Which Inks Have Disappointed You?

[inkstainedruth]

Inks are like perfumes: on different people and in different climates, produce vastly different results.

 

So far for me, Diamine Meadow, Sepia, Autumn Oak, Misty Blue, Beau Blue, Grey, Monaco Red, Matador; R&K Scabiosa, Morinda; Herbin Vert Pre; Iroshizuku Chiku rin, Fuyu Syogun, Kirisame.

 

As one can see, many of these are lowly saturated inks and require pens and papers to curb the messy shadings. It took me a long time to get these inks 'right' for proper writing and legibility.

 

For fun in infinitely wet flex dip pens, they all work. Or as blotches and swabs and in brushes, they are fine. But in dry fine nibbed Platinum or Pilot gold nib pens, they won't work - for me, at least.

 

I was misled and feel 'cheated' by many ink 'reviews' and bought many of these inks as a result. Now, I read ink reviews with extra prudence.

 

Colour is not everything.

 

Fountain pen inks are specially designed for use in fountain pens and should be 'legible'.

 

I am not dismissing creative displays of inks and colours by brushes and super wet dip pens but they do not exhibit how inks write from a real everyday fountain pen - and can be profoundly misleading.

 

I urge new fountain pen users to read reviews with discretion.

 

Which is why I tend to ignore swabs and chromatography images. The former are, IMO, fairly useless as to how an ink is going to behave coming out of a pen's nib. And the latter? Interesting if you're a chemist or are curious about what the dye component colors are.

Not to mention that inks are going to be very different looking depending not only on the pen they're in, but the paper they're used on. Plus, not everybody is going to have their monitor calibrated the same; and years ago my friend discovered that when making photocopies of calligraphy and illumination projects for a "brag book" she had to tell the people in the photocopy place to cut back on the red/magenta setting quite a bit in order for the photocopies to look "true".

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Dip n Scratch]

Sorting out a blue I like has been a interesting experience. I have even tried the famous Noodlers BSB in a sample.

Yep it is an amazing blue. However... It is very anti-social and stains like crazy. Even the enamel surface of a sink & the toilet that had to be bleached.

It is crazy expensive to buy, unless there's a UK seller I don't know about. The bad behaviour puts me off it

Private Reserve DC Supershow Blue is also a bad boy like BSB. I bought some cartridges of the PR ink & the colour seemed to darken dramatically after a while in the pen.

I suppose that you are never going to get a super-saturated blue with good manners. BSB also fades into complete invisibility under UV. Most blues fade badly under UV but the BSB was worst of the lot.

If you want ink that is UV proof it will never be a blue. It will be black. Hero234 is black as in midnight in Hell black, but don't use it in anything of the slightest value if said pen cannot be stripped down totally to clean. Hero 234 is said to contain carbon black, like copier toner. I still get show-through with cheap paper. Methinks this ink is really for a dip pen or a brush pen to do caligraphy. I just wanted to avoid anyone buying this carbon ink by mistake and ruining a pen. As a black ink it is not a disappointment.

Herbin Perle Noir is not bulletproof or fade-proof, but it is a safe ink.

 

Herbin Blue Myosotis: It looked reasonable in a swab. Swabs are not an accurate guide.

From a pen it looked like it had somehow been diluted. Fortunately I only bought a 10ml bottle.

I had also been acutely disappointed by the Eclat de Saphir & it was my Waterman Expert to blame all the time.

In a Jinhao 599 it wrote the same saturated blue as a swab.

I have changed to Rhodia paper and henceforth 'copy' paper is for my laser printer only. Even so Herbin ink still feathers. That means I maybe won't be getting any Herbin ink in anything but the 10ml tester bottles.

 

Diamine Majestic Blue was a disappointment because it wasn't the blue I expected it to be. The pen had a fine nib and may have been on the wet side as well. The ink dried black & I discovered sheen for the first time, a nice reddish sheen actually. It wasn't all bad then!

 

Then there's the Herbin green that was more like urine. Putting some blue in produced a blend I christened Fishtank Green or Vert d Aquarium if I re-labeled the bottle. I poured it down the toilet and flushed away that mistake.

 

I am very very glad I have never spent crazy money on ink that was a disappointment. Thank goodness for the trial sample.

