"Thick" ink for leaky vintage pen?

[GreenMountain]

Hi All,

I have a vintage Stetson pen that I like a lot.  It leaks a bit and the man who expertly repaired it said that I should use "thick" ink.  I have some old ink that does fix the leaks, but I don't like it much as it feathers.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a thick ink?  I'd like a blue-black or dark shading grey or dark shading brown.

Thanks!

[yazeh]

I'm a bit confused. 

If the pen is repaired why is it still leaking? 

Thick ink doesn't make any sense, in terms of fountain pen inks. You cannot put calligraphy/ sumi ink which is "thicker" in a fountain pen. 

Unless he meant a dry ink, which would mean an Iron Gall ink. Like Registrars/Essri or Büroservice Bergman's blue or red ink, for ex. 

[Ron Z]

That doesn't make sense at all.    If the pen leaks, it's because air is getting in somewhere it shouldn't.   Where or why  is the question, and there are a number of possible answers.  The "thickness" of the ink shouldn't be a factor.   As Yazeh points out, calligraphy/India ink and the like would clog your pen like a bad head cold and would be a pain to clean out.

[Karmachanic]

Pelikan inks are on the dry side.  Try 4001 Blue-Black, which is also a little iron gallish.

[senzen]

My thickest is KWZ Hunter Green, I went to great lengths to find a pen that makes it look lighter so I can see some of its colour (Pelikan 140), otherwise it's almost black.

 

 

[dipper]

On 7/27/2023 at 4:48 PM, GreenMountain said:

...... It leaks a bit .......

Could you please describe what results you see when your pen "leaks a bit".   Ink blots on the paper? Inky fingertips? Or what?

 

We may be misunderstanding the problem that you have called a "leak".

[Bo Bo Olson]

After only 30-40 years if one don't use saturated and supersaturated inks, rubber sacs die...and your looks more like 80 years old. 

 

I had an Esterbrook whose sac lasted almost 60 years. The pen was from '48-52 from the lever and Germany wasn't known as a rubber sac land in the '70-80's. So that's why I think it was still original rubber sac.

yours looks way older.

 

 Send it in to be resacked. It don't cost the world.

[GreenMountain]

On 7/28/2023 at 9:33 PM, dipper said:

Could you please describe what results you see when your pen "leaks a bit".   Ink blots on the paper? Inky fingertips? Or what?

 

We may be misunderstanding the problem that you have called a "leak".

Ink blots and ink inside the cap. Ink runs down the nib.

[GreenMountain]

On 7/27/2023 at 5:16 PM, Ron Z said:

That doesn't make sense at all.    If the pen leaks, it's because air is getting in somewhere it shouldn't.   Where or why  is the question, and there are a number of possible answers.  The "thickness" of the ink shouldn't be a factor.   As Yazeh points out, calligraphy/India ink and the like would clog your pen like a bad head cold and would be a pain to clean out.

I was advised that old pens were made to use with thick ink and that modern, free flowing ink is too thin, hence the leaks.

 

I'm going to try 4001 Blue-Black, which I have in my desk. 

[GreenMountain]

On 10/11/2023 at 7:07 PM, Bo Bo Olson said:

After only 30-40 years if one don't use saturated and supersaturated inks, rubber sacs die...and your looks more like 80 years old. 

 

I had an Esterbrook whose sac lasted almost 60 years. The pen was from '48-52 from the lever and Germany wasn't known as a rubber sac land in the '70-80's. So that's why I think it was still original rubber sac.

yours looks way older.

 

 Send it in to be resacked. It don't cost the world.

Yes, I have it tuned and re-sacked as soon as I acquired it.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Vintage ink as far as I know...was never thick.....but of course I only remember late '50's on.

The original P-51 inks ate other folks feeds, and the P-51 had a whole forest of comb/rills hidden in it's collector....so that might have well been a very fast ink...

There will be folks that know their A from their Elbows showing on on this soon.

 

What made ink so fast back in the 'day' was lack of combs/rills....the more rills/combs a feed has the slower the feed feeds ink to the nib, and more than likely the stiffer the nib is...in a nail or semi-nail ore even regular flex nibs don't spread their tines and deliver more ink....so ink delivery was slowed by more combs. In the tines didn't spread much and didn't require more ink.

 

I have pre-war feeds with big blocky side of the feed only 'comb/ to thick to be rills. It has has as I remember a superflex nib on that feed.

IMO...It's not worth digging through 120 pens to find that/them and make a picture.

 

If you are right and I am wrong about old time thick ink, drop by, I got cold beer, and beer stines to drink it out of.

 

[Estycollector]

Circa 2018 I read an article about the best inks to use in vintage pens. The recommendation was to use a wet ink for which Waterman and particularly Serenity Blue has been a good choice for vintage pens. 

