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Hello I am trying to research permanent and waterproof inks for fountain pens. I am an artist and I am on a quest for the past three years to find the perfect brown to lay OVER watercolor paintings. Not ink first than watercolor. Watercolor first then ink. My goal is to match the hue of the India ink I used in rapidographs Higgins Brown. Yes I know, not to use India ink in fountain pens. Noodler’s Walnut, DeAtramentis Document Brown, Noodlers Black, Platinum Carbon Black are all too dark. I’ve given up and I’m now using Birmingham Pen Co Soft Pretzel because it’s the brown I want - but it’s not lightfast or waterproof. I have to immediately place the finished work in plastic and in a box. Not good to display ever. Questions 1. Will DeAtramentis Dilution ink work to lighten an inks hue? 2. Am I limited to just DeAtrementis Document inks or can I use it on Noodlers, Diamine, Birmingham inks as well? 3. Any advise? samples attached

Today I went to refill my Lamy 2000 with Monteverde Horizon Blue. I noticed (luckily, before dipping my pen into it!) that the ink wasn't flowing in the bottle as I swished it around. In fact, it seemed to have turned to gel! A closer inspection showed that there still was some liquid in the bottle, but the entire bottom was covered with a solid mass. I didn't get the distinctive moldy odor that I've experienced from some previous incidents, but it was definitely ruined. This ink was not in the original bottle. I had previously transferred a large amount into an old Parker Penman bottle (my favorite bottle design of all time), and I had also taken the opportunity to dilute it 50/50 with distilled water, since pure MHB was too saturated for my taste. I don't want to give anyone the impression that I'm warning you all way from MHB. If anything, I'd consider this a warning about dilution. Ink depends on biocide ingredients to retard the growth of mold or bacteria. Diluting the ink 50% also means diluting the biocides 50%, and they may just not be effective when cut to half their original, intended strength! Just to drive the point home, I went back and inspected the remaining un-diluted ink in the original MHB bottle, and it's perfectly OK.

Hello, I hope I'm posting in the correct category. I'm not very experienced with ink and I'd like to try grey. I flushed one of my new Pilot pens and didn't wait for it to dry before putting in the black cartridge that came with it and I liked the resulting grey ink. My main purpose of this grey ink would be for school notes. I don't use black ink for school because it is hard to distinguish between printed text and annotations. Ideally it should be waterproof because I still haven't figured out how to drink water properly. Will a diluted Noodler's Black/HOD/X-Feather/Borealis/Polar/etc. still be waterproof enough that I can read my notes if my incompetent self spills water all over them? What are the benefits of buying a bottle of grey ink instead of diluting black, aside from reduced bulletproofness? Are there any "recipes" you can recommend? If there is a good reason to avoid dilution that I have overlooked, which waterproof greys can you recommend, aside from Lexington Grey? Thank you!

Hi All, Fountain pen newbie here with some questions on ink. I am experiencing bleeding on inks that most people do not have bleeding problems with. Specifically, Diamine Majestic Blue, De Atramentis Magenta Violet and Rohrer & Klingner Cassia. I am using a Leuchtturm 1917. I have read different articles about dilution but several ink reviews for these inks do not mention any bleeding problems. I have added a photo of the reverse side of a Majestic Blue list and a ink sample page. When I first started using Noodler's Black, I had problems with "ink transfer" (not sure if there is a term for this). Dried ink on one page A would transfer to another page B (Page A and B are faces of a notebook A|B where | is the spine) when I wrote on the reverse side of page B. A little dilution got rid of this problem but the problem comes back when the ink starts to dry. Using ink seems pretty intuitive... Take ink from bottle, put in pen, write. Am I doing this wrong? Why am I having so many problems? Should I be diluting all of these inks? I know Rhodia paper handles ink better but I would like to find a solution that works with the Leuchtturm -- which should still be able to handle fountain pens! Thank you!!!

Noodler's Air Corp has long been one of my daily use inks for work. I love everything about it, except that it is just slightly too green for my taste. Then I noticed that when flushing my pens, the flushed-out waste water with diluted ink in it looks bluer. Hence, I would like to try diluting it. My question is: To what extent can Noodler's Air Corp be diluted before its behavior (flow, wetness, lubricity, tendency to bleed or feather, etc.) changes noticeably? Can I go to a 1:1 ratio of water to ink and still get good performance from it? Can I go even more dilute than that? And a side question - I have heard reports that recent batches of Air Corp are noticeably bluer than batches from previous years. Is this true? The bottle I'm currently using is from an old ink-hoard I bought and stored since mid-2014. If the current year's production is bluer than the 2014 batch, maybe I'll like it even more

Greetings All, I love the color and waterproofness of Noodler's La Reine Mauve, but would like to get some shading with it in a flex pen. Has anyone come up with a perfect ink:water ratio to produce a little shading with this ink? Before I experiment with this rather pricey ink, I wanted to see if someone had already done the work. Thanks!

