Monteverde (Gemstone Collection) Olivine Ink Review

[A Smug Dill]

(Another quickie review, being largely a by-product of my checking how the EF nib on a Delike Alpha performs.)

 

 

Colour: I suppose the closest colour of ink I have to it is Diamine Evergreen but, at least in daylight, Monteverde Olivine is slightly more yellow (and Diamine Evergreen has an obvious red sheen).

 

Feathering: None observed on the Rhodia paper I used.

 

Ghosting and bleed-through: Not from normal writing, but several passes with a soaked cotton swab or a wet nib can cause some ghosting and even bleed-through.

 

Drying time: Quick enough. No smearing after 15 seconds.

 

Water resistance: None whatsoever. Washed clean off the page under a running tap in under 15 seconds.

 

Shading: Some, but slightly subtle. No distinct step going from faint to dark. That's a good thing.

 

Sheen: Not any to speak of. There is the slightest hint of a dark red outline or 'halo', if you look really hard, but that's about it.

Edited October 23, 2018 by A Smug Dill

[langere]

Love your review! I like the color, but would not buy the ink because it has no water resistance at all. Good to know.

 

Erick

[Honeybadgers]

Not sure I know of a green that has any decent water resistance on the market that doesn't absolutely suck in every other way (wancher green and noodlers polar green are waterproof but good lord do they HATE paper.)

[The Good Captain]

I really must give this ink a try - it's right there in one of my favourite colour ranges.

[A Smug Dill]

Not sure I know of a green that has any decent water resistance on the market that doesn't absolutely suck in every other way

Is Noodler's Green Marine ink still on the market? I still have (most of) a couple of bottles of it, and I remember selecting it because of its claim to whatever-proof qualities. I could go and check its water resistance myself, but I injured my wrist on my writing hand and the GP just told me this afternoon to "rest it for a few weeks" (as if!).

 

My next 'sure bet' would be Sailor STORIA Balloon Green ink, which I don't have. (I have three out of the eight colours, and I bought them in the last couple of months, so I'll assume they're still "on the market".)

 

I have a bottle of Rubinato Verde Inchiostro ('Green Ink') that I bought recently from a local department store, and I'll hazard a guess that it's at least somewhat water resistant. OK, I just tested it, and Rubinato Verde Inchiostro does not cut it at all.

Edited October 23, 2018 by A Smug Dill

[vojtahlad]

Not sure I know of a green that has any decent water resistance on the market that doesn't absolutely suck in every other way (wancher green and noodlers polar green are waterproof but good lord do they HATE paper.)

 

Rohrer and Klingner sketchINK Emma comes to my mind - see the review from visvamitra. There is also Klara in this ink line - a much brighter kind of green.

[Tas]

It's the sourness/vibrancy when washed over that puts me off. It's the main reason I don't use my Zhivago much.

Thanks for another top notch review.

[Jan2016]

Thank you for the review!

[pgcauk]

I like Olivine!
I had been struggling to find "my" olive green for a while. I was sure Tokiwa Matsu would be it, but, although I like the color that the ink dries to, I don't like the blue-green in the wash and was surprised to discover that sheen is not for me! I thought Diamine Safari would be "the one", but it wasn't enough to entice me away from good old Burma Road. Yet a bottle of Olivine that I picked up without much thought when I saw it in a store at $8 has been in constant use ever since. Not "my green", (right now I'm very keen on De Atramentis' Jean Jaques Rousseau, which is either my perfect murky green . . . . or dirty rinse water!), but interesting enough to keep coming back to.

I like how (in a wet pen) this is more "dark" than "green", with occasional hints of green a pleasing discovery where they do gleam through.

A nice, interesting, good-value ink!

[Honeybadgers]

 

Is Noodler's Green Marine ink still on the market? I still have (most of) a couple of bottles of it, and I remember selecting it because of its claim to whatever-proof qualities. I could go and check its water resistance myself, but I injured my wrist on my writing hand and the GP just told me this afternoon to "rest it for a few weeks" (as if!).

