Liquitex Flow-Aid for diluting

[Fox in the Stars]

Some people prefer to dilute highly-saturated inks, but just using water can make them feel watery and flow less well. Well, I found I had some Liquitex Flow-Aid paint additive; they call it a "fluidifiant," and the ingredients just say "surfactant blend". You can get it at Michael's or about any craft store that sells Liquitex paints. It's made to dilute acrylic paints without making them so watery, to make them flow and level better, etc., so I thought I'd try it in a cheap pen and see how it did.

 

For normal use with paint, it says to use one part Flow-Aid to 20 parts water, but I tried that way, 1:1 with water, and straight from the bottle, and so far I think I like the undiluted stuff best. I was mixing it with Noodler's Bulletproof Black to try to eliminate smearing, testing it out by syringe-filling a cartridge in one of my cheap vintage Sheaffer school pens. The mix currently in the pen and behaving well is, IIRC, three parts Noodler's Black to one part undiluted Flow-Aid.

 

My biggest fear was that it would clog the pen. I'm not totally satisfied yet, but I've left it unused and capped for as much as a day with no hesitancy when I picked it up. I mean to leave it capped unused for a week and see if it gums up, but I keep grabbing it for check-writing and addressing envelopes. ^_^; The color is still good and strong, it flows quite nicely, and smearing from a brisk dry finger rub is now very slight. Brushing with water will still move some black around, but not that much.

 

I just saw someone else talking about diluting PR ink, so I hope this might help with that kind of thing and with custom-mixing. Anyone else have things they like to use for this?

[Rapt]

Interesting... Will wait on your results...

 

You might also consider putting a small amount out in a dish or cap or as a blob on paper and seeing what happens as (if) it dries.

 

 

[OldGriz]

Some people prefer to dilute highly-saturated inks, but just using water can make them feel watery and flow less well. Well, I found I had some Liquitex Flow-Aid paint additive; they call it a "fluidifiant," and the ingredients just say "surfactant blend". You can get it at Michael's or about any craft store that sells Liquitex paints. It's made to dilute acrylic paints without making them so watery, to make them flow and level better, etc., so I thought I'd try it in a cheap pen and see how it did.

 

For normal use with paint, it says to use one part Flow-Aid to 20 parts water, but I tried that way, 1:1 with water, and straight from the bottle, and so far I think I like the undiluted stuff best. I was mixing it with Noodler's Bulletproof Black to try to eliminate smearing, testing it out by syringe-filling a cartridge in one of my cheap vintage Sheaffer school pens. The mix currently in the pen and behaving well is, IIRC, three parts Noodler's Black to one part undiluted Flow-Aid.

 

My biggest fear was that it would clog the pen. I'm not totally satisfied yet, but I've left it unused and capped for as much as a day with no hesitancy when I picked it up. I mean to leave it capped unused for a week and see if it gums up, but I keep grabbing it for check-writing and addressing envelopes. ^_^; The color is still good and strong, it flows quite nicely, and smearing from a brisk dry finger rub is now very slight. Brushing with water will still move some black around, but not that much.

 

I just saw someone else talking about diluting PR ink, so I hope this might help with that kind of thing and with custom-mixing. Anyone else have things they like to use for this?

 

Tryphon has a product called "Ink Safe" that will do what you want and more

Here is the product description ""InkSafe" is a special additive formulated to achieve three results: 1. Improve ink flow in dry-writing pens; 2. Remove traces of manufacturing oils from ink converters; 3. Prevent the onset or recurrence of bacterial or fungal growth. Use sparingly (one drop per bottle of ink). For maximum anti-bacterial treatment, we recommend the use of our SterilInk product (see below)."

 

I have used it and it works like a dream..

[Rapt]

Been meaning to order some of that...

[Lloyd]

Some people prefer to dilute highly-saturated inks, but just using water can make them feel watery and flow less well. Well, I found I had some Liquitex Flow-Aid paint additive; they call it a "fluidifiant," and the ingredients just say "surfactant blend". You can get it at Michael's or about any craft store that sells Liquitex paints. It's made to dilute acrylic paints without making them so watery, to make them flow and level better, etc., so I thought I'd try it in a cheap pen and see how it did.

