What Was The Worst Behaved Ink You Ever Used?

[BaronWulfraed]

Diamine Ancient Copper seems a candidate... Looks great on paper -- but by the fourth "expert level" Sudoku, the crud has clogged the nib so much I have to dip it in water (part of this may be that it is a Pilot FA nib).

[mirosc]

Well, these are among the weirder of his inks. HOD, straight blue, BSAR, and Apache Sunset have never given me any problems.

I didn't say all of his inks were problematic. I cherish Golden Brown and still love to use Baystat Blue despite it's problems.

But the relation of misses vs. hits is far greater than in any other ink company. I guess that's normal for an experimental mind with ideas off the beaten path. But as a result I don't buy Noodler's anymore when I can find a similar color from someone else.

[TSherbs]

I didn't say all of his inks were problematic. I cherish Golden Brown and still love to use Baystat Blue despite it's problems.

But the relation of misses vs. hits is far greater than in any other ink company. I guess that's normal for an experimental mind with ideas off the beaten path. But as a result I don't buy Noodler's anymore when I can find a similar color from someone else.

 

I LOVE Golden Brown, too....but it oxidizes and turns a blah brown in the nib after a day or two. I have to flush a bunch of ink out through the nib in order to get to the good shading hues again. Kind of a waste of ink. But lovely!

[PAKMAN]

PR Tanzanite for nib creep, smearing

Diamine Ancient Copper for pen crusting and clogging

Noodlers Bay State Blue, well, you know why

[Noihvo]

Noodler's Prime Of The Commons. I actually still weirdly like it and may end up with a bottle for a dedicated pen/pad one day BUT... it spreads like nothing I've seen and feathers on anything less than the very best paper. I touched copy paper with it once and good lord. It was the first thing I inked one Jinhao 992 with and from the way it wrote on Rhodia, I thought the nib was a med/broad; since using other inks I discover it's an xf leaning fine!

 

That said, it actually wrote beautifully in it's own peculiar way .

 

 

PS. The ink above is not Prime of the Commons 50%, but Krishna Peacock. DS.

Edited February 5, 2019 by Noihvo

[SeeksAdvice]

Noodler's Bay State Blue ... did not work well with my Waterman Phileas... attacked the feed, and well, there is a desk in the office that still has a stain in the baked enamel drawer finish from when the bottle tipped over and leaked. And, that was over 10 years and many washings ago... Ave Dominus Nox indeed.

 

Noodler's Qin Shi Huang - the Bay State Blue of the red ink world. Grew a bizarre biofilm on the inside of the bottle.

 

Noodler's Polar Blue - despite what it says on the label, it can, and will freeze in North Dakota winters.

 

Noodler's Blue Ghost - despite never, ever being opened, it grew life forms inside of the bottle. I looked at it one day and noticed stuff floating in it. Never bothered to open it, just tossed.

 

Diamine Sargasso Sea - Ugh, just ugh at least it doesn't stain as badly as BSB. Ink went chunky style on me too.

 

Diamine Wild Strawberry - opened the bottle and it smelled like a musty old cistern. Since it goes in a Preppy, just kind of ignored, but eeewww.

[CoolBreeze]

Organics Studio Nitrogen and Pr Tanzanite never dry and smear forever. Noodler's Liberty's Elysium won't flow through my pens.

Edited February 17, 2019 by CoolBreeze

[whimsicism]

I'd mention two inks, although the issues here can be resolved by being selective about the pens that I put them in.

 

First, Blackstone Sydney Harbour Blue. The colour and sheen are great, but this was an insanely gushy and bleeding ink. I'm generally happy to use wet inks, but this one was just insane because the ink literally crept out and leaked around converters and cartridges. This one can be somewhat tamed by using it in an eyedroppered PenBBS or LIY pen though.

 

Secondly, any shimmery inks. These tend to not flow well in some of my pens. My Faber Castell Writink (with a B nib) seems rather fond of shimmery inks though.

 

I would also like to mention that I've had one or two Organic Studios inks turn to goo / develop precipitates before, but that this seems a matter of luck because I do have a couple of eyedroppered pens humming along quite happily with other Organics Studio inks.