Edited August 5, 2018 by Dip n Scratch

[gcconspiracy]

Diamine Prussian Blue was a disappointment - it looked nothing like the swab on Diamine’s site.

 

Waterman Inspired Blue never quite had the character that I was looking for - it always just looked like a bright blue gel pen...

[TSherbs]

R&K Alt-Goldgrun. Dry, burns through paper.

[A Smug Dill]

Noodler's Operation Overlord Orange. That's the only bottle of ink I have ever thrown out after having paid the retail price for it. I love orange as a colour, but I thought the colour of NOOO was too flat, too apt to bleed through, and I could not find a combination of pen and paper in and on which the ink would play nice to give my lettering clean edges.

 

I'm not so keen on Pilot Iroshizuku yu-yake either, but certainly not so annoyed with it to chuck it.

Edited August 10, 2018 by A Smug Dill

[A Smug Dill]

This other thread has prompted me to re-test and review all my remaining colours of Noodler's inks. I've now decided my two bottles of Polar Green (one bottle I think is completely unused, and another still ≥95% full) and two bottles of Baystate Concord Grape (same as above) will be next to be discarded.

 

Polar Green feathers like crazy, and the colour isn't vivid or striking enough to be worth putting up with that. Baystate Concord Grape, on the other hand, is a very striking purple that I like, and it doesn't seem to feather or bleed-through particularly badly, but its tendency to stain everything just makes it too risky for me to use. I must have gotten a speck of it on my finger earlier when testing the inks, and when I went to clean the originally clean, white laminate surface of my desk, it managed to leave a pink spot on my desk that took me five minutes (and some chemicals) to remove.

 

Luckily I have found one pen (Sailor 1911 Large in Imperial Black, with a ruthenium-plated 21K gold Fine nib) that can sorta contain the Prime of the Commons blue-black contract ink's tendency to flow unusually wetly and feather (almost as badly as Polar Green); otherwise that will be going as well. Even so, once my new order of Sailor Nano souboku pigment ink arrives, the PotC ink may just fall into disuse and eventually be discarded anyway; while my writing in PotC is not prone to being completely washed away, unlike the Sailor Nano inks the PotC does not retain its colour very well at all after being soaked. (That Sailor pen has trouble when used with Sailor Nano seiboku pigment ink.)

[Corona688]

Pelikan Edelstein Tanzanite - what a funny word for "black".

[Redpanda]

Noodlers Apache Sunset - washed out yellow and no shading . Never buying Noodlers again!

[TSherbs]

....

Polar Green feathers like crazy, and the colour isn't vivid or striking enough to be worth putting up with that. ....

I think that this is the worst ink that I have ever used.

[pajaro]

Pilot turquoise. I was kind of put off with these inks -- apparently you have to speak Japanese. At any rate too flat a blue.

 

Noodler's 41 Brown. Too much nib creep, but the color was OK, too bad.

 

Generally I am not disappointed with inks. Most inks can be adjusted to satisfaction unless the flow is too creepy, like 41 Brown seems to be.

[pennonia]

I recently had to create swatches from all of the Iroshizuku inks and I have to say that the writing experience with the great majority of them was pretty bad. They were dry and writing was scratchy. I wasn't impressed by the colors either.

The only ones that I liked were: asa-gao (color/writing); chiku-rin (color); take-sumi (writing)

So I was pretty let down because these inks are so hyped up and when you actually get the chance to write with them your just looking at the paper dumbfounded thinking how can an expesnive ink like this offer such a sub par writing experience.

Also the color of Pelikan Edelstein Ruby is pretty meh, but at least the Edelstein inks are better and more wet than Iroshizuku. In my opinion if you want premium ink Edelstein > Iroshizuku. The bottles look great for both but as a display piece Iroshizuku wins by a slight margin; then again you're not buying the ink to have it stand there and be pretty on your desk.

I'm now really curious what the experience with Graf von Faber-Castell and Montblanc is.

Pelikan Edelstein Tanzanite - what a funny word for "black".

 

I managed to get some shading out of it and the blue hue shows up, but I do agree that for the most part it just looks like black.

[A Smug Dill]

I recently had to create swatches from all of the Iroshizuku inks and I have to say that the writing experience with the great majority of them was pretty bad. They were dry and writing was scratchy.

 

I'm really surprised to hear that. Were you using a dip pen, or some other writing instrument?

