been trying to figure out how the fuck my fountain pen grew mold so bad. after dumping the moldy ink, the paper towel I dumped it into grew opaque fuzzy mold right over the ink within the hour

~2ml of ink at once, as this pen holds ~2.5ml max. diamine forever hot magenta x df butterscotch (and maybe some df tiger lily), asvine v800 (highly recommended if you know how to vacuum filler + adjust nibs in an acrylic). nice bloody color. these are diamine's new waterproof inks and you really want something with a little crying resistance with UNBEATABLE

ink went from "huh this seems thick" to "huh this keeps clogging" to "huh the ink has a little slime trail when I write...?" by the time I dumped it out it was a slime.

I actually have a new idea beyond, or perhaps alongside, "inks were irreversibly contaminated by mold spores"

I was doing some stuff today. working on UNBEATABLE on my laptop. I have a lot to work on in terms of accessibility, making the game better. and I take my notes with fountain pens so I can remember them better. I hand write game development. is this a good idea?

well anyway, as I was running UNBEATABLE on near maximum settings with OBS also enabled, I thought huh! my laptop sure is about to take off. and I touched the laptop. hot. I touched the table. hot. I touched a nearby fountain pen. hot

and then it occurred to me: mold like warm. UNBEATABLE made laptop warm. and next to my laptop? the fountain pen full of red ink I was using for big red UNBEATABLE notes

whatever amount the inks got contaminated from the air ±pipette±vial±whatever was most contaminated,

my UNBEATABLE-running laptop then fucking incubated the massive 2.5ml ink capacity like a pitri dish. the two pen models I had butterscotch in were asvine c80 and asvine v800 -- the v800 is a much thinner acrylic material than the resin c80. but the resin is smelly. so when I switched from the thick as hell c80 to the thinner smelly-less v800...the ink warmed up way more easily from my laptop...it was probably a combination of mold spores in my environment and UNBEATABLE

it does kind of sound cool though to say I game development-ed so hard my pen grew.mold...actuslly that sounds like the. opposite

and I might have not sanitized the moldy fountain pen enough, it might already be growing mold again...I should have disassembled the nib unit and let everything soak but I just could not hold onto it tight enough and pull hard enough to yank the nib out even wearing grippy gloves

or maybe more of my inks are contaminated than I thought. or a different one is contaminated than I thought. I realized that I never have the opportunity to see the undisturbed surface of the ink, which would make mold way more apparent, because

these are pigment inks so of course I shake the fuck out of them before opening, which is how pigment fountain pen inks work

so if there had been visible discoloration or film on the surface...all I did was turn it back into an unsuspecting smoothie...and then put it into my vials and pens

the ammonia I got I thought was 5% it actually was 1-3% from what I could find online because it was just some shit with no percentage on it. and apparently the recipes for fountain pen cleaners expect 5%...so it might not have been strong enough to kill everything

which is another 2.5ml ink gone. maybe. starting to get thick but no obvious slime trail. maybe this is just pigment ink shit and I got too much pigment on one side of the pen but it sure makes me nervous

what are the chances of moldy fountain pen ink causing horrible mold growth in a notebook it wrote in fuck

resin enthusiasts lend me your noses for fountain pen reasons

I was hoping I could make a fountain pen gift guide in time, with a focus on asvine fountain pens, and I failed. ran out of health and time. but basically, if you know basic pen maintenence and adjustments to nibs or are buying a gift for someone who does, the asvine #8 nib series rocks. EF, F, M, 1.1mm stub.

some of the best bang for your buck if you want big fat fountain pens. this style of pen at this price is extremely rare and recent. these are a big deal. note: none of them come with ink.

asvine currently has 3 #8 fountain pens (that I know of):

the c80 smells. I tried soaking, cleaning, letting it air out. not a super strong smell, plenty of fountain pens smell worse and more foul. at one point the surface of the resin became a little cloudier from baking soda and/or dish soap soak? ?????

but what actually is the smell? is it possibly hazardous? why did the resin finish do that, did I damage it? if you know beyond "sometimes fountain pens smell" or "sometimes resin smells" or "maybe damaged or outgassing somehow" please lend me your senses so I can give more informed fountain pen recommendations.

lend me your senses and wisdom. I want to know:

thank you if you happen to be a resin enthusiasts looking for a really good big fat eyedropper-friendly fountain pen with a big fat nib. or if you manage to find this information online somewhere reliable somehow! most english listings have only vague details.

rune's shit in the bottle (SITB) adventures

the problem fountain pen in question is an asvine v800, genuinely one of the best budget fountain pens ever made. came out this year. huge fucking #8 nib in EF F M 1.1 stub, vacuum filler that detatches at the section so you can fill it japanese eyedropper style, giant awesome acrylic body, thick grip, great balance, lot of colors, clip, ~2.5ml capacity when filled with an eyedropper. harder to get a full fill with the actual filling mechanism.

