Journal with non eternal inks?

[xTurtleToex]

Hello,

I see a lot of inks and colors that I really think I would enjoy. However, 90% of what I use my FP for is journals that I want to have many years from. Hopefully until the day I die which I hope is years from now 🙏 😃

 

I only use eternal inks, noodlers, carbon platinum, a few others. All are waterproof and or archival. I guess I don't understand why I, anyone, would want to use inks that aren't going to last or wash away.

 

That leads to my question.... how good are non "eternal" inks? When it says non-waterproof will it actually just wash away or become completely illegible? If I splash or dunk it in water will I lose the writing, or will it just become super light?

 

Not worried to much about lighfastness because it enclosed in a journal. Wont see much light while storing.

 

I guess I'm hoping for, and looking for, reasons that would make it ok to use fantastic colors in my journal.

 

I guess my biggest fears would be if for some reason my journals were introduced to water or moisture. Or if the ink just fades away after time.

 

Any thoughts or help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[Horseflesh]

16 minutes ago, xTurtleToex said:

I guess I don't understand why I, anyone, would want to use inks that aren't going to last or wash away.

 

I rarely hand write anything that needs to last. I actually don't like finding old writings! It's like looking into the life of a different person. We just want different things. 

 

Lots of ink reviews seem to cover water resistance. You can probably find some inks that would keep your writing legible if soaked. 

 

Have you considered scanning your writings and saving images somewhere? With care, digital records can last a long time. This would also protect you from fire and other total losses. 

 

Fun inks makes my normal trivial grocery list writing a lot more fun, so I hope you can find a way to have it all. 

 

 

[IThinkIHaveAProblem]

Wrt water fastness, many people have done water tests

 

this was the first hit when i googled “fountainpennetwork.com water test”

also, most ink reviews contain some sort of water test

 

I can only recall people discussing one ink changing colour/fading in a closed book… i think it was either waterman bb/mysterious blue or Parker bb… iirc it was fading significantly and turning greenish…

[upupup]

FWIW, below is what's left of Parker Quink Blue-Black ink after being immersed in plain tap water.

 

[Tony1951]

I completely agree with your concerns about non water fast inks. If you value what you write, it seems to me you would want to avoid the almost instant destruction that I think probably the majority of fountain pen inks offer when water comes in contact with them. Recently, I opened an ancient suitcase in the garage which contained some documents from fifty two years ago when I was a student. They were written in a nice blue fountain pen ink and although browned around the edges of the pages from age, the writing inside was perfect. I tested the waterproofness of the ink by dipping a qtip / ear bud in water and touching it to one character of an account book which I had used in 1970 to keep records of my expenditure. The character I touched immediately dissolved into a smudged blue patch and disappeared. It was abhorrent that even this pointless bit of now superfluous record keeping was so vulnerable to the smallest exposure to water.

 

I have been experimenting with home made iron-gall inks for the same reason you have mentioned and I have a very good one called Registrar's Ink which is made by Diamine. That one is utterly bomb proof, It turns a hard deep back when wet, although it has a blue black look when new. It is supposed to be guaranteed to last at least a century, but I'd say in reasonable conditions it will last longer - hundreds of years probably. My own earlier attempts with tannin/iron sulphate inks have turned brown since early July this year  only four months and they have faded quite a lot. My newer versions are using gallo-tannic acid made by fermenting tannin with natural mould. They are much blacker and more permanent looking than my original and are more in line with the authentic recipes for making Iron -gall inks.

[xTurtleToex]

11 minutes ago, IThinkIHaveAProblem said:

Wrt water fastness, many people have done water tests

 

this was the first hit when i googled “fountainpennetwork.com water test”

also, most ink reviews contain some sort of water test

 

I can only recall people discussing one ink changing colour/fading in a closed book… i think it was either waterman bb/mysterious blue or Parker bb… iirc it was fading significantly and turning greenish…

Ok, thanks. I'll see what I can find with water tests.

[Tony1951]

6 minutes ago, upupup said:

FWIW, below is what's left of Parker Quink Blue-Black ink after being immersed in plain tap water.

 

 

I've done some tests with Parker Quink blue black and black. I had the same experience - on harder, sized paper which keeps the Quink on top, the writing will vanish in seconds, but if the paper is more absorbent, it fades badly but can remain a while under water and still be readable, presumably because the dye based ink has sunk inside the paper and is somewhat protected. I thought the Parker claim that the ink is 'permanent black' is pretty dubious. It isn't permanent around water - on an envelope posted in a damp climate it might be utterly hopeless.

