The appeal of Parker Penman Sapphire

[Mercian]

1 hour ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

…once every three or so years, I'll try it in my P-75…

I have been meaning to ask you about your 75.

What type of 75 is it?

Is it, sadly, condemned to Life (with No Chance of Parole) in Frau Olson’s Schmuck Gefängnis?*

Or does it occasionally get let out to play with inks?

 

* this phrase looks (to my monoglot Englander’s eyes) as though it simply cannot be right. But Mr. Google’s ‘Translate’ algorithms insist that it is the correct translation. I apologise if it actually means something Very Naughty Indeed.

[Bo Bo Olson]

For years it sat around gathering Patina, but it's in the pen cup, with Quink black cartridges in it. I need a new sac, or got to see if I have a converter that fits it.

I bought it back in '71.

I walked into the BX, Base exchange with plans to buy the high status Cross thin matt ball point for $8.00. A Jotter was @ $3.75.

 

I was @ 22, and had said since I was a lad, I was going to get a Snorkel...the King of Pens. ....At @ 15-16 I turned into a Ball Point Barbarian....thus the Cross ball point.

I drooled over the classic black and gold Snorkel that was some $14-15, when I got mugged by the P-75 brothers....and the thin ball point was then called from my reading a P-75; not the later named Classic.

The fancy silver fountain pen was $22 in silver dollar backed money. The silver ball point was thin like the Cross but cost $18.....and a fool and his money is soon parted......my fault fro walking around with money in my pocket....

 

I took the fountain pen to collage...a fool move. I walked away from it on the canteen table, and was a good 4-5 steps way, when I remembered leaving it....and no one called me back...you left your pen.

 

Same trouble with Zippo's.

 

So I took it home and left it there where it was safe......for years it was a in the dark of a desk drawer pen....The ball point got out to play at work a decade later. It too was in danger of a walk about...

Then I got married and both ended up in my wife's jewelry jail, until I got back into fountain pens some 15 years ago.

 

The P-75 ball point came with a Mechanical pencil cartridge, that I still have.

 

 

[Mercian]

31 minutes ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

I need a new sac, or got to see if I have a converter that fits it.

All modern Parker converters will fit in to it.

As will the ‘robot’ converters that were sold with 45s.

 

In the photo below (which I stole from an old thread):

 

I know that converters nos. 3,4,5, and 6 will fit in to and work in a Parker 75.

I think that that no. 2 will.

 

I don’t know about no. 1.

[PAKMAN]

I brought a full and two partial bottles of Penman Sapphire to the Arkansas Pen Show.  The two partial bottles (about a good sample's worth) sold but no one bit on the full bottle. I got some on my fingers Saturday and I can still see the remnants on my fingers today.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Mercian, thank you.

How odd, I bought my P-75... in pre-converter days in '70-71 and this is the first time I thought about that rubber sac squese filler as a converter.

 

You see I have basically piston pens, a couple Pelikan CC's a P-75&45....and a couple others that slid in.

 

I have a four or so Pelikan boxes cartridges  colors.............but Quink never seemed up my alley, so ignored buying them. Having only that dark gray called Black by Parker.

The sac worked well enough.

From a wild ink orgy, I'm down from 20 pens inked to 11, and have to get down to seven before I ink that P-45.

 

In I knew how a Parker squese sac filler worked, I took the fountain pen (& BP) right  out of the box and tossed the box.....with out looking inside.....it was 40 years later, that I found out the P-75 also took cartridges.

 

My P-45 is also missing a converter.

 

A decade ago, I ran into 6 converters at the flea market cheap, so I bought them. One fit some pen....don't remember which. One was a Lamy....the rest unmarked....a wide mouthed one with a take off cap, must be Japanese.

But by looking at your pictures I went and looked at Pelikan and found two of them were Pelikan converters. (Now labeled.)

Looking at your picture again, the last #6 I also had, and it is now in my second generation (long tapered body P-45. Fit in like it should.

 

First, I grew up fountain pen wise in the late '50-early 60's era, where a medium large  P-51 was considered a big pen.............the large Sheaffer PFM was advertised in the better magazines and for Christmas on TV; but I never saw one in real life. They did not sell well. A clunky pen with no balance.

I had only Standard sized pens, Sheaffer school pen, metal topped Esterbrooks...Wearevers and even a Venus.

