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Does anyone know about this ink? I picked up this little milk glass jar of blue black ink from a retired guy at a farmers market that sells antiques. It's a rad color but the mighty Google yields very little info about the ink and zero info on the company itself. I wrote out all the info on the bottle to show the color (and my terrible handwriting) http://i59.tinypic.com/i3bek5.jpg

I got some packets of Black Stone Powdered Fountain Pen Ink from Cyber6 at Scriptus (Toronto pen show) back in November and finally tried them out yesterday. Fun. A little messy. Here's what the process looked like and what I ended up with. http://ms.mcmaster.ca/~moylek/pub/fpn/BlackStoneInk/IMG_0307.JPG Three packets - Red Cashmere, Blue Cashmere, Black Cashmere - and three bottles. http://ms.mcmaster.ca/~moylek/pub/fpn/BlackStoneInk/IMG_0310.JPG http://ms.mcmaster.ca/~moylek/pub/fpn/BlackStoneInk/IMG_0313.JPG Power into the bottle ... http://ms.mcmaster.ca/~moylek/pub/fpn/BlackStoneInk/IMG_0322.JPG ... and add 30ml of water with syringe. http://ms.mcmaster.ca/~moylek/pub/fpn/BlackStoneInk/IMG_0325.JPG As hard as I tried, power got everywhere: on my desk, on my iPad, in my tea. Interestingly, these two blobs are both from drops of water hitting powder from the only packet I had opened: Blue Cashmere. http://ms.mcmaster.ca/~moylek/pub/fpn/BlackStoneInk/IMG_0328.JPG Here's the Blue Cashmere all shook up. Pro tip: don't shake a swing-top bottle full of ink if you intend to open it in the near future. http://ms.mcmaster.ca/~moylek/pub/fpn/BlackStoneInk/IMG_0329.JPG Two more poured ... http://ms.mcmaster.ca/~moylek/pub/fpn/BlackStoneInk/IMG_0330.JPG ... and all three mixed. http://ms.mcmaster.ca/~moylek/pub/fpn/BlackStoneInk/IMG_0339.JPG And now to test at three dilutions. First I tried the minimum solution of one packet in 30ml of water. Then I tried 1:1 and 2:1 water to (initial concentration) of ink. http://ms.mcmaster.ca/~moylek/pub/fpn/BlackStoneInk/IMG_0332.jpg http://ms.mcmaster.ca/~moylek/pub/fpn/BlackStoneInk/IMG_0333.jpg And finally I mixed all three 3ml samples of 2:1 dilutions into an ink well, and got the purplish brown of the last line. I'll probably fill up a trusty Parker 45 with this mixture - Brown Velour, I'll call it - and use it this coming week at work. As for the Blue, Red, and Black Cashmere .... I think that I will do some mixing and see what sort of Blue-Black and Red-Black I can come up with at some point. Thanks again, Cyber6.

Ok... I'm seriously freaking out. Or not? Sometimes when I use some kinds of cheap copy paper in the office, I get the impression that my pens become more scratchy! I don't mean that they feel more scratchy on some kinds of paper, that's normal. I mean: they write fine on paper 1, then I use cheap copy paper 2 to write a couple of notes, then I go back to paper 1 and they feel scratchy, ink flow is poorer... This always happens with cheap, uncoated papers that have a kinda "chalky", "powdery" feeling. Has anyone ever experienced anything similar?? Is it possible that a paper alters the performance of a nib? I've read somewhere that some reams of cheap copy paper are advertised as having a low "powder content", which supposedly has an impact on the performance in printers and copy machines, but is this something that really exists or is it just a marketing tool? And does this have an effect on FPs? let me know if I should call the local mental hospital, or sell all my pens and retire to meditate on the meaning of life in a Tibetan monastery. cheers, Fabio