Originally Posted by
Baisao
I find it odd that no one is concerned about the conservation of their writing (or their vintage pens).
I would venture that it isn't exactly a case of “
no one is concerned”, but it is certainly uncommon, let alone in the majority, today and not something anyone has reason to believe is the average fountain pen user's requirement from either an ink product or the application of such by default.
I, for one, don't care about either conservation or preservation of my handwritten content. I look at it from an analytical viewpoint. I'm the primary stakeholder when it comes to retrieval and review of the my handwritten content, somewhere down the line; and I can't name anything that I expect I ‘need’ or want to look up (by going through boxes or piles of journals, notebooks or notepads) and re-read on paper in ten years' time, and that failure to do so will create distress, anguish or pain. My wife is the other major stakeholder, and she hasn't expressed any information requirements for ten or twenty years hence. I don't know of any other relevant stakeholders in the context, and nobody else's requirements matter when I do my personal writing; so why would I be unduly concerned about the long-term preservation and legibility of the marks I make with my pen?
In any case, I already have — and use — a number of pigment inks that I know will preserve legibility well enough beyond our natural lifetimes, although my main concern is defence against moisture causing the ink marks to smudge or erased, not whether undue exposure to moisture would do more damage by (triggering) destruction of the paper or cause mold to grow on the substrate, etc.
As for the fountain pens themselves, I'd venture that iron-gall inks were common enough in the day when the “vintage pens” were made and used by their original owners; if they weren't overly concerned about what those inks did to their writing instruments and private property, especially back in the era of “one man, one pen” — when it was more important for someone to maintain access to his only tool(s) for fulfilling a particular common functional application such as writing on paper, less he couldn't do in a timely manner what was required — then neither should current owners of old items that are no longer so critical in fulfilling their handwriting needs. I wouldn't be particular distressed if an ink stained, corroded or otherwise damaged my (not cheap but also not that expensive) Aurora 88 Minerali piston-filled demonstrator, so why would I be concerned at all what it does to some cheaper pens made in the middle of the 20th Century that I may have picked up somehow?
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