Having So Many Inks

[Arkanabar]

Limited palette, that's me. There are some properties I require of my inks, and thanks to all the wonderful Color Uber Alles people who write reviews and do tests, I am able to avoid bunches of them which do not meet my requirements. My future purchases are limited to:

Black: Heart of Darkness (once I deal with the 5 other bottles of black I have).
Blue-black: Pilot Blue-black (eventually. I may or may not try to first use up my Chesterfield Archival Vault, which first turns black, and then (in my super cheap notebooks) grey).
Purple: De Atramentis Aubuergine (once I use up my 3 other purple samples. I have some Waterman Purple, but it's not lightfast enough to count.)
Blue: Noodler's Blue
Green: Diamine Sherwood
Brown: Iroshizuku Yama-Guri (I have trouble talking myself into this one while I still have so much Noodler's Red-Black, which is ALMOST a brown.)
Red: Sheaffer Skrip (once I use up the 3oz bottle of Noodler's Widow Maker ... which I use only for markup, so fat chance.)
Turquoise: If I ever use up my bottle of Skrip Turquoise, and the Noodler's VMail Midway Blue, I might choose to get another bottle of turquoise. But like red, turquoise is rarely used, save for markup.

Some colors (orange, yellow, pink, and sufficiently pale greens, purples, and blues) are too hard to read, and should only be used in highlighters.

[Graphene]

I've been wondering the same things lately, actually.

 

I think of myself as on a kind of "quest" to find ideal inks for certain pens and situations. Currently I'm looking for ideal blues, blacks, and blue blacks. In the past I've looked for reds, browns, and greens. I also have inks that I know I will probably never use again (essentially all of my Noodlers inks because they're way more saturated/thick than I care for and usually take a very long time to dry) but I tell myself that if I ever get back into calligraphy then I'll use them for that. I probably have close to twenty bottles of ink with another on its way.

 

I think many people rotate inks, using some for a while, switching to another, then possibly coming back to previous ones when the mood strikes or they read a review and want to give them another shot.

 

 

 

 

 

I so can relate to this! Thanks for expressing it better than I could ever do myself.

[Newjelan]

I have somewhere between 80 & 100 bottles of ink (OK, closer to 100 than 80). I also have about 80 or so fountain pens and every type of paper and notebook known to man. I love the variety or colours, flow, sheen, shading etc. in different pens on different paper. As soon as I move house, I will be buying more (I have a several inks and a couple of pens on my list, but currently have much stored away while our house is for sale.)

 

For me, it's about the joy I get from simply watching the ink flow on the page and at times, simply staring at the bottles. I am fortunate enough to be able to enjoy these without worrying about the cost and I plan to continue to do so for many years.

[Flaxmoore]

Add up everything I own and I'm at about 10 bottles, maybe 25 samples. Some samples will likely never get used up- can't stand a couple from the goulet bestseller list- but I'm close to dry on Tsuki-yo and 54M. Planning on using the Iro bottle to hold Pilot BB from my giant 350ml bottle, and then a bottle of Diamine Registrar's to replace the 54M which has gone from deep, deep gray with blue toning to teal blue.

[Sailor Kenshin]

For some reason this thread makes me want more ink.

[jvcn]

It's a wonderful hobby, and like most other hobbies easy to spend money on. I had not gotten heavily into inks when I first started pen collecting 15 years ago and only relied on 2 or 3 inks. I stayed away for the last 6 or 7 years and just came back. Suddenly I have 4 new inks, ten samples, and over a dozen more inks (including half filled bottles) on order. But as long as I stay away from pens in the hundred dollar and over range, I feel I'm safe in keeping my total expenditures modest.

 

Fortunately, in all these years, my only pricey pens have been received as gifts. And to be frank, I don't particularly like nor much use these pens. So they're ceremonial items to show off and for which I have to thank the givers again from time to time. Otherwise I stick to vintage and modern cheapies.

 

Inks give one the impression of having constant novelty, especially as the same ink becomes a different creature in a different pen on different papers.

[ethernautrix]

I had the ink thing under control until I discovered "my people" on fpn several years ago. I mean, I didn't even know that there could be an ink "thing" until fpn.

 

As could have been expected, I bought many bottles of inks. When that started to feel out-of-hand for me, I took the excess bottles to Pen Posse. Pen Posse is great for many reasons, one of which is a place to bring your excess pen stuff and to try out pen stuff and maybe to get some pen stuff that other Pen Posse friends no longer wanted.

 

I also sent ink samples out.

 

I whittled down my inks to the standards I use the most and some that I will rotate in and out of the non-standard slot(s).

 

And then I started to acquire more inks again. And slowly getting it under some semblance of control again.

 

My next cunning plan is Platinum Preppies and ink samples. This is an acknowledgement of my actual pen-and-ink habits.

[VivienR]

Brought most of my inks ink the early discovery part. Now I have much clearer picture what inks I like and what I not. Still with my current amount of inks probably will survive me. If no bad thing like molds happen with them. Still its not holding me back to buy new inks. They are much cheaper than pens, and its really great to have fun with them.

[mehandiratta]

Well I have collected more that 120 ink bottles.. And there is still urge to collect more...

Lot of sailor inks to be collected

[Fuzzy_Bear]

I did collect inks. I use Noodler's primarily and Private Reserve. I have about 23 different inks, with 3 or 4 duplicates.

