Are you concerned with the pH level of your inks? ...

[cmeisenzahl]

I remember this issue being discussed a few years ago when Noodler's inks hit the market and became popular. I think one of their selling points is that they're pH neutral if I remember correctly?

 

Anyway, last night I was flipping through an old issue of Stylus and read Greg Clark's article on ink pH. He mentioned that most inks were quite acidic, the example list he showed included many inks w/ pH between 1.8 and 2.4. Lamy blue, which I use, was listed as 2.3.

 

Greg went on to mention that Private Reserve was pH neutral. And that in recent years several brands have reformulated their inks to be pH neutral or at least closer to it. Specifically, he mentioned Sheaffer, Sailor, Omas, Visconti as being pH neutral or close to it.

 

The article is on pg. 78 of this issue. Warning, it's a 94MB PDF. ;-)

http://www.stylusmag.com/uploads/pdfs/june06_archive.pdf

 

So, are you concerned about any of this?

 

Chris

[FrankB]

Yes, I am concerned about both Ph level and iron gall content. I remember as a youth seeing some FP's that were badly corroded from the ink that was used in them. I have a couple of my own older pens that have corrosion issues. I have been consistent about keeping my pens flushed and cleaned within reason. I have found c/c pens to be the easiest to clean. Therefore, I use them to experiment with new inks.

 

I have also tried to find the "safest" inks possible for my my vintage pens and piston fillers. For many years I have used J. Herbin inks for this very reason. Of late, Ph has become a more public issue, and I am grateful that more inks are available with the Ph neutrality we are speaking of. I, for one, will continue to consider this issue in choosing inks.

[CharlieB]

So.... what pH is best for pens? I've been following other threads touting various inks as "good" for fountain pens, and the pH levels appear to be quite different from one another. Waterman is acidic, Slovenian Sheaffer is neutral, and Sailor is alkaline. What's a consumer to believe?

 

I realize that there are other factors besides pH that determine the pen-friendliness of an ink, but, if all those factors were equal, what pH should I be seeking?

[tfwall]

I realize that there are other factors besides pH that determine the pen-friendliness of an ink, but, if all those factors were equal, what pH should I be seeking?

 

7.0

 

This is "neutral" or the pH of water. It will have the least effect on both pens and paper. The reason some makers have other pHs is to hold their propriety dyes in solution at the concentrations necessary to give a pleasing color.

[Titivillus]

I realize that there are other factors besides pH that determine the pen-friendliness of an ink, but, if all those factors were equal, what pH should I be seeking?

 

7.0

 

This is "neutral" or the pH of water. It will have the least effect on both pens and paper. The reason some makers have other pHs is to hold their propriety dyes in solution at the concentrations necessary to give a pleasing color.

 

And that is the rub for some compounds to be in solution there is a window of pH that you need to stay in. We are talking mostly plastic and gold so the corrosion by a pH of 3 is not going to be all that quick. Beware of steel or at least some alloys of steel. My corrosion book is at work so I can't give a definite answer but might be able to pull something together.

 

It might be better to review your pen hygiene making sure that you rinse out your pens after use or color change to insure that there isn't stuff remaining. If I recall ( need to get my references out) that under deposit corrosion can set up an electrolytic cell beneath junk on a metal's surface and eat right through. So keeping a clean pen might be the answer rather than worrying about the pH of the ink.

 

 

Kurt

[john.reiss]

Personally, I don' t worry about it. My theory is to write more, that way it doesn't become a problem. Also flushing your pens really helps.

[Goodwhiskers]

If one wants to write something of archival quality (legible after century or more), near-pH-neutral ink and paper are helpful toward that goal. I don't intend to archive most of what I write, so the pH of my ink usually doesn't matter. Nonetheless, I'm an easy mark for pH-neutral ink.

