J Herbin Stormy Grey Review

[Ambrose Bierce]

J. Herbin Stormy Grey Review

That right folks here it is, the elusive, lustful, engrossing, and of course sheeny Stormy Grey. I have been captivated by various pictures and reviews of this ink since I discovered it. When I first got the ink I was very surprised at how small the bottle was, for some reason I had made it out in my head that there was going to be this huge elaborate bottle that I could barely fit on my ink shelf. When in actuality it is about the same size of a standard Waterman ink bottle. The bottle itself is almost as pretty to look as the ink is. The glass design, along with the string held in place with a wax seal bearing the numbers "1670" and the wax seal cap really make for a pretty looking bottle. Once I inked up a pen with this ink I couldn't contain my childlike joy. When I put pen to paper my initial thought was "This is it?" On my first few lines I barely got any gold sheen to come through and I was rather disappointed. But as I have used the ink more I have learned that this ink is a lot of things, but it is not consistent. Since the sheen is not an actual property of the ink, and instead a foreign object added to it, you will not get massive sheen on everything you write. Around 60% of writing has minor little gold flakes in it that add a nice sparkle to the writing and 40% of the time you will get that super heavy sheen that we have all already seen. When it comes to other inky attributes this ink performs flawlessly. Great flow, minor shading, no feathering, shade/bleed through is obsolete, and it is very waterproof. The best way to describe the ink is pencil lead, but that is not an exact match. To us Fountain Pen nerds we will all know better than to mistake this is a pencil, but to the untrained eye I could see someone guessing this to be pencil writing. The ink has absolutely nothing wrong with it at all, and is about as close to perfect as I have seen an ink be. I know this has a steep price of 26$ but you can always test the waters with a sample. The ink stays out of stock for a while, and is only in stock for a few weeks but I would highly suggest trying to snag a bottle when it comes back up in stock. And if I have not convinced how great this ink is yet hopefully my pictures will. Enjoy.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YYZsxToaiiY/VLKqdGGGaNI/AAAAAAAAAK8/qjObTnTbBes/s1600/DSCN0221.JPG

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5jB0Or9Dn_E/VLKrKhi20WI/AAAAAAAAAMY/48Q-qwsuf1w/s1600/DSCN0260.JPG

If you liked my review and want to see more like it check out my blog at http://fpinkgeek.blogspot.com/

[LuckyKate]

FP_Ink_Geek, Thanks for the great and accurate review and picture (the splash!)--what you say about consistency of sheen mirrors my experience exactly.

 

That said, I got this ink for the gold flecks--but I keep using it because it is an incredibly well behaved ink with excellent lubrication and a joy to use everyday. I love it!

[Ambrose Bierce]

FP_Ink_Geek, Thanks for the great and accurate review and picture (the splash!)--what you say about consistency of sheen mirrors my experience exactly.

 

That said, I got this ink for the gold flecks--but I keep using it because it is an incredibly well behaved ink with excellent lubrication and a joy to use everyday. I love it!

Same here! I really believe that I would use this ink even if it had no gold sheen to it (although I probably wouldn't pay the 26 dollars). I really have no complaints about it and I actually enjoy the inconsistency that the sheen has. It makes my writing seem like it has more character than uniform sheen could give it as.

[jasonchickerson]

Thanks for the great writeup. I have a sample of this ink but have not had a chance to properly test it. My first experience writing a couple lines with a dip pen were not promising. It feathered badly even on Rhodia and I the sheen is a consistent field of gold sparkle throughout the letters.

 

Rouge Hematite, on the other hand, performed flawlessly with the dip pen and its sheen is much more like we're used to (pooling only where the ink shades heavily).

 

I'll ink up my daily writer soon and give it a whirl, but I'm not too hopeful for this one.

[Ambrose Bierce]

Thanks for the great writeup. I have a sample of this ink but have not had a chance to properly test it. My first experience writing a couple lines with a dip pen were not promising. It feathered badly even on Rhodia and I the sheen is a consistent field of gold sparkle throughout the letters.

 

Rouge Hematite, on the other hand, performed flawlessly with the dip pen and its sheen is much more like we're used to (pooling only where the ink shades heavily).

 

I'll ink up my daily writer soon and give it a whirl, but I'm not too hopeful for this one.

Feathering? That is very odd. But I think you may actually have a case where the nib was extremely over saturated and it caused a lot of ink to run onto the page at first and feathering. If this is the case it is not the inks fault but instead just a lot of ink being put down in a little time.

[jasonchickerson]

Feathering? That is very odd. But I think you may actually have a case where the nib was extremely over saturated and it caused a lot of ink to run onto the page at first and feathering. If this is the case it is not the inks fault but instead just a lot of ink being put down in a little time.

 

I'm not sure I laid down more ink than the other 12 or so inks I dip tested that day. Here's a pic from my iphone (not color accurate).

 

 

UPDATE: I played around with this ink a bit more last night. While it doesn't feather as badly as I thought it would, it certainly is not as well-behaved as Rouge Hematite. It also doesn't like to be dipped, whereas Rouge Hematite is perfectly suited to dipping.

Edited January 12, 2015 by jasonchickerson

[maksim]

Will confirm. Have all 3 1670 inks

[jasonchickerson]

Feathering? That is very odd. But I think you may actually have a case where the nib was extremely over saturated and it caused a lot of ink to run onto the page at first and feathering. If this is the case it is not the inks fault but instead just a lot of ink being put down in a little time.

 

I updated my comment on feathering above.

 

Personally, I don't see the appeal of this ink. It is uniformly sparkly like the pens grade school girls liked to use when I was a kid. It lacks the elusive quality of sheen that I love about other sheeny inks.

[TSherbs]

meh

 

too glitzy and temperamental for me

[PS104]

I wonder if the price of the ink will fluctuate with the price of gold

[Ambrose Bierce]

I wonder if the price of the ink will fluctuate with the price of gold

I would be very surprised if this ink had actual flakes of gold in it. As far as I know it is just gold colored metal. I feel with the amount of gold in there, if it was real this ink would cost a little more than it already does.

[Anachronos]

Hi folks,

 

I have been using Stormy Grey for about a month now and I didn't think there were any problems with the gold (appearing) flakes, BUT I have a Visconti calligraphy set that I use with various colors and flush out after each use with water, and so often I clean out with pen flush. I had used the Stormy grey, cleaned out the pen as usual and put it away. About a week later I pulled it out and filled it with iroshizuku fuyu-syogun. It became very dry after about 3 minutes, which is unusual for iroshizuku ink. So I flushed it out with the pen flush, tried again and the same thing happened, so I took it apart to clean it thoroughly and found flecks of the gold on the fins of the feed. I tried to clean it all out, but there were still some fleck that I couldn't get to. I soaked the feed in the pen flush for 15 minutes or so and they finally came off.

My questions are 1. Has anyone else had a problem with the Stormy Grey or the 1670 Blue Ocean?

2. Could I have created the problem by mixing other inks with the Stormy Grey?

 

I would like to buy the Blue but am afraid I will have the same problem.

Edited March 6, 2015 by Anachronos

[Morphling27]

I've had the feathering issue on Stormy, but only on super cheap recycled paper we at the government use. It's behaved well enough on other papers I've tried it on.

 

Agreed though RH is more well behaved, but harder to clean out to me.