After I got into the hobby of collecting fountain pens, I (of course) started sampling all kinds of ink to go with them. After ordering like two batches of samples, I started reading these horror stories about a condition called SITB, or Slime (or stuff or s#$t) in the Bottle happening with a brand of ink called Private Reserve (PR). There were a few reports of it happening with other brands, but PR seemed to be responsible for the bulk of these reports.
After hearing about this issue, I decided to just avoid the brand, although I still had a few samples that I bought before hearing about it.
Fast-forward to tonight. I wanted my eight-year-old son to practice his penmanship, so I brought out his Kakuno and asked him what color ink he wanted. He chose dark red, so I grabbed my sample of Private Reserve Black Cherry and a syringe and went to fill it up.
I had trouble sucking up the ink in the syringe, and I was thinking “what the heck is going on?” I pulled the syringe out of the sample bottle and found a semi-solid wad of ick crammed into the needle.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that tonight was my first and last experience with Private Reserve. Gross.
Have any of you experienced SITB with PR or any other brand? Leave a comment and let me know!
You can protect your ink from SITB and in many cases cure an ink that already has SITB. What I do is add a biostatic/biocide additive to the ink. A biostatic additive protects ink from infection. A biocide additive cures an already infected sample of ink. Biostatic additives are more dilute than biocide additives. I use an over-the-counter product that is a 4% (by volume) aqueous solution of phenol (carbolic acid). I’ll tell you where to buy this product at the end of this post. Artists apply dilute phenol spray solutions to their work to protect it from mold and/or fungi contamination.
To protect your ink, add some drops of 4% phenol solution to your ink. Keep adding drops and gently agitate the ink until you can just detect a mild odor of the phenol solution in the ink. To cure an already contaminated bottle of ink, double the amount of phenol solution, agitate the bottle, let the ink stand for a couple/few days agitating the bottle once or twice a day, and then filter the ink through a coffee filter into a second container that is thoroughly clean. Finally, you may clean the bottle that contained the contaminated ink and return the now clean and cured ink to the original bottle.
I have used this ink treatment with all sorts of pens with no ill effects. But although I have not seen any ill effects to-date, I would err on the side of safety and not use phenol treated ink in rare and/or very expensive celluloid or Ebonite (hard-rubber) pens. My concern is probably overly cautious though, especially with Ebonite. For-example, I have never see a problem with biostatic phenol treated ink in pens with Ebonite feeds.
You may notice the odor of the phenol treated ink is reminiscent of vintage inks. That’s because it is! Decades ago most ink contained phenol to protect it against contamination. Today, I can smell phenol only in Japanese inks, especially Pilot/Namiki blue. I think this is because the overly-aggressive Lawyer-driven U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has declared phenol as some sort of monster chemical that can poison and cause cancers. Of-course this is nonsense. In-fact for many many years phenol was the primary active ingredient in mouth washes and throat sprays (and it remains so in most of the World). You would have to consume a large amounts of a fairly concentrated phenol solution to notice serious effects.
There is more to know about this subject, including some rather detailed information on concentrations for ink treatment, and links to forum posts on the subject. The Email address I used to post this comment is correct. Drop me a message if you want to know more.
Regards, David
Thank you for reading, David, and for taking the time to share your thoughts. So far, this is the first time I’ve seen this and it was only a sample (so I just chucked it). If I start to encounter it in my bottles, your info will be very helpful.