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THREE IG INKS Waterproof, bulletproof, all kinds of inks that can withstand abuse from human malice or carelessness, the weather, time; I read about them and fail to find the fascination. First of all, I like inks that wash off easily from my hands, clothes and pens. I'm not that accident-prone but when I used to carry a Pelikan M600 in by breast pocket, many were the times when the cap unscrewed by itself and the pen decorated me with large blue blots. If those blots hadn't washed off, I might have given up on fountain pens - or carrying them around, at least. Secondly, what's the use of resistant inks when I write on paper, a carrier that can be completely destroyed so easily? Does it matter that the ink is still there when the sheet of paper has become pulp? I don't write anything that important that would be severely damaged by a droplet of fluid. So, you appreciate that I didn't get the inks I'm comparing here because they're waterproof; I just liked the colours and was curious to see how they behaved in my pens. The first is IG Blue #1 by KWZ Inks. Since I now have the delight of a local store that stocks KWZ (Fontoplumo), I decided to explore their products, including their IG range, since everybody told me that they were very well behaved. I liked it immediately, although it seemed rather dry for the Waterman Taperite I first inked with it. So, I tried it in one of my gushers, too, a Visconti Homo Sapiens with a medium nib reground into a CI by Oxonian, and the combination was a success. Interestingly, with time, ink flow in the Taperite improved, not to the level of e.g. Diamine Denim, but then that was a bit too much. The second IG ink I got was Rohrer & Klingner's Salix, just so that I would be able to make a comparison. I'm quite impressed by their inks, so I decided that yet another blue ink (I must have about twenty at the moment) was not superfluous if I were to form an opinion on IG inks through a hands-on comparison (I often use this excuse, that's why I have too many inks). It also helped that Couronne du Comte at Tilburg offered a generous discount to a visiting group of pen enthusiasts. Then I remembered that one of my favourite inks, Akkerman's Diep-duinwaterblauw, is reputedly an iron gall one, too, so I decided to include it in the comparison. THE SETUP OBSERVATIONS I love the colours of all three inks. The way the colour of IG Blue #1 and Salix changes as they dry on the page still catches my attention. Diep-duinwaterblauw remains the same but then it's the richest colour of the tree. The final greyish blue of IG Blue #1 is very much to my taste but the brighter blue of Salix seems more interesting in a finer nib. All three have enough shading. Concerning smearing, Diep-duinwaterblauw is the quickest to dry on paper, some twenty seconds ahead of the other two, which seem safe to touch after thirty seconds (or slightly longer in the case of Salix). Water resistance after a minute or so was high for Salix and IG Blue #1 (with the former performing slightly better in this respect) but less so for Diep-duinwaterblauw, which is nevertheless not marketed as water-resistant. In the smearing and water tests, the Taperite was used to represent IG Blue #1, as it was more comparable to the Marlen Aleph that was inked with Salix. In conclusion, I wholeheartedly recommend all three inks to people who know how to care for their pens. I don't know yet what the long-term effects of IG inks on the pens can be. More on that in a year or more; for the moment, I can confirm that the Parker 51 and Sheaffer Targa I keep inked with Diep-duinwaterblauw for a three years now have never given me any kind of trouble. THE PROOF The paper used must be in the area of 80g and is slightly less absorbent that common 80g copy paper. In the scan the colours seem just a smidgeon darker than in real life but their differences are well captured.