Colorverse - Pen Soap
Colorverse - Pen Soap - 100 ml Bottle and Box
This is Pen Soap from Colorverse, and I’m kind of hooked on it now! @artist_motti (one of the graphic designers behind Colorverse’s beautiful package design artwork) and the Colorverse team sent this over as a gift, but this isn’t a paid endorsement. I never post about products that I don’t trust and enjoy. I’m posting about this one, because it’s converted me to the idea of using a cleaning solution to help take care of stubborn dried ink in pens I’ve neglected for too long. I use fountain pens and inks as my main daily writing tools, and as a pen and ink reviewer, I am constantly trying new inks. After seven hundred reviews, I definitely have gotten pretty good at cleaning my pens, but there’s no doubt a cleaning solution simply makes it easier!
Colorverse Pen Soap Details and Instructions
Included in the package is 100 ml of Pen Soap, and an additional empty cleaning bottle. There’s a measurement scale on the label of the cleaning bottle, and Colorverse recommends various ratios of cleaning solution to water depending on the type of pen and the level of cleaning you need. Here’s a link to the English version of the recommended cleaning procedures and ratios (product info and instructions). For regular cleaning of convertors, nibs, and feed, it’s 1:4 (1 part Pen Soap, 4 parts water). For piston fillers, it’s 1:9, and you might want to re-grease the piston after you rinse the barrel to bring it back to factory-fresh. For deep staining, they recommend soaking in pure Pen Soap for an hour or so before starting the normal cleaning steps.
TWSBI Eco barrel with three inks dried and stained
I wanted to give Pen Soap a tough test to see how well it worked. I chose a badly stained Lamy convertor, and this TWSBI Eco barrel (with micro-cracking at the section end). I chose three inks (a red, a blue, and an orange) that I know have a tendency to stain. I put a generous amount of ink in the Eco’s barrel and section and let it dry for three days, before adding the next ink and letting it dry again. After nine days, the Eco was a mess!
Three difficult inks left to dry for three days each
I rinsed both under water, used an eye dropper to add some pure Pen Soap to each and waited. After 5 minutes, I rinsed them, and then followed the instructions with a 1:4 ratio.
Colorverse Pen Soap comes with a cleaning bottle showing measurements
I was kind of amazed at how well it handled the staining on the convertor and the dried inks in the Eco. There’s a tiny bit of color remaining in the crack in the Eco’s section, but other than that, they are both sparkling clean! I’d tried cleaning the stained convertor several times in the past, and had given up, but it looks brand new now! I added a drop of pure Pen Soap directly on the crack in the section and waited another 5 minutes. That got rid of another 50% of the color, and I decided that was good enough, but you could probably repeat again and get it all out.
Pen Soap cleaned the LAMY convertor and TWSBI Eco barrel nicely
Colorverse recommends not using the product directly on delicate pen cap and body materials. It will be fine on most, but it could easily damage celluloids, glues, and urushi coatings. Don’t use it with vintage pens or sac-fillers for those reasons, either. However, for most pens, it really makes cleaning and maintenance easy!
You don’t need to throw out the used solution, either! You can re-use it several times (or more). It’s become a part of my normal cleaning routine, and I’m happy to have it! You can find it at most retailers offering Colorverse inks for US$15-20.
Clean and fresh after using Pen Soap and a rinse!