Inks: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Inks: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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Fountain pens require ink. But what kind of ink? And why? And how?

First Principles

Fountain pen ink bottle GOOD: Feed your fountain pen a steady diet of fountain pen ink. Period. This injunction may seem obvious, but it is not quite so obvious as it appears. Fountain pen ink is a solution. To the chemist, a solution consists of a fluid in which other substances are dissolved (the solvent), and the dissolved substances (the solutes). The solutes are actually reduced to the molecular level, the same as the solvent, and all the different molecules are mixed up evenly to create a uniform fluid, a pure liquid^[1] that contains no microscopic particles of solid material. The solvent in fountain pen ink is distilled water, and the solutes are dyes, wetting agents, and mold inhibitors. Because it’s a solution, fountain pen ink contains no solid matter at all. This is an important point to remember.

BAD: Certain manufacturers of artists’ inks and paints, such as Winsor & Newton, market some of their calligraphy inks as being suitable for fountain pens. Don’t believe it. Calligraphy inks are pigmented; that is, they derive their color not from dissolved dyes but instead from finely ground solid matter — like paint. In theory, the pigment in these inks is so fine that it will remain in suspension under the impetus of Brownian motion in the liquid component of the ink. Unfortunately, this does not always happen. In a calligrapher’s dip pen any separation of solid components is not a problem because the nib is easy to remove and clean and because there is no feed with hidden passages to clog. But as the ink passes through the very fine fissures of a fountain pen’s feed and the slit of the nib, pigment particles come in contact with the walls of these passages and are attracted to the surfaces. A layer of pigment builds up and will inevitably clog the feed, the nib, or both. The modern plastic feed shown here illustrates the myriad nooks and crannies into which ink can find its way before drying out to clog the works.

Fountain pen ink bottle There are other inks, less obviously troublesome, that you should avoid. Right at the top of this list is inkjet-printer ink. This stuff might seem appealing; refills are inexpensive, and the colors — especially the ones rated for 70 years or longer — are remarkably permanent. But there are some very bad things in inkjet ink. It frequently uses pigment, not dye, for color, and there are also particulate resins for better adhesion. Various glycols (diethylene, alkylene, etc.) enhance penetration, which can exacerbate bleeding and feathering in a fountain pen; and they also retard evaporation, making the ink take longer to dry on the paper.

UGLY: India ink, white-out, and other similar fluids are certain death to fountain pens. These fluids are pigmented, and they are frequently not water based. (India ink is water based, but it also contains gum arabic for permanence.)

Maintenance: Low, Medium, or High

Even when you’re scrupulous about using fountain pen ink only, your pen can experience ink-related problems. These difficulties happen because even the best inks are not perfect; and when pen maintenance is also imperfect, writing performance can suffer.

Using fountain pens, like shaving with a cut-throat razor, is partly a sensual experience, and it involves ritual. Maintaining your pens is part of the ritual. Every ink requires you to commit a certain amount of time and effort to using your pens. Your choice of inks will depend on how much fiddling you enjoy balanced against how much you are willing to tolerate. But not all inks require the same amount of involvement; the less trouble a given ink requires, the higher its usability score. An ink’s usability score is a composite rating, so to speak, that reflects the amount of time and effort you have to put into using that ink. The composite is built on factors such as these:

Flow. Inks that flow well — but not too well — score high because they don’t make the pen fight back when you’re trying to write with it. Inks with good flow will start readily and will flow evenly, without exhibiting a tendency to skip or to produce dry patches. Inks that flow too well often tend to feather or bleed, especially on cheap papers, and this sort of excessive flow lowers an ink’s score.
Staining. Inks that stain little or not at all score high because they don’t make you disassemble and scrub out your transparent or partially transparent pens so you can see through them or polish the plating off your two-tone nibs trying to keep them bright. The color of a given ink affects its staining tendency; reds and other colors containing red dyes have a high tendency to stain (and therefore somewhat lower scores), while pure blues — especially washable ones — stain little or not at all.
Lubrication. Inks that lubricate well score high because they give you a smooth glide instead of making your nib feel dry and gritty so that you have to push harder. Some users refer to inks that lubricate well as being “greasy,” but there is no actual grease in fountain pen ink.
Clogging. Inks that don’t clog score high because they don’t make you disassemble your pen to floss the nib and feed. Typically, the more intensely saturated the color is, the greater are the dye load and the concomitant risk of clogging.
“Creepability.” This is a handy made-up word that refers to an ink’s tendency to display nib creep. Inks that tend not to creep score higher because they don’t make you take out a tissue and wipe the nib to no avail every few minutes. This also raises your spirits by reducing your stress level.

Waterman inks were the first high-scoring (low-maintenance) inks I discovered. On a scale of 1 to 10, I rate Waterman inks a solid 10. They flow remarkably well under a broad variety of conditions in almost any pen. They lubricate exceptionally well, imparting a glassy-smooth ride. They are not heavily saturated, and the dyes in them tend to be relatively nonstaining. Waterman Blue-Black is almost stain free. But Waterman’s palette is not the most inspiring in the world. Recently Diamine appeared in the marketplace with a much more exciting range of colors and with characteristics very similar to those of Waterman, so that now I rely almost entirely on these two brands, the majority of whose colors sport very high scores. Their reds, as expected, have the lowest scores; but these inks still score higher than most other brands, higher even than some other brands’ blues and blacks. As it happens, I use Skrip Red (made in Slovenia) in one pen at my workbench, and it’s remarkably good. Its being red reduces its score slightly, but not enough to be a major consideration for me.

Toward the middle of the scale fall the vast majority of inks, including Aurora (which offers the richest, most intense black of all safe inks), Pelikan, Parker Quink (except the black, which scores surprisingly low because it exhibits serious flow issues), J. Herbin, Lamy, Omas, Namiki, and many more.

