Invasion of the nib & feed snatchers?

[Ink Stained Wretch]

The subject refers to a great science fiction movie from 1956  about fungus-like space aliens that take over human beings. I'm wondering if something similar has gotten ahold of one of my fountain pens, although they may not be from some distant planet.

 

I finally got around to deciding to clean a fountain pen that I had stopped using months ago, quite a few months ago. So I pop off the cap and I see some very thin, filamentary, things sticking out from the nib slit and the tip of the stainless steel nib 🤢. Oh boy, they look fungal to me.

 

I figured to photograph this sight and ask if anyone here on FPN might be familiar with it. I'm not 100% sure that what I was seeing was a fungus. It might be something else. So I put the pen on the kitchen table, turned on some extra lights so I could get a good closeup of it, and went to get the camera and a 10x loupe to make what was happening really visible. That took maybe three or four minutes. When I got back to the kitchen table the filaments were no longer sticking up from the nib slit, and only a tiny filament sticking out from the tip of the nib. Some filaments were laying flat on the top of the nib. I'm not sure what had happened to whatever it was to make it partly disappear and partly just lay down instead of sticking up. I'm wondering if the lights wrecked whatever it was. I also don't know for sure if what I saw was anything that was growing.

 

Can anyone suggest some alternative to a fungus that would look like what I've described?

 

The pen parts are soaking in a pretty concentrated dish detergent solution. I plan to start soaking them in some neat household ammonia soon. Fungi and their spores are notoriously hardy. Anyone have any suggestions for further treatments of the  nib, feed and section? I suppose that I should also treat the cap.

 

I did think of just tossing the pen, but I can't bring myself to give it up without a fight 😠.

[amberleadavis]

Oh my gosh this is scary. Nib crud can creep up like those crystals or rock candy. But it sounds like this was something different. I hope to see the pictures.

 

 

Do you have any bioside?

[Ink Stained Wretch]

4 hours ago, amberleadavis said:

Oh my gosh this is scary. Nib crud can creep up like those crystals or rock candy. But it sounds like this was something different. I hope to see the pictures.

 

Unfortunately, there won't be any pictures. It all disintegrated before I could get any. Y'know, saying that right now, I'm wondering if it's possible that the filaments retracted into the nib slit when they were stressed by the light. Sounds weird, but I wonder.

 

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Do you have any bioside?

 

Ammonia will be hitting the pen parts as soon as their soak in the dish detergent is done, which I think will be in about 12 hours or so. I'm actually wondering about maybe using isopropyl alcohol on it all after that, even though everyone says to never use it on pens 🤞.

[InesF]

Hi @Ink Stained Wretch.

That may had been some fungi which had spread out in the dark and damp environment and collapsed when they were exposed to dry air. Such hyphae may look hairy and voluminous at first, but the total amount of material is very low. So when they collapse, you may see next to nothing, even it they are still there.

 

Give it a very good rinse! If your pen can withstand, putting it in ca. 50-60°C hot water for 10-15 minutes may kill everything. You need to know your pen! If not possible, a bath in acetic acid (the usual ca. 3% you use for salad dressing) for ca. 1-2 hours may help as well. But whatever you do, first rinse your pen carefully!

 

NEVER EVER use any sort of alcohol, acetone or similar solvents with your pen!

[FarmBoy]

I would avoid soaking gold alloy components in ammonia. 

[Bo Bo Olson]

Nightmare, and not even an Elm Street near by.

[Ink Stained Wretch]

9 hours ago, InesF said:

Hi @Ink Stained Wretch.

That may had been some fungi which had spread out in the dark and damp environment and collapsed when they were exposed to dry air. Such hyphae may look hairy and voluminous at first, but the total amount of material is very low. So when they collapse, you may see next to nothing, even it they are still there.

Give it a very good rinse! If your pen can withstand, putting it in ca. 50-60°C hot water for 10-15 minutes may kill everything.

 

I'm not sure the pen would survive that treatment. I can certainly boil water, but I don't have a way to measure its temperature to tell when it's gotten down to 140° F. The pen parts are currently in a cold water soak with a lot of dish detergent. Our hot water from the tap barely gets over about 105° F. most of the time. Wouldn't hurt to soak it in that for a while, I suppose.

 

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If not possible, a bath in acetic acid (the usual ca. 3% you use for salad dressing) for ca. 1-2 hours may help as well.

