Inky T O D - Color Swatches - Blue/black - Please Post Your Pictures And Tell Us Your Thoughts

[truthpil]

http://www.sheismylawyer.com/2016-Ink/03-March/2016-03-06_02.jpg

I'm also a bit obsessed with finding several (I gave up on having just one) perfect blue-blacks and this one is calling me. Any idea when it was produced. Modern Skrip BB for me is as dull as it gets, but this vintage one looks more saturated and has that hint of green that I actually love.

 

As soon as I get around to it I'll pull out the old dip pens and post some samples of my BB hoard.

[bob_hayden]

A picture of the box or bottle would be nice. In my earliest memories (c.1960) Sheaffer BB came in a blue and yellow box and was a pale blue-grey. The current Slovenian ink is much darker and more saturated, and I think the original Slovenian version was in between. So I am wondering if the sample from Amberlea was made earlier, or maybe it is the stuff I knew and did not much care for after being concentrated by evaporation or altered by age.

[truthpil]

A picture of the box or bottle would be nice. In my earliest memories (c.1960) Sheaffer BB came in a blue and yellow box and was a pale blue-grey. The current Slovenian ink is much darker and more saturated, and I think the original Slovenian version was in between. So I am wondering if the sample from Amberlea was made earlier, or maybe it is the stuff I knew and did not much care for after being concentrated by evaporation or altered by age.

 

The sample is Sheaffer's #22 Permanent Blue-Black, which seems to have different properties (i.e., much saturation and permanence) than the standard vintage Sheaffer BB. Looking around Ebay, I see those yellow and blue boxes and I think you're right.

[bob_hayden]

I do not remember the inks having numbers. That might help to date it. On eBay I see that some #22 has RC-35 and some does not mention it. That was an additive introduced in 1956 that left a trace behind that could be read under UV light if the ink were washed off or eradicated or altered.

[Erik Dalton]

This is Aurora Blue-Black. I've fallen in love with this ink.

[amberleadavis]

Oh yes, great addition!

[truthpil]

Here's one that I don't think has appeared on FPN before: Schneider Midnight Blue. It's a true blue-black (no green, purple, etc.) on the darker end of the spectrum that is a joy to write with and works with every pen and paper I've tried so far. It's only available in cartridges, but they are dirt cheap where I live (around $10 for a jar of 100).

 

 

*This is a teaser for an upcoming review.

[bob_hayden]

An inexpensive blue-black would be good to know about. I reviewed some of the Schneider cartridges available in the US of A

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/118477-schneider-red-review/

 

and all manner of cheap cartridges

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/314342-cheap-ink-cartridges/

 

not long ago. Here in the NW US the Schneider cartridges run more than three times the price you are quoting. And I see very few of the inexpensive cartridge lines include a blue-black, and that's the case here for Schneider as well (or I just don't know where to look). eBay keeps feeding me a link to blue-black cartridges from USAoutletstore but when I click on it it does not take me where it promised. I do think they carried those but it was years ago.

 

Where are the cartridges you are buying made? The ones I see claim to be made in Germany.

[truthpil]

I can't seem to find the BB cartridges for sale in the US either, just every other color.

Here's Schneider's product information for the jar of 100:

 

https://schneiderpen.com/en_us/accessories/ink-cartridges-100-pcs-midnight-blue-4004675111425/#

 

These also claim to be made in Germany.

[bob_hayden]

Thanks. I just checked USAoutletstore's listings and store and there is no blue-black there. However, they claim their cartridges are made in Germany, so maybe these will show up there eventually. Currently they charge $13.50 per 100 cartridges postpaid for the colors they do carry.

[truthpil]

Greetings Blue-Black lovers!

 

 

Here are some quick scribbles of every Blue-Black ink in my possession (except for the cartridge-only Schneider Midnight Black I posted about earlier).

All samples were done with a cheap Chinese glass dip pen, so the color is a little more concentrated than it would be in some FPs. The wetness of the glass pen is about equal to the wet and juicy B nibs in my Lamy Safari, Pelikan M215, and Nemosine Singularity (i.e., JoWo #6). Photos were taken in indirect sunlight and, as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get the brightness right when adjusting the photos. At least the ink colors look right on my monitor.

 

 

[After putting it on the page, I realize that Iroshikuku Syo-Ro is nowhere near blue-black even from a wet pen, but it was too late so I just left it there.

