Lava Flow - Orange Shader

September 26, 2014

Hi All,

This will be my first ink "review," and one of my more successful ink mixes. I just joined FPN a few days ago and am new to the fountain pen world (about a month now) so take my thoughts with a grain of salt! Hopefully I've captured all the important points for an ink review. If I've neglected anything, please let me know!

**Edit: This recipe is made with 2 milliliters of Diamine Amber and 10 drops (from a pipette) of Noodler's Fox**

The first writing sample was done on Georgia-Pacific 20 pound copy paper. It fared pretty well overall, but the first thing I noticed was that the ink looked much duller on this paper than on higher quality paper. As with most copy papers, it was very absorbent, but there was no visible signs of feathering. Dry times were less than 5 seconds which makes smearing a non-issue, at least for my right-handed writing.

http://i.imgur.com/CaIKJ77.jpg

Shading can more readily be seen from this angle and with slightly better lighting, but overall it is pretty minimal and much duller. This pen is a fairly wet writer and I was impressed that there were no feathering issues at all.

http://i.imgur.com/csxeblH.jpg

The show through on the copy paper skated a fine line between show through and bleed through. It was not quite so bad as to not be able to use the reverse page, but the bleed through from heavily inked areas, such as the ink splatter (done with an ink syringe), would make it difficult or nearly impossible to use both sides of the paper.

http://i.imgur.com/uosPeKB.jpg

Next, Clairefontaine 90 gram paper excelled in most aspects compared to the copy paper. Dry times were much, much longer on this paper, though. A fully dry time of about 30 seconds might be extremely problematic for a lefty. Additionally, a comparison to Noodler's Apache Sunset can be seen at the top right. The ink has a much softer shade of orange than my own mix and shades with a much more brown color as opposed to my mix's red.

http://i.imgur.com/7cXOZuO.jpg

I attempted to edit the below picture for a closer resemblance to the writing samples in daylight, but it did not turn out as well as I had hoped. While it does demonstrate the ink's shading, it fails to truly capture the orange color. The photo shows much more red than is truly on the page.

http://i.imgur.com/gqzBw5p.jpg

This angle shows off shading a bit better than the straight-on shot. One interesting note that I found on both types of paper was that the ink shaded significantly more with print and much less so with cursive writing. As I'm new to fountain pens I can only assume that this is more a trait of my own hand or the pen's nib and smoothness rather than a quality of the ink.

http://i.imgur.com/oUbqzH4.jpg

Interestingly, I found that the ink, after being exposed to water, remained a truer color on the copy paper than on Clairefontaine. Despite color bleed into the surrounding paper, the ink color did not change nearly as much. On Clairefontaine paper, the color did not bleed into the paper at all, but it left a very dull gray-orange shade of ink.

Feel free to let me know what you think, be it good or bad. Thanks!

Steve

Edited September 26, 2014 by TheRealScubaSteve

September 26, 2014

I may be missing it, but how about sharing the recipe.

September 26, 2014

I knew I'd forget something.

2 ml Diamine Amber

10 drops (with a pipette) Noodler's Fox

As an aside, I tried another mix with double the red, but I found it quite opaque and boring. Perhaps somewhere in between would be best (at least for my tastes) for less orange.