 

Yeah, we have enough of that. I'll add it to the list of things that I'll throw at the problem.

 

Quote

NEVER EVER use any sort of alcohol, acetone or similar solvents with your pen!

 

Yeah, I know that advice, but things are desperate enough that I may disregard it. I think I'd only expose the pen parts to alcohol for a short time, and after all other treatments, in the hope to knock out whatever it was while it's min a weakened condition. I'm hoping that spores didn't proliferate before I got the writing parts under water. I still have the cap to deal with. It and the barrel, which probably didn't have any contamination, are in a sealed, glass jar. I'm thinking about how I could use that to decontaminate everything all at once.

 

That fountain pen had not been writing well before I set it aside. Now I'm wondering if it had already gotten infected with a fungus when I was using it and if that may have been what made it have ink flow issues .

 

Thank you for your suggestions.

[Ink Stained Wretch]

3 hours ago, FarmBoy said:

I would avoid soaking gold alloy components in ammonia. 

Luckily, there's no gold involved, only stainless steel, plastic and maybe some rubber. That last gives me pause on some treatments, but I figure that a pen in need of repair is better than a pen that's spreading fungal spores 😧.

[kestrel]

Fungal hyphae are filaments only one cell thick and many of them are susceptible to drying and appearing to disappear.  Phenol makes a pretty good biocide and it will kill fungi.  Somewhere around here I have instructions for using it safely that I will try to dig out and post. 

I saw the same thing on an Estie SJ a while back and the phenol killed the fungus without damaging the pen.

[dipper]

Can a moldy pen be cleaned out in the same way that any other "debris" would be removed? I am thinking of paper fibres, dust, fluff, dried ink dyes, encrusted dried pigment, etc. That is all stuff that will interfere with the functioning of the pen.

 

As far as I am aware, the one special danger that mold carries is that a few spores in an ink bottle can in theory multiply and ruin the ink. But even that risk requires that the fungicides present in the ink are rendered ineffective somehow.

Every time we unscrew the cap on a bottle of ink that exposure creates an opportunity for airborne fungal spores to enter the bottle. Such spores are floating in the air around us all the time. (Evidenced by how little spots of mold will appear on a slice of bread in a matter of days if left open to the air and kept moist.)

 

There is a condition termed mycophobia. That is an irrational fear or fungi and mold.

I sometimes have a fridge-full of fungal delights. Blue Cheeses, Soft Brie Cheese, Grapes dusted with hazy mold, Salami sausage, Mushrooms, Truffles .... 🤗🤗🤗. 

 

Despite being a fungus lover, if mold grows in the wrong places then I do stomp on it.

I prevent mold from regrowing by eliminating one of its key needs - moisture.

All pens are thoroughly dried before going into storage. If there is any doubt, then the pen is stored with the cap off for a week or two so all internal parts are dry. (Demonstrator pens are excellent guides for how long it takes for every speck of moisture to disappear from inside a pen, in your climate.)

 

The one thing we cannot store "dry" is ink. In the past 40 years I have had just one bottle of moldy ink, perhaps 20 years ago. That was a viscous dense pigmented calligraphy ink used with a dip pen. The cap was left off the bottle for long periods when dipping, and eventually some lucky spores found their way into a nice moist home. So that was a minor inconvenience. Not a matter requiring any special decontamination measures though. Washed out the glass bottle with hot water and detergent. No more mold seen since.

 

[FarmBoy]

Soap and water. 
 

[Ink Stained Wretch]

23 hours ago, kestrel said:

Fungal hyphae are filaments only one cell thick and many of them are susceptible to drying and appearing to disappear.  Phenol makes a pretty good biocide and it will kill fungi.  Somewhere around here I have instructions for using it safely that I will try to dig out and post. 

I saw the same thing on an Estie SJ a while back and the phenol killed the fungus without damaging the pen.

 

Great, thanks. Days before I found the fungus on the nib I'd seen some phenol for sale. I need to find that link now. I have to consider that if there's one infection there may be more that I don't know about yet.

[kestrel]

14 minutes ago, Ink Stained Wretch said:

 

Great, thanks. Days before I found the fungus on the nib I'd seen some phenol for sale. I need to find that link now. I have to consider that if there's one infection there may be more that I don't know about yet.

Read the MSDS carefully before use.  In smaller concentrations it isn't a problem (I smell it in some of my inks.) but some of the commercially available stuff is so concentrated that it can cause respiratory distress.

