Lamy Petrol (2017 Le Ink)

[namrehsnoom]

Lamy Petrol (2017 LE ink)

For quite some years now, Lamy has brought a Limited Edition Safari pen with accompanying ink colour to market. This is a trend with many other pen/ink makers these days. Often, these limited editions are quite beautiful, and worthy of your attention. This is certainly true of the Lamy 2017 Limited Edition Safari Petrol, with the accompanying Petrol ink.

I got me a pack of 5 ink cartridges with the pen. To this day I regret not having bought a full bottle of Petrol, which I really like. When I purchased the pen, I tried one of the cartridges and discovered the lovely dark teal colour of this ink. The cartridges then got lost somehow in my ink drawer, and only recently resurfaced. To be honest: when doing a review of Mont Blanc Petrol Blue, it jogged my memory that I had another "Petrol" ink lying around. You probably won't be able to obtain this ink anymore, but I'm still doing this review purely for comparison purposes.

This is a very saturated dark teal, that can look almost black in wet pens. The ink's colour lies right on the border between blue and green. When looking at it, I sometimes see more of a green, sometimes more of a blue. To get a better idea, I diluted the ink heavily with water and this resulted in the watery blue of the image below. Not a scientific test, but for me that makes it a slightly blue-leaning teal.

When writing, Lamy Petrol leaves a very dark and saturated line. Contrast with the paper is very good, even with the finest nibs. With fine nibs or wet pens, the ink shows little shading. Use broader nibs in dry pens and some beautiful-looking shading emerges. This would be a very good ink to use at work, even for more formal writing occasions.

Petrol has a rather limited dynamic colour span. To illustrate this, I did a swab on Tomoe River paper where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. This beautifully illustrates the ink's colour range. The ink moves from a fairly saturated to a really dark teal. You'll also notice a reddish sheen in very saturated parts.

On the smudge test - rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab - the ink behaved reasonably well. There is quite some smudging, but the text itself remains perfectly readable. Water resistance is a mixed bag. With the soak test - submerging the ink in still water for 15 minutes - you get some ugly smudges, but the original writing is still visible. With running tap water, the ink shows a remarkably good water resistance. A lot of the ink flushes away, but a very readable residue remains. Another plus if you want to use this ink at work. A word of warning: this ink will stain your fingers, requiring quite some scrubbing to remove it.

Petrol is a fairly fast-drying ink - with typical drying times in the 5-10 second range with my Lamy Safari (M-nib).

I've tested the ink on a wide variety of paper - from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. As such, you will get a good idea of the performance of this ink. On each scrap of paper I show you:

• 
  
• An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip
  
• 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation
  
• An ink scribble made with a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen
  
• The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib
  
• A small text sample, written with an M-nib
  
• Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib)
  

This Lamy ink looks really nice on all my test papers. This is an ink that looks good on any type of paper, both the white and more yellow ones. The ink even looks great on the horrible Moleskine paper, without any noticeable feathering (but still with a fair amount of bleed-through). Petrol is a very well-behaving ink!

Writing with different nib sizes

The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. All samples were written with a Lamy Safari, which is typically a dry pen. I also added a visiting pen - a wet-writing Lamy Dialog 3 with M-nib. The ink works great with all nib sizes I tested it with.

Related inks

To compare Lamy Petrol with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test - all in a very compact format.

Inkxperiment – twinkle, twinkle little star

As a personal experiment, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I'm reviewing, keeping things simple and more-or-less abstract. For me, this is a fun way to explore an ink's colour range in a more artistic context. It's challenging at times, and a great way to stretch my drawing skills. For this drawing, inspiration comes from some Bauhaus period stick-figure paintings I recently saw on Pinterest. And because Petrol is such a dark ink, a night-theme with stars seemed in order. I started off with 300 gsm rough watercolour paper, on which I painted the background with pure Petrol using Q-tips. Thanks to the rough paper, you get a nicely-textured background. I then used a B-nibbed Safari pen to draw in the stick figures, enjoying the starry night. Even with the limited colour span of this ink, the result looks quite nice, and shows off the ink's character really well.

Conclusion

Lamy's Petrol 2017 LE ink is a great dark teal ink, that I quite like. This ink works really well as a writing ink for use at work. I enjoyed the ink very much while doing this review. A pity that it is no longer available.

Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib

Backside of writing samples on different paper types

[carlos.q]

Excellent review! Thank you.

[Misfit]

Thank you for your thorough, excellent review. It is obvious the time it took, and it’s appreciated. When this came out, I opted to get Sailor Gentile Yama Dori instead. Lamy Petrol seems to have more green. The ink comparisons really help.

[cello]

Wonderful review, thank you! I've not pulled this one out in a while, and I need to do so.

