I purchased a bottle of Pelikan fountain pen (brilliant green) a few months ago. Last time I refilled my pen, there was something floating on the top of the ink! It looked like a thin layer of paper or something from inside the cap, so I fished it out, filled my pen, and thought no more of it.
Today, though, I saw that there is a whole bunch of white mold or bacteria or god knows what growing on the surface of the ink, and a little on the sides of the bottle!
What the hell!?!
Questions:
[ul]
[li] Did I do something to cause this? I didn’t leave the cap off, or stick anything funny in there (just the nib of my fountain pen), drop anything in, or do anything odd to it! It’s not old ink–or rather, I haven’t had it for long, though who knows when it was actually manufactured.[/li]
[li] Is the ink ruined, or should I just carefully remove the gunk and keep using it? I haven’t noticed any writing problems since the last refill, but I sure don’t want to gunk up my pen with mold or bacteria or god-knows-what! Also, I figure if it’s been contaminated, when I remove the gunk, more will just grow! [/li]
[li] If the ink is unusable, any chance I could get my money back? This stuff don’t come cheap, and it would be a terrible insult to my skinflint nature to just throw a bottle away! I doubt very much that I still have the original receipt, so I’d have to write to the company or something.[/li][/ul]
Dunno what that stuff is, but try putting a few drops of ammonia in the ink after cleaning off the latest scum. It might help keep bacteria down, and will make the pen flow better, anyway. I’ve used ammonia with india ink; it can be diluted quite a bit before losing its opacity.
If it were me, I’d just chuck the bottle and get a new one, preferably from a store that had rapid turnover of stock.
I doubt whether the ink has been ruined. You’re not using it to create Art For The Ages that needs to be acid-free or otherwise in tiptop chemical shape, are you? If you really don’t want to waste it, I’d just pour it out, strain out the goop (tea strainer? old panty hose?) and go ahead and use it. And buy your next bottle from a store that has a more rapid turnover.
However, I’d say that gunking up your pen sounds like a real (unpleasant) possibility, so you might want to consider that before going ahead and using the ink.
All the other hits for “moldy ink” are all dealing with making your own ink a la the Rugged Pioneers, out of berries and ox gall and walnuts and whatnot, and adding salt or vinegar to keep it from getting moldy.
You could try boiling the strained ink to get rid of any mold spores. Bleach will destroy mold spores, but (heh) that doesn’t do you a whole lot of good, does it?
You can send Pelikan Consumer and Advisory Services an e-mail, see what happens. Nicole looks like a nice person.
My guess would be that at some point in its career the bottle of ink was opened and contaminated with something organic, because I’ve never heard of ink in normal usage getting mold in it.
Urgk . . . I just thought of another unpleasant possiblity. My pen is contaminated with this stuff now. If I get a new bottle, upon the first fill, I might just introduce the whatever-it-is and start a new colony.
A mixture of 2/3 cold water to 1/3 ammonia is recommended for cleaning pens. I wonder if rinsing my nib and converter with that solution would be enough to sterilize them?
Pod - Strangely enough, I had a similar problem with Pelikan green ink a little while ago although my mold problem wasn’t in the ink… it was in a pen that was filled with my beloved Pelikan green.
Our beloved Duck included a great link to Rick Conner’s site and there’s a wealth of information there on all things having to do with fountain pens. The consensus is that moldy ink is pretty much unuseable but I wouldn’t be tossing that bottle in the trash just yet.
I had a similar problem a few months ago involving mold and Pelikan green ink but the mold appeared in one of my pens. You will have to clean and decontaminate your pen. There was a little blob of something in my ink but I removed that, gave the bottle a good shake and after a quarantine period, there’s no mold.
I used a 1:5 ammonia water mix to flush the pen and for good measure used alcohol to sterilize the nib and feed. There has been no re-occurrence of the mold problem. Whenever you clean a pen make sure you also flush out the cap as condensed small amounts of water will condense there and provide an environment for things to grow.
Now… about that bottle of ink. From time to time batches of ink are produced that have problems but thankfully, it’s not the norm.
The ink itself may have not been contaminated when you purchased it but could have been contaminated after it was opened. The fact that mold is growing in your ink would indicate that this batch is susceptible to mold.
Let the folks at Pelikan know of your problem or try returning the ink to the store where you purchased it for a replacement.
I wrote an email to Pelikan’s customer service department back when the fun started, and have not recieved a reply.
I pulled out my fountain pen the other day and found that there was mold all over the nib! EEECH!!! Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck! In retrospect, it was dumb of me to mess around. I should have emptied and cleaned the pen as soon as I saw mold in the ink bottle!
Anyway, I cleaned the pen with a mild ammonia solution. There was some mold in the converter and in the works of the pen itself, which fills me with dread.
After leaving the pen to dry overnight, I bought new ink and refilled it, and so far (fingers crossed) no problems.
I’m not buying Pelikan ink again, I can tell you that.
