Edible Ink

This is the last ink I have bought:

Squid ink.

At least, it is not just edible but delicious.

Arròs negre.

However, beyond the obvious joke, the underlying question is how much ink do we need, and how much ink do we accumulate. And what we do with it!

My latest inventory showed about 5 liters of ink, and that without collecting them. Possibly, dare I say, this accumulation is the result of many years of pen collecting and of writing about pens; plus some donations from friends and readers of these pages.

A small sample of my inks.

But what can we do with so much ink? That is why I'd rather buy edible ink.

Parker 75 – Diamine Bilberry

Bruno Taut
October 17th, 2024
etiquetas: tinta

Brazil Ink (I)

The Pilot Pen Station, the old museum of Pilot Corporation in Tokyo, was an invaluable source of information. In there, more than ten years ago. I took the following picture of an ink bottle of the brand:

24 ounces, 709 ml. It seems Japan was not yet metric in the 1950s...

24 ounces of ink for JPY 270. In rational units, 710 ml assuming US ounces instead of imperial ounces. And the wooden frame speaks about other presentations: 1 ounce for JPY 30, 2 for JPY 50.

This is the 1 ounce inkwell, released initially in 1949:

1 ounce, JPY 30.

And this is the 2 ounce bottle:

In 1954, Pilot built a manufacturing plant in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. And Pilot started making ink in Brazil:

Tinta Pilot. "Industria Brasileira". Note the faint stamped sign saying 709 cm3, the result of rounding down the 709.76... ml in 24 ounces. It seems Brazil was more metric than Japan at the time.

The Pilot Times reproduced some of the ads published in the local media at the time:

Ad published March 9th, 1956 in Folha da Manha. Reported in Pilot Times some months later.

We see how Pilot used the same ink bottles and simply translated the labels. What we do not know is whether the ink followed the same formulation. To check that I need a sample of the Japanese version of the blue-black ink of the time, as we already know it changed with time.


My thanks to TM.

Moonman T2 with Kanwrite nib – Pilot (Thai) Black

Bruno Taut
April 6th 2023
etiquetas: Pilot, tinta, Brasil

Ink Color or Ink Properties?

Now we know that the Pilot Tsuwairo inks –or at least the blue one-- do work in the water resistance department. And I will assume that the claims of being lightfast are also true, although I have not tested that.

So all is good and well, but do we really need all that? Is there a demand for inks with those properties?

Before the bath.

Some water resistance might indeed be useful. Back in 2015, the Peaceable Writer wanted her inks to “have decent water resistance, so that my pages survive an inevitable coffee ring or spill” (::1::). Do we need much more than that? And my point now is that the old fashioned Pilot Blue and Blue-black inks do show an acceptable resistance to water at a much lower price.

The bath.

Something similar can be said about lightfast capabilities. The usual action is to close the notebook or to file the document after writing. Then, how much more resistance to light do we need?

And more importantly, how much are we willing to pay?

And back to the first question—is there really a demand for inks like these by Pilot—or by Platinum, Sailor, etc?

After the bath.

I confess my lack of understanding of the ink market. The inflation in colors, brands, and also in prices defies any rational analysis, but the inkunuma creature –the dweller in that colorful swamp of inks—seems driven mosre by the ink color than by the actual characteristics of the ink.

And that is why I do not understand these new inks by Pilot.

Parker 51 — Sailor Yama-dori

Bruno Taut
February 24th, 2023
etiquetas: Pilot, tinta, mercado

Old vs. New. Regular vs. Tsuwairo Inks by Pilot.

Abstract.

Pilot has recently released a new line of inks called Tsuwairo (see Fig. 1). Interesting as these inks might be, they also come with a list of inconveniences the old inks in similar colors did not have.

How do these two lines of inks compare?

That is the question I want to answer on this text.

Figure 1.

Introduction.

Among the big three Japanese pen companies, Pilot was the last one to release a pigmented ink. The reason for that was that Pilot already had a permanent ink—the Pilot Blue-black ink. But in 2022, Pilot finally marketed three pigmented inks under the series name of Tsuwairo (強色; literally, “strong color”).

