Rohrer & Klingner Dokumentus Schwarz Handwritten Review

[Enkida]

This is my first review here. It was also unplanned, I just wanted to make a scan for another thread I was replying to, and it exploded into this handwritten review. Which is admittedly not the best, but I hope it is helpful to somebody at least because damn, it took a long time to scan in and resize all my pigeon scratch.

 

There are scans, there are potato camera photos. I didn't bother with photographing all the pages I wrote because I think you guys can get the idea of what my terrible camera can bring across, and the scans are more readable. No colour adjustments anywhere for anything whatsoever. I bought this ink to do watercolour drawings and fill out my tax forms, and it's serving its purpose well so far. It does smell rather strongly of "chemicals" when you open the bottle, not in the rotting way, just in the "don't sniff the glue, kids, it's bad for your brain" way. Obviously I have no idea what I am doing here. Enjoy!

 

Oxford Optik Paper. Left: scan, Right: photo

 

 

 

"Conceptum" notebook paper, AKA the cheap stuff that doesn't like fountain pens. Front and back. Front edited because of a very lazy token desire for privacy.

 

 

 

 

Everything else is Leuchtturm paper. Water test with actual beads of water on the paper:

 

 

 

Left scan, right photo. This is POST water-test.

 

Left: back of page above, right, start of mandatory review topics:

 

 

 

 

Poor quality nib creep picture, but the creep is bad enough that you can still see it anyhow:

 

 

bottle pic from Seitz Kreuznach:

 

 

 

That's all she wrote!

 

EDIT: Very important caveat: I have never left this ink in my pen long enough to see what the long-term effects might be (long enough, like, "overnight".) There are warnings all over the label to not let this ink dry out in your pen, so I usually ink it up for a targetted use, write a little afterwards (like this review), then de-ink the pen because I'm done with it.

Edited June 6, 2019 by Enkida

[sakib]

Was looking for a review of this ink specially on cheap paper. Terrific review.can u compare it's performance with kiwa guro. Thanks again.

Edited June 6, 2019 by sakib

[Enkida]

Sorry, I don't own Kiwa Guro! It does seem to perform pretty well on cheap paper, though the ink spreads a lot. It's because it gushes out of the pen so wetly, not really because I noticed any feathering, though. On absorbant cheap paper shown above, it turns a bit grey and ghosts, but it didn't bleed through.

 

This is definitely not my favourite ink (too wet), but it seems to get the job done if you need to do your taxes or sign your bank forms or whatnot.

 

Also, one further pic from a flex pen (FPR Himalaya Ultra Flex) when it was gushing out of the pen, on Leuchtturm. Left is Diamine Eclipse, right is R&K Documentus Black, but the Diamine Eclipse side is also the "back side" of more flex writing with Documentus Black, so you can see the bleed-through when using a gushing flex pen.

 

[Sailor Kenshin]

Excellent review. Enjoyed looking at it for the writing and sketches and comparisons.

[TSherbs]

Awesome review, thanks. Not an ink I am interested in, but thank you for

"documenting" your experience.

[lapis]

Nice review and keep up the good work for all up and coming jobs!

It looks like it is waterproof but the smearing (even prior to the water test) due to the highlighting seems to indicate that it's not highlighter-smearproof. Or... ?

[Enkida]

More than normal inks but not highlighter fool proof, I'd say. You can give it one quick pass and still read your stuff, but if you go over it multiple times (like I started to do with the box bit) you start to see ink lifting up and colouring your highlighter tip, too.

[Tas]

So pleased to see first reviews, especially one of this calibre. Thank you for taking the time to share your findings. We look forward to more soon.

🤗

[MsRedpen]

Super informative and super fun review to read! Thank you

[sakib]

Sorry, I don't own Kiwa Guro! It does seem to perform pretty well on cheap paper, though the ink spreads a lot. It's because it gushes out of the pen so wetly, not really because I noticed any feathering, though. On absorbant cheap paper shown above, it turns a bit grey and ghosts, but it didn't bleed through.

 

This is definitely not my favourite ink (too wet), but it seems to get the job done if you need to do your taxes or sign your bank forms or whatnot.

 

Also, one further pic from a flex pen (FPR Himalaya Ultra Flex) when it was gushing out of the pen, on Leuchtturm. Left is Diamine Eclipse, right is R&K Documentus Black, but the Diamine Eclipse side is also the "back side" of more flex writing with Documentus Black, so you can see the bleed-through when using a gushing flex pen.

 

[sakib]

Thank you for such an in depth reply.Kiwa guro is my go to as I have to use cheap paper a lot. Was looking for cheaper alternative so that it lasts longer

[inkstainedruth]

Thanks for the review.

I haven't tried this because for my purposes Noodler's HoD is permanent enough (and I don't use black inks much anyway) but I did like Documentus Helblau enough get a full bottle of that.

[lapis]

... Was looking for cheaper alternative so that it lasts longer

 

... I'd say you should be looking for an unbelievably expensive alternative so that it lasts longer (unused in the bottle)....

 

har, har

[sakib]

 

... I'd say you should be looking for an unbelievably expensive alternative so that it lasts longer (unused in the bottle)....

 

har, har

[sakib]

Ha ha.

I just wish black inks would just be that- BLACK. Unlike most, I love black inks as weird as that may sound. Still searching for that all time fav- kiwa guro is the closest so far.

[Enkida]

One more pic for you guys: while I may be paranoid enough to clean my pens out of this ink immediately, not so with my converters. This is a picture of the converter I emptied, but did not thoroughly clean, after I left it sitting overnight with a load of tap water, just to make sure nothing dried out inside. Definitely a pigment ink, I'd be leery of letting this sit in any pen you couldn't fully (easily) disassemble to clean, like a Lamy Safari.

 

[Eclipse157]

Thanks for your very nice review! I love your handwriting btw keep 'em coming!

[A Smug Dill]

Fantastic review! Thanks for all the work you've put into it.

[Enkida]

Thanks all! Another image I dug up while scanning stuff - sketch I made with the dregs in my pen on Clairfontaine paper. When it started to run out I dipped the nib in water, so there were some parts that greyed out (the text "are complicated dogs" as an example), but in general, this ink looked not very trueblack and more grey soft charcoal. It only looks dark here because I fixed the levels for posting the image elsewhere. So for you clairefontaine users, this is not a dark black ink, sorry!

 

[Enkida]

Just popping back in to say I have significantly downgraded my opinion of this ink because it is so incredibly hard to clean out of fountain pens that you can't disassemble. I used it in a cheap little Online Campus II F-nibbed fountain pen with no problems and certainly didn't let it dry out, but 2 days later in a water soak it's not only still ejecting black ink, the particles that came out of the pen formed an outline on the border of the water and the glass jar that I could only remove by extreme scrubbing with a rough brush / my fingernails.

If that's what it did to a large dilution in water to a glass jar, I can only imagine what it did to the feed of my pen!

 

If you're ok with using dip pens, this ink is still very good, but at that point, my question is "why not just use india ink!" right?