What Has Been Your Least Favorite Ink So Far?

[A Smug Dill]

Have a bottle of Diamine Sepia, which is pretty close to the authentic 'aged' shade, but it looks better on old photos.

 

 

Do you draw with the ink, or just write text with it?

[ENewton]

Though I don't have any catastrophic fountain pen tales, for me it's Robert Oster's Summer Storm.

 

https://www.gouletpens.com/products/robert-oster-summer-storm-ink-sample?variant=11884707676203

 

It looks so cool, like it might shade well, but no matter what pen I ink up with it, regardless of what quality/brand paper I use, this ink barely shows up. It has almost no depth and takes a bit of time to dry as well.

 

No shading. Long dry time. Too light colored to be of much pragmatic use. Not water proof.

 

I was expecting Thunderstorm with a touch more playful shading since it wasn't as dark. I was mistaken.

 

 

I had a similar disappointment with Barossa Grape. It looked wonderful in online swatches, and early enthusiasts characterized it as a gorgeous purple that any lover of purple should seek to acquire, but regardless of pen and paper, it turned out to be a pale liver color.

 

P.S. I met Truman once, when I was a child, because some relatives of mine knew him well.

Edited October 20, 2019 by ENewton

[ENewton]

Though I don't have any catastrophic fountain pen tales, for me it's Robert Oster's Summer Storm.

 

https://www.gouletpens.com/products/robert-oster-summer-storm-ink-sample?variant=11884707676203

 

It looks so cool, like it might shade well, but no matter what pen I ink up with it, regardless of what quality/brand paper I use, this ink barely shows up. It has almost no depth and takes a bit of time to dry as well.

 

No shading. Long dry time. Too light colored to be of much pragmatic use. Not water proof.

 

I was expecting Thunderstorm with a touch more playful shading since it wasn't as dark. I was mistaken.

 

 

I had a similar disappointment with Barossa Grape. It looked wonderful in online swatches, and early enthusiasts characterized it as a gorgeous purple that any lover of purple should seek to acquire, but regardless of pen and paper, it turned out to be a pale liver color.

[inkstainedruth]

That's the trouble with swabs. The color isn't the same as if the ink were coming out of a pen nib. And different nibs, and different paper, and even the style of handwriting can all change what an ink looks like.

Someone sent me some ink and a pen in trade for me picking up some Noodler's ink that was an LE for the Commonwealth Pen Show. The note that came with it was written with, IIRC, Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo. On cream-color paper, in a lovely Spencerian hand? It's gorgeous. So I got a sample. But on white paper, with my normal mediocre handwriting? Not so much gorgeousness....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Arkanabar]

Waterman Havana brown has a tendancy to turn to avocado green and clog fountain pens too, so to avoid as well.

 

Havana faded to a greenish color on me, too. A shame, because right out of the pen, I found it an absolutely lovely ink. I never had any problems with clogging, though. But that was in the previous millenium, and their names (and possibly formulations) have changed since then. IIRC, they now call it Absolute Brown.

 

I find it more than a little interesting that Noodler's inks inspire such passion - folks love them or hate them, with not much in between. I use them, appreciate some of them, but haven't really discovered any that I either love or hate. To be sure, some of them have disappointed me, but I'm discovering that some of the disappointment is the result of my preference for F and EF nibs. As I branch out into wider nibs I'm reevaluating my previous opinions.

I think that's likely for nearly any product that's quirky or outside mainstreams -- the most passionate are the most likely to comment, whether the passion is attraction or repulsion.

[sombrueil]

In the interest of ... well, procrastinating about something else ... I made a little list of inks mentioned on this thread so far. I didn't include Noodlers because I never use that brand, but otherwise, what stood out for me was that first, very few inks were named more than once. Those were Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Red, a winner at three mentions, and Montblanc Miles Davis, Parker Mixable Red, and Wancher Matcha Green Tea which got two votes each.

 

Second, there were only a handful of reasons to dislike inks:

1. so light as to be unreadable, these are almost all yellow and gray inks.

2. boring or repellent color -- this is obviously subjective but pale flat muddy inks gathered the most votes here.

