Noodler's Britannia's Blue Waves

[fjf]

I like this one. It is a pale turquoise color with a touch of a darker blue, creating like shadows along the writing:

 

http://i26.photobucket.com/albums/c112/fj1121/britannia.jpg

 

 

Like the other ethernal colors, it is not a bright or vibrant turquoise (i.e. the Waterman's south seas blue, a great one), but this is the price you pay for eternity. :roflmho:

 

However, it is not usable, because it flows VERY poorly and tends to dry on the pen.

 

Regards.

Edited July 23, 2006 by fjf

[HDoug]

Like the other ethernal colors, is is not a bright or vibrant turquoise (i.e. the Waterman's south seas blue, a great one), but this is the price you pay for eternity. :roflmho:

Yes, I wish I could have an "eternal" ink that looked like a Private Reserve "ephemeral" ink, but that's just the wine talking.

 

Britannia looks like the "Peacock Blue" that girls used when I was in the 4th grade (I'm an old fart). An ink called "Britannia" should look more... more like North Sea ocean and less like Montego Bay postcard, but that's just me.

 

Thanks for posting the scan -- I always appreciate it when people take the trouble to scan something, but I don't always express my appreciation. So there.

 

Doug

 

P.S. I'm button-filling myself with red wine at the moment so please excuse my ... whatever it is ...

[HDoug]

Oh, I should have mentioned that I like the shading or pooling or whatever you call the effect of darker and lighter colors according to ink depth. That is such a wonderful and charming characteristic of fountain pens, no? As opposed to the blobs of ink of the ball pen.

 

Doug

 

P.S. Okay, now I'll really shut up...

[fjf]

If you are implying this is a girly color, well, it maybe...but I like it, anyway. I guess my masculinity is in great danger now... :roflmho: :roflmho: :roflmho: A real british warrior would never use it, but then again I am no british and no warrior...

 

Regarding the shading, there is more to it than just a thicker layer of ink in some strokes. This ink has a darker blue added that appears in some parts, like insoluble little particles of some cobalt blue. Strange. Maybe you can see it better in this scan from "The Writing Desk":

 

http://www.thewritingdesk.co.uk/ink_cat/nood_brita.jpg

Edited July 6, 2006 by fjf

[Inkanthropist]

Thanks for the review. I've been using this colour for a couple of weeks, and I'm quite pleased with it. Doesn't it look bizarre in the bottle, though? The best description I can think of is 'runny blue yogurt'.

 

Neil

[sonia_simone]

It looks more like Welsh Woad to me than Britannia's waves of blue!

[HDoug]

If you are implying this is a girly color, well, it maybe...but I like it, anyway. I guess my masculinity is in great danger now... :roflmho: :roflmho: :roflmho: A real british warrior would never use it, but then again I am no british and no warrior...

I didn't mean to imply that the color of the ink was effeminate. Peacock Blue was en vogue when I was in the 4th grade when they made us write with fountain pens. That was a long long time ago. It may be the same now, but back then girls were the ones with "nice" handwriting. I had to take remedial writing so many times that they just gave up trying.

 

But what makes me think of the color as feminine is that there was this one girl who was perhaps the first to show off the new ink color. She was so pretty -- I can't even attempt to describe her now, but I can see the playground sun sparkle off her hair. And very intelligent. And sweet, too. She was even quite civil to me, one of the bad boys with despicable penmanship and inky fingers of the wrong color -- blue-black from the corner drug store! She may have also been one of the first females of the species for whom I felt that special feeling. I'm an old guy now and she must be my age. But I'm not that old, and I bet she matured into quite a beautiful adult. I will have it no other way. Her hair may be grey now, but the sun must still sparkle in it.

 

You know, as I recall, some of the guys started using it too. It became THE color to use. But I couldn't go wherever it was that they got their ink, and my sneer said I didn't care. I wasn't interested in having the right color ink or even legible handwriting.

 

After all these years, I have a decent handwriting, and I lay all kinds of blue-black noodles on pieces of paper. I don't lose my pens or break them the first day. But I can't use Peacock Blue (or Britannia, if you must). Just can't. It's HER color.

 

Doug

[fjf]

Nice story, Doug. I get it now.

[djahughes]

Hmm maybe I need to try mine again. I bought some of this and thought it was terrible! It looked so washed out and drab, not all like your scan or that of the Writing Desk.

 

Wonder if there was some water left in my VP from the pre fill flush that watered it down.

 

It's at work so I'll try again next week.

