I like Platinum Carbon in my Preppy pens, because their tight cap seal seems to keep the pen from drying out. I got a hold of several black inks, Noodlers and De Atramentis Archive Ink, Hongdian cartridge ink for my Asvine and Hongdian pens, and I think one or two others. I really like the De Atramentis. It flows well, dries fast, and seems to be waterproof and bulletproof. The Hongdian cartridge black, I really haven't checked if it's waterproof. I suspect not. But it works really well in my Asvine 1850 Rainbow Forest. I have a converter, so I may go to De Atramentis or Platinum Carbon, or maybe Noodlers Black, since I have it. I've had very good results cleaning everything but the Baystate Blue with a touch of Dawn in a cheap under $20 ultrasonic cleaner. Two or three cycles in it, and there usually isn't even a speck of the previous ink. I just run it until I don't see streamers of dissolved in wafting out of the pen components. When next I clean a Baystate pen, I'll try dissolving a bit of sodium percarbonate in the water. It has been called "dehydrated hydrogen peroxide" and not been too far off. It's a bleaching agent, just not chlorine. I have an electrolytic water purifier that makes a chlorine bleach from table salt. You'd have to really rinse it well so and residual salt would be removed, but your average bottle of Clorox loses all it's chlorine in just a few months, so I hate to buy it if I won't use it fast enough. Those are two nice experiments to try when cleaning the Baystate inks out of a pen. I'll make the results available if I do. The sodium percarbonate is one of the active ingredients in Oxiclean, but when used by itself, it's known to beer brewers as One Step Cleaner, a cleaner/sanitizer for your beer making gear that you don't even have to rinse. It's totally safe. When purchased in either brand cleaner, it's hideously expensive for the quantity you get. So I buy mine in 5 lb. bags on Amazon for next to nothing. Works great on most everything.
Another ink that stains a lot is Noodler's North African Violet. I have a converter and feed on a metropolitan that I haven't been able to get it completely out of. It hasn't harmed the pen and the flow is the same, so it doesn't bother me. I just wanted to warn people.
Noodler's V-Mail North African Violet is such a beautiful ink. I have used it in my Noodler's Neponset almost exclusively, and while it does stain, and does not seem to clean out as easily as a number of inks, it doesn't bother me either. Sometimes its what you are willing to tolerate. A nice ink!
I never asked for a struggle, and yet my fist bottle was Baystate Blue which I used in everything for years until I got some more kinds, with my favorite now being Emerald of Chivor, and I am excited to have Whaleman's Sepia on the way. (The rest of my inks are Polar Black, Noodlers La Coulour Royale, and Diamine Sherwood Green, theoretically the only normal and well behaved ink although La Coulour Royale seems to be a good runner up.)
I have had some needlers inks totally disintigrate some of my antique pens ink sacks that were replaced only weeks before. regardless of that I still use primarily noodler's inks in most all of my pens .
Love Goulet pens, everything about dealing with the company and their customer service is great. If I could suggest just one thing it would be for these blogs; look into acoustic panels, Bryan's office has poor acoustics and it is sometimes hard to understand him because of the echo. For about 300$'s I picked up a bunch of foam and coated the office in my home with it just for the sake of podcasting.
How difficult is Noodler's 54th Massachusetts to clean out? I have a VP and a Metro both inked up just in case the VP runs out on me at school one day. How often should I flush out and clean the Metro as it doesn't get much use. Thanks!
Your Q&A series are awesome. Nice work! It's crazy how much heat Noodler's ink gets both for its inks and its pens. I say, relax, clean your pens regularly and enjoy. I currently have my Appalachian Pearl Konrad Acrylic inked with Baystate blue and it's super cool :)
I am a newbie to the world of fountain pens. I have made several purchases from the Goulet Pen Co. What a joy. I bought Bay State not knowing any better. I live in FL and when I opened it ink was everywhere. My hands were stained and it took days for me to get my hands clean. My cutting board in the kitchen is still stained. With that said I love the color and I have dedicated the Noodler's Ahab for the Bay State.