3. way too wet, feathering and bleeding

5. staining, almost all reds and pinks

6. crusting and nib creep -- which of all the complaints was the only one other posters contradicted with their own experience.

7. clogging.

 

Occasional mention of inks which never dry.

 

Overall I learned quite a bit more than I usually do wasting my time on the internet!

[IThinkIHaveAProblem]

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.

All of this. Could not have stated it better. But for “Noodler’s Legal Blue”. Shame really as i LOVE it’s faded blue jeans colour (watering it down did not correct the problems)

[IThinkIHaveAProblem]

Thanks Ruth, i recall that the original batch was released in Canada with much fanfare....

 

It is my understanding that a revamp of the ink was performed with better results.

 

Our bottle, purchased in spring 2015 is pretty good (during the plastic bottle phase). Really deep blue, with somehow, a hint of red. Wet ink but not badly behaved.

[WarrenB]

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

All the cartridges of washable blue Quink I got with pen purchases, for the same reason.

[craigs63]

Color - I have Pilot Iroshizuku Fuyu-gaki (got in a set of 3 15 ml bottles) - too light for me, and orange-ish, but not orange enough...

I also have a bottle of Cross black (came with a Bailey pen in a box set) - it's not black enough (washes out to a reddish-purple-brown?), and not particularly good for flowing either. It will take a while to get through the 2 oz bottle.

 

Flow - not surprisingly, the cheap cartridge ink from Thornton's Luxury Goods, the black color, doesn't flow too well for my Lamy pens. The other colors do better. About 50 cents a cartridge, nice to have for "emergencies" (run out of ink at work).

 

Bottle - the cap on this Papier Plume "Lake Michigan Winter" was coated in sealing wax, I'm not a fan. Another thing to clog the pen with. And I didn't really need another light blue yet.

[noddle]

Robert Oster Summer Storm.

 

Don't mind the colour and tone, but it's unbearable to use - like writing with water.

[inkstainedruth]

In the interest of ... well, procrastinating about something else ... I made a little list of inks mentioned on this thread so far. I didn't include Noodlers because I never use that brand, but otherwise, what stood out for me was that first, very few inks were named more than once. Those were Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Red, a winner at three mentions, and Montblanc Miles Davis, Parker Mixable Red, and Wancher Matcha Green Tea which got two votes each.

 

Second, there were only a handful of reasons to dislike inks:

1. so light as to be unreadable, these are almost all yellow and gray inks.

2. boring or repellent color -- this is obviously subjective but pale flat muddy inks gathered the most votes here.

3. way too wet, feathering and bleeding

5. staining, almost all reds and pinks

6. crusting and nib creep -- which of all the complaints was the only one other posters contradicted with their own experience.

7. clogging.

 

Occasional mention of inks which never dry.

 

Overall I learned quite a bit more than I usually do wasting my time on the internet!

 

Thanks for doing this. Very interesting insights.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Scylax]

Least favourite of all time is Parker washable blue - used it through college. Hate the pale colour, and it fades terribly even when not exposed to light.

 

Otherwise, it's more a combination of circumstances - for example, I like the properties of MB Permanent blue, but man does it stain!

[A Smug Dill]

Second, there were only a handful of reasons to dislike inks:

 

Interestingly, I don't recall reading about anyone forever damning an ink, to the position of least favourite, on account of it having stained and ruined a prized book, an expensive piece of furniture, one's wedding dress, or skin on account of having accidentally stabbed oneself with a sharp nib and ended up with an informal tattoo by fountain pen ink.

[SwipedFromTruman]

Robert Oster Summer Storm.

 

Don't mind the colour and tone, but it's unbearable to use - like writing with water.

 

+1

[flipper_gv]

Montegrappa Turquoise, although it could be a bad batch. It just feathers and spreads on everything. On my 30+ inks, no other ink come close to behaving this way.

[kulnet]

Sailor studio 173. It's way too light to be legible.

[ethernautrix]

I bought a bottle of Rohrer & Klingner Dokument Braun, obviously confusing it with Diamine (?) Massacar (?), a rich, dark brown (which remains on the maybe-my-brown-ink-phase-will-return list of potential browns to purchase), and I did not like the Dokument Braun AT ALL.