~$35. #8 nibs alone being available in lens under, fuck, $200? is pretty fucking new even though only a few companies are doing it right now. AND a shut-off valve. meaning the flow of the main ink chamber to the feed can be shut off, making these very attractive pens to use in situations where they get jostled a lot or experience temperature changes. more on the pros and cons of this in another post.

i have taken hundreds of pages of notes and journaling with this pen model holy shit. balance is really good. some of the best bang for your buck on the market if you know how to clean pens, adjust nibs, and use vacuum fillers, because a lot of the nibs need adjusting. the new acrylic body does not smell like the resin c80 (which has a fucking 5ml capacity as an eyedropper hubba hubba), it posts when the valve is not extended. never post with the valve open. the acrylic material is less strong than the resin on the c80 and the back knob is acrylic on metal which sucks. I put silicone grease on there and...was that the right move? anyone have a better suggestion

it comes with a wrench for disassembly! and you can buy extra parts from asvine for a few bucks, and spare nibs in 2 packs for pretty damn good. so far I have tried the asvine and jinhao #8 nibs, and asvine is, of course, way better. if you get a jinhao #8 make sure you get one with the expanded converter that holds...was it 1.9ml? of ink. you REALLY want the highest ink capacity possible for a #8 nib!

pro tip I think the gold coated spare nibs have better alignment on average. quadruple pro tip NEVER TOUCH ACRYLIC FOUNTAIN PENS WITH ALCOHOL. if you have hand sanitizer on your hands or alcohol wipes you WILL fuck up the pen in ways that are probably not repairable! never clean any fountain pen with alcohol! alcohol + fountain pens = something will break a good chunk of the time.

anyway I mixed diamine forever hot magenta and diamine forever butterscotch for a really nice blood color. these are the new diamine pigment line, waterproof and fadeproof. not as good as sailor seiboku.

I mixed these with plastic pipettes and vials, and then eyedropper loaded it into the pen. yeah yeah never use pigment inks in a vacuum who cares the thing disassembles at the section. it was going great and then one day I noticed the flow was getting worse. and then I noticed the ink was writing slimy. snail trail. and then I was in denial for a few days because my nose is pretty good and there was no smell, and diamine forever inks get crusty so I though maybe it just got super gloopy at the end, and I had used diamine butterscotch and hot magenta before without issue...

anyway here was my process for diagnosing the issue: I went and flipped over the ink bottles. diamine butterscotch had green shit at the bottom, and so did the 5ml vial. nothing looked unusual in hot magenta or the vials. I use vials because I want to avoid cross contamination and developing shit in the bottle and getting mold in my fountain pens (clenches fucking fist) which is going GREAT

what probably happened is either I got a dud butterscotch or more likely, the pipette I happened to use for that ink bottle got contaminated by mold spores in the air. it was out on the table for a while. diamine usually has pretty good quality control. this is my first mold in a diamine ink.

anyway, when you have mold in a fountain pen, especially one with a big capacity, it acts like a fucking incubator. and whenever you empty that pen out, you have to be careful because the spores get everywhere. anything those spores touch is prone to developing mold. and when you have mold in a fountain pen, everything that fountain pen touches can grow mold too. other inks, which can contaminate other pens, and in worst case scenarios you could even grow mold on the paper from writing with the moldy ink on humid conditions. I am really fucking worried about that one, I was just so tired and stressed already and fucked up bad. no mold yet at least...dehumidifier on...

