[Scriptoris] sale on scribal supplies at Michaels - donations to Gulf Wars

[Diane Rudin]

--- Hillary Greenslade <hillaryrg at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Recieved a flyer from Michael's hobby's that includes sale items on: 
> (Sale good March 5-11th, Saturday)

> All Calligraphy Supplies and kits 25% off

Just in case some people don't know:

*Don't* buy Schaffer cartridge pens or just about any ink sold in little
plastic cartridges.  Schaffer cartridge pens have very thick, blunt nibs that
make it impossible to achieve a truly period look.  The more critical issue,
however, is the cartridge ink.  

The stuff in the little plastic cartridges is highly fugitive dye-ink.  In
Baron Edwin's possession is a huge work of calligraphy that has been kept out
of the light in an archival environment and after a mere decade *the inks had
very noticeably faded*!!  The writing that was done in blue and red inks is
approaching unreadability.  (And there are royal signatures fading from SCA
documents on people's walls all over the known world as I write this.)

I don't even think it's worth getting to practice with, as its writing
properties are poor, in my experience.  (It bleeds.  It flows too quickly.  Its
coverage is inconsistent.  Etc.)

If you *have* to use a cartridge ink, buy one that's labeled "acid-free
permanent non-fading archival pigmented ink", or some other combination of all
those terms.  Then, test it by writing big on a page, cutting the page in half
to place one part in a drawer and the other part in a very sunny window, and
compare the two after a year.

I prefer Platignum or Rotring cartridge pens, and I fill the reservoir with
quality ink.  Yes, they're harder to clean.  For my part, I'd rather spend a
few minutes cleaning a pen than many, many hours re-doing a piece that's faded.

Speedball "dip"-pen nibs...are another issue altogether.  I can't stand to work
with them, but some people can get good results with them.

--Serena

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