Organics Studio Manganate

September 3, 2013

This is my first ink review, so I hope it goes well and covers what people want to know!

Manganate is a blue-black ink that is very much on the blue end.

For this ink review, I did the same test on two different kinds of paper. One sheet (with the pink lines) is a sheet from a Miquelrius notebook I have. The MR site lists this as 72 gsm paper with a special coating. I have noticed before that the paper is definitely coated. The other paper (blue lines) is from a pad of unknown quality in the work supply closet, which I used as a proxy for performance on very cheap papers.

I used a vintage Wearever pen with a medium nib.

Pics:
Miquelrius Paper
http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/9373/qeyp.jpg

Cheap Office Paper:
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/4708/mzw7.jpg

Shading:
This ink shades some, enough to go from a medium grey-blue to a blue-black.

Feathering:
Didn't really feather on the MR paper, only a little on the cheap office paper. Enough to be noticeable in a side-by-side comparison, not enough to make reading an issue.

Dry times:
The 1, 5, 10, 15 numbers in the middle-left of the sheets were tests for dry times. Since the MR paper seemed to be very slow-drying, I included Noodler's Black Swan in Austrailian Rose and X-feather below the 5-second test to help with comparing dry times for some more common inks. BsiAR was still smeary after 5 seconds, while X-Feather was basically dry.

Even at 15 seconds, Manganate wasn't quite dry on the MR paper. It dried much more quickly on the cheap paper, completely dry at 5 seconds and almost dry at 1 second.

Water Resistance:
The grid on the left was a drip test, the grid on the right was a smear test. The paper obviously makes a difference, with the coated MR paper smearing more heavily. I wouldn't call Manganate exactly water-resistant, particularly if you are using coated paper, but it did hold up fairly well in the cheap office paper.

Saturation:
This was to see how multiple strokes impacted the ink color. The 1 is one line, at 2 I went over the line again, for 3 I went over the line 3 times, etc.

Bleed/Show through:

The cheap office paper clearly showed every line on the other side of the page and there was significant bleedthrough.

The MR paper showed through faintly, and had a little bleedthrough on the water tests and the multiple-stroke tests.

Other notes:
This ink seem a little less lubricating than other inks I have.
I did have Manganate in a Pilot fine-tipped pen, and that was not satisfactory. The lines were sometimes so light that it wasnt always easy to read, and the pen had enough feedback that I wondered if something was wrong with it. I now have Noodler's X-feather in that pen and the experience is much better. I have noticed that in general the inks seem a little drier than my other inks, but that pen is the only one that I did a direct comparison with.

The color is slightly darker in real life than in the pictures, but they are fairly close.

The maker has told me that all this inks should be around 7 pH, with some closer to 8 or 9.

The ink has an odor, but it isnt strong. Certainly much more pleasant than my Polar Brown.

The bottle is just a simple plastic bottle and the packaging wasn't fancy. About what you'd expect from something run but a college student. It's all sturdy and seems well-made, just nothing fancy.

Here's a picture of the ink bottle and the pen I used:

http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/4254/98m4.jpg

My opinion:
I'm not sure where this ink really fits in terms of what I want to use inks for. It's close to neutral pH which is good for journaling, but it's not really water resistant. It handles cheap paper well, so I'm currently using it for a daily note-taking, but its a little too dry for me to use in the F nib I like. It's a perfectly lovely ink, but I don't know that it's what I'm looking for.

Edited September 3, 2013 by WirsPlm