Lahr's Videos It's definitely smart to dedicate a pen to Baystate :) And just think, your cutting board will always help you remember the first time you used BSB! -Margaret
The Goulet Pen Company Baystate blue is the one ink that I always get on me, when I ink pens its usually 3-4 at a time, and my hands will be perfectly clean until I get to baystate blue, then it will be all over me. Pro-tip do not get BSB in the large eye dropper bottle, the rubber sticks to the bottle and that little bit of pressure required to get the eye dropper off the top (dried ink creating a seal.) will cause a little bit of misting. I have an Ahab dedicated to the color as well, but I also have a few preppies inked with it as give away pens. General rule when it comes to Noodlers inks, if it has Baystate in its name, your better of dedicating a pen to it. As the baystate inks do not play well with others. There will be very bad results with cross contamination. Beautiful colors but this is the downside.
I also have an Ahab Demonstrator dedicated to BSB. The pen was already blue, so it's not a huge deal. Same goes for the only other BSB pen I currently have inked with it, an Asvine V169 with the dark blue acrylic. If it's going to stain, it's going to stain, so I put it in pens where you can't tell if it's stained or not.
For some of the Chinese pens I have that emulate the vintage squeeze sac fillers, they seem to get stained very easily. My Hero 616 is permanently Diamine Imperial Purple and also the newer style Kaweco Sport converters suffer from this. Diamine Poppy Red in my case. Maybe Diamine have a high pigmentation (like Noodler's too).
Noodler‘s Revolution Blue stains badly in my Sailor 1911 Realo, it's very hard to clean out from a piston filler. Montblanc Permanent Blue (pigmented) is much easier to clean out than the latter, but I flush out this ink every week-end, never let it dried out in my pens.
I stick mainly to J. Herbin inks since they seem to leave not a trace of themselves after a water flush. I am a huge fan of Noodlers Midnight Blue, but I find it very guilty of being difficult to clean.
For a year I used Private Reserve Tangerine Dream in a pen. That pen just started oozing ink like Carrie oozed it out. I cleaned that pen and haven't used it again. About a month ago I looked at the pen and the chrome plating in the section was all gone leaving behind a white plastic.. Scary.
I've only had trouble with ONE noodler's ink: Mass 54th. It smelled a bit like paint and it seems like it's pigmented. I left it in a drawer for a week in a Noodlers Creeper and it dried and clogged everything. It was a good thing I got it as a sampler. I've used Air-corp blue-black for about half a bottle in my every day pen and never had a single issue. Ottoman's Azure is my Blue, and it's fine as well.
When you say long period of time, how long do you mean? 1 week, 1 month? Thanks in advance. I am very new to fountain pens and have learned almost everything from your videos.
Justin Wilson has Baystate blue in my Noodler’s Creaper demonstrator pen for like a month and it’s permanently stained Blue.same with my Toyvolsky. Permanently stained my demonstrators.
I didn't find much about the DA document inks but this is what I found about the black ink: Light fastness: 8 WS Ph-level: 7 Surface tension: 60 mN/m Viscosity: 1,2 mPas Humidity proofness: yes Temperature resistance: yes
No, it can eat away at some of the components in a TWSBI Eco. I'd definitely stick to just regular soap/water or pen flush for that. It should do the trick. - Colin
Oh there's so many great blue inks. I recently fell in love with Colorverse Supernova (www.gouletpens.com/ink-sample-colorverse-supernova/p/IS-CV-14 ) but definitely check out our Swab Shop tool for a better comparison between all the blues we offer: www.gouletpens.com/ink-comparison-tool - Colin
Baystate Blue is absolutely beautiful and I love it. I have a Pilot Metropolitan EF that is dedicated to that ink, and it works beautifully every time. A favourite.
+Matthew Franklin Yeah, any shimmering ink with gold flecks in it can be a burden on cleaning. You just have to keep up a regular routine, much more so than non-shimmering inks. - Colin
I like Platinum Carbon in my Preppy pens, because their tight cap seal seems to keep the pen from drying out. I got a hold of several black inks, Noodlers and De Atramentis Archive Ink, Hongdian cartridge ink for my Asvine and Hongdian pens, and I think one or two others. I really like the De Atramentis. It flows well, dries fast, and seems to be waterproof and bulletproof. The Hongdian cartridge black, I really haven't checked if it's waterproof. I suspect not. But it works really well in my Asvine 1850 Rainbow Forest. I have a converter, so I may go to De Atramentis or Platinum Carbon, or maybe Noodlers Black, since I have it.
