Suggestions for a Long-Lived Blue and Blue-Black?

[yazeh]

On 2/14/2021 at 6:54 PM, BigBlot said:

It might date further back. Pliny the Younger records a iron based ink recipe, and some of the Dead Sea Scrolls are written in inks containing metals. The oldest IG document I've personally seen was a 13th Century copy of the Magna Carta, and I've seen legal documents dating from the early 19th Century. Both were legible.

When  I checked with the specialist of  https://irongallink.org. They told me the earliestis an Egyptian Papyrus from the 3rd century.  Obviously this might change when more ink research is done on other documents....

The inks of Qumran are Carbon based. While gall nuts were used with lamp black for some texts, none of the texts are iron gall. The ink nerd I am, I checked it with the Dead Sea Scrolls website

 

 

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That said, the case of the Declaration of Independence serves as a counter example. It and the copies were also written in IG ink, and in just a few decades then Secretary of State John Adams had copper plate facsimiles made. Of course, that copy had been exposed to sunlight for years, but it's still worth noting. There were also IG inks so corrosive that they have eaten through the paper and/or parchment.

It is not only ink. There are several things besides the ink recipe that can damage the paper, High humidity above70% deteriorates iron gall written manuscripts.  Besides that it's manipulation. I believe the declaration of Independence was rolled and unrolled several times and carried here and there. Plus if memory serves me right some very funky work was done in the 19th century, which further aggravated the document. Also note wherever ink pools in a manuscript it could be subject to destruction over time. 

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Cellmatrix brings up a valid point not only about Noodlers, but about all inks claiming archival properties. Yes, there are IG ink documents nearly two millennia old. Documents written in carbon black based inks have the same or longer record. 

 

 

Just to mention, Carbon black inks can be removed easily by any abrasive material. Hence they mixed gall nuts in carbon ink, to give them an archival quality....

 

[yazeh]

On 2/14/2021 at 8:26 PM, cellmatrix said:

I agree with bigblot - it seems that iron gall ink was first introduced during the first century AD (by Pliny the Elder). 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_gall_ink

 

It’s an interesting question bigblot brings up about the types of formulations of Middle Ages iron gall compared to modern iron gall. While I love using registrar inks from diamine or ESSRI which have to be made according to certain traditional requirements, I would not be surprised if they differ significantly from Middle Ages inks which I suspect would not be fountain pen friendly.

Wikipedia articles are notoriously inconsistent. In the introduction and I quote, " It was the standard ink formulation used in Europe for the fourteen-hundred-year period between the 5th and 19th centuries, remained in widespread use well into the 20th century, and is still sold today."

While historians are aware that Pliny wrote of the chemical reaction, there is no evidence that he used it as ink

In the ink recipe page, fiberdrunk, has used her own iron gall recipes in some of her cheap fountain pens, with the usual precautions/ warnings

 

[yazeh]

On 2/14/2021 at 9:56 PM, arcfide said:

 

 the permanent Noodler's blue inks aren't very well behaved, and that makes them a bit of a pain on paper, as they spread and penetrate strongly, so that restricts the type of pens you can use as well as the type of paper. 54th Mass. is one of the worst if not the worst that I have tested for this. Liberty's Elysium was the best, with Legal Blue having the strangest blue color but also the most reliable permanence behavior out of the bunch of brighter blues. 

 

 

Funny in my experience they are very well behaved. It just a matter of finding the appropriate pen/nib combination. 54th Massachusetts is the perfect ink for EF/F nibs and dry pens.... I've also read glowing reviews of Noodler's latest, Baltimore Canyon Blue....

[cellmatrix]

8 hours ago, yazeh said:

Wikipedia articles are notoriously inconsistent. In the introduction and I quote, " It was the standard ink formulation used in Europe for the fourteen-hundred-year period between the 5th and 19th centuries, remained in widespread use well into the 20th century, and is still sold today."

While historians are aware that Pliny wrote of the chemical reaction, there is no evidence that he used it as ink

In the ink recipe page, fiberdrunk, has used her own iron gall recipes in some of her cheap fountain pens, with the usual precautions/ warnings

 

Yes its true: historians credit Pliny the elder for introducing iron gall ink in the first century 

 

Also, I'll just point out that in the middle ages they used dip pens, and dip pen ink formulations often contain substances that are not fountain pen friendly. Gum arabic is one example which was known to be a common ingredient of ink in the middle ages. If I were you, I would try to avoid using ink with gum arabic or any ink made specifically for dip pens in a fountain pen. Its just a safe thing to do.