 

My next 'sure bet' would be Sailor STORIA Balloon Green ink, which I don't have. (I have three out of the eight colours, and I bought them in the last couple of months, so I'll assume they're still "on the market".)

 

I have a bottle of Rubinato Verde Inchiostro ('Green Ink') that I bought recently from a local department store, and I'll hazard a guess that it's at least somewhat water resistant. OK, I just tested it, and Rubinato Verde Inchiostro does not cut it at all.

 

I haven't tried green marine, the only one I knew of offhand that was waterproof was polar green, and that ink is hot garbage for any pen that doesn't absolutely positively need to be freeze-resistant. And wancher green is weird as hell, is just feels like it shoots out through the nib, through the paper coating, and soaks into the very soul of the paper. it feathers and bleeds uncontrollably in XXF nibs.

 

Storia might have some waterfastness, since it's a pigmented ink. I just don't like the bright colors of the Storia line.

[A Smug Dill]

... the only one I knew of offhand that was waterproof ...

 

I thought we were talking about water resistance, not waterproofness.

 

 

Some colour left by Noodler's Green Marine will definitely be lifted off the page upon contact with water, and that could end up staining neighbouring areas on the paper (or staining something else), so it's not waterproof by any possible interpretation of the word. However, it is certainly water resistant, and writing done in Green Marine ink cannot be obliterated or made illegible just by washing or soaking in plain water.

[Honeybadgers]

Again with the semantics

 

 

You know what I meant. We're talking about it still being legible. No non-pigmented inks that I know of are truly waterproof on paper that doesn't soak in. True waterproof inks are generally outside the domain of fountain pens.

Edited October 30, 2018 by Honeybadgers

[A Smug Dill]

You know what I meant.

No, actually, I didn't. When you changed the wording from 'water resistance' to 'waterproof', it suggested to me a possible 'shifting of the goalposts' in your mind consciously or subconsciously. I wasn't about to assume those two terms have logical equivalence in your cognitive framework; they aren't equivalent in my understanding, and it does not appear from what else I've read on FPN that many others regard them as same.

 

We're talking about it still being legible. No non-pigmented inks that I know of are truly waterproof on paper that doesn't soak in. True waterproof inks are generally outside the domain of fountain pens.

Yet, more and more so, there are pigmented inks formulated and marketed for use with fountain pens. Or should I now assume (because I allegedly know what you 'meant') fountain pen inks can only include dye inks, and not anything users past or present have put in their fountain pens with which to write irrespective of a higher level of pen 'hygiene' or maintenance required?

[Honeybadgers]

We're not going down this rabbit hole again, so please stop trying to pick this fight. I want us to be able to interact amicably. Your grasp of English is excellent, and you clearly understood the intent of the context we were discussing. It would have made no sense for me to arbitrarily segue into a completely different subject. Don't be patronizing. It's immensely rude. I don't want to sound patronizing myself because I'm fairly sure you already know this, but for future reference, if we're in a thread discussing a subject, and I use a word that could be construed as a simile, that was what I meant, and I'm not suddenly jumping into a new subject matter.

 

 

Most pigmented inks will still move around a bit because they have a dye component. Even the serious pigmented players like sei boku and carbon black will move around enough to not be the best option for a watercolor overlay because they do have a dye component that can't really stay put like their pigments do. I don't know about the Storia inks, though. But every pigmented ink I've seen will stumble a bit if not permitted to soak into the paper because they do have an underlying dye component. Shellac or gelatin based inks create a hard layer that pigmented inks try to emulate. The effect is good, but I write in the rain about 200 days a year as a paramedic, and even platinum carbon will wiggle a little when the page gets wet.

Edited October 30, 2018 by Honeybadgers

[A Smug Dill]

Sailor seiboku and souboku do not wash out at all, once left to dry on the page for ten minutes or so, in my experience. The same cannot be said about Sailor kiwaguro in the same product line.

