Diamine Onyx Black

February 18, 2009

Well living within five miles of Diamine has it's advantages!!! thumbup.gif

I called in today and was the first to get hands on two new inks within the Old Century Range.

Majestic Blue and Onyx Black

I got these names verbally as yet they haven't taken delivery of the labels.

So digging out my trusty review pen, a Richard Binder supplied Pelikan M215 with fine nib I flushed the pen until clear each time and loaded with my standard inks Waterman Florida Blue and Pelikan Brilliant Black. Once I got my standards down on Rhodia gridded paper I cleared out the pen again with distilled water to review each ink.

Here are my thoughts on Onyx Black complete with scan.

Well how does it compare? The scan doesn't really show up the difference from my standard ink, but I can tell you this... Diamine Onyx Black is much nicer to write with! In my pen this ink was darker, flowed much easier and had a real almost soot-like deep blackness.

I loaded up my Parker 45 with another Binder supplied gold fine nib as this runs more like an extra-fine. Exactly the same again... a smooth flow, very, very black line. My P45 is what I use for filling out pre-printed forms (so I can get my letters in those too small boxes) and I am tempted to keep it loaded in for a very good while.

But now the bad news. This is not a bulletproof ink. Put this ink near water and it will move away from the paper faster than Michael Phelps can swim the 200m. You can still read the writing unless you completely drown the page under a tap, but it's not a pretty sight. However, for me if a form got that wet I would just have to complete it again! In the next day or so when the paper has dried I will scan and post to this thread.

My thanks as always to Phil and Christine at Diamine.