Also note that ESSRI is only a blue-black like in this scan when it's fresh. It will eventually turn to gray and black with no blue whatsoever (much to my deep disappointment and something I am trying to remedy).]

More comments below.

 

Rhodia 80gsm

 

Tomoe River

 

70gsm Copy Paper

 

 

Here are some of my personal conclusions after comparing all these inks:

Favorite Color = Noodler's Prime of the Commons (sorry folks, I'm a sucker for deep teals)

Favorite Shader = Parker Quink Permanent Blue Black (Vintage)

Truest Blue-Black Color = Hero 202, Pelikan 4001, Parker Quink Permanent Blue Black (Vintage)

Favorite Office Ink = Platinum Blue-Black (behaves better on all papers than Pilot and is notably more water resistant), Hero Dux 402* (when I need a little pinch of green in my life)

Favorite Vintage Pen Ink = Pelikan 4001 (is never too wet nor too dry in any pen I put it in)

Best Value = Hero Dux 402 (at least here in China, where it's around US$0.75 per 60ml bottle).

Driest Inks = Hero 202 (perhaps my bottle went bad), ESSRI, Parker Quink Permanent Blue Black (Vintage)

​Wettest Ink = Noodler's Prime of the Commons (feathers easily when not diluted)

100% Waterproof** = Noodler’s Prime of the Commons, ESSRI, Parker Quink Permanent Blue Black (Vintage), Sailor Sei-Boku
Nearly Waterproof** = Platinum Blue-Black

100% Smear proof (with wet finger) = Noodler’s Prime of the Commons, Parker Quink Permanent Blue Black (Vintage)

*Hero Dux 402 is amazing ink that deserves more attention. On some papers it can display a slight green tint, yet on others it’s purely a rich blue with some black in it. I have it in a juicy Esterbrook 9668 medium nib right now and I don’t see any green at all, but lots of shading. This ink could hold its own again some of the great vintage blue-blacks.

**Note that my standards for waterproofness are very strict. “100% Waterproof” means the ink will not change in any form after drying, even if the paper is totally soaked through or I run a wet finger across it. “Nearly Waterproof” means there will be just some slight loss of color when soaked or slight smearing under a wet finger. Therefore, some inks many may claim as “waterproof” I would classify as “highly water resistant.”

[bob_hayden]

I could not find this thread last night so I posted a similar (but not nearly as neat) test page here (post 80).

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/58324-best-blue-black-ink/page-4

 

I don't see much overlap in inks tested, and in those cases we seem to really disagree;-) I see two sources of variation for the Parker. One is that my sample is years old and this ink faded more than most for me and now looks almost turquoise. Then Parker seemed to change their inks over time and space so we may not be testing the same ink. Mine was certainly many years old. I did not like the fading and bought no more.

 

For the Pelikan the brown tint seen in my scan is not visible on the page. But on the page it is a very pale grey -- little trace of blue. TruthPil, is that last digit a 1 or a 7? I would have tested the most generic, readily available version, in cartridges. That too would have been long ago, and again because the ink was so washed out (in this case, right from the start) I bought no more.

 

I guess I'd better start dating the ink I buy;-)

[Jan2016]

[truthpil]

 

I don't see much overlap in inks tested, and in those cases we seem to really disagree;-) I see two sources of variation for the Parker. One is that my sample is years old and this ink faded more than most for me and now looks almost turquoise. Then Parker seemed to change their inks over time and space so we may not be testing the same ink. Mine was certainly many years old. I did not like the fading and bought no more.

 

For the Pelikan the brown tint seen in my scan is not visible on the page. But on the page it is a very pale grey -- little trace of blue. TruthPil, is that last digit a 1 or a 7? I would have tested the most generic, readily available version, in cartridges. That too would have been long ago, and again because the ink was so washed out (in this case, right from the start) I bought no more.

 

I guess I'd better start dating the ink I buy;-)

This little experiment has shown me that there is an endless number of variables when it comes to vintage inks. My vintage Parker Quink was definitely NOS and had never been opened before, but still that says nothing about the conditions in which it was stored for all those decades. It seems to be a real gamble as to what a vintage ink will turn out looking like I'm the page.