[yazeh]

20 hours ago, cellmatrix said:

Yes its true: historians credit Pliny the elder for introducing iron gall ink in the first century 

Nitpicking

https://irongallink.org/iron-gall-ink-history.html

20 hours ago, cellmatrix said:

 

Also, I'll just point out that in the middle ages they used dip pens, and dip pen ink formulations often contain substances that are not fountain pen friendly. Gum arabic is one example which was known to be a common ingredient of ink in the middle ages. If I were you, I would try to avoid using ink with gum arabic or any ink made specifically for dip pens in a fountain pen. Its just a safe thing to do.

Thank you. I am aware of that

[cellmatrix]

1 hour ago, yazeh said:

 

https://irongallink.org/iron-gall-ink-history.html

 

Interesting link, thanks!

[yazeh]

5 minutes ago, cellmatrix said:

Interesting link, thanks!

The pleasure is all mine

 

[arcfide]

On 2/16/2021 at 12:07 PM, yazeh said:

Funny in my experience they are very well behaved. It just a matter of finding the appropriate pen/nib combination. 54th Massachusetts is the perfect ink for EF/F nibs and dry pens.... I've also read glowing reviews of Noodler's latest, Baltimore Canyon Blue....

 

My initial reaction is to think, "If you need to search for an appropriate pen/nib combination, then the ink probably isn't well-behaved." 

 

Compared to well-behaved inks, which often work on less than ideal paper, in a wide range of pens from dry to wet, with all ranges of nib sizes from EF to heavy flex and broad stubs (like Music nibs), which dry reasonably quickly, don't stain pens, don't suffer excessive nib creep, and are easy to clean out of pens even if they dry up in the pen, I'm not sure I can count any of the Noodler's Bulletproof blues as well-behaved. 

 

I think a lot of people love those inks for good reason, and they are very useful inks to have on the market, but I wouldn't consider them well-behaved at all. I've had them drip out of nibs, creep all over them, bleed through even relatively good paper with anything but the driest pens and finest nibs, take forever to dry, spread like crazy on the page, leading to very wide lines relative to the width of the nib, and just generally misbehave. 

 

You can see my test for these inks here:

 

 

 

[Intensity]

53 minutes ago, arcfide said:

 

My initial reaction is to think, "If you need to search for an appropriate pen/nib combination, then the ink probably isn't well-behaved." 

 

Compared to well-behaved inks, which often work on less than ideal paper, in a wide range of pens from dry to wet, with all ranges of nib sizes from EF to heavy flex and broad stubs (like Music nibs), which dry reasonably quickly, don't stain pens, don't suffer excessive nib creep, and are easy to clean out of pens even if they dry up in the pen, I'm not sure I can count any of the Noodler's Bulletproof blues as well-behaved. 

 

I think a lot of people love those inks for good reason, and they are very useful inks to have on the market, but I wouldn't consider them well-behaved at all. I've had them drip out of nibs, creep all over them, bleed through even relatively good paper with anything but the driest pens and finest nibs, take forever to dry, spread like crazy on the page, leading to very wide lines relative to the width of the nib, and just generally misbehave. 

 

I agree 100%, that's also been my experience with the bulletproof inks by Noodler's.  All of the ones I've tried have had a varying degree of poor behavior.  Even if I could live with the line spread and bleed-through, I hated the creep-dripping behavior of some and difficulty of cleaning out.  But the non-bulleptroof inks were fine, like say Noodler's Walnut--perfectly innocuous in my experience.

[cellmatrix]

13 hours ago, Intensity said:

I agree 100%, that's also been my experience with the bulletproof inks by Noodler's.  All of the ones I've tried have had a varying degree of poor behavior.  Even if I could live with the line spread and bleed-through, I hated the creep-dripping behavior of some and difficulty of cleaning out.  But the non-bulleptroof inks were fine, like say Noodler's Walnut--perfectly innocuous in my experience.

that has been my experience with the Noodler bulletproof inks I've tried, line widening and bleeding, as well as difficulty cleaning the residue out of pens. Iron gall inks seem much easier to work with, for me.

[yazeh]

@arcfide 

I saw your review with stubs. Dipping the feed and saturating the feeds, won't give you a clear picture. Far from that. 

Normally when I fill my pens with any bulletproof ink, they behave worse when the feed is saturated. I remember when I first filled a pen with Blue Nose Bear (which is partially bulletproof) I was truly dismayed. A few days later, when I picked up the pen all the bad Behaviour was gone. This goes with most if not all the other inks I have. And, I only use bulletproof/ pigmented/ iron gall inks. 

As for dry time, some of my fastest drying inks are Polar Brown/ Green, General of the Armies and Kung Te-Cheng and El Lawrence. 

Yet I concede using some of these inks in wide/ wet combination isn't the best idea. 

