What Has Been Your Least Favorite Ink So Far?

[hu-327]

Organics Studio inks that I've used are lovely to use but a pain to clean. The only ink I've really hated is the Lamy Neon Lime ink and the very similar Charged Green ink. For goodness sake, you can barely see it!

[Paul80]

I have a bottle of Diamine Oxblood, that crystalises around the feed if not used daily and can be a bu**er to clean out. I have a few of their inks and it's the only one that does it, although that might be because I use the other colours more so less time to crystalise so for all I know they all do it.

 

Paul

[richardandtracy]

Until I got a Wing Sung 601, I was very reluctant to use my Noodlers Baystate Blue and it was my least favourite ink by a massive margin. The reason, it feathered, spotted through, stained the sac, dried out & everything. Furthermore, the smell of the ink makes me feel slightly ill if I use it for too long in a session.

 

Now, with the WS 601, the feathering is eliminated, the spotting through is limited, there is no sac to stain and the drying out is eliminated.

 

The smell of the ink still makes me nauseous if I use it too long, however with the hooded nib there seems to be less smell than with an open nib and the time before feeling ill is extended. The rest of the problems are pretty much cured and I can appreciate the good points of the ink and not be really put off so much by the bad points. And the 'Flashing Blue' version of the pen is a good colour match for the ink.

 

Now, my least favourite ink is 'Parker Boring Blue Black'. Because it's so boring. Dull, dull, dull.

 

Regards,

 

Richard

[Honeybadgers]

Wancher Matcha Green tea. Great color, absolutely, completely, utterly unusable. it firehoses out of the pen into even clairefontaine and rhodia, and just feathers like a monstrous nightmare. I cannot even begin to describe how badly it behaves. It's orders of magnitude worse than baystate blue, which at least has a unique color.

 

Honorable mention to Lamy charged green. Pointless highlighter ink, and somehow a special edition?

Edited April 5, 2019 by Honeybadgers

[SchaumburgSwan]

Hi,

 

Royal blue / Königsblau inks. Saw and used them too much at school...

 

Jens

Edited April 5, 2019 by SchaumburgSwan

[Bo Bo Olson]

DA Ochre, even lighter than the MB Yellow my wife bought me as a surprise. Both have bottles better than the ink.

Or I could go over to the Alchemist sub-section and find out how to raise those dead inks to something usable.

[by_a_Lady]

Parker Quink - any of their colours - has been nothing but dry in any pen I put it in, not to mention the colours are shít. Why anyone would put themselves through using it when there are so many better alternatives out there (even in the same shít colours, but with better properties) is beyond me.

 

And I totally agree with this:

 

Hi,

 

Royal blue / Königsblau inks. Saw and used them too much at school...

 

Jens

 

Although I've since reconciled with the general colour family a bit, as long as the ink brings something interesting to the table - shading, sheen, anything that makes it stand out from the dreaded cartridges that I used by the kg back when I didn't know about those blessed places called online shops.

 

 

Dominique

[Arkanabar]

Organics Studio inks that I've used are lovely to use but a pain to clean. The only ink I've really hated is the Lamy Neon Lime ink and the very similar Charged Green ink. For goodness sake, you can barely see it!

This reminds me of my own exerience with Noodler's Bad Black Moccasin and J. Herbin Lierre Sauvage (tho I suppose I could have used it for markup).

 

I have a bottle of Diamine Oxblood, that crystalises around the feed if not used daily and can be a bu**er to clean out. I have a few of their inks and it's the only one that does it, although that might be because I use the other colours more so less time to crystalise so for all I know they all do it.

 

Paul

A number of reds and oranges have this problem.

 

Until I got a Wing Sung 601, I was very reluctant to use my Noodlers Baystate Blue and it was my least favourite ink by a massive margin. The reason, it feathered, spotted through, stained the sac, dried out & everything. Furthermore, the smell of the ink makes me feel slightly ill if I use it for too long in a session.

 

Now, with the WS 601, the feathering is eliminated, the spotting through is limited, there is no sac to stain and the drying out is eliminated.

<snip>

Now, my least favourite ink is 'Parker Boring Blue Black'. Because it's so boring. Dull, dull, dull.

 

Regards,

 

Richard

Oh, BSB will stain piston fillers and converters too. The cure is Noodler's Rattler Red Eel. And I don't know if I'd call Quink blue-black boring, but I would call it ugly.