The Sheaffer school pen got stolen so fast I can hardly remember it, eventually the same with all other fountain pens I had and the beginning school year Jotters. It took forever before someone finally stole that Venus.

 

So I grew up with good balanced pens. A pen had to have good balance to sell.

Then fountain pens almost died out... and one needed something big and flashy to be seen across a conference table, so Large pens saved the fountain pen industry....."facts" don't have to be liked. Not even by me.

 

IMO normally large pens do not have what I consider good balance. With out the cap, too short therefore lacking balance, and with it, too long and top heavy....besides the clunky ones, and ill balanced either way. So I tend to avoid the large pens most of the Com grew up with as 'standard/normal' pens. I find thin large pens come closest to having balance.

 I do have a few large and two oversized pens; but they are not what I chase or chased.

 

As a 20 pen noobie; I did a balance test. First was a back heavy because of brass guts standard sized MB 234 1/2. Second a sleek thin medium long Geha 725, Third was the P-75 a light for metal pen,  ...4th a 400nn.

 

I didn't have my Snokel then (since given away to someone who wanted a maxi-semi-flex BB factory stub.) Nor did I have my rolled gold capped English made (regular flex springy nib...I got a semi-flex Parker Jr. Doufold three tables before eht P-45...that had opened my eyes enough to check the P-45's nib...I'd by passed that P-45 at the price he wanted with out a sock to me springy regular flex nib) P-45. (Classy looking Black and Gold.....even the Plain gold scrip name looks classy....but it's not mine.........but I doubt if someone stole it during the life time of the original owner. (* see below))

 

And there is no way in hell I'm going to try a new balance test with 100 pens....it was enough to do twenty.

 

I had been astounded when I Iayed my Snorkel next to my Safari and discovered the Snorkel was a large pen. Due to it's thinness it never felt large.

It is a pen with great balance. I was surprised my P-45 was also a large pen.

It had never felt large back when I had one as a kid. (*Of course it was stolen, as a working man's kid, I couldn't' afford to get my name engraved on any of  them. Or I'd still ave some of them. ))

Perhaps because of the tapering body, the P-45 good to very good balance for a large pen. Better than a 146.

I liked the well balanced P-51 that I don't use much in it's a nail.

[Mulrich]

I found a bottle of PPS 4-5 years ago at an old pen store for a reasonable price. I’ll go back through my samples but I think it was very close to a few of my other inks (Horizon comes to mind). But as a prior comment said, it may have been an incredible ink at the time but there are so many great options today that it’s hard to stand out except for an occasional novel offering (eg Sailor‘s Manyo line). 

[bunnspecial]

On 3/14/2023 at 5:51 PM, Mercian said:

Yes. This. Exactly.

 

And remember to factor-in its ‘game-changing’ difference to every ink that I had previously used.

 

I can't quite claim the "game changer" attachment and in fact I was relatively late to the PPS game.

 

I took an interest in fountain pens in late 2011, and one of the first bottled inks I bought(from a local shop) was PR American Blue. I fell in love with that particular ink, but found it a bit temperamental. American Blue of course is often cited as a workable(but not exact) match for PPS. I knew of PPS from discussions here, but didn't really appreciate what made

 

Fast forward to 2021. FPs were a hobby that sort of laid dormant for me for about 7 years from 2013 to 2020. I added a few pens in there, including my now much loved MB 146 as well as getting my first vintage pen(a hand-me-down Sheaffer OS Balance) but went quite a few years without buying any ink other than a single bottle of Pelikan Blue-Black out of Japan since in there my beloved MB Midnight Blue had been reformulated.

 

In any case, COVID gave me time to revisit a lot of older or domant hobbies, and FPs were one of those. Once again I found myself liking PR American Blue, but my bottle was looking low and IIRC the situation with PR inks at the time was...tenuous...in fact to the point that I bought 3 bottles of another favorite(Sherwood Green).

 

That lead me down the path of buying and using similar inks and I just gave in and paid Ebay ransom prices for a bottle of PPS. I did fall in love almost immediately. I also went after Ebony and Mocha since they were the easy ones to find. Not too long after that Scribe inks became available and I bought the whole line right away, plus connected with Leighton and was able to learn a LOT from him in just a few emails and a generous hour over Zoom.