so anyway this is what I Did and not necessarily what you should do

when cleaning mold from a fountain pen, you want to do a few things: first of all get ready to bag up and dispose of the ink and waste as sealed and carefully as you can. outside if you can manage. I did this with very little ventilation and it sucked. I dumped out the ink into a cup with a paper towel. it was gloopy as fuck. the paper towel turned brown and then...it looked like the mold? grew so fast the paper towel turned fuzzy and white again within the hour. I think that was what happened? my head was fucking pounding holy shit

next up was cleaning and sanitizing. I used 32oz mason jars, nonsudsing ammonia, distilled water, seventh generation free and clear dish soap, and a 60ml syringe I had around from old medical supplies. and labels, cups, paper towels, big zip bags for garbage, nitrile gloves, newer pipettws hopefully not contaminated,

probably should have had a mask on...I could still use a recommendation for a good mold mask. half mask+ respirators? the newer 3m ones with the increased airflow, are they good? anyway...

i made four batches:

the big problem here is that these are vacuum pens with a big metal rod in the middle. so that part, the vacuum rod, you really usually do not want to use a strong ammonia with if you are like me and trying not to give other people advice that can break their fountain pens. but I did it anyway because I fucking hate mold

clear out the ink, bag up the paper towel+cup with the dumped moldy ink in and zip it up (head pounding at this point), get another paper towel + cup and dump out a few more rounds of the strong ammonia mix with a drop of the dish soap containing one, zip up that waste cup, and then I soaked the section + nib unit in one cup and the section + cap in one of the less powerful ammonia mixes...with a few drops of the dish soap strong one. I let them soak, completely covered, for an hour.

I also soaked all of the nib units I had drying on the table for a while in case they got contaminated. and then soaked those in distilled water and dried them out.

and I just went back and forth with the ammonia mixes and distilled water, section and cap and body, trying not to leave anything metal exposed for too long. one technique that I found works pretty well for the asvine #8 nib units is to put the nib unit in a plastic 5ml vial with pen cleaner or distilled water and shake it kind of roughly and it works really well. I really did not want to risk contaminating my shitty ultrasonic cleaner for this.

once mold gets into an ink bottle there is no realistic way of saving it. some people try, and if you do it is an entire fucking process that still risks growing mold in your pen and probably costs more than just replacing the ink. I need to throw away diamine forever butterscotch.

throughout this whole process I was changing gloves a lot because again you can not alcohol wipe acrylic fountain pens and should never try. does anyone know if resin (like on the asvine c80) is safe with alcohol though

my head HURT like hell but it gave me a good meter of how much mold was left...to some degree. when using dish soap you have to be extra careful, mold loves eating soap and any residual dish soap can wreck the entire fill of ink because it changes the flow of the ink and basically makes the pen piss uncontrollably and the ink feathers and becomes unusable. whenever you use dish soap it needs to not have extra lotions, not have added fragrance, you use the absolute minimum amount and often times that means a toothpick. for 32oz of pen cleaner a single tiny drop is enough! and dish soap sucks to clean out of vacuum fillers.

not sure I sanitized the inside of the knob end of the rod now that I think about it...shit.fuck. anyway you want to clean as much residue of anything in the pen out, you want to sanitize it, and you want to rinse it all out completely with distilled water and let it dry. most of the time you can get a good enough clean with distilled water alone. or dish soap + distilled water and then distilled water over and over again. but the big secret to pen cleaning, especially in the case of stubborn dried ink and mold, is ammonia! make sure you dilute it though, I usually see people say 1:10 ammonia to distilled water.

I went through a lot of pen cleaner, at least 40oz worth. and a ton of distilled water. you can buy pre-made pen cleaner but not all pen cleaner is good for all fountain pens and it costs a shitload more to buy than to make it. sudless ammonia, distilled water, dish soap. but some pen materials are really bad with ammonia especially at higher concentrations, I think aluminum at least was one of them.

anyway I filled the pen back up a few days ago and hopefully it will not grow mold again. I hate that this happened, diamine forever butterscotch is a great ink.

but I do have to say, diamine forever ink in asvine v800...lot of crud accumulates around the underside of the nib to the point I have to use a folded piece of paper to excavate the pigment particle and/or use an ultra thin bras shim to floss the nib because the accumulated crud/pigment particles were interfering with writing. diamine forever works really well otherwise. and this is kind of to be expected with a big fat wet #8 nib

long story short: fountain pens and fountain pen inks often grow mold. in a higher capacity pen, the potential growth is much greater, and it sucks more to clean. empty, clean, rinse, sanitize, rinse, dry. and throw away contaminated ink bottles. might want to use a mask and gloves. this is exactly why I try to use 5ml vials so much, to avoid mold/shit in the bottle, but sometimes there is no helping it. there are mold spores in the air. I left the pipettes I was using too exposed to the air.

