Do all greens dry slowly?

[Wendell]

I've often heard it said that green inks in general dry more slowly
than other colors. If this is true, what's the reason for it? Are some
brands much better than others?

[Dave]

I'm using some Waterman green - it appears to dry normally.

I find it a nice green as well - doesn't look washed-out or anything.

David

[fdu...@aol.com]

Ive never heard it after 20 years in the ink and dye industry. Maybe
you need to adjust the ink flow with a left handed monkey wrench. A
right handed monkey wrench is never used for such thkngs. :)

What gets to me is words like I "often" heard it. I don't doubt you
did. It once more goes to show how much useless and misleading info is
out there concerning pens and inks. Put this in a solid steel weighted
box along with inks go bad after a year, don't mix inks, use only
distilled water to clean pens and so on. Then dump it in the deepest
part of the ocean you can get to. Hopefully with some of the folks who
claim such things as fact tied to it. :)

As for brands thats another subject. Please lest not go there again.
Well, we havent for a few weeks at least. Of course brands vary and
some are known to have QC problems reported almost daily. But known
brands like Quink and Skrip and many others are fine. Frank

[fdu...@aol.com]

Ohh, let me take this a step further. Although it should be obvious it
does seem many people do not understand the basics of ink. ITS JUST
BASCIALLY COLORED WATER.

Sooooo, if one batch of colored water has a very high dye content and
the other has a normal moderate dye content the latter will dry as it
should. The former intense ink may SEEM to almost NEVER dry. Well it
dries virtually as fast as any ink, but, but BUT--due to the intense
dyes far too much dehydrated dye remains on the paper. If the paper is
even the slightest bit damp, or even if its a higher than normal humid
day, or if its touched by even what you may THINK are your dry hands the
dye rehrdyates and semears. All human skin contains plenty of
moisture. If you think yours does not you have been long dead. Even
if this ink lays on the paper 100 years the semar factor is still
possible. After all--its colored water--water with dye in it.
Evaporate the water and you have dye on the paper. Water soulable dye.
The dye gets wet and you have a mess. Even a dry white glove or dry
paper may simply move about some of the DRY dye crystals that are on the
paper. Hence another smear. Because far too many crystals are on that
paper.

The ONLY true way to avoid this is to use inks that are not too intense
in dye content. When your skin touches dry dye--the dye may smear or
SEEM to be wet ink. Its not wet ink at all. But it may appear to be
so. Its just poor made ink thats too intense and has far too much dye
in it in the first place. So without naming names of known intense
inks, those are more likely to SEEM to dry slower. They don't. ALL inks
are considered dry when the water in them evaporates which takes mere
seconds with ANY ink with most average pens with average flow. ALL
inks can also to some extent be "rewetted" to smear or seem to have
never dried. Its a matter of degree of how much dye is left on the
paper after the water is gone, how strong that dye is, how asorbant the
paper is to the extent that some dyes are carried into the fibers deeper
and therefore may be slightly less subject to surface rewetting, and so
on. Frank

[Quarter Horseman]

Just to expand on what Frank said, I once had a bottle of Bexley green
ink that took forever to dry because it had so much dye in it. Toward
the end of the bottle I mixed the remainder one part ink to about three
parts water by just holding the bottle under the kitchen faucet until it
was nearly full, and after that it dried every bit as well as any
non-artsy-craftsy ink, although it was a little light.

Signed,
Cheap Bastard

[marlinspike]

So, was the Bexley green a really nice green though?
Richard
"Quarter Horseman" <n...@mail.sorry.nomail> wrote in message
news:bo85i8$6uk$1...@pyrite.mv.net...

[kcat]

On Mon, 03 Nov 2003 21:45:00 -0500, fdu...@aol.com wrote:

>day, or if its touched by even what you may THINK are your dry hands the
>dye rehrdyates and semears. All human skin contains plenty of
>moisture. If you think yours does not you have been long dead.

well - or in my case - take so many **** anticholinergics that there
really isn't plenty of moisture. Sometimes I do think the hands are
dead. But I am in a minority in this regard. I've *tried* to smear
my supposedly highly-smearable inks with no "luck."

I'm wondering if the OP is basing "often heard" on the fact that one
ink in particular is often referred to as "smearwood green." Other
than that, I've never heard of greens being problematic just because
they're green.

May I post the greater portion of this (your) post to PT where this
discussion is also at hand? Technically I know it's open text but...

[fdu...@aol.com]

kcat wrote:

>
> I'm wondering if the OP is basing "often heard" on the fact that one
> ink in particular is often referred to as "smearwood green." Other
> than that, I've never heard of greens being problematic just because
> they're green.
>
> May I post the greater portion of this (your) post to PT where this
> discussion is also at hand? Technically I know it's open text but...

Sure, but I rather see the whole text, not parts just in case something
gets left out by chance or mistake. As for ANY high smearable
ink--thats a positive sign its a very poor ink that really does not
belong on the market place at all and is being sold with a know QC
problem by the company making it. Of course some people do like those
intense colors, sooooo...

Until less 15 years ago in the entire history of fountain pen inks
spanning over 100 years no company I know of ever put such an ink on the
market at all. They all knew better. The sole exception would be inks
that were designed to smear or release when dampened on paper--that is
the super intense so called "copy " inks that were sold until the 1950s
until finally replaced by more modern copy machines. These inks were
designed to release 5 to 10 copies when a damp tissue paper was pressed
on the writing and then the tissue in turn pressed onto a clean paper
and so repeated until the copies were no longer dark enough to read--5
to 10 being average. Not so different from the old time "spirit" liquid
duplicators most of us remember from school and their usually violet but
often hard to read copies. Those could do 100 or so copies since they
used intense carbons which were really resulted in nothing much more
than really super smearable ink as a master copy. Frank

[kcat]

On Tue, 04 Nov 2003 13:21:06 -0500, fdu...@aol.com wrote:

>Sure, but I rather see the whole text, not parts just in case something
>gets left out by chance or mistake.

I only wish to exclude the first two sentences which are not relevant
to the topic, IMO. No technical info will be left out.

[fdu...@aol.com]

kcat wrote:

> I only wish to exclude the first two sentences which are not relevant
> to the topic, IMO. No technical info will be left out.

OK thats fine with me. FD

[Greg Burns]

Thanks for that post, Frank. It was very informative. :-)

-Greg