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Noodler’s Tolstoy Tolstoy on 23 May 1908 at Yasnaya Polyana,[1] Lithograph print by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky Disclaimer: I’ve been avoiding reviewing this ink, mostly because I dislike Tolstoy. I have read some of his books in my youth and recently watched a documentary about him, preparing this review. I was impressed by his very modern vision of school system (mostly like the modern Finnish school systems) and “liberating” his serfs. The second part of his life, he becomes erratic. The highlight, I believe, was being ex-communicated by the Russian Orthodox church And to deprive his wife and children of the royalties of his books in favour of charities. It left me perplexed as it was his wife who transcribed his undecipherable handwriting of his early masterpieces. There's a 2009 film, The Last Station which deals with Tolstoy's struggle to balance fame, wealth and his ideal of living devoid of material things. However, this is an ink review. 😛 The greatest part of doing this review was discovering the fantastic colour photography by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky. You can see most of them here: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/ethnic.html So, lets get on with the ink review with the chroma: I don’t like this ink. Filling the pen is torture. The chemical smell is awful and thankfully dissipate with time. But it gave me a headache a couple of sneezes. This isn't a good ink, it has start up issues, it hated pilot Elite, had hiccups with Lamy Safari, until I wrote a few lines, but tolerated well Pilot Kakuna. I recommend it, only to those, who have no sense of smell, love Tolstoy, like a challenging ink, are light handed, use well sealed wet pens and work under UV lights. Writing Samples: Note the difference between the Ef in Pilot Elite and Kakuna. I really had to press hard the Elite to make it write. I didn't bother to scan of the "good papers". But if you're heavy handed, use wet pens, you'll have ghosting and probably a bit of bleed through. Photo: Watertest: Left side was held under water. Kitty was waterproof Comparison: And finally a sketch. I do the yearly Inktober challenge. The prompt was Beard. The black ink is Sailor Kiwa-guro. fluorescence: · Pens used: Pilot Elite/ Kakuna(Ef/), Lamy Safari (Ef/F/M/B) · What I liked: Fast dry time, spectacular fluorescence (I’m pushing it!) · What I did not like: Name, and chemical stench, bleed through, flow issues. · What some might not like: Same as above, minus the name · Shading: No · Ghosting: On most papers yes. · Bleed through: Depending nib, paper. If you’re heavy handed for sure. · Flow Rate: Wet · Lubrication: Ok · Nib Dry-out: No. · Start-up: It didn’t like Pilot Elite. Lamy stopped working after a few days of not using. · Saturation: Sort of. · Shading Potential: Dismal · Sheen: No · Spread / Feathering / Woolly Line: Didn’t notice. · Nib Creep / “Crud”: Yes · Staining (pen): Possible · Clogging: No. · Cleaning: Like most permanent inks, the more the ink stays in the pen, the more time consuming it is to clean. I won’t recommend these inks for pens that cannot be fully dismantled and pens that don’t have a great seal. The pilot Kakuna’s transparent section was tainted in a lovely blue hue, and no amount of Q-tip would remove it, but after several hours of soaking, I should be able to remove it. Safari needed an overnight soaking, and 5 minutes in pen cleaning solution, as a safe measure. · Water resistance: Excellent. · Availability: 90 ml bottles / 3 Oz bottles Please don't hesitate to share your experience, writing samples or any other comments. The more the merrier

As everyone knows, Montblanc makes high-end pens. They also have a line of inks, and when they have a new special edition pen, there is an ink to go along with it. Sometimes these LE inks are available separately, i.e you don't have to buy a pen to buy the ink. Some of these inks have gone down in inky history as fabulous such as the Leonardo Red Chalk. But they sometimes have had some real misses of late, The Blue Hour "Twilight Blue" being one. But I don't think the Leo Tolstoy Sky Blue is a miss, I think it's quite a good ink. It has some shading, but nothing dramatic. It's a middle valued blue, so not too dark, and not too light. It's not excessively bright, or even really bright. While called "Sky Blue" it's not like Sailor's Souten nor their discontinued "Sky High". I suspect this ink will work best in broader nibs if you're looking for something dramatic. The color is greyed down a little, so it's not a pure blue, but it's only a little, enough to lend it some seriousness. Overall a very good ink I think. Not turquoise at all, but also not dark blue. Quite a bit different from their Midnight Blue. The usual papers exhausted here: Mohawk via Linen=MvL, Tomoe River=TR, Hammermill 28 lb inkjet=Hij. On the actual page the writing looks pretty even down the page. At the top where the feed was full maybe a little darker but not much. It looks nice on the page. The Nikon P50 Coolpix definitely didn't understand the lighting, and I don't have the image manipulation skills to adjust it. Again the writing on the page appears much better than the image here. I like how this ink looks on the MvL much better than the Hij. To me, this is where the ink looks the weakest, which in a way os surprising. A wetter pen, a wider nib may have been called for here. Not meant to be waterfast. When blotted with a paper towel, a decent amount of ink came up, but some left behind that might be useful. When washing the writing with water a good amount flows away, but some is left behind. An unusual mixture of what looks like two or three dyes, either all blues, or two blues and a grey.