Iron gall ink flushing recommendations

[Sh.Andrews]

Manufacturers, retailers and users always add the obligatory claim that flushing iron gall inks is the solution to any problems inherent with the high PH level.  Could someone explain the rationale behind this?  I understand that flushing will bring the PH back towards neutral but what is the point if you are just going to refill it with the same corrosive stuff?  Just short of flushing after every use or refilling with non-gall ink, I don't see how flushing will make any difference at all.

[inkstainedruth]

I suspect it depends on how you're flushing the pen out, and how often.  

The "standard" DiY homemade ink flush is a mix of about 5% ammonia to about 95% water (use distilled water if you live somewhere with a high mineral content in your water) and a drop of something like Dawn dish detergent).  For highly acidic inks like IG inks, swap out the ammonia for clear household vinegar.  Then flush out the "flush" with water -- again, I use distilled water because my water is very hard (e.g., a high mineral content).

As for how often?  Again, it depends.  I ran a vintage Parker Vacumatic with Waterman Mysterious Blue for three years with no flushing or other maintenance -- just refilling the pen as needed (this comes up in the conversation sooner or later EVERY time I'm on the phone with Apple Support, BTW.... ).

While IG inks are higher maintenance than "standard" inks, I think the only real issue is if the iron particles start precipitating out of the ink in the bottle.  But I'm sure that the pen manufacturers are telling you to flush partly because they ARE higher maintenance inks -- I wouldn't run an IG ink through a pen for REMOTELY as long as I ran WMB through that Red Shadow Wave -- but also to keep the companies off the hook in case there's a problem with the pen while it's still under warranty.

YMMV

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Sh.Andrews]

To me a flush is just water (with a long soak).  Only use ammonia in the most stubborn of cases.  Still don't understand how it would help the environment in the pen but I'm no where close to being a chemist.  You might be onto something with the precipitation or how the ink changes over time but I suspect it's more of "we know this ink is destructive but we aren't liable because you were told to flush often".

[Mercian]

2 hours ago, Sh.Andrews said:

Manufacturers, retailers and users always add the obligatory claim that flushing iron gall inks is the solution to any problems inherent with the high PH level.  Could someone explain the rationale behind this? 

 

I think that flushing is recommend in order to avoid iron-salts precipitating-out in the feed channels of the pen, and also to avoid long-term interactions between iron-salts and e.g. steel nibs.
Only the other day a member posted a thread on the Lamy board to complement the company's customer service. He had left some R&K 'Salix' - an ink with a very light i-g content - inside his Lamy 2000, and it reacted with the stainless steel section on the front of his pen, causing it to corrode/rust!

 

I have a Parker 45 from the early-to-mid 1970s that was full of dried-out old ink when it came to me.
Lots of soaking enabled me to disassemble the pen, and I found that there were a couple of patches of some kind of matter dried on to the underside of its steel nib. When I finally got all of that off, I found that the stainless steel nib has pitting on its underside where the 'gunk' was. The pen now writes flawlessly, but the pitting could have become much worse if I had not removed the gunk from the underside of the nib.

 

As for WHAT you should use to flush your pen, it depends on how often you flush it...
Until about 2013, Montblanc used to make a 'blue-black for documents' ink that was iron-gall. They used to recommend flushing the pen with plain water every three months or so.

 

N.b. DON'T put Ammonia through a pen that has had iron-gall ink in it!

The alkaline ammonia will react with the acid that keeps the iron salts suspended in the ink, and make all the iron precipitate out inside your pen.
You DON'T want that to happen!

If you wish to completely remove old i-g from your pen, you should load it with a dilute solution of Ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), or Citric acid, or white vinegar.

All three of those are weak acids, and they will re-dissolve old iron-salts. Former-member 'Pharmacist' recommended Ascorbic acid because it is the best 'chelating agent' for the iron ions that are present in i-g inks.

Whichever solution you have to-hand, leave that in the pen for 'a while' (e.g. overnight, or overnight plus until you get home from work the next day) and then, to get it out of the pen, you should put a folded piece of kitchen roll paper in to the bottom of a mug, then uncap the pen, and stand it nib down on the paper inside the mug.
The acid solution will then 'wick through' the nib, thereby cleaning the nib as well as the feed of the pen.