Baystate Blue bleeds through any paper with a vengeance with my medium nib

 

[BigBlot]

On 2/16/2021 at 11:45 AM, yazeh said:

It is not only ink. There are several things besides the ink recipe that can damage the paper, High humidity above70% deteriorates iron gall written manuscripts.  Besides that it's manipulation. I believe the declaration of Independence was rolled and unrolled several times and carried here and there. Plus if memory serves me right some very funky work was done in the 19th century, which further aggravated the document. Also note wherever ink pools in a manuscript it could be subject to destruction over time. 

Just to mention, Carbon black inks can be removed easily by any abrasive material. Hence they mixed gall nuts in carbon ink, to give them an archival quality....

in 1976, remember something about that particular copy was hung on a wall exposed to sunlight for a time. When John Adams had facsimiles made, the process removed some of the ink, giving it a ragged appearance.

 

Have seen mention of humidity, maybe combined with heat, affecting IG documents. That said, England is a damp place, and the copies of the Magna Carta have been around for a long time, but English climate isn't associated with heat. OTOH, those early 19th Century documents I saw were in Georgia, and until the advent of air conditioning could have been affected by temperature and humidity, and those had held up pretty well. I'm not saying that heat and humidity doesn't affect IG, and I'm quite sure there have been tests by conservators, just those Georgia documents come to mind.

 

A legitimate question would be how do I know they were written in IG ink. I don't. By what I remember of the color of the ink, that is merely an assumption. For the earliest, I'm assuming locally made IG ink. Fast-forward toward the middle of the 19th Century, and store bought ink is a possibility. 

[yazeh]

High humidity means leakage, flood in library..

19th century documents are more prone to corrosion than medical documents...

 

Enjoy: 

https://irongallink.org/ink-corrosion-an-autocatalic-nightmare.html

[arcfide]

On 2/18/2021 at 3:58 PM, yazeh said:

@arcfide 

I saw your review with stubs. Dipping the feed and saturating the feeds, won't give you a clear picture. Far from that. 

Normally when I fill my pens with any bulletproof ink, they behave worse when the feed is saturated. I remember when I first filled a pen with Blue Nose Bear (which is partially bulletproof) I was truly dismayed. A few days later, when I picked up the pen all the bad Behaviour was gone. This goes with most if not all the other inks I have. And, I only use bulletproof/ pigmented/ iron gall inks. 

As for dry time, some of my fastest drying inks are Polar Brown/ Green, General of the Armies and Kung Te-Cheng and El Lawrence. 

Yet I concede using some of these inks in wide/ wet combination isn't the best idea. 

Baystate Blue bleeds through any paper with a vengeance with my medium nib

 

 

While a saturated feed may be a little heavier, IME, all these inks retained their behavior after that, and the saturated feed represents a very significant portion of the writing experience, because my pens will continue to have such a feed for roughly half of the time before the next fill. I've filled notebooks with 54th Mass. for instance, and it has been consistent in its poor behavior from EF nibs to broader. 

 

The sole exception for blue-ish inks is KTC, which I think behaved the best out of the bunch, but even so, was only closer to well-behaved, and not really what I would call well-behaved on paper. 

 

Now, Noodler's Black is a totally different animal, and was extremely well behaved on paper in general, even if it looked terrible. :-) 

 

I've also not been testing a wide variety of Noodler's other colors besides black and blue, since those are the only colors that I'm very interested in from Noodler's. 

[yazeh]

9 hours ago, arcfide said:

 

While a saturated feed may be a little heavier, IME, all these inks retained their behavior after that, and the saturated feed represents a very significant portion of the writing experience, because my pens will continue to have such a feed for roughly half of the time before the next fill. I've filled notebooks with 54th Mass. for instance, and it has been consistent in its poor behavior from EF nibs to broader. 

 

Thank you for expanding on your experience. 👍 

It is enlightening how an ink's bad behaviour is acceptable for one and not for another.

You might want to look at El Lawrence then. It's quite well behaved. One of my many favourites is General of the Armies. Though I'm not sure if you would like it. It's a chameleon of ink, it writes blue, dry to sea glass and overtime turns back into a blue green. A fascinating ink with broad nibs.... 

[arcfide]

9 hours ago, yazeh said:

Thank you for expanding on your experience. 👍 

It is enlightening how an ink's bad behaviour is acceptable for one and not for another.

You might want to look at El Lawrence then. It's quite well behaved. One of my many favourites is General of the Armies. Though I'm not sure if you would like it. It's a chameleon of ink, it writes blue, dry to sea glass and overtime turns back into a blue green. A fascinating ink with broad nibs.... 

