People have used natural rock, soils and clays and plants for painting and coloring. Natural pigments are found in rocks and soils around the world, and natural dyes can be found in plants in the fields.

In general, dyes can be washed off with water or oil.　But pigments cannot because their grains are too big to dissolve in water or oil.

Therefore, dye inks penetrate through papers and cloths deeply but pigment inks just adhere to the surface of paper strongly.

As explained in 1, dyes produce great colors but tend to spread out.
While, pigments are more water resistant and light resistant than dyes and remain permanent.

For pigments do not spread out easily, the edge of written lines or a cross point of lines are much clearer.

However, ink clogging phenomena happen with dye inks as well as pigment inks.

Ink will be clogged if you have not used your fountain pen for long periods, ink dries and makes the feeder blocked.

We often got opinions from our customers “I have not used my fountain pen much, but ink has not flown well when I would like to use it.”

Please remember a fountain pen is just like a human body and needs exercise and circulation of fresh blood. Please use your fountain pen more and it will serve you better and more efficiently. If you do not use your fountain pen for long periods, please remove the cartridge or converter and clean and dry your fountain pen.

With the proper maintenance, ink in your fountain pen will flow smoothly when you write again.

The pleasure of writing with a fountain pen is the feeling of a mild touch in writing and the beauty of the ink.

You finally found your favorite fountain pen, and this pen with your favorite ink makes you feel excited and affords much pleasure in the use of creating characters on the page.

One of the pleasures of writing with a fountain pen is that you can easily change the ink color. In changing the color of the ink or brands of the ink, please clean the nib and the feeder thoroughly to avoid ink clogging.

Please use PLATINUM ‘’Ink Cleaning kit.’’ when you change the ink.
The Ink cleaning kit is available for both for Platinum and the International cartridge of fountain pens.

With this kit, please wash the feeder and the nib of your pen with water and dry well.

“Ink Cleaning Kit” is really effective to clean the nib and the feeder especially changing the Alkaline inks and Acid inks.

Blue Black ink is one of our flagship products of the PLATINUM brand.

When a fountain pen was the major business tool about 50 years ago, official documents or semi-official documents like a medical chart needed mothballs because it was difficult to keep them in a good condition without them.

The Blue Black ink was developed to meet these needs.

The Blue Black ink is not a pigment but a dye ink but it remains on paper for a very long time.

Well, why does this ink last so long although it is a dye based ink ?

Many decades ago, we could not develop pigment ink for fountain pens. So we mixed ferrous tannic acid and blue dye-based ink to make ferric tannic acid, so to say “Blue Black” colored ink. I will skip boring details, but we compounded blue dyes together with ferrous tannic acid, and this Blue Black ink is became oxidized in the air after writing and become ferric. Hence, its color turns blue after writing. However, the blue dye color will gradually fades away and only the ferrous iron remains on the paper permanently.

At first, the blue color, later changed to black; that is why we call it ‘’Blue Black’’, the name comes from its function, not the color itself.

Blue Black ink has strong support from our customers because of its shading color. But, be careful ! it is acid and needs a bit attention to exchange Blue Black ink to another ink. (If you really want to change this beautiful ink to another one !)

And old fountain pens sometimes have gold plated parts around the grip section. Gold itself will not corrode itself but it may corrode by attachment with Blue Black ink.

Almost all pen makers have already discontinued Blue Black ink, but we think the truly great character of this ink will provide more and more enjoyment now that you know the character of this ink, since we explained the character and origin of this ink correctly.