 

Most cheap paper from wood comes out of the factory acidic. "Acid-free" wood paper comes out of the factory with a pH close to 7.0, but some components in the paper might become acidic after exposure to the water vapor in air. Wood paper that is "Acid-free and alkaline buffered" has had some alkaline material (or alkaline-turning after exposure to water vapor) added to it in the factory so that it will stay neutral after many years or at least become acidic much more slowly.

 

Therefore, if I had to choose an archival ink for writing on wood paper, and my only choice were only between alkaline (pH much greater than 7) and acidic (pH much less than 7), I'd choose alkaline.

[Richard]

If I were interested in archival qualities, which I'm not, I'd choose 100% rag paper and modern (properly formulated) iron gall ink. Iron gall ink has gotten a bad rap because, over the centuries, a lot of people have made it who didn't know what they were doing. The iron compound that should be used is green copperas (aka green vitriol), which is hydrated ferrous sulfate (FeSO₄·7H₂O). If you use anhydrous ferrous sulfate, you can end up with a significant amount of soluble iron salts in the mix, and it is these salts that eat paper. If the ink is correctly made, its iron content will oxidize completely to ferric oxide (Fe₂O₃) and will last for centuries, even millennia, without harm to the paper. The black color, also, will be utterly bulletproof, not even subject to bleaches that can remove the color of cellulose-bonded dyes. (he blue color, which comes from indigo, can fade or bleach away without other harm.)

 

As for my pens, I don't worry. I'm using inks with pH numbers above 3 and below 8, and I don't think they will damage my pens in the next 50 years or so, after which time I'll no longer care.

Edited January 21, 2008 by Richard

[savarez]

No. I'll be dead hundreds of years before the pH or iron gall content of my ink has any effect on any documents I've written, and I flush my pens sufficiently and rotate inks often enough that I'm not at all worried about my pens.

Edited January 21, 2008 by savarez

[Paddler]

So, are you concerned about any of this?

 

Chris

 

No. I have some doctor's day books that were written in 1847 - on through 1900, and they are perfectly legible and show no signs of the writing eating its way through the paper. You can watch as the ink gets more and more stale -- it starts out black and gradually becomes more brown as time passes. Then the doctor refills his inkwell and the writing is black again. I am almost certain that the ink is iron gall ink. If it has survived this long in such good condition, I am confident that it will last as long as the paper. The paper, by the way, is still white and supple.

 

Paddler

 

[punch]

Am I concerned? No.

[Jinnayah]

Well, all other things being equal, I'd chose the neutral pH (but then again, all other things being equal, who wouldn't)? In practice, I avoid the really acidic inks (like iron gall) because I'm both absent-minded and fond of steel nibs. At a more moderate but not neutral level, I'm not too worried on it -- with the cheap paper I'm infamous for using, it'd be silly for me to worry about the document's longevity being affected by the ink. In any event, by coincidence, my favorite brand of inks are pH-neutral anyway.

[dcwaites]

I used to write labels for museum specimens. These have to last centuries. We used special rag paper labels and wrote on them with Rotring drawing pens filled with Rotring drawing ink.

 

If I wanted now to write something that was going to last a long time, I would be looking for some museum-quality archival paper and writing on it using a dip nib and india or other carbon-based ink.

 

Practically, though, I would draft the document on cheap-and-nasty paper using Parker Quink, copy it onto the computer, typeset it with LaTeX, and laser-print it onto archival quality paper. I might also take the effort of printing out the untypeset LaTeX document onto the same archival paper and store it somewhere else.

 

You can hand-write using Rotring drawing pens. I did it for years.

 

 

[finalidid]

Hmm. What really DOES last forever? Nor marble nor the gilded monuments ...

 

If I wanted to make an archive of something, perhaps to send down to great-grand-children, I guess I'd seek out some 100% cotton rag paper and some registrar's ink. If I wanted something permanent enough for my insurance company, I'd scan it and keep it on a USB drive in a bank vault. Other stuff is more ephemeral and I don't mind it being so.