Pilot declares these inks are lightfast and water resistant. But Pilot also warns about their risks (see Fig. 2):

– Not to be used in urushi-decorated pens.
– Not to be used in three Pilot pen models Custom Heritage 92, Custom 823, and Justus 95.
– Not to be used with the old converter CON-70 but only with the newer version CON-70N and with the CON-40.
– Not to be used with non-Pilot pens.

Figure 2. The instructions and warning of Pilot about the use of Tsuwairo inks. It also describes the differences between the old CON-70 and the newer CON-70N.

And their price is 2.5 times higher than those of the regular inks by Pilot—JPY 1000 vs JPY 400, taxes aside; 30 ml.

But if the Pilot Blue-black is also permanent, albeit by different means and possibly not lightfast, are the new Tsuwairo inks worth the extra cost and the extra risks? How permanent are those older inks?


Methodology.

To answer those questions I performed some simple experiments. In essence, three inks were tested against water immersion.

The inks were Pilot Blue, Pilot Tsuwairo Blue, and Pilot Blue-black. The paper was Pilot sample paper, manufactured by Life. (See Fig. 3).

The writing was done with Sailor fude nibs and with Pilot M and calligraphy (CM, stub) nibs made of steel.

The immersion in water was made at two different times: about 5 min after being written and after several hours after that.

Figure 3. The inks and the papers used on the experiments.

Results.

On figure 4 we can see the written sample made with Pilot nibs before (top) and after (bottom) immersion in water. On the left, the sample was exposed to water 6 minutes after being written. That on the right, after 4 hours.

Figure 4. Written samples. Pilot nibs (M and CM). Sample on the left immersed in water 6 minutes after written. Right sample, immersed 4 hours after being written.

And on figure 5, the results of a similar experiment but with Sailor fude nibs. The sample on the left was immersed after 5 minutes of written. The one on the right, 12 hours later.

Figure 5. Written samples. Sailor fude nib. Sample on the left immersed in water 5 minutes after written. The one on the right, immersed 12 hours after being written.

Pilot nibs, on figure 4, carry a lot less ink that those by Sailor (Fig 5).

The results are quite clear and do not change significantly with the variables explored on these experiments—time of the ink on the paper, and amount of ink in the nib and on the paper.

The Tsuwairo ink clearly performs better than the regular inks, and there are not major differences between the behaviors of the regular Blue and Blue-black inks re their resistance to water.

However, the traditional inks are perfectly legible after 15 minutes in water, and they do this at a much lower cost, and without the risks associated to the pigmented inks, as warned by Pilot.


Conclusions.

The Tsuwairo Blue ink is indeed water resistant, but according to the manufacturer it should not be use under certain conditions.

On the other hand, the traditional Blue and Blue-black inks show a remarkable resistance to water without any of those risks and at much lower cost.

Moonman A1 — Montblanc Burgundy Red

Bruno Taut
February 13th, 2023
etiquetas: Pilot, tinta

Thai Pilot Inks

Some months ago I got to know about some Pilot inks made in Thailand, where the company had a manufacturing plant since the 1950s.

There were at least three ink colors manufactured in Thailand—blue, blue-black, and black. I could only get my hands on two of them, and the current analysis is limited to those—blue and black.

Two Pilot inks made in Thailand. Photo courtesy of Papishdama.

The question to answer is obvious—are these Thai inks of the same formulation as those made in Japan?

Two blue inks by Pilot, one is made in Japan; the other, in Thailand.

Smell wise, the Thai inks have a very distinctive phenol odor whereas those made in Japan are almost odor-less. The black ink, though, releases a hint of ammonia.

On paper, both pairs show similar tones. The Thai blue is slightly lighter in color, and the Japanese version occasionally adds some purple sheen. The Thai ink has a higher surface tension.

Re black ink, the Thai one is again slightly lighter and less brilliant than the Japanese  ink.

Mise en place.

Finally, the chromatography shows that the dye composition is different in both pairs. The differences are bigger in the black inks. But the conclusion is clear—Thai and Japanese inks are different formulations.

Chromatographies.

