Light exposure on some blue and blue-black inks

[dave321]

i exposed some blue and blue-black inks to the light from a south facing window (im in the uk)

for ~ 6 months and here are the results.

i thought the pilot and platinum inks would behave much better, surprising.

all were inked using the same dip pen, washing and drying between each .

 

[TSherbs]

Very interesting! I really appreciate this kind of comparison. Thank you for sharing it.

[dave321]

just out of interest,

Royal Blue : This ink was used on April 2010 by Presidents Obama/Medvedev in the signing of the nuclear arms treaty at Prague Castel

 

as the scans above show, it completely disappeared after 6 months light exposure lol😲

 

still, probably ok if kept in the dark

[Tasmith]

Thanks for sharing!

[arcfide]

This is interesting, as I remember someone doing a fade test on Pilot Blue Black and Platinum BB along with a few others a while back, and I think their conclusion was that it wasn't worth using Platinum BB because they thought the Pilot Blue Black appeared to be holding up just as well in their test. However, their test didn't involve the same amount of time as yours, and looking at the apparently complete erasure of Pilot's Blue Black, while both the Platinum and Pelikan IG inks are still around, albeit quite faded, would seem to indicate that there may be an initial "burst" period of fading with IG inks, such as what led the previous tester to conclude that Pilot's Blue Black was more fade resistant, whereas as time goes one, the IG inks might fade at a lesser rate compared to other inks that might initial start with less fading. 

 

I have long suspected that with many of the fade tests, there is a serious non-linear rate of fading on some or many inks, making it difficult to extrapolate the true longevity of an ink unless you take care to track that fading over a very long period of time. 

 

I also find it interesting that most of the Diamine Blue Black seems to have held up quite well, but there are a few places where the ink has completely disappeared, compare this to the two IGs, which, while both have on the whole more fading than the Diamine BB ink, they have at least *some* ink remaining visible across pretty much the entire set of letters. 

 

It's also just a little it depressing to me that the black inks and those black ink components always seem to be the ones that can hold out well, but they just aren't any emotional fun to write with! Bah humbug. With the exception of some of the misbehaved Noodler's, that is. 

[dave321]

6 hours ago, arcfide said:

 

 

I also find it interesting that most of the Diamine Blue Black seems to have held up quite well, but there are a few places where the ink has completely disappeared, compare this to the two IGs, which, while both have on the whole more fading than the Diamine BB ink, they have at least *some* ink remaining visible across pretty much the entire set of letters. 

 

yes i agree with you. there could well be different lag periods before the fading takes off.

 

one of the reasons for using a dip pen nib was to try and get roughly the same amount of ink on the page for each ink.

however each ink behaves differently and as i recall the diamine blue black did lay down quite heavy writing, so that may have something to do with why it MAY not have faded quite as expected.

 

in this respect these tests are in themselves difficult to put the same amount of ink on the page for each sample

[arcfide]

9 hours ago, dave321 said:

yes i agree with you. there could well be different lag periods before the fading takes off.

 

one of the reasons for using a dip pen nib was to try and get roughly the same amount of ink on the page for each ink.

however each ink behaves differently and as i recall the diamine blue black did lay down quite heavy writing, so that may have something to do with why it MAY not have faded quite as expected.

 

in this respect these tests are in themselves difficult to put the same amount of ink on the page for each sample

 

Indeed, and I have found this as well. But I think trying to regulate for the exact same amount of ink might not be as useful as regulating for the same "input device." That is, I think it's probably more useful to see the relative fading when used with the same writing instrument, as this shows more accurately the effect that switching inks while keeping the same writing instrument will have. In this case, for instance, if you did manage to deposit the same amount of ink in the same spread for both the Diamine and the drier IG inks, the experience on the page may give some information about the sheer fade resistance of the individual components, but the actual practical writing experience might be difference, because the IG inks might write a drier line by default, and so potentially the Diamine ink might in fact last longer simply by virtue of its tendency to put more ink on the page for any given instrument over the IG inks. 

 

I have used Diamine Blue black in my own testing as well, and I have also noted the relatively wet nature of the ink. It along with Platinum Carbon Black seem to absolutely gush onto the page and leave large pools of ink with my swab tests versus the much drier IG inks. I don't have Pelikan to compare against, but R&K Salix and Diamine Registrar's both showed significantly reduced flow even from a cotton swabbing. On the other hand Platinum BB showed itself to be, IMO, significantly wetter than Salix or Registrar's. I have heard that KWZ Blue Black is also on the wetter side, but I do not have that ink with me to compare it to the others right now. Even so, compared to the Diamine Blue Black or the Platinum Carbon Black, they are definitely not as wet, and probably not even as wet as the Iro Kon Peki or Tsuki-yo inks that I have, which are also pretty wet. 

 

All that to say that I think the choice to use a standardized implement like a glass dip pen is the "right call" over trying to put more effort into getting the exact same amount of ink down on the page. 

 

I think what your test demonstrates on the whole, at least for this period of time, is that even if the IG inks will fade (that has been known for a long time), they still have archival properties and have a strong degree of longevity over a huge swath of typical inks, and can easily compete with some of the stronger, more fade resistant inks in the dye-based categories, especially among the colored options, and even among many of the darker options. 

 

I think given their other very elegant properties, including their liveness and the degree to which they behave very well on a wide range of papers, they are a very practical choice for an archival ink. To get better than this, you have to start giving up a wider degree of general behavior in order to start getting more archival guarantees, whereas IG inks of good formulation appear to provide a reasonably good degree of archival-ness while also not suffering as many downsides as, say, colored Noodler's archival inks, or the pigmented inks (Blue pigmented inks that I'm aware of all seem to have a higher degree of clogging and dryness reported for them over their black counterparts, and all of the pigmented inks seem susceptible to some degree of page transfer or lift off, more so than the IG inks, and they will bleed a little easier as well, and do require a little more care to thoroughly clean IME).

 

I think people get scared off from the "it fades in UV", but they don't stop to consider that most inks fade in UV, it's just a matter of understanding what you are giving up in order to increase UV resistance and deciding where the cut-off point is for you in terms of what you value. Plus, IG inks provide a lively character to the page that few other inks can rival, IMO. 

[A Smug Dill]

On 1/8/2021 at 10:45 PM, dave321 said:

all were inked using the same dip pen,

9 hours ago, dave321 said:

one of the reasons for using a dip pen nib was to try and get roughly the same amount of ink on the page for each ink.

 

9 minutes ago, arcfide said:

I think trying to regulate for the exact same amount of ink might not be as useful as regulating for the same "input device." That is, I think it's probably more useful to see the relative fading when used with the same writing instrument,

 

But @dave321 was using the same writing instrument!  Nothing wrong with trying to get roughly the same amount of ink, spread in a similar if not identical manner, on the page using the same dip pen, as opposed to trying to account for or at least consider how ink may flow through a particular fountain pen.

[arcfide]

2 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

But @dave321 was using the same writing instrument!  Nothing wrong with trying to get roughly the same amount of ink, spread in a similar if not identical manner, on the page using the same dip pen, as opposed to trying to account for or at least consider how ink may flow through a particular fountain pen.

 

You say "but" like I was saying something other than that? I was confirming his choice to use a dip pen over a more complicated approach that might have been able to ensure the same amount of ink got on the page for each pen, which I think would have been less useful than simply using a dip pen, which would simulate the relative variances in ink flow between each ink in a relatively repeatable manner. 

[amberleadavis]

Thank you for this wonderful contribution.  Sorry I have been unavailable for updating lately. I've added your experiment to the list I've been compiling. If I have missed any fade tests, please let me know.