Pilot Blue and Pilot Black behave differently. A question.

[Mangrove Jack]

I have been using Pilots "ink for fountain pens" standard Blue and standard Black for some time now and just realized that the Blue is extremely water resistant but the Black is not at all water resistant and washes off very easily.

 

Isn't this strange when they both are basically the same except for the colour ? 

 

Here they are:

 

 

 

 

 

[Mercian]

13 hours ago, Mangrove Jack said:

Isn't this strange when they both are basically the same except for the colour ? 

The difference in behaviour does not seem very strange to me…

 

The fact that the inks are different colours means that they contain different dyes. These will have different chemical properties to each other. I suspect that Pilot wanted to make sure that its black ink worked reliably in its pens, and did not cause them to e.g. clog up or corrode. Perhaps they just could not find a way to make a waterproof black ink that did not do either of those things?

 

One can get black inks that are very waterproof - the most-common ones are either made with iron-gall, or with black pigment.

Pigmented inks can clog the delicate channels inside pens, and so they require their users to exercise greater care, and to clean their pens more often.

Iron-gall inks can also cause problems such as clogging or corrosion - especially if they ever dry-out in one’s pen - and so one also needs to take greater care when using them, and to clean one’s pens more-often.

 

If one’s main market for one’s ink is e.g. high school students - or anyone else who is less likely to exercise care when using their pens - Pilot is probably wise to avoid making their black ink to be a ‘high-maintenance’ one such as pigmented or iron-gall inks. Otherwise they might be faced with lots of warranty claims to replace pens that students did not use in school holidays, and which were then ‘damaged’ by the company’s own ink.

From memory, such warranty claims were the reason why Parker stopped making its ‘Penman’ inks in the late 1990s (although I personally blame the problems on the design of their pens’ caps, rather than on the inks).

[Olya]

I have never seen that black ink bottle before.

Where is it from?

 

In Brazil there's Pilot Blue, but that is not the same Pilot Blue as the one made in Japan. It is a different colour, behaves differently and smells differently. Pilot Brazil basically licenses the name, but manufactures their own.

 

I assume this Pilot Black is in the same boat as Brazilian Pilot Blue, just which country?

[PithyProlix]

FWIW, given the shapes of the bottles as well as the labeling, the Pilot black you have looks like the one made in Thailand while the blue, Japan. I haven't tried the Thai versions nor the Japanese versions because I am not interested in those colors so I can't add much more but, also, see this: 

https://estilofilos.blogspot.com/2022/01/thai-pilot-inks.html

[AceNinja]

its not that strange.  I think its quite normal.  Lots of people think that an ink of the same series will behave the same way, no matter the colour.  I think that's a misconception.  For me I find that ink within the same series can also behaves differently.  For example I find that pelikan 4001 brilliant black is a drier ink than 4001 royal blue.  So I think what we can say is "ink from the same series will behave roughly the same way".

 

Also, given that in your photo, the Pilot Black's bottle is different from the normal standard pilot ink 30ml bottle.  So it could be slightly different manufacturing.

[Lithium466]

Pilot blue has the highest water resistance within the blue/blue-black/black Pilot inks (made in Japan). Also, and that may only be my experience, the best behavior on lesser papers. Current formula is using some cellulose reactive dyes (dyes? Stuff).

 

I like Pilot blue 😇 (even if it's a boring blue)

[Mangrove Jack]

Thank you all for the replies. Much appreciated.

I never bothered to look for the country of manufacture as I presumed that they were all made in Japan. Thanks to your replies, I found Made in Japan stamped on the side of the bottle of Blue ink and Made in Thailand stamped on the base of the Bottle containing Black ink.

 

PithyProlix, you are perfectly right 👏.

[PithyProlix]

8 minutes ago, Mangrove Jack said:

Thank you all for the replies. Much appreciated.

I never bothered to look for the country of manufacture as I presumed that they were all made in Japan. Thanks to your replies, I found Made in Japan stamped on the side of the bottle of Blue ink and Made in Thailand stamped on the base of the Bottle containing Black ink.

 

PithyProlix, you are perfectly right 👏.

 

What complicates things a bit is that I am pretty sure the Pilot ink factory in Thailand was part of Pilot Korea which, while a licensee to Pilot Japan, was a totally separate company so those two bottles of ink were likely formulated totally independent of each other. 

 

The Thai Pilot inks, which I believe are all old stock, are available here for less than USD equivalent of $1. I should have bought the Blue Black while it was still available - it looks better than the Japanese version, at least to my eyes. 

