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Testing Spotting Inks and Ink Rollers for Scraping

Richard King

Diamond
Joined
Jul 12, 2005
Location
Cottage Grove, MN 55016
Charles asked me to write about "tests" I did over in Austria back in October 2019 on Brayers / Ink Rollers. We also tested spotting inks. I will write this in sections as I'm a bit under the weather.

Some of you know I came up with 5 RULES of Scraping. # 5 in "Cleaning with your hand to feel the dirt. We found this to be the key when spreading all the inks and using the rollers.

I wrote up a thread on Facebook this morning on the Norwegian Machinist forum and I will link and cut and paste that to this now as I won't need to type it all over again. I tried to link it to the Facebook forum, but it doesn't work. I have my own company forum there plus there are others worth joining.

Cut and paste of what I wrote:

I used to use Dykem High Spot blue in the 1970's -1980's and loved the print I got from it, but it stained your skin, granite surface plates and clothing. I started using Canode in the 1990's and used it until 2019 when Tom Lipton introduced me to Charbonnel during a California class. In Tests we made last October in Austria where I taught classes we tested several inks available in the USA and Europe. Canode, Charbonnel (water based. They also sell an oil based that we did not test), Diamant, Stuarts, Russian water based bluing sold on Ebay and Dyhkem. Everyone hated the Dykem because of the staining, hated the Russian ink as it smeared super easy even when applied thin; I like the Stuarts, other did not. We discovered if we made a thin paste mixing Canode 80/20 Charbonnel. Mixing in a small 2" diameter x 1" deep glass jar, then dabbing it on the plate with a 1/4" artists paint brush. We used the Charbonnel Prussian water based we got the best result.

Pic's: Inks we used minus Canode in Pic. Showing Canode I introduced to Europe in the 2017. BIAX Germany now sells it in Europe as they paid for the Testing.
 

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I bought a 32oz bottle of Canode last year from ARTCO and found it to be useless. It was full of bit of what looked like plastic shavings and had absolutely no depth of colour. It was like trying to print with slime. I got onto ARTCO expecting them to tell me to send it back for a replacement but didn't receive good customer service. I didn't want to throw good money after bad so the bottle remains here unused and unusable.
To compound matters for me I had decanted some of the 32oz bottle into my nearly-empty 8oz bottle for ease of use, rendering that remaining Canode useless also.

Now I use Diamant Tuschierpaste.
 
Peter, the online info for Diamant mentions clean up with "High performance cleaner R 16". No idea what the heck that is. What do you use for clean up?

Lucky7
 
I use ordinary brake cleaner with blue paper towel. I behaves like any other oil-based spotting dye but the colour is very deep.
 
Ink Specialties the maker of Canode made a bad batch of Blue a few years back. I know this as BIAX Germany ordered several Euro's of it and it also had those particles. Ink Spec told us that the particles were clay or actually they called it "earth" that they did not mill long enough. Milling means mixed. They recommended we use hard rubber rollers to mix it more or squish it. Biax and I used that method and that worked. BIAX sold out the ink with that explanation to there customers in a few months as it is very popular in new machine builders and machine rebuilders in Europe. I have ordered new batches and they are good. That one batch is the only time I had a problem. It washes off with soap and water.
 
As I stated we had 2 different brands of ink roller, 3 if we included the soft foam rollers BIAX sells and is in the one photo. I brought the new Speedball rollers. They had 1.125 diameter rolls and they did not work as well as the UK made Essdee rollers. I took close ups of them. The other ones worked good as you could lay them down upside down and the roller stayed clean. We did have issues with a couple of the students did not blow off the parts before a final hand wipe and crud would fall out of holes and pollute the ink on the plate with scraping chips. We would use the soft foam rollers to spread the ink on at first and then rolled it thinner with the hard rubber rollers. Also we used the yellow Canode thinned with window cleaner like Windex as a highlighter like we used to use red lead.
 

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Ink Specialties the maker of Canode made a bad batch of Blue a few years back. I know this as BIAX Germany ordered several Euro's of it and it also had those particles. Ink Spec told us that the particles were clay or actually they called it "earth" that they did not mill long enough. Milling means mixed. They recommended we use hard rubber rollers to mix it more or squish it. Biax and I used that method and that worked. BIAX sold out the ink with that explanation to there customers in a few months as it is very popular in new machine builders and machine rebuilders in Europe. I have ordered new batches and they are good. That one batch is the only time I had a problem. It washes off with soap and water.

This lot was made by B.B. Chemical Corp, LaGrange, Illinois Rich.
 
That's is the same company. They changed names when the new owner bought the old one. Same sales staff, So same recipe, new owners. I have been buying Canode from the the makers for over 30 years, It is the 3rd company who made / Make it.
 
As far as I know, all of these inks are made basically the same way. Powdered pigment is mixed with a sulfanated oil. That's it. Sulfanated oil is water washable.

It's roughly the same process that allows us to mix oil with water to form machining coolant that we are all familiar with.

I really think a guy could take some pigment powder and mix it with coolant concentrate and make your own secret sauce. Also, sulfanated oil is readily available from companies that sell soap making supplies.
 