Not much can I say about Pilot in Thailand. It started in 1953, and the manufacturing plant was located in Bangkok. The Thai black ink is dated in 2013, and we can assume that the Pilot plant was open until at least that year. As of today, the Pilot Thailand website (http://www.pilotpen.co.th/) is not active, and there is no reference to Thailand in the Pilot Global site.

Manufacturing date of the Thai black ink--Thai year 2556, which corresponds to AD 2013. Photo courtesy of Papishdama.

My thanks to my friend and ink connoisseur Papishdama.


Note (August 2022): It seems that the Thai Pilot was related to the Korean Pilot, a different company than the Japanese one. Korean Pilot is not operating currently.

Chilton Large – Sailor Yama-dori

Bruno Taut
January 12th, 2022
etiquetas: Tailandia, tinta, Pilot

Haikara Ink

Yet a new ink in the market...

The company Teranishi Chemical Industry has released a line of four inks under the name ハイカラ, Haikara in Romaji, which could in turn be either “high color” or “high collar”, a term with some history in Japan.

The advertisement brochure. Four inks: Gentle Green, Melancholic Blue, Modern Red, and Salon de Violet. Note also the ideograms 大正浪漫, Taishô Roman, on top of the katakana ハイカラ.

ハイカラ / Haikara, as derived from “high collar”, is a word coined in Japan in the Meiji era (1868-1912) to describe with scorn the mostly male fashion of dressing with Western clothes. The term, however, became more neutral once Western clothes became less of a novelty, and is used even nowadays to describe something nostalgically trendy. In the packaging of these inks we can also see the inscription 大正浪漫, Taishô Roman (Taishô Romance): a term use nowadays for a romantisized view of the Taishô period (1912-1926).

Anyway, these inks come in 40 ml inkwells at a price of JPY 1500, plus taxes. This means JPY 37.5 / ml, which is more expensive than Pilot's Iroshizuku inks (JPY 30 / ml for the 50 ml inkwells) but a lot less than Sailor's Ink Studio (JPY 60 / ml) and Shikiori (JPY 50 / ml) inks.

Two of the inks: Modern Red and Melancholic Blue.

So, is this just another company trying to cash in on the ink bubble with some more attractive prices?

The low tech and the low cost involved in making inks is indeed an incentive to enter this activity as we have seen in recent years. And the company Teranishi Chemical Industry comes with good credentials.

Teranishi Chemical Industry was founded in 1919 in Osaka. In 1931 it started making fountain pen ink that eventually carried the brand name “Guitar” or “Guitar Mark”. However, the main product of the company is the oil-based marker “Magic Ink”, very popular in Japan, and the fountain pen ink disappeared from the Teranishi catalog at some point after the War.

The Magic Ink marker.

Then, in 2021 Teranishi Chemical Industry has made this new ink named generically ハイカラ or Haikara, which could be “High Color” or “High Collar”, while mentioning the old in-house brand “Guitar” and speaking of "Taishô Roman"...

Can this ink be a success with so many names?

Anonymous 6-bu jumbo pen – Kobe Ginza Gold Sepia

Bruno Taut
September-October 2021
labels: tinta, Japón, mercado, Haikara

Reliable Information.

Some years ago I wrote about a nominally Spanish pen brand by the name of Presidente. Then, a fellow stylophile in Greece contacted me apropos of a similar pen sold in the Greek market under the name Joker.

A fruitful conversation ensued, and we reached to a couple of tentative conclusions:
– Joker was presumably a Greek company, or based in Greece, as opposed to being Italian, as its advertisement in Greece had suggested.
– Hifra, another brand marketing similar pens, was likely to be South African.

From top to bottom, a Joker, a Hifra, and a Presidente. But all of them are, actually, Platinum.

Now, how sure can we be of those conclusions? We can safely say that Presidente was Spanish because there are records fo such a brand registered in Madrid, Spain, in 1959; but we do not know of similar registries in Greece or in South Africa.

However, we have other information—Joker as a brand seems unknown outside Greece and, interestingly enough, in Italy, while there was some Joker ink in Greece as well. Hifra, on its side, seemed like a domestic name in some South African texts. Therefore, in absence of contradicting information I feel that those conclusions were reasonable.

Joker ink, in Greece. Photo by Kostas K.

