Good Student/ Beginner Ink?

[yongsheng]

This kind of reminds me of the days when I was a kid , messing around with cheap as dirt pens(and broken them, what else could you expect) and poor quality ink. I used some sort of carbon ink, so poorly made that I can see pieces of carbon floating on the surface. But I was in my middle school so I have no idea things went wrong and inked it up. As you can expect, my pen was ruined.The punchline is always go for those cheap, reliable ink and try out ink samples before you really invest in those boutique ink.

[TennesseeTrash]

Ive heard good things about pilot blue-black. Its also $11 for 70ml on Amazon

Edited November 21, 2017 by TennesseeTrash

[bluebellrose]

This kind of reminds me of the days when I was a kid , messing around with cheap as dirt pens(and broken them, what else could you expect) and poor quality ink. I used some sort of carbon ink, so poorly made that I can see pieces of carbon floating on the surface. But I was in my middle school so I have no idea things went wrong and inked it up. As you can expect, my pen was ruined.The punchline is always go for those cheap, reliable ink and try out ink samples before you really invest in those boutique ink.

lol did you use those ink meant for chinese calligraphy using dip pens i.e calligraphy brushes for fp? They aint good for anything but dip pens,and chinese calligraphy brushes it clogs the feed I'm told.

[bluebellrose]

I've never used any polar inks, so I can't say how well they write. I sometimes clip my pens in an inside coat pocket if I'm worried. But even carrying pens around in a briefcase I've never had a problem. Note: my winter experiences reference southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. Your location my be more extreme.

it hit negetive 18 C around here once.

 

For the OP's question:

 

You won't go wrong with any of the recommendations thus far. I find Heart of Darkness a little more well-behaved than Noodler's original bulletproof Black.

 

That said, my first recommendation would be Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Black. Even if you should spill some water, coffee, tea, or soda on it, it's likely to remain legible, and it resists fading. It's also low-maintenance and isn't too prone to feathering.

 

And if you can get it, I'd say that Pilot Blue-Black (Pilot INK-350-BB or INK-70-BB) could well be The World's Most Workmanlike Ink.

 

@BlueBellRose: if you keep your fountain pen in a shirt breast pocket, well inside your coat, Polar Black should not be necessary. If you plan to write outside, then yeah, I can see taking the time to go get it, especially if you're citing sub-zero in Farenheit, rather than Celsius.

 

Oh wait, I've looked up typical winter temperatures in Vancouver, and unless you're writing outside where and when it's plenty cold enough for ice fishing, you're not likely to need Noolder's Polar ink.

We don't do F, We do C around here. Eh depending on the courses, I'm taking, I sometimes end up writing outside during field trips. I ended up taking notes in the freaking rain because the weather decided to rain everytime we had a field trip and we had to take notes for our lab report to hand in later.. It was cold and raining. I got so wet I ended up throwing my shoes away when I got home. And opened my spare pair. I got tired of waiting for it to dry. Waited for a few days and it still didn't dry, I may just order a small sample vial for those extra cold weather conditions from goulet pens. Hopefully I don't have do anymore courses where i have to write in the rain. ._.

Edited November 21, 2017 by bluebellrose

[bluebellrose]

hmmmm, My local staples has waterman and parker quink. My current plan of attack is grab a hello kitty platinum preppy from ebay from a reputable seller. I'm more interested in the capped cartridges that comes with the package than I am in the preppy. I have syringes I got from daiso, Next grab a plasir from jetpens or gouletpens. Probably Jetpens since I want to grab some pentel hybrid techicna refills as well.Only want to pay shipping once lol

 

Though I also want to grab a highlighter ink as well.

[yongsheng]

lol did you use those ink meant for chinese calligraphy using dip pens i.e calligraphy brushes for fp? They aint good for anything but dip pens,and chinese calligraphy brushes it clogs the feed I'm told.

Nope. It was just a Chinese Hero carbon ink with REALLY poor QC. To make matters worse, I couldn't realize the ink was bad back then. Anyway, several years after that I heard about some high-end black inks, i.e. Sailor's nano pigment and Noodler's h.o.d. I choose Sailor's and it never fails me.

[Torrilin]

Lamy and Pilot are both pretty reliable with iffy paper and lefty writing. I haven’t tested all the colors, but they’re pretty ok so far. I’d be comfortable recommending the brand to a middle or high school kid. I haven’t tried Platinum inks besides carbon black, so they may not all be great. But if you need waterproof, it’s very lefty friendly. And it’s very flexible about paper. It will even write on thermal printer paper.

 

Skrip is awful smeary, so I never recommend it. It’s what I learned on, and it’s extremely fussy about paper quality, and most of the colors dry very slowly. Just say no. The black might be ok, but even that’s iffy.

 

Fountain pen ink is a solution of dye and water mostly, and there aren’t any solutes that make water freeze at a higher temperature than 0 C that I can think of. Noodler’s Polar inks are well named, because they’re intended for temperatures closer to -40 than normal human ones. Your phone will have temperature troubles before your fountain pens will. Most phones are rated for 0C to 30C. I wouldn’t expect most fountain pens to have trouble before about -15C. If your spit isn’t freezing when it hits the sidewalk, your pen should be fine. Granted freezing rain is icky and disgusting and will make you wish you could die, and it will make your ink smeary as hell. But the Polar ink series has very mixed reviews, so I definitely would steer clear of it if you just want a boring daily driver ink.

 

Oh, and in my book, test your favorite weird color in a brand over blues and blacks if you’re deciding on a daily driver ink. The basic colors tend to be the most reliable. The weird ones are more likely to change over time or have batch variations. Green, purple, red, brown... those are much harder to find a good every day formula. So if you need an oddball color, it’ll be harder.