 

The Pelikan is 4001, the standard one that I believe can't be bought from within the US due to something in the ink that hasn't been US approved. Thankfully it's one of their top selling inks I'm China and even for sale in my local bookstore here.

[bob_hayden]

About the only variation I have seen in the USA Sheaffer inks is that the #22 blue-black was a bit darker than the later unnumbered version, and the cartridges of that look darker after drying out to about 40% of their original content. I just tried a Blue that was 50% dried out and it is only slightly darker than new and I do not see much change in the other colors in cartridges.

 

Parker is another matter because they changed their inks more often and produced them in three countries that I know of and each looks different. So we would have to make sure we both had the same version from the same country. It's too late for that because I do not have the packaging for mine. They might have been from 20 years ago and hence probably from the USA but I do not know. In any case, the ink went on a reasonably dark blue. The turquoise is what it faded to (a long time ago). So we could in fact have the same Parker ink.

 

The Pelikan ink I had was 4001 which I think was not hard to find in the US back then. I poked around on the site and there were numerous similar reports of very washed out PBB from around 20 years ago. That one I think was a QC issue at the factory or maybe the use of an unstable dye. At FPN the problem is often attributed to the ink being old today but I and at least one other had the same problem back when that ink was new.

[bob_hayden]

Here is what I hope is a neater scan of my blue-blacks along with three new ones (marked so in red in left margin). A general comment is that the ages of these inks vary all over the place, though the samples were all written on the same day.

 

http://statland.org/PenPix/blueblack.jpg

 

I am looking at the scan on screen and the original and will add some comments on scan accuracy and anything else that pops into my head. The Aristotle is even more faded in real life. I think it used to look more like 54th Massachusetts but no more. You can find scans online that look a lot like mine but without the tan tinge and you can find scans that look like 54th. I think the Noodler's inks had more grey in them when new but look quite turquoise now.

 

The Sheaffer #22 behaved very mysteriously. On another sheet of the same paper, and using the same F pen, it was lighter than any of the inks below it on the page, while in the very wet Parker M it was much darker -- like only the word "Reflex" is here.

 

If you know the very cheapest Daiso fountain pens the "Selectum: ink was bundled with the same pens sold under the Selectum brand.

 

The Duke ink does not have the color on the label in Englsih. The consensus seems to be that it is labeled blue-black in Chinese but is more of a dark blue in reality. Below the Duke the scans show hardly any blue, but all those inks, though very dark, really do show a bit of blue.

 

I think my favorite is the mostly dried out old Sheaffer USA cartridge;-)

[truthpil]

 

The Duke ink does not have the color on the label in Englsih. The consensus seems to be that it is labeled blue-black in Chinese but is more of a dark blue in reality. Below the Duke the scans show hardly any blue, but all those inks, though very dark, really do show a bit of blue.

 

 

Thanks for posting the new scan. This is extremely informative!

 

I concur with your opinion, I think that old evaporated Sheaffer cartridge looks like the best for a true blue black. The wet sample of the Sheaffer #22 from the Reflex looks nice as well.

 

If you can post a picture of the Duke ink bottle, I can probably tell you what it is.

[bob_hayden]

I am thinking I must have made a mistake re Sheaffer #22 above. Looking at all my other tests and the #22 TruthPil posted I think I must have grabbed the wrong pen -- maybe the one with Slovenian Sheaffer BB in it. Here is a fragment from my draft for this page which is much more representative of what I normally see with this ink.

 

http://statland.org/PenPix/bb22.jpg

 

In particular the first line is what I normally see while the second is only seen in a VERY wet pen. (This one is my wettest.)

[truthpil]

Merry Christmas!

 

Here's a scan of Penbbs #66 Sea Blue (海蓝). As you can see in the writing at the end, it has noticeably more shading when used for printed writing as opposed to cursive. This ink is enjoyable to use because it really lets the nib glide across the paper and has just the right flow. The color is very similar to Hero Dux #402, but has a little more grey to it and it more saturated. There's is just a tiny bit of green hue that can be noticed on some papers, but it's in no way a teal. There's less green in reality than seems to come out in the photo. I including some scribbles with Noodler's Prime of the Commons and Pilot Blue-Black to help get the idea. I've loved using this ink daily for the past two weeks!

 

 

Edited December 25, 2017 by TruthPil

[amberleadavis]

Very Nice!!!