 

Hi,

 

Royal blue / Königsblau inks. Saw and used them too much at school...

 

Jens

+1. My favorite blue is Noodler's, which is a long way from ballpoint/Royal /eradicable blue.

Edited April 5, 2019 by Arkanabar

[inkstainedruth]

Least favorite ink of all time? Probably Platinum Mix-free Flame Red. I got a bottle of it free when buying a pen about 5 or 6 years ago because isellpens.com had an overstock of that line of inks. I picked it because I didn't have a red ink at that time. Only when I got it? I STILL didn't have a red.... I had this eye searing orangey-pink that reminded me of Mecurachrome (for those of you old enough to remember it... Just a hideous color. I ended up giving the bottle away to the guy that runs the Steel City Nibs mailing list (he's a college professor and was going to use it for grading) -- and then HE ended up giving it away to my friend Karl. I should check and see if Karl still has it or has given it away to yet someone else....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[ISW_Kaputnik]

I have a bottle of Montblanc Midnight Blue. With some information from FPN members, I've determined that it's an iron gall version; the later ones are not. Regardless, it has been an excessively dry ink in any pen that I've used it in, including a Montblanc Noblesse, and I think I've had a couple of pens clog with it, though I don't recall which. Although it looks like a very dark blue when wet, it dries to something indistinguishable from black, which I don't care for. I periodically think of emptying out the very nice bottle and using it for something else, but then I think that I might give it another chance sometime.

 

And there's Rohrer and Klingner Scabiosa, another iron gall ink, which has given me performance issues similar to the Midnight Blue. The particular shade of purple doesn't appeal to me either, although I like purple.

 

Both of the above inks at least have good permanence. I don't insist on inks that are absolutely indelible, but any ink with no or poor water resistance is undesirable as far as I'm concerned. When I first tried fountain pens, it never occurred to me that many of the inks would remain water soluble after they "dried" on the page. So I acquired a number of inks which would run all over the place if I happened to get a drop of water on a notebook, many of them very popular inks which were recommended in good faith by other fountain pen users. Now I use them mostly for pen testing when I want a really "safe" ink. This includes inks from Lamy, Pelikan, and Waterman, among others.

 

Obviously, I realize that both the specific inks I mentioned have their fans. And water resistance is not that important to many FP users, but it seems generally desirable to me. The point is not that these are bad inks, but that I don't care for them, personally.

[sciumbasci]

Pelikan 4001 Brilliant black.

 

Don't kill me, cap'n!

[chromantic]

Least favorite appearance-wise (as opposed to poorly performing)? Waterman Harmonious Green, hands down.

[senzen]

Appearance: Violette Pensée, Myosotis, and I finally admitted defeat with Ina Ho: I wanted what's shown on the box, a brown, not a green.

 

Performance: Rouge Hematite always clogs up the pen.

[BaronWulfraed]

Least favorite appearance-wise (as opposed to poorly performing)? Waterman Harmonious Green, hands down.

 

Does that make it INharmonious?

[NeverTapOut]

MB Toffee Brown...Had too much of a red hue for me. When people see red phychologically it says stop.

I used it for a journal entry about 1 month ago and the redness has seemed to tone down.

I returned it to buy MB Swan Illusion.

[Writing Uphill]

Diamine Quartz and Graphite. I love the look of these inks, but they dry out way too fast on the nib. It's a double hate because l like them so much but they are useless for ordinary writing.

[georges zaslavsky]

Waterman Encre Violette which has a tendancy to clog pens . I only use in a Waterman Laureat with an XXF nib

[Sailor Kenshin]

Any ink that remains sticky on the page for like, ever.

[Bo Bo Olson]

How could I forget Lamy Green .....well I have some cartridges.....and I don't use cartridges much........that is as poor an ink as everyone has stated.

 

With great paper, a few good nibs.....it can reach middle of the pack...........the rest of the time it was last or tied for last in a Green ink and paper test. I was suddenly into green inks...bought 12-14 in a year, and was dithering about spending a real fortune of E40 for 100 sheets of paper.

There were some 12 sample sheets by Gmund..............so Lamy Green did get a fair trial.

[WJM]

Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Red.

 

I generally like Pelikan 4001 line, despite their rather dry-ish quality. But Brilliant Red is just really bad. The color isn't red - it's orange-ish pink. Plus it clogs pens and is a pain to clean.