 

I've managed since then to flesh out my Penman a bit more. In fact I connected with a big-time ink collector on Reddit and all said and done ended up buying out most of his collection of vintage American ink(including a half dozen nearly full master bottles). In my various dealings with him, I also bought a dozen bottles of different colors of penman(no emerald, which was elusive for a while but I finally found two bottles last year).

 

I'm set on PPS, but to me it's nearly a perfect ink. I do grab Scribe Indigo fairly often because it's a bit less temperamental. With that said, PPS is nice and sheeny while, to me, being a bit better behaved than some of the over-the-top ones like Diamine Skull and Roses and OS Nitrogen(the latter of which is beautiful and pure evil). I find it somewhat less smeary than Visconti Blue or Akkerman #5 Shocking Blue

[Mercian]

2 minutes ago, bunnspecial said:

OS Nitrogen… …which is beautiful and pure evil.

😁

 

Ah, why must it be that those two particular qualities so often come hand-in-hand, one with the other? 🤷‍♂️

[fireant]

On 3/14/2023 at 1:11 PM, Trekker said:

The easiest substitute is Scribe Indigo (https//scribetc.com) that's available from the original developer (Dr. Leighton Davies-Smith) of Penman Sapphire.

 

I have a bottle and color wise the are almost identical but I didn't see the same sheen as I did/do with PPS. Sometimes I do ink shoot outs using rare inks. This is one from a few years ago. The paper is cream TR 68gsm. I could try to redo some of these on white tr/rhodia if you like. But not sure I have all of these inks anymore tbh.

 

Sorry that the pic is ginormous.

In the second picture (I didn't have scribe) you can see how close Bungu Box's First Love/Sapphire is. I think in the first picture it's Scribe's Indigo although the sheen isn't the same. I know that's probably due to the age of the PPS though.

 

[SamCapote]

I have 6 full bottles in boxes of PPS, and about 1500 of the cartridges that were being sold very cheaply due to volume evaporation.  I still find it a superb rich blue and performs great in my favorite Duofold.  I just ordered some of the Scribe Indigo and will see how close they compare.

[Lithium466]

I look forward to your observations. Do you have some Diamine blue velvet to compare to the Scribe Indigo?

[kestrel]

3 hours ago, SamCapote said:

I have 6 full bottles in boxes of PPS, and about 1500 of the cartridges that were being sold very cheaply due to volume evaporation.  I still find it a superb rich blue and performs great in my favorite Duofold.  I just ordered some of the Scribe Indigo and will see how close they compare.

Scribe Indigo is a lovely ink but it isn't as intense as Sapphire.  Another thread recommended a 1:1 mix of Monteverde Horizon Blue and Monteverde Sapphire as being indistinguishable from Penman Sapphire.  To my eyes with their mutant rhodopsins the Monteverde mix is a dead ringer. 

[SamCapote]

Yeah Monteverde makes some great inks.  I do have Diamine Blue Velvet also

 

[txomsy]

Regarding the finger staining and permanence: I have found that typically permanent inks (at least IG) wash out very well from skin, while non-permanent inks take a lot of work to remove.

 

I believe this is due to differences in composition: paper is cellulose (basically a sugar -a polyalcohol- polymer), skin is protein (basically an amino acid polymer), which leads to differences in chemistry, so that often what sticks to paper doesn't to skin and vice versa.

 

So, I doubt it is an effect of aging on PPS, but rather, typical behavior.

[BlueJ]

I agree with Kestrel's comment about Scribe Indigo: to my eyes it is very close to PPS, including the red sheen, but slightly darker and less vivid in its blue hue. It is difficult for me to be certain, since I have not had any PPS for many years, only old notebooks written with that ink, where I can enter new lines with newer inks for comparison.

 

At the Portland OR pen show this past July I came across another close analog to PPS, Taccia Ruri:

 

[PJohnP]

9 hours ago, txomsy said:

So, I doubt it is an effect of aging on PPS, but rather, typical behavior.

 

 

Actually, I've found the "re-hydrated" PPS in my carts has perceptibly changed compared to the bottled material without water loss.

 

The re-hydrated PPS is a bit darker and it's most definitely harder-starting than the bottled PPS.