 

And yes, it does look WEIRD in the bottle!

[southpaw]

Thanks for the quick look at BBW!

[krz]

Thanks fjf. It does look like the Peacock Blue some. I like it!

[fjf]

Doesn't it look bizarre in the bottle, though? The best description I can think of is 'runny blue yogurt'.

Yes, in the bottle it has a milky appearance. This is probably because this ink is not a solution, but a suspension of microscopic particles in water. I hope they don't aggregate because that might block the feed of a pen. These noodlers are made more like a paint than an ink. I wonder what's the glue that bonds the particles to the paper and makes the painting permanent. That's their secret.

Edited July 9, 2006 by fjf

[*david*]

The Noodlers inks that dry waterproof have a dye in them that reacts with cellulose. Luckily, no glue.

[Carrie]

How do you find this ink with regards to flow? Have you had any problems with it drying out in pens? I got one of the first batch and experienced major problems with it drying out causing pens to skip after just a few seconds off the page. I had wondered if the colour would be too pale, but I did like it. I certainly know what people mean about it looking odd in the bottle, you just don't expect to see an ink looking so bright in the bottle. Looks nice, but after initial experiments I haven't risked using it in any of my pens.

[Goodwhiskers]

Noodler's inks are not suspensions of pigment (microscopic particles that provide color), like iron gall inks and many dip-pen inks for drawing and calligraphy. Pigment inks can permanently clog pens (iron gall inks for fountain pens will not clog pens if the pens are flushed every few weeks).

Noodler's inks are solutions of dyes (water-soluble materials) in water (with a few other ingredients but not glue), and the dyes of Noodler's waterproof inks become waterproof when they bond chemically to cellulose.

Some Noodler's colors may look like paint in the bottle, but they won't permanently clog pens. With Noodler's, even the worst situation for ink in a pen, a dried-up penload, can be flushed out of the reservoir, feed and collector after a water soaking or a soaking in a mild mixture of household ammonia and water.

Edited July 9, 2006 by Goodwhiskers

[Inkanthropist]

How do you find this ink with regards to flow? Have you had any problems with it drying out in pens? I got one of the first batch and experienced major problems with it drying out causing pens to skip after just a few seconds off the page. I had wondered if the colour would be too pale, but I did like it. I certainly know what people mean about it looking odd in the bottle, you just don't expect to see an ink looking so bright in the bottle. Looks nice, but after initial experiments I haven't risked using it in any of my pens.

Carrie

 

I haven't had any problems with it drying out in the one pen that I've used it in so far (a Pilot Custom 74 with a broad nib). In fact, I left the pen filled with the ink but unused for about a week, and it started perfectly when I went back to it.

 

Neil

[fjf]

Noodler's inks are not suspensions of pigment (microscopic particles that provide color), like iron gall inks and many dip-pen inks for drawing and calligraphy. Pigment inks can permanently clog pens (iron gall inks for fountain pens will not clog pens if the pens are flushed every few weeks).

Noodler's inks are solutions of dyes (water-soluble materials) in water (with a few other ingredients but not glue), and the dyes of Noodler's waterproof inks become waterproof when they bond chemically to cellulose.

Some Noodler's colors may look like paint in the bottle, but they won't permanently clog pens. With Noodler's, even the worst situation for ink in a pen, a dried-up penload, can be flushed out of the reservoir, feed and collector after a water soaking or a soaking in a mild mixture of household ammonia and water.

Yes, I've read that before. However, a solution is transparent, and a suspension of particles is turbid (just like milk). And this noodlers is milky. I haven't done any mass chromatography of the thing (and I am not going to, industrial secrets should stay that way), but this ink looks like a suspension to me. And probably the glue that acts later is activated by cellulose (or any other paper component) on the paper and not by the plastics in the pen, and that's why it works. In any case, I like this one.

[Dr.Grace]

It's true that these inks are turbid. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're suspensions. They might be emulsions. Also, colloids can be turbid (refract light) but the particles in a colloidal suspension would be too small to clog a feed, unless they have a tendency to aggregate over time.

 

Perhaps Nathan Tardif could be asked about this (or perhaps he has already commented on the properties of his inks somewhere?)

 

Don

[fjf]

That's a good point. If it is an emulsion (suspension of microscopic grease drops), that would explain why these inks smear when dry. This ink seems too milky to be a colloid and produce this effect by the Tyndall phenomenon, but one never knows!.

[zorroflores]

Wow! this is becoming a lesson in chemistry (or is it physics?); quite interesting discussion anyway.