 

What a mistake!

[Aquaria]

My first instinct was to say Parker Quink Washable Blue. More like Washed-Out Blue. Pale, watery, impossible to read--and that's when you're writing with it. It fades to next to nothing after it dries, and then it never gets better. Did I mention that it skipped when crossing the graph lines on my Clairefontaine notebook?

 

Never again.

 

Unlike other people, I rather like the Parker Blue-Black, because I didn't care about the name on the bottle. The color on the page was so weird that I rather liked it.

 

But then I remembered there was a reason I'm one of the rare anti-Noodler's people around. Multiple bad experiences made me that way. For instance...

 

Noodler's Gruene Cactus. Don't remember if it was the Eel formula or not, but whichever version I got is as temperamental as an Italian opera diva. Skipped like mad in every pen I tried it in, as if it were a dry ink, but never really dried, either, like a badly-behaved wet ink. Gets everywhere, even if you're not an overwriter. If you look at it funny, it leaps onto some part of you and smears on the paper, you, your clothes--everywhere. Thankfully, it was only a sample.

 

Noodler's Baystate Blue--but not for the reason people think. Mine wrote like a champ on cheap paper with a $1 Chinese throwaway F nib pen I bought to give that ink a test run. Loved the performance and the color. So I thought, this will be great on some good paper with a better pen and nib--finally, a Noodler's ink I can like! Wrong. It was a hot, stinking mess in my Diplomat Magnum and Lamy AL on every good paper I tried it on (Apica, Clairefontine, Rhodia, Maruman). A good thing the BSB I had was also a sample, because I don't use cheap paper enough to justify owning a bottle of this veritable Sybil of an ink.

 

But all of that was nothing compared to...

 

Noodler's Air-Corps Blue-Black. The ink that taught me never to trust Noodler's enough to buy a bottle from them, ever again. A/C doesn't cause nib creep or even gushing. It's a Victoria Falls ink, and it soaks through everything, as in 2-3 pages of Rhodia. With an EF Lamy Vista. I actually thought for the longest time that my nib had been mis-stamped at the Lamy factory, and that I'd gotten a broad nib by mistake, rather than an EF. Until I put Pilot Namiki Blue in the pen, and it was suddenly writing like a proper EF. Same thing with other, more reliable inks (Waterman, Diamine, J Herbin, even Caran d'Ache's new formula inks); the pen wrote like an EF with everything else I put in it. Tried A/C in it again thinking maybe because the pen was new, maybe the feed was wonky before a good series of cleanings, but nope. As soon as A/C hit that feed again, the EF was back to writing like a broad nib. That's how much ink came out of that pen. Worse, I know for a fact that no two bottles of that ink are the same. The A/C I had (notice the past tense-it's the only ink I've gotten rid of) was different in color (black with a hint of drab green) and performance from the A/C that one of our professors had (an awesome teal-black, flowed nicely) and both were different from what a mutual friend had (standard blue-black with a hint of green and wrote dry). And we all bought that same ink within a few months of each other.

 

That three different people have three different inks in color and performance from bottles bought within a short time period is a sign of unacceptable quality control. That's why I don't buy whole bottles of Noodler's ink anymore. I can't trust what I'll get, bottle to bottle. The one bottle I still have, Baystate Concord Grape, was a gift. I use it only to write letters to the person who gave it to me, because I can't hurt her feelings about buying me something I would never have bought for myself. She's not an FP person and thus doesn't know any better, so no harm, no foul. I mostly don't hate the ink. I like the color well enough, but I'm not a huge fan of it, either. It's only so-so in performance and flow. When I use purple, it's usually J Herbin Poussiere de Lune, Iroshizuku Murasaki-Shikibu, Waterman Tendre Purple, Bungubox Ink of the Witch--i.e., purples I like and can trust on flow and performance.

[YonathanZ]

Montblanc Burgundy Red and Royal Blue. Both are pale, dry inks that I only keep for the fancy bottles.