 

Therefore, the issue of ink pH becomes more, one of protecting my pens. I have always used Watermans Florida Blue, and usually I have flushed my pens fairly carefully. Am I in trouble? Do I need to change my regimen? I'm thinking of getting a bottle of Diamine Registrar's Ink for my envelope addressing, which I will fill into one P51 demi as my permanent "bulletproof writer." Should I treat it differently? The sacs in all my pens are modern, replaced in there in the last ten years by enthusiasts such as Richard Binder and others. Are they of concern as far as ink pH goes? What about other innerds? Feeds, nibs, pistons, plastics, metals.

 

When you start thinking about permanency in a distant, philosophical sort of manner, I think you're likely to realize that every material has its drawbacks. The engraved doo-hickey on Voyager 1 spacecraft is, I think, a gold-plated phonograph album. Gold is good because it doesn't oxidize; but then, it's too malleable for most purposes, won't keep a permanent shape. The best solution to permanency is to write something that everyone else wants a copy of. Shakespeare probably didn't really think too much about whether he was using iron gall ink or not (he was not, I don't think, and whatever he was using was likely poorly formulated anyway). Rather, he got the words right, to the point that hundreds and now thousands of other people have gone about the deliberate task of copying them in various forms. Now THAT'S permanence. Who gives a hoot about ink pH when you can write a lofty rhyme that outlives them all?

Edited January 21, 2008 by finalidid

[Paddler]

When you start thinking about permanency in a distant, philosophical sort of manner, I think you're likely to realize that every material has its drawbacks. The engraved doo-hickey on Voyager 1 spacecraft is, I think, a gold-plated phonograph album. Gold is good because it doesn't oxidize; but then, it's too malleable for most purposes, won't keep a permanent shape. The best solution to permanency is to write something that everyone else wants a copy of. Shakespeare probably didn't really think too much about whether he was using iron gall ink or not (he was not, I don't think, and whatever he was using was likely poorly formulated anyway). Rather, he got the words right, to the point that hundreds and now thousands of other people have gone about the deliberate task of copying them in various forms. Now THAT'S permanence. Who gives a hoot about ink pH when you can write a lofty rhyme that outlives them all?

 

That is a good idea, but, as Doc Smith said, "Ve can't all be first violiners in der orchestra. Some of us must push vind t'rough der trombone."

 

Paddler

 

[damien]

I was just wondering... most of the aging to paper is because of chemicals or oxidants in the air, right? What if you simply wrote your journal (made of archival paper) using archival ink and keep it in an air-tight ziploc bag in a light-proof box? Would that work?

[tfwall]

I was just wondering... most of the aging to paper is because of chemicals or oxidants in the air, right? What if you simply wrote your journal (made of archival paper) using archival ink and keep it in an air-tight ziploc bag in a light-proof box? Would that work?

The aging can be due to atmospheric contaminants or residues left on/in the paper from its production. Most of the aging is fueled by oxidation reactions with oxygen. If you wanted to curtail further deterioration, like museums do, pack your document under an inert gas like argon or nitrogen.

 

Your suggested method would certainly slow the aging process if carried out.

[Robert Hughes]

But remember, of course, that the definition of "archival" for pen & ink is on a whole other scale than, say, videotapes or computer disks, which have a lifespan of about 20-50 years. Even cheap newsprint will last a century, and any paper / ink combination that is used by someone paying reasonable attention to archival stability will last far longer. Now all we've got to do is think of writing something worth reading in 500 years...

[Luca]

Slovenian Sheaffer is neutral...

 

The brown, green, and peacock blue, are acidic (pH 4), while the red is alkaline (pH 9).

 

Luca

[dmmcf]

As others have pointed out in related threads, the modern (Slovenian) Skrip may be more neutral. According to

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...st&p=107850 , which cites Clark's ink sampler, the current production Skrip colors all have pH values between 6 and 8. I hope someone can verify this, or set me straight.

 

Just my (borrowed) two cents.

 

Michael

 

Edited to fix link. Bah.

Edited January 29, 2008 by dmmcf