Favorite ink to test a new pen?

[cbrown]

I recently ordered a 1950's Parker 51 and am anxiously awaiting its delivery.  As I ponder which ink to fill it with first, it got me thinking.  Do you have a specific ink you test all your new pens with to have a baseline comparison?  I don't as this is only my fourth fountain pen, two of which are not currently in my possession.  If not a favorite ink, do you have a favorite color you test with?  This will be my first vintage pen, after all the rave reviews I needed to see one for myself.  Now the excruciating wait. 

[yazeh]

If the pen is fragile, I'll use an ink which I know it's easy to clean. I have a bottle of boring Parker Quink Blue, that's what I use, most of the time. Many use Waterman. Some Pelikan Royal blue. 

I would avoid using anything pink/red/purple, or a pigment/ permanent ink. 

They are often the most difficult inks to clean. 

 

 

[es9]

The most gentle ink I know of—Waterman Serenity Blue. Whatever the pen, I can be pretty darn certain that that ink won’t make anything worse. It’s easy to clean, well behaved, and readily available at a decent price. However, unless there’s a particularly good reason to (e.g., a celluloid pen with great transparency or something of high sentimental value), I rarely use it beyond testing/tuning. 

[Mercian]

7 hours ago, cbrown said:

I recently ordered a 1950's Parker 51 and am anxiously awaiting its delivery.  As I ponder which ink to fill it with first, it got me thinking.  Do you have a specific ink you test all your new pens with to have a baseline comparison?  I don't as this is only my fourth fountain pen, two of which are not currently in my possession.  If not a favorite ink, do you have a favorite color you test with?  This will be my first vintage pen, after all the rave reviews I needed to see one for myself.  Now the excruciating wait. 

Obviously, the first thing that you should do when your “51” arrives is flush it out with plain water. If any dyestuff comes out, you might then wish to move on to other solvents.
That step may of course be completely unnecessary, so I won’t go into any further details here about which ones you ought to use, and in what order.

 

Like many other people, I tend to use Waterman ‘Serenity Blue’ to test new (to me) acquisitions.

It is benign, flows well (not ‘dry’, but also not too ‘wet’) and it washes out of most pens with just plain water.

 

That said, if your 1950s “51” has an ink sac that is still completely clear, and you wish to keep it that way, I would try a different ink first.

To my great surprise, I found that a fill of ‘Serenity Blue’ actually caused some slight staining of the sac in my 1950s “51”, and that the staining would not then come out when I flushed the pen with water 😯
Happily though, the ink that I use most-often in my “51” (R&K Salix, which is an iron-gall ink, and so is considered ‘scary’ by many people) removed the stains.

 

Most “51”s have sacs that have stained completely, and they do still work perfectly, but I want to retain the clarity of mine for as long as I can.

 

If your “51” also has a clear sac, and you wish it to remain clear, I would recommend that the first ink you try in your pen be Parker Quink ‘Washable Blue’.
It is the ‘washable blue’ ink that was used by my classmates when I was at school, and it is very pale, but, as its name suggests, it is very easy to clean out of a pen, and e.g. it contains even less dyestuff than does ‘Serenity Blue’.
Also, as it is made by Parker, one would rather expect it to work perfectly in your “51”.

 

Slàinte,

M.

Edited April 1, 2023 by Mercian
Edited to fix syntactical error caused by brain-fade

[Penguincollector]

I use Parker Quink Washable Blue for most vintage pens, unless I have the pen maker’s ink to hand.  The blues seem to be the easiest on materials. 

[Mark from Yorkshire]

My ink of choice for my vintage pens is either Diamine Onyx Black for a back ink or Presidential blue. Diamine is a recommended ink by www.vintagfountainepens.co.uk where I get the odd fountain pen from including the last one that I bough a vintage Eversharpe skyline and who serviced my Parker Lady Duofold 

[corniche]

On 4/1/2023 at 3:21 PM, Mercian said:

Obviously, the first thing that you should do when your “51” arrives is flush it out with plain water. If any dyestuff comes out, you might then wish to move on to other solvents.
That step may of course be completely unnecessary, so I won’t go into any further details here about which ones you ought to use, and in what order.

 

Like many other people, I tend to use Waterman ‘Serenity Blue’ to test new (to me) acquisitions.

It is benign, flows well (not ‘dry’, but also not too ‘wet’) and it washes out of most pens with just plain water.

 

That said, if your 1950s “51” has an ink sac that is still completely clear, and you wish to keep it that way, I would try a different ink first.

To my great surprise, I found that a fill of ‘Serenity Blue’ actually caused some slight staining of the sac in my 1950s “51”, and that the staining would not then come out when I flushed the pen with water 😯
Happily though, the ink that I use most-often in my “51” (R&K Salix, which is an iron-gall ink, and so is considered ‘scary’ by many people) removed the stains.

 

Most “51”s have sacs that have stained completely, and they do still work perfectly, but I want to retain the clarity of mine for as long as I can.

