Which is wetter/the least dry

[Kenjji]

I can't decide which ink to use for my lamy safari with fine nib which is a little bit dry, what ink to use I can only get these 3 brands:Lamy black, Parker Quink Black,Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Black, which is the wettest, I used Brilliant Black but after 2-3 pages it turned grey from an intense black anu thiughts?

Thanks in advance!

[Ergative]

Pelikan 4001 inks are generally regarded as quite dry. Did you use a converter to fill your pen? If so, then probably what happened is that your feed was saturated from filling your pen, which is why it was dark at first, but as you ran through that ink in the feed you started to see the true flow from the converter, which was much lighter.

 

I can't comment on Lamy or Parker Quink Black, but I bet either of them will flow better than Pelikan 4001. You generally can't go wrong with using the same brand of ink as your pen. That's one reason Pelikan 4001 inks are so dry: Pelikan pens are known for being firehose writers. So I'd recommend trying Lamy black for your Lamy Safari.

[nibtip]

If you can only choose between those 3 inks, then i'd say Lamy is wetter than 4001 Pelikan for sure. Sorry i don't know about the Parker.

[LizEF]

37 minutes ago, Kenjji said:

Lamy black, Parker Quink Black,Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Black

Lamy Black

Parker Quink Permanent Black

Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Black

 

When you want to know how wet an ink is, IMO, this guy (An Ink Guy on YouTube) is your best resource.  His descriptions (usually?) include links to the point in the video that covers viscosity (aka flow, aka wetness).  I'm not familiar with Parker Quink.  If there's a non-permanent black, and that's what you're referencing, he doesn't appear to have a video on it.

[arcfide]

According to An Ink Guy, Parker Quink Black is the wettest of the three by a long margin, followed by Lamy Black, and finally Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Black. However, wetness might not actually solve your problem here. In a dry writing pen, all three of these blacks are going to give you a little bit of shading and depending on the paper may come out as a little bit on the greyer side. Parker Quink his black from a blueish tint, and I can't say much for the others, but you can see the Chromatography for each in the videos LizEF linked. 

 

IMO, these are all quite good black inks, but you might be having issues more due to your pen than the inks. With any of these inks, they are going to show off their blackness most either when they are written wetter or when they are on more absorbent paper. The first thing I would look at is making sure that the Lamy has a good flush through it, and I might even flush with a bit of the ink in question to use the solvents in the inks to really clean out the converter and the feed. I'd also take a loupe to the nib and see if the tines are adjusted too tightly (they have been on most of the Lamy nibs I've had). Simply ensuring that the feed is clean and flowing well and adjusting the Lamy nibs so that there is a small bit of space between the tines rather than the tips of the tines touching makes them write quite reliably and well, IME. 

 

If you want a good balance of saturation and flow, then the Lamy Black is probably your best bet among those three, but if you just want the maximum flow you can get, the Parker Quink is going to fit that bill, but might not do what you expect. 

 

If you're writing on highly ink resistant fountain-pen friendly paper, my recommendation for these inks would be to switch to a more absorbent paper, as you probably won't benefit from the sheening you can get from these inks in a normal F nib, and the fountain-pen friendly ink resistant papers are going to tend to highlight the shading of an ink, which will tend to make the inks come out more grey in this case, and what you want is to have less shading, not more. I don't know where you are located, but some cotton bond paper would probably do well here if you can find it, or some of the more absorbent popular papers, such as may Apica Premium, though I would stay away from Apica CD Medium paper as that's a paper that shows off too much shading for what you might want. You might also give MIO paper a try, Crown Mills, G. Lalo, or the Stalogy papers. I think the Itoya Oasis ProFolio notebooks (standard, not the Light models) would also have some good, anti-shade papers that are fountain pen friendly; they might work well for this case. 

 

With Parker Quink, you might also be fine just using regular heavyweight copy paper, as, IME, it's a pretty well behaved ink. 

 

Just remember that wetness doesn't necessarily imply darker or more saturated. 

[torstar]

Probably depends on the pen, I wish I could give you a bold declaration.

 

The only time an inked "failed" for me was Lamy blue with my Lamy 2000... 

 

Lamy ink worked fine elsewhere as did the Lamy 2000...

 

Wettest ink ever was easily Private Reserve Tanzanite, for which I recall they had to issue a "faster drying" version?

 

 

[arellano81366]

I have the Lamy and the Parker. Parker is wet and nice, I like it very much. Well behaved too! Recommended.