Ink Report Sheets

[Nyanzilla]

I created a sheet for ink reports and comparisons which I'm using for all my inks.

Maybe someone else might find it uselful, so here it's for free:

A4 ==>Inkreport-1e.pdf

US-letter ==> Inkreport-form1e-letter.pdf

 

[edit] added form in US-letter format.

Edited September 15, 2019 by Nyanzilla

[Beechwood]

Thank you for this.

 

I see you have kept the word saturation in your review form, I am never enturely sure as to what is meant by the word in an ink review, would you agree that saturation is difficult to measure and often misinterpreted by the reader. Does it mean, for example, depth or power of a color saturation or a saturation of a solution, or something different? I think that some people would define colour saturation as In reference to the bandwidth of light, and saturation describes the intensity of that hue. When colour is fully saturated, the colour is considered to be purest.

 

When a reviewer claims good saturation what exactly does this mean, both to the reviewer and the reader, I see this term bandied about and I dont know what is meant other than what I can see on the screen.

 

Diamine Orange and Diamine Blaze orange have both been described as having good saturation or quite well saturated, I suspect with regards to colour, but this is difficult to understand when comparing the two below, I wouldnt have thought it logical to have a paler shade of colour to be reasonbly called saturated when compared to its stronger brother.

 

Apologies for the small size of the images

Edited September 15, 2019 by Beechwood

[txomsy]

Interesting. Thanks

[Arkanabar]

I'm guessing it's sized A4, rather than letter, which is the paper size I (and most of the Americans and Canadians on these forums) use, but it looks like a very nice mini-review form.

Edited September 15, 2019 by Arkanabar

[Nyanzilla]

I created a book with 100 sheets:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1097662918

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1097662918

(It was cheaper to create a paperback book and have it made by Amazon than going to a copyshop for binding my own paper )

[ErrantSmudge]

How is the quality of the paper Amazon uses to print the paperback book? Is it friendly to fountain pens?

[Nyanzilla]

That's difficult to say, as those books are printed and manufactured by different printers, depending on your order or location. (Mine came from Poland.)

My copy is made of not very ink friendly paper. But it has the advantage that you can see whether the ink tends to bleed or feather. On good paper all inks look nice.

 

For our American friends I added a version in US-letter format (see first post).

Edited September 15, 2019 by Nyanzilla

[A Smug Dill]

  On 9/15/2019 at 10:14 AM, Beechwood said:

I see you have kept the word saturation in your review form,

Unless Nyanzilla has modified the form after your comment, I don't see the word 'saturation' anywhere in the document.

 

  Quote

I am never enturely sure as to what is meant by the word in an ink review, would you agree that saturation is difficult to measure and often misinterpreted by the reader._...‹snip›...When a reviewer claims good saturation what exactly does this mean, both to the reviewer and the reader, I see this term bandied about and I dont know what is meant other than what I can see on the screen.

What would you prefer? 'Dye load'?

[Beechwood]

  On 9/16/2019 at 2:37 AM, A Smug Dill said:

Unless Nyanzilla has modified the form after your comment, I don't see the word 'saturation' anywhere in the document.

 

What would you prefer? 'Dye load'?

 

 

Draw your own conclusions.

 

In my opinion the word Saturation should be left out of ink review forms, especially when you seen the description by the reviewer as 'quite well saturated', whatever that is meant to mean.

[Nyanzilla]

There is no entry for saturation on my form. This is difficult to measure. But I left a field for remarks and additional tests. So you can add whatever info you want.

[Beechwood]

  On 9/16/2019 at 9:57 AM, Nyanzilla said:

There is no entry for saturation on my form. This is difficult to measure. But I left a field for remarks and additional tests. So you can add whatever info you want.

 

 

I think this is a good idea. the FPN standard form has a box for saturation, the answers given by reviewers are often difficult to interpret and therefore it is better to leave the question off the form.

 

I think that the intention is for the reviewer to make a comment on the purity or strength of colour, it is difficult to comment on saturation without reference to another similar colour.

 

To read comments such as not very saturated, or fairly saturated, are difficult for the average person to form any sort of meaningful judgement.

 

So good for you in leaving the question box off your form.

