![]() I doubt it would be safe in a technical pen. Shellac cleans easily with denatured alcohol, which is cheap in a gallon drum from the home center. Like Higgins Black Magic the Reeves & Poole leaves a slightly embossed feeling on the paper, but goodness it writes well on photo paper. This smells like alcohol and is almost certainly a shellac-based product. The second test was a product labeled “Royal India Ink Encre de Chine” by Reeves & Poole Group. After an hour or more it seems pretty stable, but it is such a light grey that it is miserable to read. As the unaltered scan shows, after one minute it smeared badly. This pen uses a fiber-filled cartridge refill, so you can’t change the ink. I bought a Copic Multiliner SP pen in 0.03 mm (very, very, fine line) and tried it. I decided to round up a couple more candidates, and I have two new winners and a loser to add to the mix, and one more loser. Like latex paint in a house, it never fully loses its stickiness. I suspect the cause is that Higgins Black Magic is a latex-based ink. I was displeased, though no harm was done to the pictures. I do not know if I put them together while the ink was still wet, or if the ink adhered over time. In exactly one case I found one photo that had picked up pen marks from another. I recently went through some 2 or 3 year old pictures I had marked with Higgins Black Magic. I tested three new writing media for the backs of photographs. Scratches, lines blob badly when crossing Well controlled, but very slight blobbing The 3080-F is dark, which is good, but the lines are very broad and poorly controlled. I should have called it Rapid, not Ultra. I see no reason, based on these data, to prefer the 3085. The 3084-F is darker than the 3085-F, and the ink is as well behaved in the B-5 and the B-6 nibs. The detail below is the with the B-5 nib, and though the line is wide, the mark is very well behaved. The other nibs either puddled or scratched the photo. It performed well with the B-5 and the B-6 nib. 102 both scraped the paper and left little puddles, but might be acceptable. It puddled horribly with the 513EF and the No. Reeves & Poole had very minor smearing with the No. This ink, once my favorite, must now be relegated to the scrap. The detail zoom below is taken from the B-6 test, and the edges are fuzzy and bloomed. Each of the photos below shows the left side, before wiping, and the right side after wiping. After scanning I pressed a wadded facial tissue to the paper and wiped firmly from left to right. About 24 hours later I scanned the images. I wrote each set on the back of the photos. The paper is Fujifilm Crystal Archive, which seems to be a common print medium. The test involved writing a the ink name and the nib name on the back of a Costco print. Rapidograph Universal 3080-F (acrylic or latex based).Rapidograph Rapidraw 3084-F (acrylic or latex based).Rapidograph Ultradraw 3085-F (acrylic or latex based).Reeves & Poole India Ink (shellac based).Higgins Black Magic (probably latex based) (left).leave writing that does not smear after a few minutes.A well-performing ink-and-nib combination should I thought perhaps different inks would too, and set about to test the pair. The photo below shows the bumps and still-wet pools of ink when using some nibs and the smooth, even writing from others.ĭifferent nibs, obviously, perform differently. However, the drawing nibs left puddles of ink on, snagged, and spattered. I had purchased a set of drawing nibs at the local hobby shop thinking I was all set. Not all dip pens are created equally, or at least not for the same purpose. ![]() The alternative to technical pens is the dip pen. Filling a technical pen and cleaning it for an hour’s use is unsatisfying. When I’m writing on photos, I tend to do a batch at once, and then none for weeks. They dry out and clog the pen if not cleaned properly. Technical pens are a delight, you can cap them-or rather you must cap them. The inks can by applied with technical pens or with dip pens. The problem with drafting inks is that they cannot be applied with a Bic pen. If you can’t stand my dip pen solution, more details are available here, where I recommended the Zig Millenium (blotted) or the Zig Photo Signature. When the ink is applied correctly it can be handled without risk of smearing in as little as a few minutes. It would seem the inks are usually archival even though the paper is not. The best solution I have found for writing on the back of plastic-coated photos, like those from Costco or most modern developers, is drafting ink. Rapidraw 3084-F or Reeves & Poole India Ink
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