I had spoken to Jan Sverre about this at the time, and he had told me about having to roll out the Canode to use it. This is not the same problem - I mean, I HOPE it is because that would mean I haven't wasted £100 but I'm sure it isn't. This is like trying to roll slime, the hard roller just slips and slides and won't turn, plus there's loads of bits, some hard and some like tiny fish scales and no colour.

I still had the tiny 1.5oz bottle from the scraping class to compare.See the pics.

1.jpg2.jpg3.jpg4.jpg6.jpg

The difference is easy to see in the fingertip pics. The last pic is the old stuff which works well.
 
Next time you go to a paint store see if they can shake it up a bit more. I am going to order another 2 cases of 1 1/2 once and 8 oz. bottles of it for my 2020 classes. I will mail one or 2 - 8 once bottles when I get it, so you can test it again, I still have your postal address I think. It will be your Christmas present. I haven't ordered any for a couple of years and I will check with the sales lady I have always used to be sure the recipe is the same. Ill check it too, before hand. One issue I have had with it is it separates when it sets on the shelf a longtime. I usually slide in a long Allen wrench in it and still it in my drill press. Also one has to snip off the end of the spout or it won't squirt out right. The 1 1/2 once bottles if you don'y snip off the tip, it will push out the top plug and make a big mess. My friend Ed Dyjak of Milford MI buys gallon jugs and fills up his own bottles if anyone wants to order small quantities of it. DAPRA also sells it. Pete do you use the Eeedee roller? Tyrone sent me a tin of the Stuarts Engineering ink and then I bought some off Ebay. It also needs some experimenting to apply it. I liked it too. Hell when I was a kid we used Permatex tube type and it was terrible and in a pinch we used lampblack mixed with 90 weight oil. Phil and RC99 like paint pigments. At Bourn and Koch in Rockford IL where I teach once a year uses cement coloring pigments mixed with oil. They used a Carbon Black made by Rockwood LB1011 for Ink and Ferrispec FB Venator. I have photos in my camera I need to download to PC if anyone wants to see it. Here is the link to the 2014 PM thread. I see Cash uses the same product as B&K. They both have old Mattison Journeymen working for them. Pigment Colors for Printing Your Surface
 
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Next time you go to a paint store see if they can shake it up a bit more. I am going to order another 2 cases of 1 1/2 once and 8 oz. bottles of it for my 2020 classes. I will mail one or 2 - 8 once bottles when I get it, so you can test it again, I still have your postal address I think. It will be your Christmas present.

Rich, I don't know what to say, I'm very touched. Thank you.
 
I have also experienced some separation and granularity in a couple of bottles of Canode.
Richard's advice of "power-mixing" it is a very good one.
I did some relatively successful experimentation with mixing sulphonated oil, surfactant and a couple of other ingredients found on Canode MSDS with lamp black. Less successful using concentrated cutting fluids.
The trick is in the pigment: Prussian blue is a great pigment, fine opaque powder, the blue of Canode is a bit less satisfactory.
One last note on Canode is that polypropylene is permeable to water vapor. With the time, Canode will lose water and you can easily see that by the bottle (especially the large ones) getting deflated.

Paolo
 
Milling clarification

If what Richard was told about the dogy batch of Canode 'they didn't mill it enough' is true it means that pigment particles were not ground sufficiently small. Mixing will not reduce particle size just disperse those particles better. What is needed is a lab bead mill.
 
Yes and no

If what Richard was told about the dogy batch of Canode 'they didn't mill it enough' is true it means that pigment particles were not ground sufficiently small. Mixing will not reduce particle size just disperse those particles better. What is needed is a lab bead mill.

True, mixing doesn't reduce the size of the particles.
However, size matters also for something else: larger particles tend to drop out of solution significantly faster. There is where mixing thoroughly just before use and, of course, before dispensing in other containers would help.
My impression on the ink I had is that the pigment was ground to the right size first and, possibly, left alone for long time (possibly in damp condition) and the powder clumped together. I thing that they didn't break down those clumps before mixing the pigment with the liquid ingredients.
This is, on my opinion the only explanation for the fact that rolling it with a stiff roll, ameliorates the situation to a certain extent (no enough rigidity and force to break down large particles of pigments, not small grains clumped together).

Paolo
 
I have also experienced some separation and granularity in a couple of bottles of Canode.
Richard's advice of "power-mixing" it is a very good one.
I did some relatively successful experimentation with mixing sulphonated oil, surfactant and a couple of other ingredients found on Canode MSDS with lamp black. Less successful using concentrated cutting fluids.
The trick is in the pigment: Prussian blue is a great pigment, fine opaque powder, the blue of Canode is a bit less satisfactory.
One last note on Canode is that polypropylene is permeable to water vapor. With the time, Canode will lose water and you can easily see that by the bottle (especially the large ones) getting deflated.

Paolo

I have noticed the water loss in the canode as well. I was thinking about adding a bit of DI water a few drops at a time to re wet.

Curious if anyone has done so.
 
I bought tubes of Charbonnel Prussian blue and the yellow ink as Tom Lipton recommended. I thought they were a bit sticky and tended to pull parts down. I was pondering thinning, somewhat like thinning the cannode with Windex.

Rich, have you heard of anyone thinning out the Charbonnel?
 








 
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