really hope I did not damage that pen. well whatever. this whole process sucked and my head was pounding. mold sucks. the asvine v800 is amazing. be careful about shaving off the threads on the back knob and never post the cap on the back of the knob unless extended

seriously though are the new 3m respirators good? with the better flow? or what do you folks recommend for mold cleaning

do you have Diamine Forever fountain pen ink?

hey if anyone following me has Diamine Forever (diamine's new waterproof pigment line) fountain pen ink bottle that has a good amount of ink left and has not been jostled at least in the past few days, could you do me an enormous favor and look at the bottom of your Diamine Forever ink bottle and tell me if you see white stuff around the bottom rim? and which specific Diamine Forever ink it is? and when the last time you shook it was

and if you have Diamine Forever Butterscotch, could you tell me specifically what you see at the bottom? do you see anything green?

most of my Diamine Forever inks have a white ring around the bottom right now, and I am trying to figure out if that white ring is mold or if the pigment particles happen to appear white when they settle at the bottom for a few days/weeks.

having a Shit In The Bottle moment and trying to figure out what got contaminated. either one specific ink (Butterscotch) or all my pipettes have been contaminated by local mold spores. which would mean every ink I have used in the past several months is contaminated and the pens I used them with are too.

please lend me a hand in figuring out how many ink bottles I have to throw away now and how many pens I have to sanitize. thank you!

I forget how many posts I have made about this but diamine forever is a really good line of waterproof fountain pen inks. I take a lot of medical notes and do a fuckload of medical journaling so I want my inks to be long-lasting. I almost exclusively use waterproof or highly water-resistant fountain pen inks for medical notes and medical journaling.

so I have tried a lot of different types of waterproof and water-resistant fountain pen inks over the years, including

some of them you have to shake a lot more than others to disperse the pigment particles to write correctly. some of them have wetter flow. some of them are more likely to dry out in a pen. some of them are harder to clean if they dry in a pen. some of them are more likely to bleed through the page. some are more likely to spread the line without feathering. some are more likely to feather. some inks within the same line can be mixed with decent results and others look like shitty garbage when mixed.

I think the diamine forever line is fantastic overall and I plan on making another post about it in the future with more information. but it is worth noting some people have seen gold plating on steel nibs get eaten by diamine forever ink. it does not make the nib unusable or anything, mostly just looks ugly. not entirely clear on how widespread any amount of nib damage with diamine forever is. if anyone knows of more stories of diamine forever damaging a nib than just the one jowo nib post from months ago let me know!

after being all about the magic of creativity and the power of the pen and human made magic blah blah blah they they use generative AI. they also just launched a kickstarter for a harry potter collaboration. their inks can be pretty inconsistent, lack water resistance, often have a dry flow in a fountain pen, often feather, and are on the more expensive end of ink prices. they have fun ink bottles but I have never bought their fountain pen inks and I doubt I ever will.

hey so I often say that pilot fountain pen nibs are sharper than most other fountain pen nibs.

how sharp are they, you ask?

this sharp

this is a style of fountain pen ink bottle I like to call The Shoe. very stable but I bet I could find a way to knock it over if I tried hard enough. at the far ends of the bottle are very tasteful dips to help get the fountain pen nib all the way the fuck down there for some ink drinking. easier access and less likely to damage the nib or the bottle. I appreciate little details like that.

unless you mean this one which looks very very crunchy and good mouth feel. excellent for gripping, biting, throwing. it could use more of a dip at the bottom for easier pen stabbing. at least The Shoe makes it easier to get the last bits of ink.

hello everyone thank you all so much for asking about some of my favorite fountain pen ink bottles. I am going to have to start off with pilot namiki blue in the 70ml bottle.

check it out. very stable on a table. pilot namiki blue is a fantastic and vibrant ink that has some great sheen and works pretty good on most paper while having some damn good water resistance. this is a fantastic ink if you want some water resistance with vibrance and without messing with a waterproof pigment ink. pigment fountain pen inks are riskier and more annoying to use than dye-based fountain pen inks, and are more likely to cause issues. pilot namiki blue balances water resistance with still being fairly cleanable if it spills or dries up in a pen.

