Rehydrating Ink

[bunnspecial]

Not too long ago, I was going through a miscellaneous box and found an old inkwell bottle of Sheaffer blue-black that was dry but had a fair bit of reside caked on the bottom. I started to wash it out, but when I added water the bottle started filling with a substance that looked an awful lot like ink. I did a quick swab of it, and sure enough it acted just like what I expect Sheaffer Blue-Black to act like. I added water with swirling until I had no residue at the bottom, and ended up with a bottle probably 3/4 full. I braved it in a pen(a Parker 21) and sure enough it acted just like good old Sheaffer blue-black. I was worried about the iron content in it, but sure enough the rehydrated ink tastes like an iron gall ink and shows the same amount of water fastness. I compared it side-by-side with another bottle still full of a similar vintage, and couldn't detect any behavior differences in the two.

 

Inspired, I went around looking for other dried out ink bottles. One was a "Carter's Washable Blue" that again swabs well, but I haven't tried it. A rehydrated bottle of Sheaffer Permanent Red seems to work fine, plus reeks of Phenol just like other bottles I have.

 

The only one I'm not totally sure about is a bottle of Quink BB Solv-X. It seems to be very washed out and has very little water resistance. I do taste iron in it, but it's very faint. To be fair, though, I've never used the Solv-X version in untouched form, and at least it writes better than the current I've-never-used-a-dryer-ink Qunk BB.

 

Everything since the first bottle of Sheaffer I've done with distilled water.

 

I've heard of folks sometimes doing this to get a sample out of a dried cartridge of a rare ink or something like that, but I've not seen a lot of discussion of doing this on bottles. Has anyone else done it?

[Dimy]

Well my father when gifting me fountain pen first time did it with old bottle of ink (no idea of brand, father said it was professor ink) and my I did same for my friend with his old dried camlin ink, when he entered the FP world.....I just never gave it much thought honestly, but I have experienced it (never with a cartridge though).

[txomsy]

I've done it too. Using tap water, by the way, and, to date, without any major problem. Maybe tap water is not so bad here. Others mention only using distilled water on their pens to avoid problems, so it would likely be better to also use distilled water for reconstituting inks. OTOH, in the old (hundred years ago) times of solid ink, I doubt anybody would use distilled water at all, but then I do not know either which problems, if any, they found.

[inkstainedruth]

If you don't live where the water is hard (i.e., has a high mineral content) tap water might be safe.  But I don't.  So I use distilled water to flush pens; and to get them started again if the ink dries up somewhat; and to dilute ink to make it go further (as well to dilute when the ink is supersaturated and/or I'm too lazy to flush).  Someday I will get around to taking photos of the crud on my bathroom faucet and say "This is WHY I recommend distilled water...."

As for bunnspecial's initial query -- I've been told that reconstituting dried up vintage Sheaffer ink tends to work okay; but that trying to do the same with vintage Quink?  Not so much.  I haven't tried it myself, and I was underwhelmed with the contents of a bottle of Skrip Microfilm Black, and wondered if it had been reconstituted (and if so, whether that had happened more than once...).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[bunnspecial]

46 minutes ago, inkstainedruth said:

If you don't live where the water is hard (i.e., has a high mineral content) tap water might be safe.  But I don't.  So I use distilled water to flush pens; and to get them started again if the ink dries up somewhat; and to dilute ink to make it go further (as well to dilute when the ink is supersaturated and/or I'm too lazy to flush).  Someday I will get around to taking photos of the crud on my bathroom faucet and say "This is WHY I recommend distilled water...."

As for bunnspecial's initial query -- I've been told that reconstituting dried up vintage Sheaffer ink tends to work okay; but that trying to do the same with vintage Quink?  Not so much.  I haven't tried it myself, and I was underwhelmed with the contents of a bottle of Skrip Microfilm Black, and wondered if it had been reconstituted (and if so, whether that had happened more than once...).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

I just moved to Illinois(St. Louis area) from Kentucky. In Louisville, our water wasn't too hard. In Central Kentucky, it was a different story-pretty much everything had passed through 100+ miles of limestone aquifers and creek/river beds. The town where I went to college was fed entirely by a 30 mile limestone aquifer, and I use to joke that drinking a glass of water was as good as taking tums for heartburn. In one of my upper level chemistry labs, the professor got a bit obsessive about measuring water hardness, and we analyzed calcium a half dozen different ways...and the water plant obliged us by telling us their measurement on any given day if we called and asked. I don't remember numbers, but suffice to say it was high. When we titrated with EDTA(the standard way to measure hardness, and how the water plant did it-yes we went there and did it ourselves also) we would use a fair bit more EDTA solution than the textbooks said we "should" use.

 

I haven't actually checked hardness here. I'm tempted to assay it but I don't know if we have everything on hand to do a titration. I need EDTA, conc. ammonia and ammonium chloride to buffer it to pH 10, and the correct indicator(Calgamite or Eriochrome Black T). Of course that's all sort of beside the point since my initial try was done with good old Central KY tap water.

 

I find it interesting that your comments about Sheaffer working well and Quink not working interesting. I wonder if a bit of vinegar would help the Quink...I wouldn't do it in a good pen, but there's also a reason why I always have a handful of Platinum Preppys(plus O-rings to eyedropper them) on hand.

[SamCapote]

There was a seller that had massive numbers of Parker Penman Sapphire cartridges that we verified were legit, and over time 30-40% of the water evaporated through the plastic.  So many of us just used a syringe to remove what was left, transferring to a separate ink vial/bottle(s), and rehydrated it.  You could also have pierced the cap and hydrate the cartridge with the syringe to use it in your pen.

 

Always, we used only distilled water because you don't know what elements/ions are in various tap or filtered waters that could combine with the color dyes and alter the performance of the inks.

[Laurie J.]

Where I live artesian well water is what our water company pumps to us. The water is very soft and easy to make soap suds. I've reconstituted several bottles of dried up ink that was in the bottom of old Sheaffer Skrip topwell bottles. I do it really slow so as not to dilute it too much. It works great and I've never had any problems using the tap water here. Even though it works fine, I may switch over to distilled water just to be on the safe side.