The problem here is to decide which sources are reliable. And that in a field where most of us are aficionados with no pay, with other obligations, and with not many resources to do any research.

So, who is reliable and who is not?

We are not living in an academic environment and we do not have peer-reviewed journals to publish our findings. Consequently we must rely on the good or bad name each of us created along the years through our contributions to the community. And the rest is up to the receiver.

Some weeks ago, Inky.Rocks published a video on the ink Pilot Blue-black, about which I had spoken on these pages. Inky.Rocks pointed out that this ink is water resistant by reacting with the cellulose in the paper. This claim was challenged on Reddit, and that was good. The problem was that the challenger did not offer any alternative to the behavior of the Pilot ink, nor any reason why Noodler's should be the only maker with cellulose-reacting inks.

What vintage do you prefer for your Blue-black?

Pilot Blue-black ink is water resistant. That I can prove. The sample was one full minute under running water. Some dyes were removed from the iron-gall inks. The modern formulation, cellulose reacting, is remarkably resistant to water.

At the end of the day, the facts are that Pilot Blue-black is a water resistant ink without being iron-gall or pigmented. And that a former Pilot worker, well respected in the Japanese pen community, explained the change in the formulation of the Pilot Blue-black ink in the 1990s to whoever wanted to listen.

Are those arguments conclusive? Certainly not. But they are better than nothing.

And that is why critical sense is so important.

Pilot Capless LS – Pilot Iroshizuku Yama-budo

Bruno Taut
Nakano, June 23rd, 2020
etiquetas: tinta, Presidente, Pilot, Joker, Hifra, Pilot, metabitácora, Platinum

Strange Times

The following picture displays two different inks by two different makers—Pilot and Tono & Lims.

Are these two inks so different?

Both inks are remarkably similar in color but their prices are a factor of 2 apart. The Pilot Iroshizuku costs JPY 30/ml (50 ml inkwell) or JPY 47/ml (3-15 ml inkwells), whereas the Tono & Lims costs JPY 60/ml (30 ml inkswell).

Are they so different? Is there any reason for this disparity?

Needless to say, companies have all the right to market whatever the color they consider fit for whatever the price they decide; and that regardless of what the fellow competitors might make. That is certainly not the problem.

The problem, as I see it, it is on the side of the user and how we spend our resources, always limited. Inflation on inks (::1::, ::2::) –some of them redundant-- and on their price (::3::, ::4::) is hardly beneficial to the customer.

Ink and price inflation on one single picture.

The paradox nowadays is that the ferocious competition on the ink market is not translated into a competition on lowering the prices. Much the opposite, actually, as inkwells become smaller and smaller and prices are on the hike.

Strange times.

Ohashido – Sailor Blue

Bruno Taut
Nakano, June 16th, 2020
etiquetas: tinta, Tono & Lims, mercado, Pilot

Against Inks

I had never done this before, but hanging out with some other pen aficionados –or should I say ink hoarders— made me create an inventory of my inks.

According to it I have 86 ink bottles of 71 different inks totaling 4.1 liters. Well, a bit less as some of them are open and I have inked some pens with their ink.

Some of my inks.

Anyway, what do 4 liters of ink mean? If I were to use 100 ml of ink per year –a generous amount—it would take me 40 years to use them up. 40 years!

So, why bother? Why spending so much money in a consumable product that is also perishable? Why bother with the inks of today when tomorrow there will be new and more attractive colors?

And more inks.

Behind this unreasonable accumulation of many of us (and I am just an apprentice on this field) lies the trend of smaller and smaller inkwells (::1::, ::2::). People, or ink aficionados at least, buy ink colors and ink labels –similar colors with different names and manufacturers— rather than milliliters of usable ink.

But, how much ink can we consume in the rest of our lives?

Ôhashidô, music nib – Sailor Blue

Bruno Taut
Nakano, April 30th, 2020
etiquetas: tinta, mercado

Retro

On several recent Chronicles I have praised Pilot (::1::, ::2::) for its policy on ink prices. They have been remarkably constant for a long time despite the inflationary movements in the competitors. I also vindicated the basic line of Pilot inks –30 ml inkwells in red, blue, blue-black and black—as the radical option: reliable, inexpensive, well behaved ink. Their only problem was the lack of poetry—plain names, functional or even boring bottles and boxes...