[lapis]

Excellent review as always. Especially your comparisons are very helpful. I bought this ink when it came out two years ago and still regret that Lamy didn't/doesn't/won't cough out bottles of their own LEs even in their own country. I've come to the conclusion that Lamy doesn't like Germany.

[chromantic]

As the comparisons show, Dark Forest is pretty close, color-wise, with the same lovely dark red sheen. For anyone who missed out on Petrol, it may be an acceptable substitute.

[DrDebG]

Outstanding review! I was gifted a bottle of this ink and despite being a teal fan, I have never liked this ink. It is just too saturated a color. It does have a lovely red sheen to it and does have some good water resistance. But, for me, I can't get past the overly saturated color.

[Biber]

As is typical for my, I'm late to the Lamy Petrol party. Great looking ink. I'm very glad to see the comparisons to Noodler's Air Corp BB which I have (and like to pretend is Miruai). Maybe reminiscent of Noodler's Catalpa.

[senzen]

I remain in awe of namrehsnoom's ability to make an ink colour I don't like seem interesting.

[Sailor Kenshin]

Outstanding review! I was gifted a bottle of this ink and despite being a teal fan, I have never liked this ink. It is just too saturated a color. It does have a lovely red sheen to it and does have some good water resistance. But, for me, I can't get past the overly saturated color.

Same here...but this wonderful review makes me want to take out the Petrol and start over.

[DrDebG]

Same here...but this wonderful review makes me want to take out the Petrol and start over.

 

+1

 

. . . or maybe I will just sell it with a pen so someone else can enjoy it.

[Intensity]

I love it, it's so well-behaved and cleans converters from staining after being in a pen for a while. I have back-up bottles of it. My only gripe is that it was limited edition, and so none of those bottles were cheap =/

P.S.: Petrol actually has a kind of pink sheen, not so much red. I've not seen another ink with that color of sheen yet.

 

 

Edited November 29, 2019 by Intensity

[namrehsnoom]

Outstanding review! I was gifted a bottle of this ink and despite being a teal fan, I have never liked this ink. It is just too saturated a color. It does have a lovely red sheen to it and does have some good water resistance. But, for me, I can't get past the overly saturated color.

 

 

Well... in wet pens it’s almost black. But I do love the way it looks in a dry Lamy Safari with B or 1.1 nib. In my opinion, this is an ink that’s made for dry pens (maybe not a surprise given that it IS a Lamy ink, that’s probably meant to look at its best in their own pens, which are typically dry writers).

[Intensity]

It still looks great in my new wet-writing Lamy 2000 EF. I love this ink so much, I ordered an extra back-up bottle of it today an also made a mini review of it (will post soon). The outstanding qualities of this ink are also in great flow characteristics and lubrication--something about it makes problematic nibs that have tipping grind issues write better and skip less. It also is similar to Sailor Do-You in that it cleans stained converters after sitting in them for a while.

[Honeybadgers]

I have a bottle, it's far from my favorite. But I use it.

 

Absolutely not worth the psychotic price markup people are asking for it.

Edited December 7, 2019 by Honeybadgers

[austollie]

Lamy Petrol is my favourite ink. I also bought the gift pack with five cartridges and a bottle of this wonderful ink. With all the positive reviews it has had and the silly prices that the ink fetches on ebay, I can't understand why Lamy would not want to make Petrol a regular colour in its line-up. Perhaps it's because, they want to create a hype around their limited editions, so people rush out to buy the limited edition product and to only wonder afterwards, if they really wanted it.

 

Thanks "namrehsnoom" for the great review. I also like the comparison with similar inks, so that I know what similar product I can purchase, when my bottle of Lamy Petrol eventually runs out. I'm using Petrol in my Lamy 2000 EF to make it last longer (my Petrol Safari has an M nib).

 

I missed out on Lamy Dark Lilac and I'm using Diamine Pansy instead- a close match, I am assured by others in this forum.

[Bill P]

Thanks for the comprehensive review.

 

I find Petrol to be an excellent ink...one of my favorites..

 

Bill P.

[SamCapote]

What an excellent review! Thanks for showing it in so many aspects. I know this took many hours to do. Gotta get some more. Thanks again!

[tamiya]

Petrol is seriously saturated!!

 

Finally getting around to processing my overloaded Wash bucket... the few pens that have had Petrol in them - Im rinsing & flushing about 5X more than any other colour ink.

 

My AlStar dedicated to Petrol had also dried out somewhat. Topped up its tank with pure water and its revived... reconstituted Petrol aint much difference to a fresh dip from the bottle.

[Intensity]

In my experience, it's saturated, but it washes out clean. It also has cleaned my pen converters and ink windows of any staining if it sits in them for around 2 weeks or longer.