 

If your “51” also has a clear sac, and you wish it to remain clear, I would recommend that the first ink you try in your pen be Parker Quink ‘Washable Blue’.
It is the ‘washable blue’ ink that was used by my classmates when I was at school, and it is very pale, but, as its name suggests, it is very easy to clean out of a pen, and e.g. it contains even less dyestuff than does ‘Serenity Blue’.
Also, as it is made by Parker, one would rather expect it to work perfectly in your “51”.

 

Slàinte,

M.

 

Many turquoise inks are prone to staining... I use Waterman Mysterious Blue... same great qualities... and it never stains.

 

It's also a great looking "old school" color; perfect for a vintage pen.

 

- Sean

[RJS]

Waterman Serenity Blue and Pilot Blue Black. Badly behaved pens manage to find some way to behave acceptably with those two. I have 300+ml of Pilot BB, and it's my perennial favourite, so I tend towards that, though I know it's not as gentle as the Serenity Blue... however, it does seem to be able to 'clean' a pen that wasn't flushed perfectly, which is a nice trait.

[PAKMAN]

I always use Parker Quink Blue-black when I test a new-to-me pen.

[Mercian]

59 minutes ago, PAKMAN said:

I always use Parker Quink Blue-black when I test a new-to-me pen.

Hmm.

Parker’s Blue-teal is an ink that I view with suspicion….

 

It caused some hard-starts in my 1994 Vector ‘M’ - unheard-of! - and its unexpected colour-shift wrong-footed me too.

Its final colour is one that is not unpleasant, but that teal isn’t what I was expecting from an ink that is sold as blue/black.

 

I think that the shift to teal is caused by paper containing sulphites.

But it happens e.g. on the ‘ivory’ Clairefontaine paper in the Rhodia ‘Webnotebooks’ that I use for journalling, so my cartridges of Quink ‘Blue/Black’ are, I am sorry to say, left rather neglected.

 

Maybe I ought to use them up writing shopping lists with my Parker 25 🤔

[cbrown]

Thank you for all your replies.  So much good information I never knew.  I'll have to pick up either Waterman Serenity Blue or Parker Quink Washable Blue, or Waterman Mysterious Blue.

 

I usually gravitate towards vibrant colors such as red, orange, green, teal, and purple.  So knowing they are more difficult to flush and/or more likely to stain was very helpful.

 

Guess I'll be ordering some new blue inks 😀.  

[RJS]

1 hour ago, cbrown said:

Thank you for all your replies.  So much good information I never knew.  I'll have to pick up either Waterman Serenity Blue or Parker Quink Washable Blue, or Waterman Mysterious Blue.

 

I usually gravitate towards vibrant colors such as red, orange, green, teal, and purple.  So knowing they are more difficult to flush and/or more likely to stain was very helpful.

 

Guess I'll be ordering some new blue inks 😀.  

The Serenity Blue is an especially vibrant and interesting blue, to my eyes, so you might enjoy that one the most of the three you mentioned, as vibrant colours are your thing.

[Ron Z]

Pelikan Royal blue.  I buy it by the liter.

[TSherbs]

2 hours ago, Ron Z said:

Pelikan Royal blue.  I buy it by the liter.

 

!!

 

Same ink choice for me, but standard bottle size is good enough. How many liters of Konigsblau do you think that you have bought over time? 

[inkstainedruth]

For me, it depends.  If it's a modern pen, I'll often try something I haven't tried before, so it varies.  OTOH, if it's something like a Parker Vacumatic (especially one that has been restored for me), it's likely to be a Waterman ink, because my first Vac (the Red Shadow Wave) was tested with Waterman Mysterious Blue (and I then ran that ink through that pen for three years... without any sort of flushing ).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

[cbrown]

Based on your recommendations, I ordered Waterman Serenity Blue Ink.  I'll wait for that ink to arrive before I test my Parker 51.

 

For a working condition pen, I am pleased with how it looks.

 

 

[corniche]

7 minutes ago, cbrown said:

Based on your recommendations, I ordered Waterman Serenity Blue Ink.  I'll wait for that ink to arrive before I test my Parker 51.

 

For a working condition pen, I am pleased with how it looks.

 

 

Mysterious Blue would have been a far better choice...  ... but Serenity Blue is a great ink, too.

 

Enjoy your "new" 51... it's a real nice looking specimen. 

 

- Sean

[inkstainedruth]

Yeah, I LOVE my 51s.  Although I have put more "problematic" inks in some of mine without issue (the Plum Demi has seen fills of fairly saturated Noodler's inks in the past, like North African Violet -- and also original version Private Reserve Ebony Purple). 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[cbrown]

5 minutes ago, corniche said:

Mysterious Blue would have been a far better choice...  ... but Serenity Blue is a great ink, too.

 

Enjoy your "new" 51... it's a real nice looking specimen. 

 

- Sean

I looked for Mysterious blue, but the two sources I checked were out.

 

Thank you, I am excited to try a new pen out.  Especially since I typically purchase Japanese pens.

 

Any other tips or recommendations for my new 51?

 

Thank you all for being so helpful!

[es9]

18 minutes ago, cbrown said:

Any other tips or recommendations for my new 51?

Yea: Enjoy it! It’s one of the greatest pens ever made.