You should repeat this process until no more traces of old ink can be seen on the kitchen roll paper after a fill of the solution has 'wicked through' the pen.

 

You should then fill the pen with plain water, and allow that to wick through the pen, in order to remove all traces of the acid solution from your pen.

Once you have done that, you will then be able to run Ammonia through your pen if you wish.
Again, you will need to run some plain water through the pen after any ammonia, in order to prevent the occurrence of undesirable alchemical shenanigans inside your pen.

 

After you have done the above-described 'deep clean', you will probably only need to regularly flush your pen with plain water, perhaps doing the 'acid dance' once every few months.

 

Slàinte,
M.

[Sh.Andrews]

I was the one with the destroyed Lamy 2000.  Guilty of not flushing.  I won't use IG in it anymore mainly because of the steel section.  Acrylic or similar would be a better choice I think.  What surprised me the most was that it destroyed the gold nib as well - the main reason I used it.

 

IG inks do have a quality that I find very interesting and unique, it's just now I am afraid to use them. After your comments and Ruth's, I'm starting to see that it is the precipitation of iron that is the enemy.  So it would be more of a matter of time being the enemy in conjunction with the acidic environment.

[Mercian]

13 minutes ago, Sh.Andrews said:

I was the one with the destroyed Lamy 2000.  Guilty of not flushing.  I won't use IG in it anymore mainly because of the steel section.

 

I thought that I recognised your name! 🤦‍♂️ 😁

 

 

13 minutes ago, Sh.Andrews said:

IG inks do have a quality that I find very interesting and unique, it's just now I am afraid to use them. After your comments and Ruth's, I'm starting to see that it is the precipitation of iron that is the enemy.  So it would be more of a matter of time being the enemy in conjunction with the acidic environment.

 

I use 'light i-g' inks - R& K Salix and Scabiosa, and Pelikan 4001 Blue-Black - in all of the pens that I have that are easy to clean. And I tend to do my 'acid dance' after every fill of i-g ink. But that's only because I switch between pens, and between inks, often.
I even use Salix in my Parker "51"s - which are very much NOT easy to clean (ask me how I found that out 😁).

 

That said, after encountering flow issues in a few pens with heavy i-g ink - ESSRI - I now restrict that ink to a pen that I bought especially for it.
The pen in question is a UK Parker Duofold Junior. It has the 'aerometric' squeeze-filler system from a Parker "51" Special, so a 'pli-glass' sac, and an ebonite feed (which is very 'wet').
And it has a 14k gold nib that has a bit of springy flex (i.e. it is 'bouncy' and fun, but isn't by any means a 'flex nib').
It is the perfect pen for ESSRI.

 

Of course, I'm in the UK, so I managed to get a rather 'minty' one for about £30. They may well be rarer, and thus more-expensive, on your side of the pond.

[Sh.Andrews]

It sounds like you are successful using IG with the obligatory maintenance - that's reassuring.  I will choose wisely the next time I reach for the Salix or Scabiosa.

 

On another note, trying my first pigment ink (Platinum Carbon).  Hopefully that won't end in disaster as well although I suspect a clog would be easier to deal with than corrosion.

 

Like you foul/fog footer.

[Mercian]

6 minutes ago, Sh.Andrews said:

Like you foul/fog footer.

 

Thanks.
I must though admit that I stole it (shamelessly!) from a song 😁

[yazeh]

@Mercian when you say acid ascorbic in what format do you use it. I'm assuming it's not dissolving a vitamin C tablet and feeding it to the pen

 

I used for some time Essri in a wet noodle vintage pen, which couldn't handle modern wet inks. What I found most difficult removing, is the blue black dye itself. I could never really wash it out.  

[LizEF]

Essri, the danger noodle, prefers his vitamin C in the form of slushy OJ - just for the record. You may now resume your iron gall discussions.

[Mercian]

47 minutes ago, yazeh said:

@Mercian when you say acid ascorbic in what format do you use it. I'm assuming it's not dissolving a vitamin C tablet and feeding it to the pen

 

Indeed not!
One would have to buy pure, non-flavoured Ascorbic acid in powdered form, and then dissolve the powder in water. I believe that it is sold in powdered form for bakers (or was it brewers?) to add to their creations.
The amount to use can be calculated scientifically after a bit of web searching, in order to make up a batch of solution for use over time, or one could make a weak solution and then strengthen it if necessary. Personally, I recommend the scientific approach!

