Last week I posted: What happens if you leave a RevMark marker uncapped for 4 days. I started on 8/2, checked the marker on 8/4, and then 8/6, to see if the ink had dried out.
I called this a 4-day test.
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One person, – yes just one – pointed out the flaw in this test. If I’m writing with the marker after 48 hours, and then again after another 48 hours, that doesn’t make it a 96 hour test, that makes it two 48-hour tests in a row.
Thank you to BFLContracting for the message on Instagram!
This was a big *doh* moment for me. I raced to uncap a marker to see if RevMark’s “our marker won’t dry out if left uncapped for 72 hours” claim, but didn’t think long or hard enough about my methodology.
I hadn’t considered exactly what I was testing, which was to see if the ink in the tip would dry out and render the marker non-functional.
So I repeated the test. I left the marker uncapped for 99 hours, and it passed again.
The slightly imperfect lines seem to be because I’m drawing long lines rapidly, but normal writing results in dark and fully saturated markings.
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It’s possible that leaving the marker uncapped for over 4 days has resulted in some impaired writing quality, but none that I can see.
If you leave a marker uncapped for 4 days and it can do anything at all, that’s a win. I’d accept some diminished quality, but in this case it doesn’t seem like I have to.
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Now here’s what I’m wondering:
Did anyone or even everyone else miss that my proclaimed 4-day test was really (2) 2-day tests, and decided not to speak up? Or did my confidence in the test and results lead you to accept the results without question?
Maybe I didn’t explain how I tested the marker well enough?
I started off on 8/2/2017, taking a new RevMark marker and writing the day and time on some inkjet paper. I left the marker uncapped at the rear of the garage, near the door.
I had planned to check in on it everyday, but I forgot about it. I checked in on it on the 4th, and it wrote the same as on Day 1.
I remembered about it again last night, the 6th, so I went and gave it a quick test. Some scribbles and a little writing later, and there’s no sign of any drying out.
The image also shows that I wrote with the marker in the middle of what was supposed to be a 4-day test.
Did writing with the marker after 2 days interrupt the test by a measurable amount? I can’t say, because I just don’t know. But that’s why the test shouldn’t have been interrupted by my writing a 2-day status timestamp.
In any case, this same marker has now been uncapped a whole lot – (2) consecutive 48-hour tests, and then (1) 99-hour test. It’s suffice to say – these markers’ tips are certainly not quick to dry out.
smee
I think it just sounds like two different tests, both of an uncapped pen. Another version would be to sit there continuously writing with it for 72 hours – that would also be 72 hours without being capped. I’ll await the report on the results of that test.
fred
I would think that the continuous-writing experiment would test the amount of ink in the pen and the how the tip wears over time. In that test you are continually causing ink to flow into the tip. The uncapped experiment – especially if the tip is up – is testing how the tip dries out over time without ink being made to flow. That last statement may not be precisely correct – because ink may be flowing to the tip via capillary action. It would be interesting to precisely weigh the pen at the start and then at the end of the experiment to see how much ink has been lost. This might tell you if the tip is being constantly kept wet via capillary action – or if the “secret” to the pen’s uncapped longevity is just a low vapor pressure ink vehicle (solvent).
Over the years, I’ve noticed that some marker packaging keeps them on the display rack with their tips pointed down. This is probably a measure taken by the manufacturer to help keep the pen tip wet with ink – and ready for use right out of the package.
Adam
In either test, it still sounds like a great marker. I’m pretty good about putting caps back on, but my dad leaves pen caps off like it is his job (arguably it is, but still not necessary).
kcalhoun27
The only error was in semantics. If the marker was left uncapped, then the amount of time is the amount of time. If you meant to say uncapped and unused for “X” amount of time, that’s a different story.
In any event, it sounds like they’ve made a great product that does what they’ve said it will. That’s a fairly rare thing to see these days.
Stuart
Not really. His suggestion was that in writing with the pen after 48 hours, it re-wet the tip and counteracted any potential drying out.
I agreed about the possibility, and so a follow-up test was needed just to make sure. There was no harm in following up with an uninterrupted test.
Joe
I bought a set of red blue and black ..based on your initial review. I’m a builder and the marker writes as well as my previous favorite…inkzall by Milwaukee….True you can leave the marker cap off a couple days,,,but when writing on lumber 2x 4,6,10 or pressure treated wood the inkzall writes better then this one…
Rcward
Wow, somebody really is that nit picky about this?
Nathan
I noticed you didn’t mention – or I didn’t read it – that these are from the write in the rain people.
that make the notebooks and pens. I’ve been thinking about getting one of their pens
AND these do come in ultra fine point
Stuart
They’re not.
I asked my RevMark contact about the relationship, and he either missed or skipped that question in his last response.
I didn’t see any corporate relationship.
Looking at the RevMark website, it says:
Pen Company of America is extremely excited to carry a line of products from Rite in the Rain.
