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I recently received a new pen with a custom-ground italic nib. As is often true, I had to try a few inks before I found one with an acceptable combination of color, dryness (related to thick/thin line differentiation) and lubrication (related to flow and how smooth the nib feels in writing). I thought the resulting writing samples might be of interest to some others. The pen is a Montegrappa Extra. I first inked the pen with Leonardo Blue. This is a lovely ink that I have been using a lot recently. It is moderately dry and works very well with Leonardo stub nibs. Flow was hesitant and the line differentiation was disappointing. So, I thought, this is a Montegrappa pen. Montegrappa ink is probably optimized for Montegrappa nibs. I only had one bottle of Montegrappa ink which I had never opened. I had thought it was black, but it turned out to be brown. The nib seemed much smoother with this ink, and the color was okay. However, it was a wettish ink in a wettish nib, and line differentiation was not at all acceptable. So, I went with one of my "go to" inks. It was a good color match and, in my experience, works well in a very wide variety of nibs - a very forgiving ink, so to speak. Sheaffer Blue-Black ink: Bingo! There are other inks I might try at some point, for example, some of the Diamine blues and Pelikan Blue-Black, but I am quite content with how Sheaffer Blue-Black works with this pen. Happy writing! David