 

The same is true for Citric acid (it can be bought as a powder, and then that powder dissolved to make solutions of appropriate concentration).

 

Personally, I have only ever used solutions of white vinegar (aka pickling vinegar) in my pens. Typically, I make the solution so that it is one part vinegar to five parts water, but the concentration can of course be adjusted as one sees fit.

I once let some Salix dry-out in my first Parker "51" (I got distracted by a family medical emergency).
Getting all the precipitated iron out of the pen again took several weeks of filling the pen with dilute vinegar, leaving the pen overnight, then wicking the vinegar out.

The pen was eventually cleansed of old iron salts, but it stank of vinegar for weeks afterwards

 

 

47 minutes ago, yazeh said:

I used for some time Essri in a wet noodle vintage pen, which couldn't handle modern wet inks. What I found most difficult removing, is the blue black dye itself. I could never really wash it out.  

 

The component of iron-gall ink that turns black is the dissolved iron salts. Once the hydrochloric acid in the ink 'gasses-off' into the atmosphere, the iron salts react with atmospheric oxygen and turn dark, making the ink 'turn black'.
The blue dye (indigo? aniline dye?) is only there so that one can see what one is writing. Without it, the ink would go down clear, and one would have to wait for for the iron salts to 'cure' to black to see what one had written. I think that one company (perhaps De Atramentis?) used to sell such a 'pure' iron-gall ink.

 

ESSRI started out as 'Stephens' Ink'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Stephens_(doctor)#Inventor
When that company was eventually wound-up, one of its directors bought the rights to the name, the recipe for the Registrars' ink, and one of the ink-brewing vats, and started his own company - Ecclesiastical Stationery Supplies.

The blue dye in the ink can be removed from one's pen with dish soap solution, or with ammonia solution, but only after one has first got all of the old iron salts out with vinegar (or ascorbic acid, or citric acid), and then flushed the pen with water to get the acid out.
If you are finding any black components coming out of your pen, those will very probably be iron-salts, and strongly I recommend that you thoroughly clean out your pen using the 'acid dance' method that I described earlier.

If you use ESSRI in your pen constantly, you ought only need to do the acid clean thoroughly once, and then be able to flush your pen with water after every few fills, and perhaps do an acid clean once or twice a year.

But, if you (like me) tend to leave the pen un-used for a good while between fills, I recommend doing a vinegar flush after every fill with ESSRI.
OK, it may not be necessary, but it's the approach that I have adopted, and since starting to do it I haven't had any problems
(Yet...?)

 

Slàinte,
M.

[Mercian]

12 minutes ago, LizEF said:

Essri, the danger noodle, prefers his vitamin C in the form of slushy OJ - just for the record. You may now resume your iron gall discussions.

 

😆

Do not disturb (or perturb) the danger noodle!

[Mark from Yorkshire]

That or buy some stop bath solution from your local darkroom supply, which from memory is also citric acid or ascorbic acid. I can’t remember which now. By last bottle went down the drain about 9 years ago.

 

looking online some stop baths are citric acid solutions 

[yazeh]

2 hours ago, LizEF said:

Essri, the danger noodle, prefers his vitamin C in the form of slushy OJ - just for the record. You may now resume your iron gall discussions.

[yazeh]

2 hours ago, Mercian said:

 

Indeed not!
One would have to buy pure, non-flavoured Ascorbic acid in powdered form, and then dissolve the powder in water. I believe that it is sold in powdered form for bakers (or was it brewers?) to add to their creations.
The amount to use can be calculated scientifically after a bit of web searching, in order to make up a batch of solution for use over time, or one could make a weak solution and then strengthen it if necessary. Personally, I recommend the scientific approach!

Thanks. Makes sense. 

2 hours ago, Mercian said:

 

The same is true for Citric acid (it can be bought as a powder, and then that powder dissolved to make solutions of appropriate concentration).

🙏

2 hours ago, Mercian said:

 

Personally, I have only ever used solutions of white vinegar (aka pickling vinegar) in my pens. Typically, I make the solution so that it is one part vinegar to five parts water, but the concentration can of course be adjusted as one sees fit.