[arcfide]

It's also worth noting that there are different ways of measuring durability. Pilot Blue is known for being relatively water resistant, but it is also not particularly lightfast. On the other hand, Pilot Blue Black and Black, at least in the tests that I have seen, is reasonably lightfast (certainly not proof against UV light), especially relative to the blue. But Blue inks aren't universally bad against light, with inks from Levenger and even Pilot's own Iroshizuku line (Asa-gao, Kon-peki, and Tsuki-yo at the least) being surprisingly light resistant. 

 

 

[Mangrove Jack]

Arcfide,

Pilots Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo is one of my favourites. Had it been water resistant it would be my most used ink. I love the colour and its wetness in fine nib pens.

Glad to know that it is surprisingly light resistant. Thank you.

[Mangrove Jack]

Is this Pilot Blue Black ink Water Resistant ?

Its available in Japan, so I presume it is Japanese manufacture. 

 

[A Smug Dill]

6 minutes ago, Mangrove Jack said:

Is this Pilot Blue Black ink Water Resistant ?

 

https://mountainofink.com/blog/pilot-blue-black

[Mangrove Jack]

Thank you Dill.

[Lithium466]

I don't know why MOI put it as "low" in water resistance. In my observation

s, the blue component mostly stays in place while the black part tends to go away. It is not waterproof as you will get some smudging, but the text will likely remain readable. Maybe the smudging part is assessed? Some inks completely disappear.

 

My real life test for water resistance is tea spills or "tea humidity" at the bottom of the cups. I tend to put my cup on written pages (bad habit when my desk is cluttered, which is often), sometimes the bottom if the cup is still a bit moist, and the cup is obviously warm, which tend to render many "standard" inks unreadable where humidity was applied. More so than just water spill, for some reason (heat? Ink reaction with green tea? I shall test!).

It's also paper dependent. I'm using a noname French made notebook (70g/m2) at the moment (likely made by Clairefontaine), and it seems sensitive to water, ie not "retain" ink well when water is applied.

[arcfide]

14 hours ago, Mangrove Jack said:

Is this Pilot Blue Black ink Water Resistant ?

Its available in Japan, so I presume it is Japanese manufacture. 

 

I would classify it as water resistant, but not highly water resistant. As noted above, the darker components will wash out and the light blue will be left. If you have Pilot Blue, imagine if you mixed that with a black ink (just a little) and then you washed that black ink back out with water. That's sort of what I imagine is happening with Pilot Blue Black. The result is that it's not quite as solid and bright a line as you would get with straight PIlot Blue, but it's not bad. I think JetPens has a good comparison between Pilot Blue, Blue Black, and Black ink in terms of water resistance, and I find that reasonably accurate.

[OCArt]

Here is my water test of a few Pilot inks. The paper, HP 32lb Laserjet, was completely saturated and allowed to sit at the bottom of my sink for about a minute. It was then set on the counter to dry-- it was not blotted or touched while wet. As you can see Pilot blue is a bit more waterproof than the blue-black. 

[A Smug Dill]

On 2/4/2023 at 5:34 PM, Mangrove Jack said:

Pilots Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo is one of my favourites. Had it been water resistant…

 

19 minutes ago, OCArt said:

Here is my water test of a few Pilot inks.

 

I'd call Tsuki-yo water-resistant, on account of @OCArt's test results above, at least for the particular ink-and-paper combination. There is more than sufficient legibility of the ink marks after washing (although I usually soak the written sample sheet for an hour or more, just to achieve finer gradations of water-resistance).

[arcfide]

2 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

 

I'd call Tsuki-yo water-resistant, on account of @OCArt's test results above, at least for the particular ink-and-paper combination. There is more than sufficient legibility of the ink marks after washing (although I usually soak the written sample sheet for an hour or more, just to achieve finer gradations of water-resistance).

 

As noted, ink and paper combinations make a large difference, my experience has been that many inks have a surprising amount of resistance when used with absorbent papers, such as even LaserJet paper. With some of the highly resistant papers from Japan, water resistance is significantly reduced. 

[Mangrove Jack]

14 hours ago, OCArt said:

Here is my water test of a few Pilot inks. The paper, HP 32lb Laserjet, was completely saturated and allowed to sit at the bottom of my sink for about a minute. It was then set on the counter to dry-- it was not blotted or touched while wet. As you can see Pilot blue is a bit more waterproof than the blue-black. 

Thank you. Good test and useful results. The Tsuki-yo in my tests were a lot less water resistant and had almost gone completely off the page. Possibly because of the paper I used.