Prejudice Against Noodler's Ink

[welch]

I joked somewhere else, that Mike can add a mushed/melted sac I had in a Parker 51 Vac. I had been using Diamine Sapphire, an easy-going ink.

I use Noodlers Blue Eel and Ottoman Azure all the time. The rest of his inks don't appeal to me. I like blue, and most of his blue inks lean toward teal. I won;t use the specialty inks, since I have no need for them.

Noodlers does seem to have a QA problem, since Mr Noodler wants to be a one-man ink company. I suspect that his inks vary a bit from batch to batch. No idea if he's modifying the formula with each batch, or has trouble, as a one-man manufacturer, in exactly repeating an in from one batch to another. User "Corniche" at FPN once began an ink company. He described the difficulty of getting a recipe just right, and stopped when the supplier of one of his ingredients closed up. Noodlers must have trouble keeping so many inks flying.

[Sailor Kenshin]

Well.

I got a sample of Bernanke Blue at the LIPS. I like it enough that I just ordered more from isellpens along with a Hero that was on sale. It's almost as bright as BSB but the color washed out of the converter. Unlike BSB.

[mhosea]

Bernanke blue is a very nice color, indeed, essentially the same as Liberty's Elysium but a regular dye ink, not cellulose reactive. I don't like fast dry inks, though, because they soak into the paper to achieve that, so they tend to deliver a wider line and, on paper that allows it, more feathering. Horses for courses.

It's apparently very hard just to demonstrate a sac failure on demand, let alone prove cause and effect. I no longer worry about ink selection for fear of premature sac failure, especially since I learned from David Nishimura not to uncrimp Snorkel sac protectors, just use heat and wiggle them out. Now even changing the sac on a snorkel wouldn't be all that bad for me.

[Sailor Kenshin]

The BB was made for southpaw hookers like myself.

[nigh means near]

I've been using Noodler's red-black in my TWSBI classic. I use it every day for hours on end (university) and have not had so much as a single hard start. I can't say the same about any other ink I've used (though to be fair, they've all been used in different pens). Still, the red-black is super reliable, and doesn't feather or bleed through even when using my Noodler's flex pens on cheap copy paper.

The X-Feather is also my go to drawing ink these days (even for brushes and dip pens). The only inks that even compete with its level of blackness are heavy, almost chunky pigment based drawing inks like Talens, which obviously are poison to fountain pens.

[mhosea]

3 weeks down. No degradation. Pretty sure I just screwed up somehow before, but I'll keep it going. I also checked the BSB fragment, which has been going longer. Looks fine.

OK, just to put this one to bed, nothing going on. The replaced sac fragment in the dryout part of the Noodler's Black experiment is fine. The sac fragment in the sealed Noodler's vial has been in there almost a year, and it looks fine, too, maybe a bit more gray, but aren't we all. Even the villainous BSB is not helping me out. Glad I'm not a starving grad student working on a PhD thesis!

[dr.grace]

Thanks for your efforts, Mike. Even though the results are negative, they're reassuring, in a way. Anyway, I've stopped worrying about gooey sacs. These days I'm only concerned about particulate residue clogging feeds.

[snedwos]

Hee hee! This afternoon I had a Vulcan's Coral Ahab (red/pink white swirl). It is now purple. My nose is blue. The inside of my coat is blue. My hands a blue (and I went to sea in a sieve, I did).

BSB is a pretty colour, but boy is it psychopathic.

I have had rather a lot of fun in 24 hours with my sample.

[Dreck]

Hee hee! This afternoon I had a Vulcan's Coral Ahab (red/pink white swirl). It is now purple. My nose is blue. The inside of my coat is blue. My hands a blue (and I went to sea in a sieve, I did).

BSB is a pretty colour, but boy is it psychopathic.

I have had rather a lot of fun in 24 hours with my sample.

Interesting. Everyone else I know of who writes with a fountain pen uses their ink solely for that purpose. After your experimentation, do you find BSB to be a viable substitute for makeup and/or clothing dye?

[snedwos]

Bay State Blue is clearly grossly offended by any colour other than itself. It actively pursues hue purity. Only violent shades of electric blue are acceptable. It is a genocidal maniac. It will stain anything with extreme prejudice. It wasn't even that big if a spill!