[A Smug Dill]

  On 9/15/2019 at 10:14 AM, Beechwood said:

I see you have kept the word saturation in your review form,

Note: my emphasis

  On 9/16/2019 at 2:37 AM, A Smug Dill said:

Unless Nyanzilla has modified the form after your comment, I don't see the word 'saturation' anywhere in the document.

  On 9/16/2019 at 9:57 AM, Nyanzilla said:

There is no entry for saturation on my form.

That just does not reconcile. Funny that Beechwood has not subsequently posted and acknowledged he made a mistake. The point is not whether 'saturation' is a good word to have in a review, but whether Nyanzilla's ink review form (which is the focus and seed of this discussion) uses that word verbatim.

[Beechwood]

  On 9/16/2019 at 11:20 AM, A Smug Dill said:

Note: my emphasis

 

That just does not reconcile. Funny that Beechwood has not subsequently posted and acknowledged he made a mistake. The point is not whether 'saturation' is a good word to have in a review, but whether Nyanzilla's ink review form (which is the focus and seed of this discussion) uses that word verbatim.

 

 

I am not going to answer that, I appreciate that you like to troll and I am not going to rise to the bait.

 

You really should be stopped.

[ErrantSmudge]

A Smug Dill may be overly pedantic, but he (I assume he is a "he") is not a troll.

 

He has a valid point, that "saturation" (in this case, the relative amount of color saturation a given ink puts down, all other factors being equal) has a place in ink evaluations and is routinely discussed in this forum. That there isn't an objective standard to define "saturation" is very much true for every other attribute (permanency, feathering, wetness/dryness, lubrication, etc) people use to judge inks. If we want to eliminate "saturation" from the form on those grounds, the rest of the attributes should be tossed as well.

Edited September 16, 2019 by ErrantSmudge

[A Smug Dill]

@ErrantSmudge Thank you! By the way, yes, I'm a "he".

  On 9/16/2019 at 4:52 PM, ErrantSmudge said:

That there isn't an objective standard to define "saturation" is very much true ...

That's why I offered the suggestion of dye load. A search on Google for ink "dye load" yielded links to number of patents first up. Example wording with regard to dye load includes:

  Quote

 

The ink set for ink-jet printing of claim 1, wherein the light dye load is from 0.1% to 2.0% by weight and the dark dye load is from 2.0% to 10.0% by weight.

Source: Patent US6824598B2

 

  Quote

 

a magenta ink-jet ink having a dye load capable of providing a visible absorbance between about 0.01 and about 0.06 at a 1:10,000 dilution of dye to water

Source: Patent US7533980B2

 

so I think there is some way (but not a "standard") to objectively describe saturation of colourants in ink, irrespective of whether we're talking about ink-jet ink or fountain pen ink. It's just not particularly user-friendly, not that user-friendliness is a requirement when presenting what essentially technical information on properties of a substance removed from its application context.

  Quote

for every other attribute (permanency, feathering, wetness/dryness, lubrication, etc) people use to judge inks.

More user-unfriendly language to convey some other characteristics of inks:

  Quote

 

Twenty two different magenta dyes were tested for humid shift as follows. Each magenta dye was applied to three different types of inkjet printable media: Media 1 (swellable), Media 2 (porous, Al2O3 coated) and Media 3 (porous, SiO2 coated). Each dye was therefore tested on three different media samples. Each sample tested was exposed to 35° C./80% Relative Humidity (RH) for 4 days. Table 1 lists the humid hue shift (HF) of each sample measured in terms of ΔE (Average ΔE CIE94). When used to measure humidfastness, this value is a measure of the color difference or color shift after exposure to high humidity ...

Source: Patent US6824598B2

 

and then, there are the test methods in ISO 11798:1999, with which results can be reported as proxy for the actual properties of an ink.

In my opinion, none of that can be reasonably expected of ink reviews conducted and shared by fellow fountain pen hobbyists, even those with a significant following in the community and are in a position to monetise on the volume of retrievals (or "number of views") and audience reach of their publications (YouTube videos, blog articles, forum posts, etc.) They're not engaged to perform pieces of professional analysis and produce technical reports on inks, to bridge the information gap where product manufacturers have failed to provide what consumers wants to know.

(Of course, there is one question to which it is entirely unreasonable for consumers to expect answered faithfully, "factually" and comprehensively by someone else: "How will this product work for me?" no matter how much the individual craves that certainty.)