On the high-maintenance (low scoring) end of the scale we find Private Reserve, Levenger, and other very heavily saturated “boutique” brands, most of which score in the range from 3 to 5. As described earlier, fountain pen ink is a solution; the solvent is water, and the solutes are the dyes, the surfactant, and the fungicide. The nature of chemical solutions is that as the temperature declines, the solvent can keep less of the solutes in solution. The more solute you start with, the more likely it is that some of it will come out of solution as time passes and conditions such as humidity and temperature vary. As the dye comes out of solution it precipitates onto the interior surfaces of the pen — particularly the fissures in the feed. This leads eventually to a clog.

Some boutique inks also score lower because of differences in flow and drying rate among their various colors. Private Reserve Sherwood Green is a lovely color, but I give it a score of 2 because it sometimes never dries. (I've come back six months after writing something with it and smeared it while handling the paper.) On the other hand, Private Reserve Tanzanite, sometimes called “the Ex-Lax of inks,” stains badly and flows far too readily. It also scores a 2 or a 3. If you like the color of Tanzanite but don’t like the way the ink behaves, try mixing Waterman Florida Blue and Waterman Violet in equal parts. This mixture, which I have dubbed “Blurple,” is virtually indistinguishable from Tanzanite.

In the same way that a heavily saturated ink can precipitate in your pens, it can also do so in the bottle. In fact, if you habitually leave ink bottles open for extended periods, the water gradually evaporates, rendering the solution more saturated than the manufacturer intended. Even otherwise “safe” inks can do this. Do not shake an ink bottle before filling your pens from it — and if you ever see a sludge in the bottom of an ink bottle, the wisest course if you want to avoid clogging is to discard the contents.

Note

The highest-maintenance inks of all, in my experience, are Noodler’s “bulletproof” colors. These inks, although their dyes are in solution, contain suspended particulate matter (the stuff that makes the ink bond chemically with the paper), and they can sometimes have flow and clogging issues — as well as a high creepability that results from the use of a greater amount of surfactant than normal in order to keep the particulates flowing well. (In layman’s terms, these inks are simply “wetter” than other inks.) These minor quirks aside, however, they’re excellent inks; and if you absolutely, positively need permanence, they definitely deserve consideration. Every user’s experience is different, and you might just find that nothing else works as well in your pens as these inks.

Let it be clearly understood that the designation of a given ink as high maintenance (by me or by anyone else) should not be construed as a warning to avoid said ink. With proper care, including more frequent flushing, use in opaque pens only, adjustment of nibs for richer flow, etc., these inks are eminently usable, so long as you use them in pens that like them and give them the attention to maintenance that they need.

Creeping Crud: the Dreaded SITB, or Slime in the Bottle

Sometimes an ink can undergo an adverse chemical reaction among its various components: the fungicide might react slowly with the dye and — over time — produce a slimy film or threadlike bits of slime. This is bad news. I’ve seen suggestions that filtering the slime out will leave the remaining ink usable, but it’s not really a good idea. There is no way to tell what the chemistry of the ink is anymore; if the reaction involved the fungicide, for example, the ink no longer contains sufficient mold inhibitor, and it can develop mold very suddenly — in the bottle or in your pen! One visit to a pen repairer to have the pen cleaned out will cost you at least the price of two bottles of ink. Is it worth the risk?

Your Grandfather’s Ink

Iron gall ink for fountain pens I’ve left one particular type of ink until the end. Iron gall ink was invented more than 1500 years ago. It was used by innumerable nameless scribes to copy sacred manuscripts; by great secular writers and thinkers such as Voltaire, Shakespeare, and Leibniz; and by ordinary people. When fountain pens came into existence, iron gall ink made the leap to the new technology, and it is still in use today because it is perhaps the most permanent ink of all, even more tenacious than Noodler’s “bulletproof” formula. But it has a couple of drawbacks. First, but of less serious consequence for most of us, is its reputation for destroying, over the course of centuries, the paper on which it is used^[2]. Of more concern to you, as a fountain pen user, is that it is rather acidic: it can corrode metal pen parts such as steel nibs and cartridge nipples, and plated trim rings — every part that comes in contact with it. Only gold alloys are safe from its ravages; if your pen features a gold nib and has no other metal parts that are continually exposed to the ink (such as a metal cartridge nipple), you can use iron gall inks such as Montblanc Blue-Black and Diamine Registrar’s ink with impunity.

You should note that iron gall ink is not the only acidic ink that is currently available. Your best course, if you’re concerned about the pH of your inks, is to look for inks that advertise neutral-pH formulas. Greg Clark’s book The Ink Sampler is also an indispensable resource.

The Bottom Line

Be sensible. Know what inks you are using and how to handle them; and take good care of your pens to ensure that they’ll deliver the writing performance that was designed into them. If you’re like most collector/users, you have more pens than you want to use at one time — when you take a pen out of your rotation, flush it thoroughly (see Care and Feeding: How to Pamper Your Pens), and let it dry uncapped overnight before putting it into your pen chest for a bit of well-earned relaxation.

Notes:

The discussion of solutions in this article is necessarily simplified. For example, it speaks of liquids, but gases and solids can also form solutions. For example, fish breathe by extracting dissolved oxygen gas from the liquid water in which they live.
For those of a curious disposition, the destruction of paper by iron gall ink is simply a greatly accelerated form of natural decomposition, catalyzed by active soluble salts remaining in the ink (frequently due to a lack of understanding as to the correct form of iron sulfate to be used). Properly balanced ink does not contain excess soluble salts and is, for all practical purposes, not harmful. For more information, see the glossary entry on iron gall ink.

The information in this article is as accurate as possible, but you should not take it as absolutely authoritative.

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