 

For normal use with paint, it says to use one part Flow-Aid to 20 parts water, but I tried that way, 1:1 with water, and straight from the bottle, and so far I think I like the undiluted stuff best. I was mixing it with Noodler's Bulletproof Black to try to eliminate smearing, testing it out by syringe-filling a cartridge in one of my cheap vintage Sheaffer school pens. The mix currently in the pen and behaving well is, IIRC, three parts Noodler's Black to one part undiluted Flow-Aid.

 

My biggest fear was that it would clog the pen. I'm not totally satisfied yet, but I've left it unused and capped for as much as a day with no hesitancy when I picked it up. I mean to leave it capped unused for a week and see if it gums up, but I keep grabbing it for check-writing and addressing envelopes. ^_^; The color is still good and strong, it flows quite nicely, and smearing from a brisk dry finger rub is now very slight. Brushing with water will still move some black around, but not that much.

 

I just saw someone else talking about diluting PR ink, so I hope this might help with that kind of thing and with custom-mixing. Anyone else have things they like to use for this?

 

Tryphon has a product called "Ink Safe" that will do what you want and more

Here is the product description ""InkSafe" is a special additive formulated to achieve three results: 1. Improve ink flow in dry-writing pens; 2. Remove traces of manufacturing oils from ink converters; 3. Prevent the onset or recurrence of bacterial or fungal growth. Use sparingly (one drop per bottle of ink). For maximum anti-bacterial treatment, we recommend the use of our SterilInk product (see below)."

 

I have used it and it works like a dream..

Tryphon's product doesn't state that it reduces smearing. Have you experienced it doing so?

 

[Fox in the Stars]

Tryphon has a product called "Ink Safe" that will do what you want and more

Here is the product description ""InkSafe" is a special additive formulated to achieve three results: 1. Improve ink flow in dry-writing pens; 2. Remove traces of manufacturing oils from ink converters; 3. Prevent the onset or recurrence of bacterial or fungal growth. Use sparingly (one drop per bottle of ink). For maximum anti-bacterial treatment, we recommend the use of our SterilInk product (see below)."

 

I have used it and it works like a dream..

 

I have some, but it's comes in these tiny phials and Tryphon says just to use a drop of it in a bottle. I don't think it's for cutting ink by 1/4 to 1/2 like I was trying to do.

 

If the current experiment works out, I'm thinking of putting the Flow-Aid through a (cheap) pen almost straight, just add enough ink to get a light color.

[Fox in the Stars]

Okay! The test pen has been unused for a week, standing tip-up. When I got it out and tried it it was dry---but just barely! A tiny bit of doodling and a tiny little shake broke it loose, and now it feels nice and fluid like before I set it aside.

[Fox in the Stars]

As a further experiment, I tried adding just a drop of Noodler's Saguaro Wine for color to 8 drops of Flow-Aid, and it feathered and bled like nobody's business; in fact soaked into the paper enough that *that* washed out the color. Such a bad result was reasonably to be expected using so much surfactant, but it didn't hurt to find out. ^_~

[Ste_S]

I've got a particularly dry pen I'm giving Liquitex Flow Aid a whirl in. Didn't want to dilute the ink too much, so added as per the recommendation on the bottle. Roughly 0.05-0.1ml to a 1ml converter.

 

Anyone else tried this out since the original posts here ?

[Ste_S]

Initial impressions.

 

My Visconti Rembrandt is a very dry pen, even with Waterman Blue. The medium nib writes almost like a fine.

A tiny amount of Liquitex Flow Aid into the converter has made a huge difference. It's now a wet pen and on the broader side of medium. The ink doesn't show any sign of dilution, and is much darker on the page

 

Hopefully the flow aid doesn't have any adverse effects on the pen. It looks fairly innocuous, smells and looks like the soapy liquid you get in bubble blowing bottles.