 

The only on purpose, accidental, duplicate is Texas Bluebonnet. I used my free 1 oz. bottle, started on the second 1 oz. bottle and bought a 3 oz. bottle.

 

I have a friend that went to one of the Dallas Pen shows and gave me his free ink.

 

There are a couple of colors I still want and then I will be through unless replacing a used up ink.

[amberleadavis]

I did collect inks. I use Noodler's primarily and Private Reserve. I have about 23 different inks, with 3 or 4 duplicates.

 

The only on purpose, accidental, duplicate is Texas Bluebonnet. I used my free 1 oz. bottle, started on the second 1 oz. bottle and bought a 3 oz. bottle.

 

I have a friend that went to one of the Dallas Pen shows and gave me his free ink.

 

There are a couple of colors I still want and then I will be through unless replacing a used up ink.

 

What color do you still want?

[ScienceChick]

 

I don't know, SC and I really like him.

Yeah, he's a keeper.

[dcwaites]

I haven't really been a collector (although there is half a shelf's worth of inks of often used inks (the other half is books) and a box on the shelf below full of less used inks). I do have a number of Noodler's inks, and a few PR, and a couple of Sailor's, and a few vintage Parker Quinks w/Solv-X, and 3 bottles of Visconti Blue (one glass mushroom, two plastic), and some first-run Wanchers I need to replace with current models, and far too many testing samples of Blackstone inks (do they count?) and a few Sheaffer Skrips and Watermans (Watermen? Waterpersons?) and some too-old Lamy and Mont Blanc Blue-Blacks that need to be thrown out and the bottles re-purposed and the odd one-off like Koh-i-noor Document Blue, but that's not many, really.

All the inks were obtained for functional reasons (there really was a good reason at the time that I bought them. Truly.).

 

But I was given a sample of Pelikan Edelstein Topaz. I wasn't too keen on the colour (too light blue) but the rest of the ink's properties pleased me. So I bought a bottle of Pelikan Edelstein Sapphire to blend with it. The results were excellent, and have been posted elsewhere, in the Recipes section.

 

So, I needed a whole bottle of Topaz, and as also mentioned elsewhere, I got a bottle piggybacked with a bottle of Chanel No 5 (for my beloved, not me...).

 

So, I'm sitting here looking at the two bottles, and thinking how pretty they are, and that they shouldn't be hiding in their plainish boxes. And then I saw that the Amethyst was out of stock, but they could let me know when it was available again. And then Sciencechick said somewhere that next year's special ink will be Aquamarine.

 

The only reason that I can even contemplate these inks (and their oh-so-pretty bottles) is that my seller is selling them at half the price they are anywhere else on the planet.

 

Do blends count? I have a number of bottles of various blends, from large to small, as well as 1 litre of Angus Blue-Black powdered ink and 400 mls of Thistle Blue-Black (both slightly different, and both dye-only, no IG).

And then there's the little container of Webster Diamine Powdered Blue-Black (predecessor of Diamine Registrar's) and the Red, Blue, Black canisters of Simpson's powdered ink.

 

And to think I only used to use Parker Quink Permanent Black w/Solv-X.

 

But then, I used to be normal(-ish).

[thygreyt]

I feel lonely now with 6 bottles and 8 samples...

[AnneLyle]

I've never been the type to buy things "just to have them". All my stash - inks, art supplies, knitting yarn - is bought with the intention of using it, even if that use sometimes doesn't materialise.

 

Right now I have 30-odd different inks (in a spreadsheet!), but that includes individual cartridges that came free with Preppies so it's a lot less ink than it sounds. Some of my pens only take cartridges (e.g. most of my Kawecos), others only take bottled ink (TWSBI, Noodlers) so I have to keep both on hand, and the range of colours in cartridge is of course a lot more limited. Yes I could refill cartridges with a syringe, but so far I mostly can't be bothered.

 

And of course different colours are appropriate for different occasions. I wouldn't load my everyday office pen with Emeraude de Chivor, and my personal journal would look pretty dull in Bulletproof Black (though I guess it would stand the test of time a little better)

Edited December 31, 2015 by AnneLyle

[Pensei]

I must say that I'm impressed with the notion of having hundreds or even a thousand inks, but I can understand it. Color is such an amazing thing; I don't think it's unreasonable to say it is one of the wonders of creation. I'm often fascinated to study two inks that seem almost alike, but in some very hard to define way, they are not. I know that artists and scientists of color could indeed analyze some aspects of why one color is distinguished from another, but it remains ultimately mysterious. Just a little example: I found a good price on Tsuki-yo, but before I clicked the Order button, I said to myself, that looks a fair amount like Yama-Dori, which I had also been examining in a sample. So I wrote a few sentences parallel to each other with each ink, and made side by side smears. Sure enough, quite a bit alike. A non-ink person (!) would probably see no difference, but there is a subtle but real difference. I decided a reasonable person could own both. After all, pens are just a device we use to experiment with different inks, right?

[amberleadavis]

http://www.sheismylawyer.com/2016-Ink/01-January/2016-01-02_04.jpg

[amberleadavis]

http://www.sheismylawyer.com/2016-Ink/01-January/2016-01-02_05.jpg

[amberleadavis]

http://www.sheismylawyer.com/2016-Ink/01-January/2016-01-02_06.jpg

[amberleadavis]

http://www.sheismylawyer.com/2016-Ink/01-January/2016-01-02_07.jpg