[Lithium466]

13 hours ago, GreenMountain said:

Ink blots and ink inside the cap. Ink runs down the nib.

Sounds like you have air going in somewhere on the ink "path" where it shouldn't. I'm absolutely not familiar with that pen (nor with vintage pens) but that could be some threads not being sealed somewhere, nib/feed assembly improperly set in, etc.

 

[Lithium466]

11 hours ago, Estycollector said:

Circa 2018 I read an article about the best inks to use in vintage pens. The recommendation was to use a wet ink for which Waterman and particularly Serenity Blue has been a good choice for vintage pens. 

It funny that according to surface tension, W SB isn't considered particularly wet, yet that comment comes back often about it. Maybe compared to Pelikan 4001 Royal blue it is wet!

I wonder if the recommendation for such Royal Blue is due to the methyl blue die most use, easy to clean, with some antibacterial (?) effect, and needs to be in acidic media (water + other ink components), which goes well with vintage materials like celluloid or rubber.

Anyway standard royal blue are usually said to be very easy to clean (according to Pelikan, pens used with 4001 Royal blue need to be cleaned less often than when used with other inks of the lineup), I think Waterman and Lamy used to say something like that (to be proven) too, and well they are also cheap and easy to find, so make a good "blanket recommendation" for vintage pens.

[Estycollector]

41 minutes ago, Lithium466 said:

It funny that according to surface tension, W SB isn't considered particularly wet, yet that comment comes back often about it. Maybe compared to Pelikan 4001 Royal blue it is wet!

I wonder if the recommendation for such Royal Blue is due to the methyl blue die most use, easy to clean, with some antibacterial (?) effect, and needs to be in acidic media (water + other ink components), which goes well with vintage materials like celluloid or rubber.

Anyway standard royal blue are usually said to be very easy to clean (according to Pelikan, pens used with 4001 Royal blue need to be cleaned less often than when used with other inks of the lineup), I think Waterman and Lamy used to say something like that (to be proven) too, and well they are also cheap and easy to find, so make a good "blanket recommendation" for vintage pens.

I've read the opposite on this forum regarding Waterman and Pelikan. Most of my pens are now near 70 years old and most I have restored. I use Waterman Serenity Blue because it's an attractive color and it cleans out easily. Plus, blue inks are considered safer because fewer pigments are needed. 

[Bo Bo Olson]

Ink in the cap, and blots, is not an ink problem....gasket or rubber sac

Do post that in the repair section....where there are folks that have a good idea of repair.

Outside that Esterbrook I mentioned with the 60 year old sac that turned to mush...I have only a few and re-sacked lever pens (with in the last decade) ...mostly '60-70's, and some old Plastic gasket 1.0 or cork that was allowed to dry for generations so died.

Since on the whole repaired with new gaskets....still a good handfull to go.

[Runnin_Ute]

Waterman Serenity Blue is not as wet as many more modern ink formulations is true. It is more of a mid range in wetness these days. 

[Bo Bo Olson]

8 hours ago, Runnin_Ute said:

Waterman Serenity Blue

Had a different name a long time ago, for when I bought it a 'the' wet ink, in I had a dry writing semi-flex pen.

I later switched over to DA Royal blue, a more saturated blue.

Some DA inks are wet, others are shading inks.

 

Japanese inks are wetter than the Euro inks I use in they have very narrow nibs.

One of the reasons Waterman' blue and their other inks were then 'wet' was they had narrower 'dry' nibs than the rest of the western nibs outside Aurora .

Pelikan's dry 4001 inks matched Pelikan's wet nib.

 

At €25 a bottle over here in Germany I only have one Japanese ink, Kon Piki. It is a nice wet ink, that can show a touch of shading on the right papers. Is out of my price range.

[GreenMountain]

Thanks, everyone.  I didn't want to go buy more ink as I already have too much, so I used J Herbin Bleu Pervenche. This ink isn't particularly thick. As long as I keep the pen nib up when stored it doesn't seem to be leaking.  So, I won't be carrying it around, but at home it's a great pen. 

Now that it is not leaking I'll try a Sailor ink, my favorite, and see how that works.  The inside of the reservoir is quite stained already, so I'm not going to worry about staining.

I think where it was leaking was around where the nib meets the body...not sure what that area is called.  Maybe ink drying out there stoped the leak.

[Jjanek73]

I´ve had similar problem with piston Montblanc Monte Rosa just several days ago. Piston tested was air-tight and subsequently it turned out feeder is loose in the section (don´t know how this could happen). I have had no fitting spare one, so I "adjusted" current - as it was made from hard rubber, I warmed it with boiling water and firmy pushed flat end against solid surface. Up to now it seems working well, but this method could definitely be risky and "without guarantee". 🙂

 

Best regards

Janek