I've had very good results cleaning everything but the Baystate Blue with a touch of Dawn in a cheap under $20 ultrasonic cleaner. Two or three cycles in it, and there usually isn't even a speck of the previous ink. I just run it until I don't see streamers of dissolved in wafting out of the pen components. When next I clean a Baystate pen, I'll try dissolving a bit of sodium percarbonate in the water. It has been called "dehydrated hydrogen peroxide" and not been too far off. It's a bleaching agent, just not chlorine. I have an electrolytic water purifier that makes a chlorine bleach from table salt. You'd have to really rinse it well so and residual salt would be removed, but your average bottle of Clorox loses all it's chlorine in just a few months, so I hate to buy it if I won't use it fast enough. Those are two nice experiments to try when cleaning the Baystate inks out of a pen. I'll make the results available if I do.
The sodium percarbonate is one of the active ingredients in Oxiclean, but when used by itself, it's known to beer brewers as One Step Cleaner, a cleaner/sanitizer for your beer making gear that you don't even have to rinse. It's totally safe. When purchased in either brand cleaner, it's hideously expensive for the quantity you get. So I buy mine in 5 lb. bags on Amazon for next to nothing. Works great on most everything.
Another ink that stains a lot is Noodler's North African Violet. I have a converter and feed on a metropolitan that I haven't been able to get it completely out of. It hasn't harmed the pen and the flow is the same, so it doesn't bother me. I just wanted to warn people.
Noodler's V-Mail North African Violet is such a beautiful ink. I have used it in my Noodler's Neponset almost exclusively, and while it does stain, and does not seem to clean out as easily as a number of inks, it doesn't bother me either. Sometimes its what you are willing to tolerate. A nice ink!
I never asked for a struggle, and yet my fist bottle was Baystate Blue which I used in everything for years until I got some more kinds, with my favorite now being Emerald of Chivor, and I am excited to have Whaleman's Sepia on the way. (The rest of my inks are Polar Black, Noodlers La Coulour Royale, and Diamine Sherwood Green, theoretically the only normal and well behaved ink although La Coulour Royale seems to be a good runner up.)
Am getting Whaleman's Sepia soon, so excited for it! I got a sample and fell 100% in love with it
I have had some needlers inks totally disintigrate some of my antique pens ink sacks that were replaced only weeks before. regardless of that I still use primarily noodler's inks in most all of my pens .
Thanks for your greats QA videos, both the new ones and the old ones are gold
Love Goulet pens, everything about dealing with the company and their customer service is great. If I could suggest just one thing it would be for these blogs; look into acoustic panels, Bryan's office has poor acoustics and it is sometimes hard to understand him because of the echo. For about 300$'s I picked up a bunch of foam and coated the office in my home with it just for the sake of podcasting.
How difficult is Noodler's 54th Massachusetts to clean out? I have a VP and a Metro both inked up just in case the VP runs out on me at school one day. How often should I flush out and clean the Metro as it doesn't get much use. Thanks!
Your Q&A series are awesome. Nice work!
It's crazy how much heat Noodler's ink gets both for its inks and its pens. I say, relax, clean your pens regularly and enjoy.
I currently have my Appalachian Pearl Konrad Acrylic inked with Baystate blue and it's super cool :)
markos741 Yes, cleaning regularly certainly helps keep the pens in great shape :) And using them often too of course! -Margaret
I am a newbie to the world of fountain pens. I have made several purchases from the Goulet Pen Co. What a joy. I bought Bay State not knowing any better. I live in FL and when I opened it ink was everywhere. My hands were stained and it took days for me to get my hands clean. My cutting board in the kitchen is still stained. With that said I love the color and I have dedicated the Noodler's Ahab for the Bay State.
Lahr's Videos It's definitely smart to dedicate a pen to Baystate :) And just think, your cutting board will always help you remember the first time you used BSB! -Margaret
The Goulet Pen Company
Baystate blue is the one ink that I always get on me, when I ink pens its usually 3-4 at a time, and my hands will be perfectly clean until I get to baystate blue, then it will be all over me. Pro-tip do not get BSB in the large eye dropper bottle, the rubber sticks to the bottle and that little bit of pressure required to get the eye dropper off the top (dried ink creating a seal.) will cause a little bit of misting. I have an Ahab dedicated to the color as well, but I also have a few preppies inked with it as give away pens. General rule when it comes to Noodlers inks, if it has Baystate in its name, your better of dedicating a pen to it. As the baystate inks do not play well with others. There will be very bad results with cross contamination. Beautiful colors but this is the downside.