[Antenociticus]

I have a bunch of Noodler's inks, mostly ones that are “bulletproof” or billed as having durable properties, and nearly all of them annoy me in some way or another – usually either by being too spready and blobby and feathery and not laying down a crisp enough line on most of the papers I'm using, or by taking absurdly long to dry and thus always getting smeared in my notebooks. I love some of the colours, but ...

 

The only two that haven't annoyed me were El Lawrence, though I've only experimented with it briefly and in one pen, and Baystate Blue, because the drawbacks are a known trade-off for an extraordinary colour.

 

Empire Red, on the too-gloopy end of the spectrum, gets extra demerit marks for being such a weak, limp shade that it looks like it should have arrived with a note from its mother. But maybe its pinkish lack of panache is appropriate – a faded empire seen through rose-coloured glasses.

[Antenociticus]

Super5 inks ... They dry up on nibs really quickly, which are later stupidly difficult to get properly clean. Constant hard starts. The simplest way to handle them seems to be: ink up a cheap pen for a single session of use – and then throw the pen away.

 

I know, I know ... but it really can take a couple of days' soaking to get this stuff out of your pen. The Delhi Orange is particularly recalcitrant.

[inkstainedruth]

Empire Red, on the too-gloopy end of the spectrum, gets extra demerit marks for being such a weak, limp shade that it looks like it should have arrived with a note from its mother. But maybe its pinkish lack of panache is appropriate – a faded empire seen through rose-coloured glasses.

 

Yeah, I tried a sample of that and it's a truly wretched color. I suspect that it was Nathan Tardif being political (again) when he came up with the name for the ink.

I have seen one that's even worse a color, though: De Atramentis Document Red. I would call it "salmon pink" myself.... Except that I've never seen cooked salmon that unappetizing a color.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Antenociticus]

 

Yeah, I tried a sample of that and it's a truly wretched color. I suspect that it was Nathan Tardif being political (again) when he came up with the name for the ink.

 

It's one of several he made specially for Pure Pens in Wales, along with the Brexit ink, so yeah, "political". I really need a decent archival red so held my nose while buying this, and now I'm stuck with a whole bottle of the stuff.

 

I have a sample of the De Atramentis Document Red in the post. Not looking forward to it now.

[Mongoosey]

Organics Studio Nitrogen and Pr Tanzanite never dry and smear forever. Noodler's Liberty's Elysium won't flow through my pens.

 

I couldn't get Liberty's Elysium to flow well either. I poured it down the drain : (

[carlos.q]

I couldn't get Liberty's Elysium to flow well either. I poured it down the drain : (

I wonder if this ink would benefit from a little dilution with distilled water.

[rolo305]

Noodler's 54th mass and Liberty's Elysium have been the worst for me. I have tried to like them.

[shinryu]

Diamine Quartz Black. I am a big fan of lighter blacks but this one dries near instantly on the nib, you cannot keep it uncapped for more than a minute. Even if I do cap it refuses to write after literally 24 hours. Shame because I love the colour. I would really like to know if there is a light black/extremely dark grey ink with a more agreeable personality.

[kronos9]

All my pens are recently having skipping and non-starting problems with Diamine. These are some of my most reliable pens and now nib-to-paper performance is basically gone. Type of paper doesn't matter, Leuchtturm or cheap spiral notebooks. Twenty years using FPs and this has never happened.

[ENewton]

All my pens are recently having skipping and non-starting problems with Diamine. These are some of my most reliable pens and now nib-to-paper performance is basically gone. Type of paper doesn't matter, Leuchtturm or cheap spiral notebooks. Twenty years using FPs and this has never happened.

 

 

I had a similar experience with the one Diamine ink I tried--four years ago--after twenty years of using fountain pens. The flow would stop in the time it took me to choose the words for my next sentence! Diamine makes so many inks that I am convinced that some must be better, but given that I haven't had problems with inks of any other brand, I have not been tempted to test that assumption.

[sparksflyup]

I'm going to have to join in and echo my frustration with Noodler's 54th. When an ink will feather with every nib I have and on any paper I can find (CF to Copy), there's a problem.

But I think for the the bigger problem is the QC... Nathan has done so much for the market and for the FP community in general, but how can some people's favourite and best behaved in (54th) also be some people's worst?

[geodesigner]

Back in the day, Noodler's El-Lawrence drove me mad. I suspect that Nathan really did bottle used motor oil just to troll us.

 

Nowadays my gripes relate to the Instagram darlings, the sheeny monster inks.