Pelikan - 4001 Royal Blue

April 25, 2020

a lovely review, up there with Sandy1's best, of a fundamental ink

I've used this ink since the age of 6 for at least another 25 years, without ever considering any other ink (or pen)

today, despite a much wider collection of blue inks, it's still a favourite

I know it's behaviour well, and the fact that it can behave differently depending on nib an paper, but it's so reliable that sometimes it's hard to choose other inks (even when attracted by greater saturation, brightness, and lubrication).

I've played around a lot with it (some of my Royal blue mixes derive exactly from the wish to maintain the same writing characteristics, with just a touch of additional strength or tone)

May 2, 2020

Thanks for the detailed review! This is the ink I use to test pens because it doesn't have any crazy properties,

July 8, 2020

#50shadesofbluechallenge (link to the hashtag on Instagram) is the hashtag for the ongoing challenge over at the German PenExchange forum for July & August 2020. Since I inked up all my pens for this challenge with all the 50+ blue inks I have I also want to share my snapshots here.

Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue is a standard in German schools (as are other comparable inks like Lamy (Royal) Blue, Faber-Castell Royal Blue, Online Royal Blue, and countless nameless blue cartridges that come with a generic blue ink with new pens) and it is erasable with an ink eradicator/ink killer (Tintenkiller), as you can see here (link to my Instagram-post with a short & blurry video). Children in schools here in Germany use this since the 1980s, and it works, although you can see that the blue felt tip line is never quite the same as the original. This ink also is not erasable. Most teachers here tolerate the Tintenkiller, but all in all it is considered a better practice to just use a ruler and strike out the wrong word/part.

Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue now sits in my daughter's pen, a WingSung 3008 F.