I also have an Ahab Demonstrator dedicated to BSB. The pen was already blue, so it's not a huge deal. Same goes for the only other BSB pen I currently have inked with it, an Asvine V169 with the dark blue acrylic. If it's going to stain, it's going to stain, so I put it in pens where you can't tell if it's stained or not.
For some of the Chinese pens I have that emulate the vintage squeeze sac fillers, they seem to get stained very easily. My Hero 616 is permanently Diamine Imperial Purple and also the newer style Kaweco Sport converters suffer from this. Diamine Poppy Red in my case. Maybe Diamine have a high pigmentation (like Noodler's too).
Noodler‘s Revolution Blue stains badly in my Sailor 1911 Realo, it's very hard to clean out from a piston filler. Montblanc Permanent Blue (pigmented) is much easier to clean out than the latter, but I flush out this ink every week-end, never let it dried out in my pens.
I stick mainly to J. Herbin inks since they seem to leave not a trace of themselves after a water flush. I am a huge fan of Noodlers Midnight Blue, but I find it very guilty of being difficult to clean.
Maybe try Diamine Midnight? It's pretty similar and easy to clean. - Colin
+The Goulet Pen Company thanks! will try it for sure if that's the case
For a year I used Private Reserve Tangerine Dream in a pen. That pen just started oozing ink like Carrie oozed it out. I cleaned that pen and haven't used it again. About a month ago I looked at the pen and the chrome plating in the section was all gone leaving behind a white plastic.. Scary.
I've only had trouble with ONE noodler's ink: Mass 54th. It smelled a bit like paint and it seems like it's pigmented. I left it in a drawer for a week in a Noodlers Creeper and it dried and clogged everything. It was a good thing I got it as a sampler. I've used Air-corp blue-black for about half a bottle in my every day pen and never had a single issue. Ottoman's Azure is my Blue, and it's fine as well.
When you say long period of time, how long do you mean? 1 week, 1 month?
Thanks in advance. I am very new to fountain pens and have learned almost everything from your videos.
Justin Wilson has Baystate blue in my Noodler’s Creaper demonstrator pen for like a month and it’s permanently stained Blue.same with my Toyvolsky. Permanently stained my demonstrators.
@@potatopewpew4719 Did bleach remove the stain from the Baystate?
Ken W. Nope. I designated it as my “Blue Pen” now since no matter what I can’t get the Baystate out.
Thanks for the info. Just a quick qn: what about Noodler's Heart of Darkness?
What's the best way to clean off a stained nib? My Cross classic century had a purple nib after using noodlers north African violet in it for a while.
DA also offers a thinner for diluting the document inks and thus making the colours lighter.
But that's all i could find out. Sorry about that.
+ssi1991 Yup, we've got the dilution liquid here! www.gouletpens.com/de-atramentis-dilution-liquid/p/DA1089 -Margaret
How about the new Krishna Inks?
I have just bought A diplomat Excellence A2 14k gold ... can someone suggest me the safest ink ?
I didn't find much about the DA document inks but this is what I found about the black ink:
Light fastness: 8 WS
Ph-level: 7
Surface tension: 60 mN/m
Viscosity: 1,2 mPas
Humidity proofness: yes
Temperature resistance: yes
Can you use borax to clean a Twsbi Eco??
No, it can eat away at some of the components in a TWSBI Eco. I'd definitely stick to just regular soap/water or pen flush for that. It should do the trick. - Colin
This video has done nothing but make me worry about Baystate Blue!
As long as you clean it out regularly and not let it sit in your pen, it's fine to use! - Colin
Well that is a relief. I am looking for blue inks on your great website.
Oh there's so many great blue inks. I recently fell in love with Colorverse Supernova (www.gouletpens.com/ink-sample-colorverse-supernova/p/IS-CV-14 ) but definitely check out our Swab Shop tool for a better comparison between all the blues we offer: www.gouletpens.com/ink-comparison-tool - Colin
Baystate Blue is absolutely beautiful and I love it. I have a Pilot Metropolitan EF that is dedicated to that ink, and it works beautifully every time. A favourite.
Uurg my J.Herbin 1670 Rouge Hematite is so hard to clean out, and the gold is so unreliable too.
+Matthew Franklin Yeah, any shimmering ink with gold flecks in it can be a burden on cleaning. You just have to keep up a regular routine, much more so than non-shimmering inks. - Colin
dyed sorry *
Only 10 times "and stuff like that" this time