If a member of the hobbyist community has strong views about how ink (or other product) reviews ought to be done, then he/she is free to invest time, effort and resources to (as the case may be, continually) develop and refine the methodology and the language for conducting, structuring and authoring reviews done "the right way" by his/her reckoning, and show others how it's done. The proof in the pudding, so to speak, as to whether other hobbyists agree its "the right way" will be in the level of adoption of the methodology and/or language used by fellow reviewers, and not how many information consumers pipe up to say thanks or give "constructive feedback".

Along the way, as I delved deeper into this hobby, I became aware of some things I want to know about this or that ink before choosing to deploy it for a particular writing application. Some of that is because I learnt as a fountain pen user what are undesirable outcomes when writing with ink, and as I've heard communicated to me before with lasting impact, "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." Some of that is because I read in fellow hobbyists' ink reviews something that I haven't previously thought to explore about an ink, and it piqued my interest — not necessarily in the particular inks they reviewed, but just what I'd want to know about "my" inks, either those I already have or those I will acquire.

  On 9/15/2019 at 9:49 AM, Nyanzilla said:

I created a sheet for ink reports and comparisons which I'm using for all my inks.
Maybe someone else might find it uselful,

Nyanzilla has kindly shared with us his^† methodology and language for conducting ink reviews by showing us the form he uses, and that's the contribution for which I sincerely thank him. It doesn't matter if he doesn't actually publish any review content subsequently to tell us "all about" a particular commercially available ink.

Judging the usefulness of the form as a review content consumer, instead of a fellow hands-on reviewer, is rather uncalled for — and quite rude, in my view. If someone wants to convince an individual reviewer, or reviewers at large, that a given ink characteristic is worth testing for and expressing in a particular way, then it seems to me that it would be far more constructive and effective to do one's best to convince the reviewer(s) that they are interested in doing so to serve their objectives in conducting testing and/or reviews.


^† Nyanzilla's FPN user profile indicates he's male, by his voluntary disclosure.

[XYZZY]

  On 9/16/2019 at 11:38 AM, Beechwood said:

 

 

I am not going to answer that, I appreciate that you like to troll and I am not going to rise to the bait.

 

You really should be stopped.

 

I'm not sure what the problem is with "saturation". It's not used the same way in fountain pen inks as it is in color theory, but so what? Dill's proposal of "dye load" fits with my understanding of how it's used in the FP community and it seems to be used fairly consistently. If anything, "saturation" as "dye load" is fairly consistent with the first definition given for saturation in the dictionaries that I've checked. It's color theory where people have to learn a different meaning.

 

There's also a ton of variation in pen reviews. Two copies of the same model pen are frequently adjusted/aligned differently, people use different paper, hold their pens at different angles, write with different pressure, leave their pens inked for different times, and buy from different batches. So to whatever little extent an ink review might be objective, it's still not reproducible. AND THAT'S OK. Read several reviews, think about how the different scenarios might apply to you, and enjoy that people find different things.

 

I understand that you don't appreciate how he called you out. But I read your response as "let's abolish things that I don't understand". I think "arrogant" is a reasonable adjective for telling people how they should spend their time reviewing things or to avoid topics you don't understand. Dill isn't the troll here.

[XYZZY]

  On 9/15/2019 at 9:49 AM, Nyanzilla said:

I created a sheet for ink reports and comparisons which I'm using for all my inks.

Maybe someone else might find it uselful, so here it's for free:

A4 ==> Inkreport-1e.pdf

US-letter ==> Inkreport-form1e-letter.pdf

 

[edit] added form in US-letter format.

 

Thanks for this. It's great to see how other people think about ink reviews. I just don't have the patience to produce a review with this information, but I'm grateful to those here that do.

 

  On 9/15/2019 at 4:53 PM, Nyanzilla said:

I created a book with 100 sheets:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1097662918

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1097662918

(It was cheaper to create a paperback book and have it made by Amazon than going to a copyshop for binding my own paper )

 

WHAT? Maybe I'm the last person to know about this, but how do you get Amazon to do that?

[Nyanzilla]

It's a service called Kindle Direct Publishing (formerly Create Space). => https://kdp.amazon.com/

You can publish your own book as an e-book for the Kindle reader as well as a paperback book and sell it on the Amazon platform internationally.

[samasry]