I commented that diluted Merlot might be equivalent to Tyrian Purple so, as requested by member theinforat, here is a scan. As you can see, I was wrong. Merlot is far more brown but it is amazing how it holds up at such a dilution; doesn't flow so well, but still a strong colour. Now, I am picky about ink colours and have been looking for something around the subdued wine/purple area. Diamine Damson is good but a little too blue. Tyrian is very close but perhaps a little too red. So I tried adding a little Macassar to dull it down, went too far and added Tyrian back in. I now have an M600 filled with almost Tyrian and that looks about right but I have no clue as to the proportions. Still, all good fun!

In most cases you can dilute an ink as much as you want with something like Noodler's Blue Ghost and still maintain a usable flow for a fountain pen. The same cannot be said for distilled water. I have a surfactant (Kodak Photo Flo) which I can use to reduce the surface tension thus making the ink wetter or flow better. I want to mix the surfactant with water to achieve a solution that could be used to dilute an ink while still maintaining good/usable flow (similar to how Blue Ghost can be used). The obvious solution is trial and error of mixing concentrations, diluting some inks, and writing with them until I find a surfactant concentration that I feel writes well. However, that is tedious and subjective. Does anyone have ideas on how to do this more efficiently or objectively? Edit: Note: I fail at titles.

I think I will drive myself crazy if I try further nail down a description of what I see in these vials. You all have probably read that blacks are usually a mix of colors so that if you dilute them you should not necessarily expect a pure gray. You maybe have even noticed this when flushing a pen and watching the dilute black in go down the drain or changing the color of the water you dipped it in. I wanted a reference to what these colors were in case so I could be mindful of them when mixing inks. I purchased a number of black samples for this purpose and this shows all blacks I thus have in my possession. I tried adding a drop of the ink to a full sample vial, but that was still too dark to see the color and I don't have a way to make smaller drops. The method I used was to dip a cotton swab, swab out a sample, then dip the cotton swab into a sample vial of distilled water. I would dip as much as need to get to the point of it being dark enough to recognize color. Here are the results: Dark Matter: Definitely blue, as the blue spectrum goes it tends more towards yellow then it does towards red, but I would not call it green. Aurora Black: Purple. Very similar to Borealis but more red(pink). Borealis Black: Purple. Very similar to Aurora but more blue, making it seem a little darker, dustier Carbon Black: Yellow, a little more brown/orange than Noodler's Black, but very close. Lamy Black: Purple. Not as vibrant as Aurora, making it closer to Borealis, though I think more yellow making it seem paler. Heart of Darkness: Grey? More Blue and Red than the Yellows, more Blue than the Chinese Cartridge. Noodler's Black: Yellow Noodler's Blackerase: Yellow Private Reserve Velvet Black: Purple. Like Lamy but less dusty. Waterman Intense Black: Pink. Fits in well with the purple ones, but when you look at them side by side, it is definitely less blue. Quink Black: Pink. Less blue than the Waterman Generic Chinese Cartridge: Peach. Initial reaction on this one was grey; it really matters which inks you juxtapose. I note that the color of light the vials are viewed under could make a difference in how I would classify them above. I came up with the above viewing them under an incandescent desk lamp bulb (so a fairly yellow light). Everything below preserves the same order listed above. Pictures of the vials, I did my best to capture them but still not great: Swabs: The top line for each color was gone over 3x, the second 2x, and the bottom 1x. The purpose of this was to get into the what is the darkest black discussion, but the swabs are fairly revealing on on that front as well. Accidental pesudo-chromatography (ordered left-to right, top-to-bottom): EDIT: Note: The above paper is try in both pictures, Noodler's Black does have that smokey ring but it is washed out in the second picture by the strong light.

Fun diluting PR DC Supershow Blue: http://thefrugalfountainpen.blogspot.com/2014/05/ink-dilution-two-inks-for-price-of-one.html

I recently bought a Pilot Custom 74 with a SFM (Soft Fine Medium) nib. Great pen but a really wet writer. I tried several different kinds of inks in it but had feathering issues. I then tried Noodler's black and found it to be very saturated with plenty of nib creep on this pen. I diluted it 1:1 with distilled water and now it the pen writes perfectly and the ink is still very dark. The nib creep is also gone. Bottom line is that it pays to try ink dilution with wet writing pens.