 

This is  perhaps unsurprising when one considers that the bottled PPS is in glass, not plastic, storage, and that "concentrating" the ink in the carts could lead to more chemical degradation.  That last point is speculative, I'll admit, but does follow from some basic chemical principles.  However, I can say from experience that the more dehydrated cartridges consistently follow with these observations than the less dehydrated cartridges.  I'm pretty careful to use distilled water to re-hydrate the cartridges and re-fill them to a consistent volume, limiting the effects of the hydration to repeatable conditions.

 

In science, we note that "the plural of anecdote is not data".  Perhaps others could add some additional comments to assist in determining if this is just a one-off with the carts that I have.

 

 

 

John P.

 

[Lithium466]

It's not only the water that evaporates. I wish we could find "rehydrating fluid" for ink. There's the De Atramentis dilution solution, or Noodler's blue ghost, but I have never tried these.

 

My only experience rehydrating cartridges is with Pelikan 4001 red, and Rotring brilliant black, and both gave the expected results with just distilled water...but I don't have any comparison point except memory, so there's that!

[SamCapote]

1 hour ago, PJohnP said:

 

 

Actually, I've found the "re-hydrated" PPS in my carts has perceptibly changed compared to the bottled material without water loss.

 

The re-hydrated PPS is a bit darker and it's most definitely harder-starting than the bottled PPS.

 

This is  perhaps unsurprising when one considers that the bottled PPS is in glass, not plastic, storage, and that "concentrating" the ink in the carts could lead to more chemical degradation.  That last point is speculative, I'll admit, but does follow from some basic chemical principles.  However, I can say from experience that the more dehydrated cartridges consistently follow with these observations than the less dehydrated cartridges.  I'm pretty careful to use distilled water to re-hydrate the cartridges and re-fill them to a consistent volume, limiting the effects of the hydration to repeatable conditions.

 

In science, we note that "the plural of anecdote is not data".  Perhaps others could add some additional comments to assist in determining if this is just a one-off with the carts that I have.

 

 

 

John P.

 

 

John, yes I notice the same thing in terms of the cartridge color a richer blue, but I love intentionally being able to make PPS a bit more concentrated on purpose.  Have not found a significantly worse harder starting, but I likely use my pens more.  Also, I always have a sample size tube for a quick nib dip to get things started if needed.

I know it seems silly, but I just feel good using PPS.  Maybe it seems like I'm going back in time to when FP's were in their splendor?  

[PJohnP]

4 hours ago, SamCapote said:

I know it seems silly, but I just feel good using PPS.  Maybe it seems like I'm going back in time to when FP's were in their splendor?  

 

I have some of the same feeling as I use the PPS carts in a 'sixties era flat tassie Parker 75 Ciselle *, but I admit frustration when it just won't start...  <annoyed grimace>

 

I do use the pen (when in rotation) as my "daily pen" in my shirt pocket when I leave every morning.  It's well cleaned when not in rotation.

 

I've tried some surfactant treatment with mixed results.  I need to find the right quantity for this to start well without excessive flow after a long start-up.

 

More experimentation is in order I suppose.  A longish while back, I had purchased the PPS carts in two batches from two different sellers.  When the current one is done, I'll carefully change to the other set.  I might also try flossing the nib this week.

 

BTW, thanks for the info years back on phenol additions for older inks that are getting a little "funky".  I'm still on the same bottle of material that you suggested.  It's not been needed for the PPS, but a couple of times where I received vintage ink that was deteriorating, it's saved the day (and bottle).

 

Who says that we can't learn anything from folks here on FPN ?  <warm smile>

 

 

 

John P.

 

 

* Probably my most favourite of Parker pens sold over the decades, I might add.  Using the pen, I get distinct flashbacks to that period (I was a kid, admittedly) and to the movies of that time.  It took me a long time, but I eventually completed the Parker 75 set with a flat tassie BP and a mechanical pencil of the same era.  It might not have been the peak period for FPs, but it's a time that I personally remember.

[txomsy]

I would rather expect it to be an effect of partial re-dissolution.

 

Very low progressive concentration leads to crystallization. This makes the deposit harder to redissolve, and if there remain micro-crystals, these facilitate ink channel obstructions. It will also lead to changes in reflectivity and refractivity.

 

Notwithstanding slow progress reactions. As you concentrate, specially if it takes a very long time, reactions that wouldn't normally happen, now become less unlikely and may chance. Oxidization as water is substituted by air (and oxygen) should also increase. That is also a possibility as well.