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Could some one who owns Diamine Sapphire Blue ink go and smell your bottle of ink for me please? I just ordered a few bottles of ink directly from Diamine UK, and among them is a 30ml plastic bottle of Sapphire Blue. As soon as I opened the cap, I noticed the unmistakable mouldy smell. Very strongly. If you have this ink, can you tell me if your Sapphire Blue smells differently from other Diamine inks you own? I have 20 odd other Diamine inks and most of them don't have any smell, or some of them have just a faint solvent type of smell. But this bottle just stinks! And I know what mould smells like. When you lived in an old house with mould in the wall for 12 months, you just know. I may have even developed some allergy to the smell of mould because I get teary eyes and sneezy when I smell such strong mouldy smell now. Thank goodness we have our new house built and everything is fresh these days. After I smelt the mould in Sapphire Blue, I went and opened every bottle of Diamine inks I own and sniffed all of them one by one. I noticed a faint hint of mouldy smell in Sargasso Sea as well, interestingly, another bottle from this new batch of inks I ordered. Both of these smelly 30ml ink bottles have the silver tape on top of the cap with the black text to show the name of the ink as usual, but the black font used on these is a little bolder or larger than my other older bottles. First of all do you think this mouldy smell is normal? Have you noticed anything like this from your recent Diamine order? I haven't contacted Diamine yet, because I wanted to check with you to see if this smell is normal for these particular inks i.e. Sapphire Blue, and maybe Sargasso Sea as well. Thanks for your input! Even if it is normal, I can't use these because just the smell gives me stuffy nose and headache. SNAK Eddited to add: I do love my Diamine inks, and I am not badmouthing them or anything, I am sure if this turns out to be a contaminated ink they will happily take them back and exchange for good ones. I will continue to be their customer too.

It looks like there might be mould or spores in my 823. It could be staining of the grease in the barrel though. Has anyone got any suggestions as to where to get a suitable 'removal' liquid from, here in the UK? Our local pharmacists seem reluctant to speak about this - hardly surprising - and it would be a shame not to clean it out. Phenol or Carbolic Acid just don't seem to be classed as 'over the counter' medicines any more. Shame... So, helpful suggestions, please but the inks I've had in it, don't appear to be contaminated at all, so I guess it's just come from stagnant water. Bye for now.

okay, ive experienced some issues with waterman purple, and i would like to ask the collective experience on this one. I had a bottle of waterman purple, and adored it. It was the second bottle of ink i had ever purchased (after quink black). In the last few weeks i started to see a green tinge when writing, and a little in the bottle. i stored it away in quarantine as it were, and purchased another bottle, same ink, same issue. My question is this. Does this ink have a green tinge at all that anyone has experienced, or do you think that its a mould issue?. There may be some very small particles in the bottle, but no particularly visible growth.

All, Could anyone be kind enough to put me out of my misery concerning something that might be mould (or perhaps isn't) in my bottle of ink. I haven't seen any growth on my pen, but I did refill an old bellows pen for a relative from the bottle in question about four or five days ago. I'm not yet loosing sleep over it, but it is haunting my dreams. Eternal thanks, Peter

So, I loaded up my fountain pen with Herbin's Lierre Sauvage. Everything was ok, until I opened the bottle today (2 days after I first opened it and loaded up the pen) and there was mould floating on top of the ink. Panic ensued, I got all the remaining ink out of my Lamy Safari and the converter. Rinsed both of them repeatedly, first with lukewarm water and when everything was clean I added a bit of washing up liquid to a glass of water, rinsed and shook the converter about a bit to get all the stuff out. Then rinsed with clean water again a number of times. My question is: was this enough? I couldn't see any mould inside the converter, so hoping that this is all ok now.