[Arkanabar]

In a microbiology class I once took, we dropped a little disc of blotting paper soaked with dish detergent solution onto several bacterial cultures.  It was a surprisingly effective disinfectant, even without scrubbing.

[Ink Stained Wretch]

3 hours ago, kestrel said:

Read the MSDS carefully before use.  In smaller concentrations it isn't a problem (I smell it in some of my inks.) but some of the commercially available stuff is so concentrated that it can cause respiratory distress.

 

Yes, I know that it can be hazardous stuff. That's part of why I didn't grab some right away. I'm still hesitant to get some, even though it might be beneficial to my inks and pens.

[Anne-Sophie]

On 1/30/2023 at 3:03 AM, InesF said:

Hi @Ink Stained Wretch.

That may had been some fungi which had spread out in the dark and damp environment and collapsed when they were exposed to dry air. Such hyphae may look hairy and voluminous at first, but the total amount of material is very low. So when they collapse, you may see next to nothing, even it they are still there.

 

Give it a very good rinse! If your pen can withstand, putting it in ca. 50-60°C hot water for 10-15 minutes may kill everything. You need to know your pen! If not possible, a bath in acetic acid (the usual ca. 3% you use for salad dressing) for ca. 1-2 hours may help as well. But whatever you do, first rinse your pen carefully!

 

NEVER EVER use any sort of alcohol, acetone or similar solvents with your pen!

 

Thanks so much InesF!

[Anne-Sophie]

On 1/31/2023 at 10:42 PM, Arkanabar said:

In a microbiology class I once took, we dropped a little disc of blotting paper soaked with dish detergent solution onto several bacterial cultures.  It was a surprisingly effective disinfectant, even without scrubbing.

 

That's what I'll use Arkanabar. Thank you for the great info.

[Anne-Sophie]

 

After many, many years, decades in this forum and even more decades of fountain pen use.

 

Stuff in an almost finished bottle of ink, a couple of refills ago and... today grey stuff in the container used to clean 2 sections and one converter.

 

I switched container to a clean one but I think, I am going to add dish soap to that container too.

 

Those are containers not used for the main refilling setup, luckily, they are even in another room, but I brought them to the main refilling area. 

 

Which is, anyhow, always covered with layers of dish and microfiber cleaning cloths, assigned exclusively to filling sessions times.

 

Panic set in and luckily, well not for the OP, I found this thread.

 

 

[kestrel]

The antibacterial chemicals in detergents don't work on fungi.  Bacteria and fungi are made of completely different types of cells with radically different metabolic processes.  Antibiotics (and antibacterial chemicals) interfere with those metabolic reactions that are unique to prokaryotic cells (bacteria) without harming eukaryotic cells (every living thing except bacteria including fungi and mammals like us) which is why penicillin does a fantastic job of killing bacteria without killing the human who takes the stuff (usually).  This is also why a lot of antifungal chemicals can do nasty things to human cells. 

Ron Zorn recommends Shaklee Basic G to kill fungi.  The stuff isn't cheap but it works.

[Ink Stained Wretch]

7 hours ago, kestrel said:

The antibacterial chemicals in detergents don't work on fungi.  Bacteria and fungi are made of completely different types of cells with radically different metabolic processes.  Antibiotics (and antibacterial chemicals) interfere with those metabolic reactions that are unique to prokaryotic cells (bacteria) without harming eukaryotic cells (every living thing except bacteria including fungi and mammals like us) which is why penicillin does a fantastic job of killing bacteria without killing the human who takes the stuff (usually).  This is also why a lot of antifungal chemicals can do nasty things to human cells. 

Ron Zorn recommends Shaklee Basic G to kill fungi.  The stuff isn't cheap but it works.

 

Yes, fungi are much more robust than bacteria. They're multi-celled living things and they are very adaptable and tough 💪 . But dish detergent should have some effect on them, especially if they're not on something that they can actually gain nourishment from. I've given the pen pieces another shot of dish detergent; there's quite a bit of it in the cleaning-shot-glass with them now. I will get some household ammonia on it all soon and I have not yet ruled out buying some phenol. I figure that I can pour some almost boiling water over the nib, and that should kill off any fungus after the other treatments. I'm not sure about the feed and I'm really hesitant to put such hot water on the section. I'll fight 'em 👾!

 

BTW, that Shaklee isn't the same company that had people selling so-called vitamins and dietary supplements many years ago, is it?