The two packaging currently in the market.

And then, Pilot surprised us all with a new retro packaging inspired on the presentation of the 1950s. Not only that, but Pilot is not changing the price at all. The drawback is that, so far, this is a limited release with limited distribution.

On the left, the original inkwell and box of a Pilot ink around 1960. On the right, the new retro packaging. Note how Pilot revives the old logo.

So, is Pilot fighting back? Pilot might just need fancier (or plain ridiculous) names for these old inks to entice the inkunuma (ink swamp) community...

Sailor FL Black Luster – Sailor Black

Bruno Taut
Taito, February 7th 2020
etiquetas: tinta, Pilot, mercado

Iroshizuku 2020

The only purpose of this text is to summarize the color gamut of Iroshizuku inks. Part of the information that I am including here had already been published in 2017, but there have been some changes since that time.

The chronology of these inks is as follows:

December 2007. First 5 inks: Asa-gao, Aji-sai, Tsuyu-kusa, Kon-peki, and Tsuki-yo. 50 ml inkwells for JPY 1500 (plus taxes).

July 2008. Another 5 inks: Ku-jaku, Sho-ro (Syo-ro), Shin-ryoku, Kiri-same, Fuyu-shogun (Fuyu-syogun). 50 ml bottles.

November 2008. 4 inks: Yu-yake, Momiji, Yama-budo, Tsutsuji. 50 ml inkwells.

January 2009: The Tokyo Limited Edition was first released. These are three inks for sale in a small number of shops in Tokyo: Shimbashi-iro, Edo-murasaki, Fukagawa-nezu. 50 ml inkwells, JPY 1500 (plus taxes).

These inks were reissued in November of 2016 and in January of 2020 with the same limited distribution as in 2009. These reissues were available in both 50 ml inkwells and in three 15 ml inkwell set.

The Tokyo Limited Edition set of the "mini" Iroshizuku inkwells (edition of 2020).

May 2009. Tsukushi, Fuyu-gaki, Yama-guri. 50 ml inkwells.

October 2009. A new presentation became available for a short time: 3 inkwell set, 20 ml each, for JPY 3000 (plus taxes). There were four different sets, and it was not possible to change their content.

The set of three 20 ml inkwells from 2009.

August 2011. 4 more inks: Ina-ho, Kosumosu, Murasaki-shikibu, Chiku-rin.

The regular line of the series became complete in November of 2012.
The last three inks were Take-sumi, Shin-kai and Ama-iro.

November 2012. The final 3 inks to complete the 24 color range: Take-sumi, Shin-kai, Ama-iro.

January 2015. New presentation called Iroshizuku Mini: three 15 ml inkwell box for JPY 2100. On this occasion it is possible –at some shops- to choose the contents of the package.

March 2019. On the occasion of the centenary of Pilot, the company released 7 new Iroshizuku inks: Ebisu, Daikoku-ten, Bishamon-ten, Benzai-ten, Fuku-roku-ju, Juro-jin, Hotei-son. The presentations are individual 50 ml inkwells for JPY 1600, and boxed set of seven (all seven inks) 15 ml inkwells for JPY 8000.

The inks for the centenary of Pilot. These are the most expensive Iroshizuku inks at JPY 1600 per 50 ml.

All in all, the whole Iroshizuku line is composed of 34 inks: 24 of the standard series, 3 of the Tokyo Limited Edition, and 7 of the Centennial edition, also limited.

A remarkable detail of these (and other!) Pilot inks is the stability in the price: JPY 15000/50 ml has been the price since they were first released in 2007. The only exception are the 7 Centennial whose price in JPY 1600/50 ml, which is not an outrageous increase. And even the recent releases of the Tokyo Limited Edition preserved the price of 2009, when first marketed.

As a consequence, the originally overpriced inks (in 2007!) are now very reasonably priced, if not plainly inexpensive, when compared to other inks available in Japan.

Jinhao 51A – Unknown purplish ink

Bruno Taut
Nakano, February 5th 202017
labels: Pilot, tinta, mercado