Hi, These samples show my results from diluting Noodler's Arthur Brown Manhattan Blue with distilled water. These simple samples are viewed in the basic terms of the Ink Review performance profile, without addressing use, aesthetics and so on - the interesting stuff. THE USUAL ☞ Please take a moment to adjust your gear to accurately depict the Grey Scale below. As the patches are neutral Grey, that is what you should see. Mac http://www.computer-darkroom.com/colorsync-display/colorsync_1.htmWintel PC http://www.calibrize.com/http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/yy116/Sandy1-1/FPN_2013/27ddb717.jpg ~::~ WRITTEN LINES These replace the ubiquitous but flaky swatches. Figure 1. Paper: Staples 20lb. http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/yy116/Sandy1-1/FPN_2012/Dilution%20-%20Noodlers%20Manhattan%20Blue/2960e6f7.jpg Row 1. 100% (stock) Row 2. 80 Row 3. 66 Row 4. 40 Row 5. 100 Row 6. 60 Row 7. 80 Row 8. 40 WRITTEN SAMPLES - Moby Dick Ruling is 8mm Figure 2. Paper: Staples 20lb. Pen: 330. http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/yy116/Sandy1-1/FPN_2012/Dilution%20-%20Noodlers%20Manhattan%20Blue/e7b70440.jpg Figure 3. Paper: Rhodia. Pen: 330. http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/yy116/Sandy1-1/FPN_2012/Dilution%20-%20Noodlers%20Manhattan%20Blue/4e765583.jpg Figure 4. Paper: Staples 20lb. Pen: M200. http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/yy116/Sandy1-1/FPN_2012/Dilution%20-%20Noodlers%20Manhattan%20Blue/319b6229.jpg Figure 5. Paper: Rhodia. Pen: M200. http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/yy116/Sandy1-1/FPN_2012/Dilution%20-%20Noodlers%20Manhattan%20Blue/ad5d7045.jpg OTHER STUFF Bleed- Show-Through: Figure 6. Paper: Staples. Pen: 330. http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/yy116/Sandy1-1/FPN_2012/Dilution%20-%20Noodlers%20Manhattan%20Blue/811b0ff3.jpg Figure 7. Paper: Staples. Pen: M200. http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/yy116/Sandy1-1/FPN_2012/Dilution%20-%20Noodlers%20Manhattan%20Blue/3e378f1c.jpg Smear / Dry Times Figure 9. Pen: 330. http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/yy116/Sandy1-1/FPN_2012/Dilution%20-%20Noodlers%20Manhattan%20Blue/2372b941.jpg PHYSICAL PERFORMANCE & CHARACTERISTICS Flow: With the exception of 40% on the Staples from the M200, flow was OK.(Instances of skipping are circled.)Nib Dry-out: Not seen.Start-up: OK for all dilutions.Lubricity: Diminishes as dilution increases.100 & 80% were OK.60% was barely OK.40% was barely tolerable, so textured papers and/or narrow nibs may be unpleasant.Bleed- Show-Through: 330 on Staples 20lb: All dilutions, as seen in Figure 7.330 on Rhodia: None.M200 on Staples 20lb: All dilutions, as seen in Figure 8.M200 on Rhodia: Some freckles appeared at all dilutions. (!)Feathering / Wooly Line: Staples: Increased slightly as dilution increased. (?)Rhodia: Not seen.= = = = NUTS & BOLTS Pens Written Samples: Sheaffer 330 + steel M nib.Pelikan M200 + richardpens hand-ground g-p steel 1.0 Stub nib.Lines & labels: Visconti Burgundy from a Pilot Penmanship + EF. Papers: Rhodia: satin finish vellum, 80gsm.Staples: house brand multi-use copy/print, USD4/ream, bears FSC logo, 20lb.Imaging An Epson V600 scanner was used with the bundled Epson s/w at factory default settings to produce low-loss jpg files.No post-capture manipulation of scanner output was done, other than dumb-down by Epson, Photobouquet, IP.Board s/w, and your viewing gear.Fine Print ◊ The accuracy and relevance of this Review depends in great part upon consistency and reliability of matériel used. ◊ Ink does not require a label/notice to indicate (changes in) formulation, non-hazardous ingredients, batch ID, date of manufacture, etc. ◊ As always YMMV due to differences in materials, manner of working, environment, gravity dimples, etc. ◊ Also, I entrust readers to separate opinion from fact; to evaluate inferences and conclusions as to their merit; and to be amused by whatever tickles your fancy. -30- TAGS: Fountain Pen Ink Review Noodler's Arthur Brown Manhattan Blue Dilution Art Brown NYC Sandy1

I currently have a black Hero ink (pigmented) I got in China, some real cheap stuff. I figured black inks doesn't need to be too fancy and got a bottle to try out. It definitely have starting problem, this stuff is VERY black, not a hint of grey, so maybe dilution required?