I once let some Salix dry-out in my first Parker "51" (I got distracted by a family medical emergency).
Getting all the precipitated iron out of the pen again took several weeks of filling the pen with dilute vinegar, leaving the pen overnight, then wicking the vinegar out.

The pen was eventually cleansed of old iron salts, but it stank of vinegar for weeks afterwards

Ok. I did the same. With a Pilot Varsity  

2 hours ago, Mercian said:

The component of iron-gall ink that turns black is the dissolved iron salts. Once the hydrochloric acid in the ink 'gasses-off' into the atmosphere, the iron salts react with atmospheric oxygen and turn dark, making the ink 'turn black'.
The blue dye (indigo? aniline dye?) is only there so that one can see what one is writing. Without it, the ink would go down clear, and one would have to wait for for the iron salts to 'cure' to black to see what one had written. I think that one company (perhaps De Atramentis?) used to sell such a 'pure' iron-gall ink.

Thanks for the explanations. De Atramentis dosen't sell IG anymore

2 hours ago, Mercian said:

 

ESSRI started out as 'Stephens' Ink'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Stephens_(doctor)#Inventor
When that company was eventually wound-up, one of its directors bought the rights to the name, the recipe for the Registrars' ink, and one of the ink-brewing vats, and started his own company - Ecclesiastical Stationery Supplies.

Yep I know that. Thanks for reminding me though  

2 hours ago, Mercian said:

The blue dye in the ink can be removed from one's pen with dish soap solution, or with ammonia solution, but only after one has first got all of the old iron salts out with vinegar (or ascorbic acid, or citric acid), and then flushed the pen with water to get the acid out.
If you are finding any black components coming out of your pen, those will very probably be iron-salts, and strongly I recommend that you thoroughly clean out your pen using the 'acid dance' method that I described earlier.

Would that affects the sacs in vintage pens?

2 hours ago, Mercian said:

If you use ESSRI in your pen constantly, you ought only need to do the acid clean thoroughly once, and then be able to flush your pen with water after every few fills, and perhaps do an acid clean once or twice a year.

Makes sense

2 hours ago, Mercian said:

But, if you (like me) tend to leave the pen un-used for a good while between fills, I recommend doing a vinegar flush after every fill with ESSRI.
OK, it may not be necessary, but it's the approach that I have adopted, and since starting to do it I haven't had any problems
(Yet...?)

 

Slàinte,
M.

Thanks. Clear as whistle, laddie  

[OCArt]

Stop Bath is acetic acid.

2 hours ago, Mark from Yorkshire said:

That or buy some stop bath solution from your local darkroom supply, which from memory is also citric acid or ascorbic acid. I can’t remember which now. By last bottle went down the drain about 9 years ago.

 

looking online some stop baths are citric acid solutions 

 

[Runnin_Ute]

In August 2017, I bought a Pelikan 140 from Rick Propas. Outside of two fills of Diamine Sherwood Green (I think) I have run nothing but Pelikan 4001 Blue Black in it. It is ALWAYS inked. I think I have flushed it maybe twice in the last twelve months. Because I keep it inked all the time and use it several times a week I don't worry too much about flushing. Should I flush it a little more frequently? Maybe. Since I am refilling with the same ink, I just flush with tap water. Currently it is the only iron gall ink I have. In the past I had KWZI Iron Gall Turquoise, don't recall what I did with it in terms of maintenance as it has been a while. (years)

[Mark from Yorkshire]

@OCArt this is the stuff i used to use it smelled very urm aromatic of orange juice ILFORD ILFOSTOP is a low odour, citric acid stop bath which stops further development of paper or film. That and it also looked like orange juice as well when one poured it out of the bottle. LOL 😜

[OCArt]

5 hours ago, Mark from Yorkshire said:

LFORD ILFOSTOP is a low odour, citric acid stop bath which stops further development of paper or film.

Thanks for that, I wonder if they changed from acetic to citric acid for environmental or shipping reasons?  ... To return to the original topic I have to admit that I once used diluted lemon juice.

[Mark from Yorkshire]

1 hour ago, OCArt said:

Thanks for that, I wonder if they changed from acetic to citric acid for environmental or shipping reasons?  ... To return to the original topic I have to admit that I once used diluted lemon juice.

More likely British being tight 😂