Water resistance of some iron gall inks, some Herbins, Diamines & others

May 27, 2021

Trying the water resistance of a few inks that use regularly and a few others I happened to have on hand.

I used Southworth 25% cotton paper, wrote everything out (some with a dip pen awkwardly angled into small bottles, so it's not all with the same pen) and took the "before" photos. Waited 12 hours, and then soaked the paper in water for over an hour, removed and (mostly) dried it and took the "after" photos.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Observations:

- First, in general the inks seem to have survived on this 25% cotton paper better than I've seen with certain other papers (like Southworth's 'parchment'-finished paper). So perhaps not a bad choice for paper.
- The Krishna Dark Chocolate and Herbin Poussière de Lune seem to have had the worse water resistance, followed by Diamine Majestic Blue (actually, I expected Majestic Blue to be completely gone, so I'm impressed by the paper that as much survived as it did).
- The KWZ Iron Gall inks overall don't seem particularly water resistant. Note that most of them don't seem particularly clearer than the Diamine Ancient Copper and worse than some of the non-iron gall inks. The Red no. 3 seems to have survived the best and even has a bit of red left in it. I imagine their original Blue-Black is much better, but I don't have any on hand.
- The Herbin inks, for the most part, did really, really well. Not the Poussière de Lune, obviously. But even the Cacao du Brésil which I thought might wash away more is still really clear (it became a blueish-purple). The Lie de Thé lost all of its brown, but the dark grey which remains is fully clear and legible.
- And for the Perle Noire, pretty impressive. It developed a very, very slight 'aura'/'halo' and became a bit lighter, but was largely unaffected.
- The Rohrer & Klingner Scabiosa did well too, but became about as much lighter (it started off a bit light) as the Perle Noire did.
- The Akkerman no. 10 IJzer-galnoten blauw/zwart seems to have been completely unfazed by the leisurely water bath. I don't now about its lightfastness, but it seems to shrug off water at least.

Relevant recent discussions (water-resistance of iron gall inks):

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/351047-water-resistance-of-some-iron-gall-inks-compared/