 

As far as online discussion and posts are concerned, I'll continue to regard everyone as carefully and deliberately choosing each and every word they write, so they vary their wording, I'll continue to assume that there is something at least subtly different in their cognitive/internal representation of what they are writing about. That's not patronising, but simply having a high expectation of others in line with my expectations I have of myself (which even I sometimes fail to meet). I'm not going to prioritise getting agreement, pretending there is inherent like-mindedness or mutual understanding, or favouring harmony over treating discourse as primarily an intellectual exercise. Even for the purposes of information sharing, precision and accuracy take priority over putting readers in a receptive mindset any day, in my book – except when someone is paying me to facilitate a workshop, or produce a technical report or whitepaper they commissioned.

Edited October 30, 2018 by A Smug Dill

[davidtaylorjr]

I got this ink as a free ink Goulet Pens special. Does anyone else have the issue I am having where this ink crusts heavily on the end of the nib when not in use?

[A Smug Dill]

3 hours ago, davidtaylorjr said:

Does anyone else have the issue I am having where this ink crusts heavily on the end of the nib when not in use?

 

In my experience, the forming of nib crud while a pen is capped and unused is indicative of a cap (seal, or design) that is ineffective in preventing ink evaporation. That said, some inks — typically in the red-orange colour range — are more apt to form nib crud in such a pen and/or circumstances; with other inks, the residue volume inside the pen's reservoir would simply reduce, and the 'writing fluid' become more saturated or concentrated in terms of dye load (thus generally darkening), often even without the pen user noticing. I see that as a flaw or shortcoming in the pen and not the ink.

 

My wife was the only one who used our bottle of Monteverde Olivine in a pen outside of ink testing/review, in her Pelikan M205 (2017 Special Edition) Olivine piston-filled pen. Pelikan M-series pens are generally very good at preventing ink evaporation when capped; we have a few here that usually stay filled with ink. I don't recall her complaining about or showing me nib crud from this ink, even though she's used that pen from time to time, and I've refilled it a couple of times for her.

 

So, my suggestion is that you try your bottle of this ink with a pen you know/trust will seal well when capped, and not apt to dry out in any period less than three months if unused and undisturbed. Anything from a high-end (for loose logical equivalence, gold-nibbed) Sailor, Pilot, Platinum, Pelikan or Aurora fountain pen, down to a humble ¥330 Platinum Preppy (which has a cheaper version of the Slip-and-Seal mechanism in the far more expensive #3776 Century models), or something like a Fine Writing Instrument (Bronze Age or Planets series, etc.) pen in between those two ends of the spectrum.

 

I'll happily wager that Monteverde Olivine in a Platinum Preppy/Plaisir/Prefounte (all being cheap pens) will not form nib crud when capped properly.

[chromantic]

18 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

... Monteverde Olivine in her Pelikan M205 (2017 Special Edition) Olivine piston-filled pen

 

Great color, great review. My first thought was that it looks like the pre-release photos of the Edelstein that got us all excited.

[davidtaylorjr]

On 12/6/2020 at 3:21 AM, A Smug Dill said:

So, my suggestion is that you try your bottle of this ink with a pen you know/trust will seal well when capped, and not apt to dry out in any period less than three months if unused and undisturbed.

Thanks for the suggestion. This was happening in my new Conklin All-American Ebony Gunmetal. The crusting was happening literally within an hour of not using the pen.

[LWJ2]

On 12/9/2020 at 10:33 AM, davidtaylorjr said:

Thanks for the suggestion. This was happening in my new Conklin All-American Ebony Gunmetal. The crusting was happening literally within an hour of not using the pen.

A bit late to the discussion here, but: I also have a Conklin All-American, originally purchased with the flex nib; which I replaced with a fine nib because the flex dried out quickly. Well, so did the fine, so it's a problem with the design of Conklin's nibs.

 

If they're in constant use, both the fine and the flex work well; with the intermittent use typical of my habits, not so.

 

My TWISBI pens don't have this problem. The All-American is a lovely pen, being a woodworker I delight in the ebony, however, Conklin's nibs suck (literally) the ink out of the reservoir. Not a problem with my antique Conklin Crescent; their engineers should take a look at what was done before.

 

Cheers!