 

I've only just created writing sample cards for all my bottled inks – including all 24 colours of Iroshizuku – not a fortnight ago, using a #5 oblique steel nib on a dip pen, and I haven't found any of the Iroshizuku inks to write particularly dry, certainly not in comparison to the other (including Sailor, Cross, Pelikan, Parker, Caran d'Ache, and 11 Noodler's) inks.

[ENewton]

 

I'm now really curious what the experience with Graf von Faber-Castell and Montblanc is.

 

 

I have used only one ink of each of these brands. I would say that Montblanc Lavender Purple is somewhat dry but not unpleasantly so; right now I have one pen inked with Pelikan 4001 Violet and another with Montblanc Lavender Purple, and the Pelikan Violet is wetter than the Montblanc ink.

 

As for Graf von Faber-Castell, I have used only Violet Blue, and although I liked the hue, the ink was unbelievably dry.

 

Among Iroshizuku inks, I have used Murasaki Shikibu, Kujaku, and Ajisai and have not found any of those three to be dry.

[minddance]

Iroshizuku inks are not dry, they are slippery and mid-low saturated - except for a few darker colours. On Rhodia (non-absorbent and slippery), the ink skids across the page without laying much dye onto the paper.

 

I don't suppose Pilot had Rhodia in mind when formulating Iroshizuku inks. Rhodia doesn't like inks, repels them, and

many inks somehow don't like Rhodia.

 

Rhodia papers are an oddball, really, and there's nothing quite like them.

Edited August 12, 2018 by minddance

[php2316]

Noodler's Liberty's Elysium - I love the color, but I am still trying to find a pen that's not a hard-starter before I buy a whole bottle. Thinking of trying a Platinum Plaisir, maybe.

Noodler's Rome Burning. I don't know what I was expecting, but 'meh'. I might switch it to a fine nib instead of the medium and see if that makes a difference.

 

Keeping in mind that I love Noodler's Inks, in general.

 

Also Monteverde Green. I like most bright greens, but this one is boring to me. The color just doesn't pop.

 

[php2316]

Liberty’s Elysian has worked perfectly in my Noodlers Ahab flex pen.

[ErrantSmudge]

Levenger Gemstone Green, Cardinal Red and Cocoa inks feathered and bled through so badly they are among the few inks I have poured down the drain.

 

Blackstone Barrier Reef Blue, Uluru Red and Daintree Green are all great colors, but all are extremely wet - too wet for my pens, plus Uluru Red was prone to clogging. I traded all three away.

 

Sailor Yuki-Akari looked like a really nice cyan-turquoise when I tried it at the pen show, but was both dry and pale when I loaded it in my own pens.

Edited September 2, 2018 by ErrantSmudge

[Hallel]

Mostly when I am disappointed in inks its because of my personal expectations not being met rather than a serious flaw in the ink itself. That being said, Ive drifted away from Noodlers inks because I generally find them fiddly and over saturated. My biggest disappointment from them came when I bought 2 samples of Noodlers black swan in Australian Roses and then ordered a bottle and none of the three matched and the bottle I have is my least favourite version of this ink.

 

I didnt care for Noodlers Napalm, the ink was fine, I just couldnt find a use for it. Its the ink I would use to send a Howler if I lived in the Harry Potter universe maybe.

 

I didnt care for R &K Salix, J. Herbin eclat de sapphire, j. Herbin cacao du brasil, or Diamine teal. They were all good inks, I just had a meh reaction to them.

 

I eventually developed a dislike of rust brown reds, so I am retroactively disappointed that I bought full bottles of Diamine oxblood, Diamine Ancient copper, Monteverde canyon rust, de Atrementis sepia, etc... but thats a me thing not an ink thing. Lol.

Edited September 3, 2018 by Hallel

[doggle2]

Noodler's X-Feather. It was such a terrible ink. Simultaneously dry, yet able to feather on bad paper more than with some of my other inks (Lamy Blue), in a wet Kaweco BB nib. The variation between batches is said to be the cause of this. If these batches vary so much, why even bother having so many different lines of black inks if they vary so much? And the famed water resistance of the ink? None. It washed clean out of the paper. And, it also developed mold in the bottle after 1 month.

[TSherbs]

Noodler's X-Feather.... It washed clean out of the paper.

That's weird for this ink. I can't get it out of anything (once it dries).