 

Thanks for the suggestions! I took a look, but I'm pretty sure they're not for me. I'm more of an indigo/royal blue sort of person, and if a blue is going to lean in any direction, I prefer it to lean red than green. And I don't like the warm browns anymore. Montblanc Sepia used to be a favorite of mine, but now I'm much more on the cool tone train. 

[ENIAC]

On 2/13/2021 at 4:06 PM, BigBlot said:

This raises the question of what is a good blue and blue black fountain pen ink that will resist fading? For blue-black, Noodler's 54th Massachussets comes to mind, but nothing for blue. Any suggestions?

Based solely on those requirements, I'd recommend Noodler's 19006 Midnight Blue, 19014 Blue-Black, 19040 AirCorp, and 19038 Navy.  You can see them here along with other "flavors" in the blue family.  I own them all, purchased more than a decade ago, and the writing I did with them back then still looks new.  They work in every pen I've tried them in, though in the vintage ones -- back when feed technology was relatively crude -- they can tend to overload.  In modern pens, flawless performance, instant starting, zero clogging even after weeks of non-use, and all that good stuff.

 

If the saturation is too much for you, all those inks "take water" really well and will still run reliably.

[SeeksAdvice]

IG isn't the end all be all.  When my father died, I used R&K Salix to make labels for ammunition and firearms that were stored in a vault for months.  When the vault was opened, the Salix had faded to a very, very pale grey. 

 

Diamine Registrar's Ink claims to be the standard for certain documents across the pond.  While it doesn't fade in complete darkness like Salix, I'm not 100% convinced that it is all that durable.

 

Pigmented inks have also been around a rather long time.  While I can't stand the color of Souboku it looks to be pretty durable.  Seiboku is much more interesting that Souboku.  Platinum pigmented blue also seems to be pretty durable. 

With regard to Noodler's products... I'm American, but I'd put more faith in the "permanent" inks from DeA and R&K than Noodler's.  Love GvFC ink behavior and own five colors, but it's terribly susceptible to water attack despite claiming to be indelible and ISO compliant.

 

 

[fiberdrunk]

I like Noodler's Bad Blue Heron for a permanent nearly fade-proof ink.  Hudson Valley Sketches did light-fastness tests on Noodler's ink here (scroll down to the blue colors).  Polar Blue and Luxury Blue did well, too.  Scroll down for other brands as well.  Platinum Pigmented Blue and Sailor Blue did pretty well.  I only have experience, myself, with Bad Blue Heron.  I'm a permanence nut because I do stuff for genealogy and want documents to last.

 

I did a 6-month light-fastness test on several iron gall inks several years ago.  I made two written samples (one was kept indoors in the dark, the other was placed in a sunny window).  Some are commercial fountain pen iron gall inks and the others are homemade iron gall inks (the Chesterfield Archival Vault was rebranded Diamine Registrars Ink).  The homemade ones had the full gallo-tannic acid, which makes them more permanent than the commercial safe-for-fountain pen ones.  The Dr. Stark iron gall recipe and Pharmacist's Urkundentinte were the most permanent of all of the iron gall inks.

 

I hope to do more light-fastness tests this summer.  I have a solar oven now and I'll really be able to give them a good torture test, but I'll wait until the sun is at its highest.  If you really want to find the most permanent inks, it's always a good idea to perform these tests yourself, and on the paper you will most likely be using them on.  Paper is part of the permanence equation, too.  (And always remember to store your documents away from bright light, heat and humidity.)

 

 

Indoor copy

 

 

 

 

Sunny copy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dan in montreal]

On 2/16/2021 at 1:26 AM, Jerome Tarshis said:

Everybody who has posted so far appears to be thinking about inks. I think about paper. That has changed. I have had ordinary student notebooks from the 1970s and earlier in which writing done in blue ink has not faded. Beginning in the 1980s, possibly at some point in the 1970s, that ceased to be true. I am not one bit surprised to learn that blue writing from the 1980s has begun to fade. Ink has changed, but the paper is another consideration. I suspect that even today the right paper, and it wouldn't be the cheapest or most ordinary, would help ink resist fading rather than actually promote fading.

Just read through the whole thread and this has not been discusssed further. Paper - fibers used, chemicals used, acidity, they should be taken into account. I would have to scrounge around my basement to find some old notebooks from the eighties, but the last time I ran across them, there was a marked difference in fading depending on the quality of the paper - and I know this because for the longest time the only ink I used was Quink black. This was before PR, Noodler's and everything that came after. The school stuff had faded writing and the better stuff (most "better' quality books I used were purchased at various art supply stores) fared much better.  Bookbinders and artists attach the utmost importance to the quality of the paper they use, whereas we are more concerned with ink. That's interesting.