[Karmachanic]

36 minutes ago, xTurtleToex said:

Not worried to much about lighfastness

 

But you're worried about those same words written on those pages "washing away".  How does that work?

 

There's no eternal anything in this world.

[LizEF]

I would worry about the paper before the ink, but that said, there are lots of newer companies coming out with pigmented inks in bright colors these days.  Check out Kala, Kakimori, and Rohrer & Klingner sketchINKs, for example.

[LizEF]

5 minutes ago, Tony1951 said:

I thought the Parker claim that the ink is 'permanent black' is pretty dubious.

Apparently, the "washable" inks come out of clothing.  The "permanent" inks don't wash out of clothes.  Has nothing to do with the ink on paper - or so I've heard.

[A Smug Dill]

50 minutes ago, xTurtleToex said:

That leads to my question.... how good are non "eternal" inks? When it says non-waterproof will it actually just wash away or become completely illegible? If I splash or dunk it in water will I lose the writing, or will it just become super light?

 

Firstly, “eternal” means absolutely nothing outside of one particular ink manufacturer's marketing terminology; it's even less recognised by the industry than “#6” as a nib size (when not even Bock terms its nibs thus, never mind all the own-branded nib manufacturers in China and Japan; and Aurora and Pelikan don't recognise that size designation either) or “international standard” as an ink converter geometry specification (which doesn't exist, as far as I know). So, effectively all inks that are not Noodler's are non-“eternal”, irrespective of whether it meets the requirements of, say, ISO standard 11798 or 12757-2 or 14145-2 for inks suitable for documentary use.

 

Secondly, if “waterproof” means water has effectively no effect on the ink marks (i.e. no change in colour or intensity, and no run-off) after they're dried, then even many pigment inks will fail that criteria; but I daresay all of them will remain legible, provided that the surrounding area on the page is not so stained by the run-off colour that you cannot make out from it the dark marks that remain.

 

1 hour ago, xTurtleToex said:

Not worried to much about lighfastness because it enclosed in a journal. Wont see much light while storing.

 

I guess I'm hoping for, and looking for, reasons that would make it ok to use fantastic colors in my journal.

 

Store your enclosed journals in a waterproof bag or case, then. Problem solved.

 

If you drop your journal into the bath or swimming pool, and leave it for an hour or longer before fishing it back out, the run-off colours from adjacent pages will make a complete mess of your written content anyway, and when you try to peel the pages away from each other they'll probably tear and/or disintegrate.

 

[arcfide]

The vast majority of fountain pen history was written with water-soluble inks. Much of these original writings are technically vulnerable to water. However, provided that you adequately store and protect those documents, many inks are environmentally stable enough to last a long time without degredation through time. Water and sunlight have been the bane of paper records since their existence, and that's even accounting for the traditional use of soot-based pigment inks and iron gall inks. Neither of these are really solutions to real archival qualities. 

 

However, the modern fear around longevity of inks is, in part, a psychological trick of advertising. The reality is that most inks will easily last your lifetime if properly stored. Yes, you could destroy them with water, but if kept in a proper location, dry, and away from the sun, the majority of inks will last a long time. Even so, there *are* some inks which inherently fade over time, and those aren't suitable for your purposes, but just because an ink is water soluble doesn't mean you won't get many decades of longevity from it under proper storage conditions. 

 

Where the really archival inks come into play is forgery and *very* long term storage, across generations. If you need your financial, legal, or archeological records to last under display conditions for generations, well, that's going to require something very different. 

 

Even with all of that, if you expose iron gall ink to water or light, or worse, both, they *will* degrade over time. The same goes for the paper. This is a big one. If you have paper that you dunk in water, even if you can read what is written on that paper, you have likely compromised the chemical structure of the paper and increased the speed of its aging. Unless you are taking care to pick only the highest quality paper, you'll run the risk of losing your work in 100 years anyways. Of course, keep in mind that if you're only worried about 50 years or so, chances are that many modern acid-free papers will be fine. Even 25 years or the like is an easy mark for most papers these days, except the most acidic ones, which are rather rare these days. 

 

Even in times past, pigmented inks would wash away and iron gall inks could fade with light. You really couldn't have an ideal solution. Noodler's Eternal inks can cause a weakened bond with the substrate, leading to ink and paper flaking off under certain conditions. 

 

If you are willing to pair up paper and ink and storage together, then using the best pigmented inks using the best pigments and very sturdy, thick, and archival quality paper stored under ideal conditions is the best way to get your writing to last. Outside of that, Iron Gall inks are all quite permanent, even if modern fountain pen varieties will tend to fade a little from their original brilliance, and a large number of inks will stay highly legible on good paper in notebooks for many decades. 