Okay, so they’re separate companies, presumably in a manufacturer-distributor relationship of some kind.
I ordered some Felo stuff, and it’s shipping from Bondhus, but Bondhus isn’t Felo, they’re just a USA distributor for the brand. So it’s not uncommon.
fred
Sometimes an importer or marketer has an exclusive deal – sometimes not. Some years ago I bought a batch of Thor brand hammers made in the UK for our metal fabrication business. Many came dropped-shipped from a local warehouse in the US – and had UPC labels starting with 043099 that I traced to a company called Anglo-American Tools. Another batch came from England – bearing an EAN barcode with a prefix 501293. Perhaps Anglo-American was only importing some of the line. Sometimes the relationships are even more convoluted – with one company owning an interest in another.
Nathan
my reading of their website has me thinking more along the lines of – Pen Company of America is our producer and they bought out our idea to be the corporate holder of items.
from either website I notice you get to the same pages and the same store. They may have started independently – but I have a feeling today they are all one in the same. Hard to say but since they don’t come right out and say one answer or the other just leads to other questions.
Either way though – looks like a great product and I will now buy some.
Greg - RevMark
I can clarify a bit here. Our company is Pen Company of America. We make a lot of different writing instruments, mostly for the promotional industry. RevMark is a brand of ours, specializing in Industrial Markers.
We wanted to offer a broader line of products on our webstore, so we looked to add some products. Rite in the Rain is a quality, USA made line of writing instruments and notebooks, so it seemed like a good addition to our store. Hopefully we will continue to add products that compliment our line while keeping our high standards.
Hope that clears it all up!
Greg
Jim @ Rite in the Rain
Hey Nathan, looks like you’ve been addressed by Fred, Stuart, and Greg – awesome. I’m Jim from Rite in the Rain. You’re welcome to email me if you want to know a little more about our stuff – happy to help you out. [email protected]
firefly
Perhaps it’s my internal bias but I trusted you enough to conduct a reasonable test. So I just took whatever the result at face value.
Jason
1) ‘Reasonable’ is far too subjective a term especially when you’re playing semantics yourself (as KCalhoun & See put it)
2) It’s beyond Unreasonable to be trusting of _any_ marketing claims from *any* vendor and EVERYONE should ALWAYS look at the empirical data and test procedures.
3) After addressing your observations in a nonconfrontational manner & then incorporating your input into the test this vendor has gone more than above and beyond anything anyone can REASONABLY have expected of him and in doing so has resolutely shown he and his testing procedures were completely reasonable and ethical and any other big 5-dollar words I’ve left out in my attempt to fluff my feathers as well as you bwahaha..
.
OP, nice pens and even better business practices! ?
Stuart
Thanks!
Nobody is infallible, and it can be easy to make a wrong assumption, or misinterpret data to come to the wrong conclusion.
There are times when I spot issues or potential issues with others’ findings, and hope that my own errors will be caught and pointed out, as much as I try to avoid making mistakes to begin with.
In the print world, you have multiple people checking your work, or at least that’s how it used to be, before staffs started to shrink. As ToolGuyd is a small online publication, I have to be author, editor, and fact checker.
There are times I’ll get something wrong. The beauty of being an online publication is that posts can be fluid, testing can be ongoing, not just ending when the main story is published.
Just to be clear, I’m not selling these markers. After posting my review, a reader asked me to see if I could replicate the manufacturer’s uncapped dry-out resistance duration, and so I did.
One person pointed out a potential issue with how the testing was done. I agreed and so I repeated it. Even if I disagreed, it was worth repeating the test son as to eliminate the potential for doubt.
There are other factors I could have controlled or analyzed for the testing to be more scientific, but it didn’t seem necessary.
I don’t know how the manufacturer came up with the 72 hour dry-out resistance claim, but from what I’ve seen, there’s no reason to doubt it’s accuracy. If anything, it’s very conservative.
If I wanted to really get scientific about checking their results, I would test multiple markers, with varying amounts of use and remaining ink. That’s probably where the 72 hours came from – that’s possibly for used markers, or under worst case environmental conditions.
Whiskey and wood
That assumes that the negative effects of drying out don’t accumulate and are completely reversed with writing. We know this isn’t true, if you leave he cap off a marker and write with it every ten minutes, it still dries out very quickly, so what happens? The ink compounds accumulate and clog the capillary action. This isn’t completely restored upon writing, some percentage of capillary capacity is reduced due to buildup of ink and a lack of carrier/solvent whether you write again or not.
dave9
I am inclined to think it is still a bit of marketing more than usefulness.
I mean that even if it still works, leaving it uncapped may have substantially decreased its overall lifespan, meaning you would have to factor a higher cost per use instead of just buying a box full of some other markers and accepting the loss in the rare event you forget to cap one.
Stuart
I see the slower dryout as a bonus, with the primary advantage being the pocket clip.
MC
the reviews on this pen made me wish i had one!!!