't make a big difference.

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7 hours ago, Quentin said:

Interesting topic.

 

Can a chemist or physicist explain if, technically, a short-term but higher UV energy exposure on ink is the equivalent to a longer-term lower-level UV exposure? In other words, is it actually possible to have an accurate experimental result by removing TIME as one of the variables in the experiment? 

 

It depends whether you're talking about brightness or wavelength (colour).

 

Bright light for a short time is roughly equivalent to dim light for a longer time, unless there is another element to the reaction.  For example, an ink dye may be reacting with oxygen and UV light is only catalysing the reaction - if the reaction with oxygen is slow then more light won't necessarily accelerate the reaction.

 

Most light-induced reactions have a wavelength threshold: dim UV will damage a dye, whilst intense red does nothing at all (sunburn and photographic paper are other examples).  But using ever shorter wavelengths (more extreme UV) doesn't necessarily make the reaction go faster, and even can slow the reaction down if the shorter-wavelength light isn't well absorbed.

 

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15 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

With a particular batch, perhaps; but I don't think there's sufficient trust or credibility that Noodler's Inks — even if we only focus on bulletproof-and-eternal colours — would stay consistent enough from batch to batch, year to year to be considered the same ink chemically and performance-wise.

 

Given how many people have done testing with various Noodler's inks at this point, I think we have a reasonable amount of evidence that demonstrates that Noodler's ink does vary more than other commercially available inks from batch to batch and that this variation is still apparently within a sufficient range of tolerance to maintain good longevity and durability properties.

 

I think you could argue for "it's a different ink each batch" depending on what your tolerances are (though I would argue that Noodler's is probably at least as good as commercial inks of the past in terms of quality control; we're spoiled for tightly controlled inks these days) but I think it's harder to argue that this variance fundamentally alters the durability of the ink except perhaps at the very long tail end of durability (far beyond most people's considerations for archival requirements). 

 

I imagine that you could argue, for instance, that one batch of Noodler's formulation might have sufficient durability to extend into the 1000 year range of durability, while another one might show more degradation by that time, but, for a given Noolder's ink that is equivalent or better than competing colored pigment and IG inks (excluding Carbon Black), I think it would be hard to say that batch variation would make enough difference for the Noodler's to "change durability classes", say with one batch outlasting an IG ink or colored pigment ink and another one failing to be more durable than that same ink. 

 

On the order of a few centuries, I don't think batch variation would matter much for the formulations one way or another, although I do think that some of the Noodler's formulations that are considered Archival might not have "centuries" in their life span, whereas others seem likely to do that easily. 

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R&K Salix has been a rather disappointing IG.  Used it to label some items that were going to be left in an unused evidence vault for months until I could arrange transport.  Came back and found the tags to be a really light shade of gray.  Not sure what happened, but we're talking months in a pitch black walk-in vault, and um... yeah...

 

With regard to Noodler's I really haven't found it to do anything that any other decent durable ink won't do, except maybe write in the wet (polar series).  Various ruined articles of clothing can attest to the durability of Noodler's "Bulletproof" inks.  "Oopsies" with those inks have probably cost me more in clothing than all of the Noodler's inks I've ever purchased.  I think I have a white cotton dress shirt with a 10 year old stain from Noodler's ink on it.  Bleach, washing, etc. have all dulled it, but still pretty clearly present.  As I noted previously, I might forget and put an uncapped pen in a pocket, but that's different from having the ink crawl out of somewhere it shouldn't and wind up places it definitely shouldn't.  Since moving away from Noodler's inks, my clothes have definitely had a much better time of things. 

 

 

Imagination and memory are but one thing which for diverse reasons hath diverse names. -- T. Hobbes - Leviathan

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That's actually not that surprising, SeeksAdvice.  Much as I like IG inks, I have found them to not be overly lightfast/UV resistant in general.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstinedruth

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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14 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

That's actually not that surprising, SeeksAdvice.  Much as I like IG inks, I have found them to not be overly lightfast/UV resistant in general.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstinedruth

 

What's more, the only parts that are slightly resistant are the IG particles. Generally, the dyes fade relatively quickly, which means that the more "interesting" the IG is, in terms of those light, shading colors that seem to be so attractive to so many people, such as Salix, the less IG will usually make it to the paper. Once that dye fades, often only the light grey of the IG will remain. That lasts longer, but will succumb to UV over time. 

 

I think this is the part that shocks some people, since with the reasonably durable non-IG, dye-based inks, the dyes tend to still retain their main color, but for IG inks, in general, the color shifts rather rapidly under UV to a grey/black color. I think a lot of people expect the color to stay the same, but IG shifts color more rapidly than any other ink in the "durable" category. 

 

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Noodlers cellulose-binding inks can sit on top of less-absorbent high quality paper and smear easily with finger touch or water.  IG inks can fade significantly when exposed to light and turn very pale yellow when exposed to bleach.  I would stick with pigment inks for permanence. Still, not all pigment inks either: some fade when exposed to light very quickly.  Permanence is a tricky subject and requires matching inks with pens and paper and applications.

“I admit it, I'm surprised that fountain pens are a hobby. ... it's a bit like stumbling into a fork convention - when you've used a fork all your life.” 

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6 hours ago, Intensity said:

Noodlers cellulose-binding inks can sit on top of less-absorbent high quality paper and smear easily with finger touch or water.  IG inks can fade significantly when exposed to light and turn very pale yellow when exposed to bleach.  I would stick with pigment inks for permanence. Still, not all pigment inks either: some fade when exposed to light very quickly.  Permanence is a tricky subject and requires matching inks with pens and paper and applications.

 

I think the applications POV is overlooked often enough. It's fun to explore the absolute most durable of durable inks, but you often give up a lot for that. It's fundamentally probably more enjoyable to ask yourself what you really want out of your inks, and then tailor your selection of inks to best suit your specific applications, which may or may not include the most absolute eternal ink durability in all weather conditions and for all papers and pens or the like. 

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10 hours ago, Intensity said:

Still, not all pigment inks either: some fade when exposed to light very quickly.

 

I wasn't aware of that.  What are some examples?

 

fpn_1375035941__postcard_swap.png * * * "Don't neglect to write me several times from different places when you may."
-- John Purdue (1863)

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