 

Case in point, Waterman inks are some of the more fungible ones, being very low maintenance and water soluble. However, I have books filled with Watermain Serenity Blue and Intense Black (older formulations) that are 20 years old, and while the blue isn't quite as vibrant as when you first write with it, the writing is all quite legible and clear and not even to the point where you could call it "faded" beyond the color of a Pelikan washable blue. That's in a cheap-o notebook that I picked up from a big box stationery store decades ago. I have a cheap legal pad (white paper) that I wrote a bunch of notes on in Waterman Black around the same time and the writing looks as good today as it did then. I happen to know from UV tests and water tests that these are inks which aren't nearly as permanent as many other standard dye-based inks, yet they are holding up just fine. 

 

Yes, if you expose them to harsh environmental conditions they will decay. So will the paper underneath. But from a purely objective standpoint, most of these inks are more than fit for the purpose and longevity that most people *need*. Now, what people *want* is an entirely different thing. 

 

Even so, the more interesting and crazy you go with colors outside of your standard ranges, the more likely you are to run afoul of inks that *do* fade over time. Subtle shading reds, multi-chromatic oranges, vibrant greens, delicate blues, etc. are all inks that I would have less faith in than a standard traditional dye-based black ink or even the fade-prone IG's like Salix. Yet, the standard colors like Tsuki-yo or Asa-gao, premium but typical dyes, have surprisingly good UV resistance, and if you don't get them wet, this probably indicates that they will last a long time in a closed notebook. 

 

The vast majority of my most used inks are ones that I like in no small part because of their more permanent nature (I use a lot of dye-based black inks precisely because they are low maintenance but more inherently durable), and I love the IG line from Platinum. I also tend to almost exclusively use relatively high quality paper that is very buffered and acid-free, if not 100% cotton or partially cotton. I love doing water tests and seeing how different inks perform. But if I look at the objective measures of performance, even my most fugitive inks that I use, such as Parker or Waterman, have more than adequately served my objective needs over the decades of writing with fountain pens. Everything else is just because I like imagining my silly lists and to do items living on into the next century or two, but I don't really need that. 

 

And I'll grant, there's something perversely enjoyable about scribbling the most useless drivel like some math equations or napkin sketches on archival paper with Platinum Carbon ink, knowing that in theory, that paper could find its way into some strange future almost completely unchanged. 

 

If you are worried about the longevity of your journals, you'd probably be literally better served by purchasing good burn/safety boxes that are airtight, sealed, and fire resistant, and then store your finished journals in those boxes. That's the best way to actually keep them protected if you want them to really last, because then you protect the paper as well as the ink. 

[txomsy]

This one went through a washing cycle in the washing machine.

 

 

I guess you can tell what was written in waterproof ink and what wasn't.

 

Hope it helps illustrate what may happen.

 

It all depends on how do you treat your notebooks. This one was an A7 I carried in my pocket and forgot before doing the laundry. But I have had similar effects under heavy tropical rain or if a notebook fell off into water. Some pages would become unreadable.

 

So, I tend to prefer waterproof inks for everything. Just as you do.

 

But, I do also keep some notes I took during my University years in the early 80s, using non-waterproof ink. They are still pretty readable and even some I took in loose leaves and kept all this time exposed to light haven't faded yet to the point of illegibility. But those never suffered accidents. And notebooks that have been used and cared, are still readable (whereas the fluorescent marker has faded to a large extent).

 

I.e. it all depends on what you expect. If they will be well taken care of, then there should not be great concern with using other inks, they may fade a bit but otherwise last a very long time. Some inks may last longer than others. Reviews may help, but the problem is the only way to know would be if someone waited this long. And after so much time most makers have changed ink formulations, so it may not apply.

 

Expect the unexpected.

 

Maybe one day in a house move there will be an accident, or the neighbor upstairs will have a leak...

 

So, in the end it is a gamble: no way to know how modern inks will behave until decades have past, but one may expect them to survive pretty well if well taken care of (not much is needed, actually, just to avoid spills). If you want to make totally sure, go for waterproof. Noodler's has a nice range of colors, but so do other makers. In the worst case, the color will disappear but the remains will still be legible. If you do not mind taking a risk in exchange for a colorful life, then do go ahead and enjoy your life, your  notes and the wealth of colors currently available.

 

For me it was a no-brainer, because at the time the only choice was just black, blue-black, blue, red and green. Not much to sacrifice. Now, you have much more fun to enjoy. It is all up to you to balance a life of fun with the risk of losing some notes.