[Jon Szanto]

[The Good Captain]

Ah - the Blues Brothers.

[mhosea]

Ah - the Blues Brothers.

The Blue Man Group response is as follows:

[Jon Szanto]

Ok, we're already off the rails, and I can't resist. One of my all-time faves:

[mhosea]

I always wish the drums at 3:28 would go on longer before the song picks up again. Must have been cool being on stage for that bit.

[mhosea]

It's been awhile since I checked all the sac fragments in the sealed inks, but I did so this evening. Several of these have had sac fragments in them for a full year, others about 8 months. The results so far:

Noodler's Blue -- gummy sac fragment (about like freshly chewed bubble gum), loss of elasticity (obviously)
Noodler's Black -- OK
Noodler's Nikita -- OK
Noodler's Baystate Blue -- OK
Noodler's Gruene Cactus Eel -- OK
Noodler's Qin Shi Huang -- OK
Noodler's #41 Brown -- OK
Noodler's Bad Belted Kingfisher -- OK
Noodler's Bad Blue Heron -- OK
Noodler's North African Violets -- OK
Noodler's Upper Ganges Blue -- OK
Noodler's Heart of Darkness -- OK
Sailor Sei Boku -- OK
Waterman Blue -- OK
Control samples -- all OK

Note that a single result like this is suggestive, but it's not sufficient unless we can replicate it, so the next step is to repeat with Noodler's Blue. If you have some Noodler's Blue and a hunk of a latex sac, I invite you to do the same. I am sure that the Noodler's Blue that the sac fragment was in did not have any phenol added. Unfortunately, I may have added some to my full bottles. Consequently, I am not in the greatest position even though I have two full bottles of Noodler's Blue. Finally, I'm pretty sure my bottle of Noodler's Blue was cross contaminated with a sample of Noodler's Blue Eel, so Blue Eel would be worth testing also.

If you want to give it a go, here's my methodology:

1. Take a latex sac remnant.
2. Divide it in two.
3. Place one half in a vial with the test ink, at least enough ink to immerse the sac fragment.
4. Place the other half in a "control" fluid. This might be an ink widely considered safe, such as Waterman Blue or Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue. I was using Waterman Blue for awhile, but I switched to distilled water with phenol as a preservative.
5. Wait a long time (months and months).
6. Fish out the sac fragment from the test ink and inspect it. If it seems OK, clean it, dry it, and then put it back.

The "dryout" version of the experiment is the same except don't seal it. Use less ink you want the sac to be partially exposed to the air during the dryout version.

Unfortunately, I may not have checked that fragment for some time, so even if we can replicate the result, it may take nearly a year to do it. I do not expect results in less than 6 months time. I hadn't done a dryout type experiment with Noodler's Blue, so it's possible that that avenue will yield an accelerated result, though.

[whych]

The interesting thing about this is that BSB is not the culprit.
If phenol was a problem, we would have seen/heard that users of the old Parker Quink inks had similar problems with sacs melting in the past.

[mhosea]

I don't worry about phenol. That's why I used it in my control fluid. However, I wish I could remember if I added any to the full bottles. It's just a variable I would prefer not to have tweaked for retesting purposes. Obviously I couldn't have added much to a full Noodler's bottle!

[mydecemberht]

I use both Noodlers Heart of Darkness, Baystate Blue(loveeeeee!) and Noodlers Vmail North African Violet...I've never had any issues in my Lamy, Ahabs or other pens so far. I wash my pens pretty well, and make sure not to leave any inks in them for too long though. I'd totally buy more Noodlers Inks...and hopefully another Ahab and figure out why I had so many issues with it.
Heather

[Woody]

Back to the original question. I think sometimes it's good for an ink maker to comment on the boards from time to time. Succinctly comment if you will. Also I believe that political statements don't belong on ink labels. That being said there are two Noodlers colors that I've had no problems with. Nightshade and Navy. The red black I tried to like but one bottle was not like the other. I think they do make a nice brown, not sure how wet that would be. I have a bottle of Goulet's Purple Heart that seems to clog a bit. Another question of the brand may be the Noodler pens that are somewhat temperamental. If one has a bad experience with a pen, it's quite likely they may transfer some of that opinion to a brand's inks. It's a natural thing that consumers do.