- Pamela Hammersley What an interesting paper/essay Alan, thanks for sharing it, enjoyed reading it.
- Jon Singer Excellence.
- Alan Petrillo Pictures when I have the energy.
- Pamela Hammersley Hope you're feeling well Alan.
- Jay Ashworth How inkspiring.
- Alan Petrillo Zebra V-301, Inkjet cyan.
- Alan Petrillo Preppy, inkjet black, Mead paper
- Alan Petrillo Preppy, inkjet black, Norcom paper.
- Alan Petrillo Even on the really super cheap Norcom paper there is no bleed through, and very little show through. If it won't bleed through this junky paper then it won't bleed through anything.
- Alan Petrillo Preppy, inkjet black, Rhodia paper.
- Jon Singer Alan -- Hmmm. Paper less absorbent than Mead; guess that's expectable.
- Alan Petrillo There's an obvious fold through the image. Feline interference. :-)
- Alan Petrillo Preppy, inkjet black, Hammermill paper.
- Alan Petrillo Lamy Safari 1.1mm, inkjet black, Mead paper.
- Alan Petrillo Lamy Safari, inkjet black, Rhodia dot pad.
- Alan Petrillo Again, a fold through the image due to feline interference. :-)
- Alan Petrillo Lamy Safari 1.1mm, inkjet black, Hammermill paper.
- Jon Singer Alan -- Much wider line here than on the Rhodia.
- Alan Petrillo Jon Singer : Yup. It does feather a bit, but not badly.
- Alan Petrillo Update: I have now been using inkjet carbon black exclusively as my black ink for 6 months, still with no problems. But I do get bored writing with only black ink, so now I generally only carry one pen filled with black ink.
First, the disclaimer:
I did this inksperiment with my own pens for my own curiosity. If you choose to do inksperiments like this with your own guineapens then you do so at your own risk. If you break anything then you get to keep the pieces.
Do not try inksperiments of any kind with vintage, valuable, collectable, or rare pens.
Do not do inksperiments with any pen that you cannot completely disassemble and clean.
If you want to experiment with nontraditional inks without risking your fountain pens then do it with a dip pen. If you do want to inksperiment with your pens then go for it.
The Premise:
Inkjet printer ink and fountain pen ink are similar in many respects, so I wondered if inkjet ink would work in fountain pens. Rather than go with the conventional wisdom of never putting anything into a fountain pen that is not specifically labeled for fountain pens, and risking the cries of “IT WILL RUIN YOUR PENS!” I decided to take the risk and see for myself. My reasoning is that inkjet print heads use orifices measured in microns that dispense droplets measured in picoliters, and if the ink won’t clog that then it won’t clog a fountain pen. Further, inkjet cartridges and print heads are made of similar materials to most modern fountain pens, and if it won’t ruin the cartridges or print heads then it won’t ruin modern fountain pens.
The Inks:
The experimental inks are bulk refill inks from New Era Toner. I purchased the inks in 16oz bottles. Unfortunately, New Era Toner no longer carries ink in 16oz bottles, but bulk ink is available from other vendors.
The cyan, yellow, and magenta inks are dye based, and the black is pigment based, as this is what most current inkjet printers call for. HP and Canon printers in particular specify pigment black.
Inkjet inks, when purchased in bulk refill bottles, are a fraction of the cost of fountain pen inks. At the time I purchased my inks, New Era Toner sold “16 oz” bottles of ink, which in reality were 500ml bottles. The price for the 500ml bottle was $15, or $0.03/ml. The price for Platinum Carbon Black is $25/60ml, or $0.417/ml. This means that inkjet carbon black is less expensive than Platinum Carbon Black by more than an order of magnitude.
Similar prices can be found at Printer Ink Warehouse, but I have not purchased from them. They allow the the customer to specify pigment or dye based ink.
The Guineapens:
The guineapens for this inksperiment are a Platinum Preppy with a 0.3mm nib, a Speedball fountain pen with an unbranded 0.7mm stub nib, and a Speedball fountain pen with a 1.1mm cursive italic nib. Recently I have added a Lamy Safari with a 1.1mm stub nib. (Lamy calls it a stub, I call it a cursive italic.) Finally, a Zebra V-301 with a clogged feed.
The Results:
The first ink I tried was the cyan in the Preppy. I found it ridiculously wet, and it feathers and bleeds all over the place. It will bleed through the page and onto the page underneath. Interestingly, when tried on Rhodia paper the feathering is absolutely the worst. It’s like trying to write with a paint brush, and not in a good way. I don’t mean a paint brush that an artist would use, I mean a paint brush that a house painter would use. The 0.3mm nib line feathers out to about 2mm, so it’s like writing with a really really broad round point. I did not test the cyan further, because it just wasn’t worth the mess I knew it would make in the broader pens.
I gave a thought to the Zebra V-301 with the clogged feed. It won’t write with any other ink, so I thought perhaps something so ridiculously wet might make it through the clogged felt feed. I took the empty Zebra cartridge I had in it, filled it with cyan ink, and tried it out. It sort of works. If I store the pen nib down then enough ink will make it to the nib that it will write a couple of lines before running dry. It isn’t really a good result, but until I find a way to unclog or replace a felt feed then it’s all this pen has. If I was not emotionally attached to this pen, because I found it in the desk of a deceased uncle, then I would just chuck it and move on, but I really want to find a way to repair it.
The next ink I tried was the pigment based black. As black as it is I can only assume the black pigment is carbon. Most likely nano-sized soot. The pigment particles are small enough that they do not settle out of suspension. I decided to try the two Speedball pens, mostly because I don’t really like them and if I ruin them I don’t care, and the Preppy, because it has the smallest feed and the smallest nib, so if anything would be clogged by the pigment ink it would be the Preppy.
Unlike the dye based cyan, the pigment based black works beautifully. I had no problems with feathering or bleeding, and it works well even on really cheap paper that is notoriously fountain pen unfriendly. I have not had problems with clogging either. I went through a full 6ml fill in the Preppy with no problem, and that one is the real test, because it has the smallest feed and the finest nib. The Speedball pens are cartridge only, which is one of the reasons I don’t like them much, so I had to refill cartridges with a syringe, but each of them went through 6 refills with no problem. I intentionally did not flush them between any of the refills, and they just carried on writing.
This ink has a different feel to it. I often describe pens as “writes like silk”, but this experience is different. Rather than silk, writing with this ink feels more like velvet. The Speedball pens, which despite their problem being limited to cartridges are smooth writers, felt even smoother. The 0.7mm Speedball is one of the smoothest writers I have, and this ink made it feel even smoother. Even the Preppy, which is amazingly smooth for a pen of any price let alone a $5 low end model, has a velvety feel to it with this ink.
The only problem with clogging that I’ve had was with the Speedball 1.1mm, when I was sick and didn’t write at all with it for 3 weeks. It didn’t want to start at all, not even with a bump start. But a quick dip in tap water opened it right up, and in a few seconds it was writing again. If it had used a converter with which I could have primed it then I expect a quick priming, or a “push start”, would have gotten it writing even faster.
As for “it will wreck your pens”, I wrote exclusively with these three pens for four months, and in that time I saw no signs of damage at all. These are plastic pens with plastic feeds and stainless steel nibs, so there really isn’t much that can hurt them. The results might be different with acrylic or celluloid pens, or with Ebonite feeds, but at this point I’m not going to push it.
I am confident enough that inkjet pigment black will not harm my pens, at least my modern plastic ones, that I’ve put it into one of my Lamy Safaris, and so far it has written beautifully.
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