[Tony1951]

I'm just glad that stuff like Pepys's diaries survived, not to mention many manuscripts from people like Jane Austen, and countless others. Of course, vast amounts of writing didn't make it; mostly because people clearing out the houses of deceased relatives threw them away, or burned them -sometimes because they were too 'spicey' - this, to the great detriment of academic understanding of individuals in the past. I expect that being thrown in the skip will be the fate of most of my writing. It's funny really, that such insignificant individuals as myself have any thought at all about whether people will read what they wrote in the future, but why write it if you don't think that they might?

 

Interesting detail in some of the posts here and good advice. I enjoyed reading the various informative contributions. Thanks to all for making them.

[Bristol24]

I used nanopartical inks (Hero 231 Carbon Black mostly) in our boat's log book for many years.  The occasional drop of seawater never phased it but ultimately I transitioned to iron gall (KWZ IG Blue #1 or Hero 232) primarily because nanopartical inks require even more fastidious pen care than iron gall inks.  As mentioned already, the dye element in some iron gall inks, if splashed with water, may create a slight color wash but hardly enough to be anything more than noticeable.  In business I keep a handwritten daily journal that goes with me everywhere.  I only use inks that I know will not let me down should the journal meet with some catastrophe.  Typically the ink is either Hero 232, a KWZ iron gall or an R&k iron gall.

 

Cliff

[Ink Stained Wretch]

8 hours ago, Tony1951 said:

I'm just glad that stuff like Pepys's diaries survived, not to mention many manuscripts from people like Jane Austen, and countless others. Of course, vast amounts of writing didn't make it; mostly because people clearing out the houses of deceased relatives threw them away, or burned them -sometimes because they were too 'spicey' - this, to the great detriment of academic understanding of individuals in the past. ....

 

Brings to mind Isabel Burton, wife of the explorer, writer and translator Richard Burton (1821–1890) who burned his journals, manuscripts and notebooks after his death. A lot of what she burned had been getting prepared for publication by him before he died. She also violated his desires after his death in other ways, which I won't get into here.

 

Isabel Burton is not my favorite person in history 😠.

[Tony1951]

1 hour ago, Ink Stained Wretch said:

 

Brings to mind Isabel Burton, wife of the explorer, writer and translator Richard Burton (1821–1890) who burned his journals, manuscripts and notebooks after his death. A lot of what she burned had been getting prepared for publication by him before he died. She also violated his desires after his death in other ways, which I won't get into here.

 

Isabel Burton is not my favorite person in history 😠.

You can hardly credit that anyone would do such a thing as that. We will never know why she would do it. The motivation can often be embarrassment, or shame at revelations.

 

One of Queen Victoria's daughters, Beatrice,  burned a large amount of her journals and writings because (it is now thought) that  the Queen, widowed at the age of forty,  had revealed information about emotional attachments to her husband and after his death, with two servants - one John Brown who had been her groom and took her riding every day, and the other, an Indian servant, Abdul Karim who she called her Munshi. He taught her to speak Hindustani and Urdu. Beatrice expurgated large amounts of Queen Victoria's writings by copying out the parts that she felt were not controversial or embarrassing and destroyed the originals. 

[Ink Stained Wretch]

Yes. it is unfortunately not that rare a behavior 😞.

[inkstainedruth]

My mom used to be friend with an SF author who shall remain nameless, and they were penpals for a few years.  When the guy had major health issues, another writer and his wife moved to where the guy lived to take care of him, until the guy turned on them (he had nothing remotely good to say about his ex-wife, either, apparently).  

My mom made the mistake once of writing to the guy and saying "People have accused you of being paranoid -- but that means you have imaginary enemies.  And you have a very REAL one -- the one who looks out of your shaving mirror every morning...."  And he turned on HER, then.  She had my dad burn all the correspondence from the guy in the fireplace, because she didn't want to people coming across the letters after she died and saw what horrible things he'd said about people....

So sometimes there's a reason for NOT letting stuff like diaries be made public (especially after the death of the author, if it's a famous or relatively famous person).  

As for me?  My morning pages journals are MY writing, and if after I'm gone the "wrong" people get their hands on them?  Oh well....  And by "wrong" people I mean the people I rant about at times.  If they don't like what I've said about them?  That's on THEM, not me....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Checklist]

On 11/20/2022 at 1:30 AM, Ink Stained Wretch said:

Yes. it is unfortunately not that rare a behavior 😞.

 

If I remember right, Martha burned most or all of George Washington's letters on his death, too.