one of my favorite inks ever right here.

this bottle has a little fucked up secret and that is: it has a little compartment that separates a bit of the ink from the rest of the bottle. that little plastic thing fills up when you flip the (TIGHTLY CAPPED) bottle over. and what this does is it helps protect the rest of the ink bottle from contamination.

fountain pens typically get dunked in ink to be filled properly, regardless of what that filling system is. and when a fountain pen nib touches ink in a bottle, stuff that went into the feed and the nib contaminates that ink. it leeches out into the surrounding ink. which can encourage the spread of things like mold spores, particulates, or residue from a previous ink fill. once an ink bottle gets contaminated, welp. you are on your own. if mold or slime starts growing you have to throw the whole thing out and clean your pens, or risk contaminating other bottles. mold and slime clog pens and can stop them from writing at all.

I have a LOT of little 5ml vials that I use to reduce the risk of contaminating bottles. I play it safe when it comes to mold.

but what this bottle does is, when the fountain pen nib hits the ink here, those potential contaminants stay separated in this little mini vial and then get sucked right back into the fountain pen instead of messing with the rest of the ink bottle! this is especially helpful for fountain pens like vacuum fillers where you have to expel air and any remaining ink into the bottle so it can suck ink back up.

but most importantly: the shape is really really really really good.

jetpens just started stocking a product that will be an ergonomic game-changer for a lot of folks!

this is the kutsuwa punyu spiral pencil grip. unlike most pencil grips that are solid tubes and have a fixed maximum diameter they can wrap around,

the punyu is a spiral! it wraps like spaghetti.

this means that, unlike almost every other grip on the market, this grip can be added to almost every pen or pencil! and that includes fountain pens and gel pens. you can see it here being used on a pilot metropolitan fountain pen and a sakura gelly roll gel pen.

(not an affiliate link, not sponsored, you can buy from wherever you want if interested, jetpens has a lot of specs of their products that I appreciate)

a jetpens review even mentions someone using these on the lamy safari line of fountain pens. the ones with a really sharp triangle grip. these grips seem really really versatile, especially if you are about to sit down and take notes for hours on end!

if you do use this with a fountain pen, I recommend making sure the fountain pen is not prone to hard starts or drying out, has a good flow (whether that flow is from a wet nib or a wet feed or both), and/or that you use a relatively wet ink. because the goal is to have the fountain pen continue to write even if you put it down for a few minutes, so you do not have to keep removing the grip, capping the pen, uncapping the pen, or reapplying the spiral grip!

over the years some folks have asked me if I know of anything like this, and well, now we both do! if you get this let me know what kinds of pens and pencils you use it with and how well it works! this is a really exciting pencil grip!

not everything on the internet is true. a lot of people have never actually bothered to double check the thoughts they formed over the years and then think the spaghetti of it all counts as knowledge. and then they spread those half-assed noodle thoughts as facts or truth or anything other than assumptions at best. then other people see that shit and assume the person who said it bothered to give a single fucking google about it first. it is infuriating. nobody knows everything and everyone makes mistake but holy shit a lot of people need to either try harder before they talk or just pick different subjects to talk about. wikipedia is FREE!

news flash: if it does not have an internal ink reservoir, it is NOT a fountain pen. fountain pens contain ink INSIDE the pen, which constantly flows from the internal ink reservoir and down to the tip of the nib. the ink is always right there at the tip. that is literally the point. fountain pens do NOT have to be continuously dipped, brushed, or otherwise loaded with ink. that is literally what the "fountain" part fucking means!!!!!!!

I will die on this hill. because truth matters to me. and if truth matters to you too, launch every single mislabeled dip pen right into the fucking ionosphere. it really is that simple.

diamine recently (and FINALLY) released their nanopigment waterproof fountain pen ink line! I have been waiting for years! the line is called diamine forever, and jetpens just started stocking it!

if anyone gets a diamine forever ink, and happens to have these papers...could to let me know how it works on sanzen tomoe river (especially the flawed hobonichi batches) and apica CD15 and/or CD15? or whatever apica you have if you have any.

remember to wiggle the ink before filling, and wiggle the pen before using to disperse the pigment particles!

well-behaved waterproof fountain pen inks are crucial to my notes!