Sheen degrading over time?

[sirgilbert357]

I have noticed one of my inks isn't sheening anywhere near as well as it used to. Is this a thing; anyone else experienced this with any of their inks?

 

The ink in question is one of my favorite blues, Sailor Bungubox Hatsukoi. I show it was originally opened in May of 2019. I've been using it carefully to stretch it (it's not an inexpensive ink), but perhaps I should have just used it as much as I want, especially if the properties I love about it are degrading over time.

 

Thoughts/experiences?

[LizEF]

Have you shaken the bottle up before filling?  (Sheening inks are generally very concentrated and may need shaking up to keep all the ingredients "homogenized".)

 

Alternately, have you switched papers?  (Not all papers show sheen well.)  Or pens? (Ditto.)

[sirgilbert357]

Yes I shake the bottle, but the paper is the same. This ink seemed to sheen in any pen that was "wet enough", and in my M1000 it isn't sheening (it's definitely wet enough, lol).

[LizEF]

Interesting.  It does suggest some sort of chemical change then.  I haven't heard of this happening before.  Hopefully folks with more experience will see this and comment.

[Mercian]

This is news that I find to be weird…

 

…I have always thought that ‘sheen’ was a result of high dye-concentration resulting in the ink drying with a non-flat surface, causing diffraction-effects that made the ink seem to be a different ‘colour’.

 

And I would not have expected dye-concentration to reduce over time.

So, I interpret @sirgilbert357’s results to mean that my ‘understanding’ of ‘sheen’ has always been incorrect 

[sirgilbert357]

I'll try shaking the bottle more vigorously and putting it in a different pen. I'm also going to try to find an old notebook where I wrote and the sheen showed up and write beside that old text to see the difference.

 

I figured whatever usually causes the sheen is evaporating out of the ink over time, but that just seems wrong or off to me. If anything, I would think it would develop more sheen over time, not less. 

[arcfide]

Is your paper getting old? Paper can change properties the longer it is stored in some conditions. In some papers, I've noticed that they become more absorbent, which would interfere with sheen. 

[Karmachanic]

Maybe it's just me, but as far as I can tell all physical objects degrade over time.  I know this from my own experience.  I just look in a mirror. 

[sirgilbert357]

5 hours ago, arcfide said:

Is your paper getting old? Paper can change properties the longer it is stored in some conditions. In some papers, I've noticed that they become more absorbent, which would interfere with sheen. 

 

The notebook in question is several years old, so perhaps that's it. I have a way to test for that, though. I intend to find out.

[sirgilbert357]

3 hours ago, Karmachanic said:

Maybe it's just me, but as far as I can tell all physical objects degrade over time.  I know this from my own experience.  I just look in a mirror. 

 

LOL. 

[miig]

Maybe you have some Tomoe River paper on hand? This brings out more sheen than most papers I've seen. If you write on this with a wettish nib and it doesn't sheen, it probably ever will (again).

[XYZZY]

Are you using the same paper and pen as before? 

[sirgilbert357]

4 hours ago, miig said:

Maybe you have some Tomoe River paper on hand? This brings out more sheen than most papers I've seen. If you write on this with a wettish nib and it doesn't sheen, it probably ever will (again).

 

Well, I just cracked open a new Endless Recorder journal with Tomoe River. It's a couple of years old, but it was still sealed in the two plastic wrap layers it came in. No sheen at all from the M1000. Perhaps it isn't the paper...

 

I can't find a notebook from my past that shows obvious sheen from what appears to be Hatsukoi...to be honest, I usually write in my notebooks and then once they are full, they go in the trash, so past options for comparison are limited. It is the joy of physically writing that I enjoy, not re-reading what I had written down, lol. Oh well...

[sirgilbert357]

3 hours ago, XYZZY said:

Are you using the same paper and pen as before? 

 

Everything I write on is either Clairefontaine 90g/m2 or Tomoe River, so yes...but I know there there are batch differences from time to time. Clairefontaine has been remarkably consistent in my experience, which I why I originally suspected the ink itself.

 

I'm still working on writing the M1000 dry, so I'll have wait a bit to try the "shake the bottle MORE vigorously" test...

[miig]

Very interesting. That is indeed curious. I mean, I just looked up the ink and at least these descriptions don't highlight the ink as a strong sheener:

 

https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2015/6/25/sailor-bung-box-hatsukoi-true-love-sapphire-ink-review

 

 

So if the sheen is already quite subtle, it will probably not take much to make it go away.

Although my experience is rather that older inks get more concentrated and sheen more, but maybe that can't be generalized...

[TSherbs]

13 hours ago, sirgilbert357 said:

I'll try shaking the bottle more vigorously and putting it in a different pen...

Yes, and try swatching it, too. I don't think that a current one-pen trial is enough data to draw a conclusion from. You need to experiment a bit more to get to the bottom of the possible problem. Lighting can matter, too. I am not a big fan of heavy sheen, so I own very little of it (maybe none now) and can't share any personal experience with this. 

[sirgilbert357]

5 hours ago, miig said:

Very interesting. That is indeed curious. I mean, I just looked up the ink and at least these descriptions don't highlight the ink as a strong sheener:

 

https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2015/6/25/sailor-bung-box-hatsukoi-true-love-sapphire-ink-review

 

 

So if the sheen is already quite subtle, it will probably not take much to make it go away.

Although my experience is rather that older inks get more concentrated and sheen more, but maybe that can't be generalized...

 

Hmm. Perhaps I am expecting too much from this ink. I've had excellent sheen from it in the past, though...can't recall which pen produced it though.

[InesF]

That's interesting, @sirgilbert357.

When every obvious possibility can be excluded, the most astonishing must be the cause. Not worldly reproduced out of my heart, but you know what is meant.

Can it be that your older writing was done with a pen that tends to dry out? Maybe you have written at that time with a concentrated ink. No water has evaporated from your bottle.

The drying in the pen can need weeks until it comes to effect and will not be recognised as such when the ink was already well saturated.

[sirgilbert357]

8 hours ago, InesF said:

That's interesting, @sirgilbert357.

When every obvious possibility can be excluded, the most astonishing must be the cause. Not worldly reproduced out of my heart, but you know what is meant.

Can it be that your older writing was done with a pen that tends to dry out? Maybe you have written at that time with a concentrated ink. No water has evaporated from your bottle.

The drying in the pen can need weeks until it comes to effect and will not be recognised as such when the ink was already well saturated.

 

That is an excellent point. My M1000 seals very well and can be left unused for weeks and have no hard starts or obvious dry out. Perhaps the prior pen was not on the same level, and that increased the sheen. I wish I knew which pen it was!

[RJS]

Hmm, I'd not given much thought to how well sheen lasts before...  but now that I look back at old writing of mine nothing is looking very sheeny. Even two month old writing looks less sheeny than fresh stuff. Shimmering inks from a couple of years ago seem to still be shimmering merrily, meanwhile. (Edit- please note this is just my observation from one notebook which I happen to have at hand at this very moment.)

 

I don't own many very sheeny inks, I will say. Unless it's red sheen on blue ink I don't much care for it, though I have seen pretty gold sheens.