EFNIR: Rohrer & Klingner Scabiosa

[LizEF]

Extra Fine Nib Ink Review: Rohrer & Klingner Scabiosa

This is review #109 in my series.  Here's the YouTube video:

Post-recording notes: Color is difficult with this ink because it does darken over time.  The video and screencapture really didn't pick up color well at all.  The scan and the zoom are the best reproductions, but the scan is a bit bright for how the ink looks after an hour...  Cleaning required more effort than usual: I had to use a cotton swab to wipe the ink off the inside of the section, and from inside the converter.  Dried ink inside the cap took considerably more work, and after trying vinegar and rinsing with water, pen flush (with ammonia) finally got rid of that.  So, expect some extra work cleaning this ink from your pen.

NOTE: This is the first review to use my new scanner and a new USB Microscope.  The USB Microscope seems about the same as the old one (which has a fraying wire).  The scanner is much, much better!

And here is a screen of the final result, for those not interested in the video:

Scan of Completed Review:

Zoomed in photo:

Absorbent Paper Closeup (top is puzzle paper like thick newsprint, bottom is old 20lb copy paper):

Images also available on Instagram: @zilxodarap

Previous Review: Diamine Red Dragon.

Want to influence the inky sequence?  Take the "next ink" poll.

Need to catch up on The Adventures of Quin and Makhabesh?  Find the whole story here.

Hope you enjoy.  Comments appreciated!

[mizgeorge]

Thank you as always @LizEF for a really excellent review.

 

I don't have Scabiosa. I have Salix, and use it all the time, but I've just never been won over by the colour of it's aubergine cousin, and I still don't think I am.

 

I was surprised at how feathery it was on poor quality paper - I've always found IG inks to be the solution for bad paper, and this would seem to go against that. Curious.

 

The new scanner seems have done a good job though!

[LizEF]

15 minutes ago, mizgeorge said:

Thank you as always @LizEF for a really excellent review.

 

I don't have Scabiosa. I have Salix, and use it all the time, but I've just never been won over by the colour of it's aubergine cousin, and I still don't think I am.

 

I was surprised at how feathery it was on poor quality paper - I've always found IG inks to be the solution for bad paper, and this would seem to go against that. Curious.

 

The new scanner seems have done a good job though!

You're very welcome, and thank you!

 

I've rarely been interested in purple inks, so I can understand folks not being won over by one ink or another.

 

Yeah, others have said it works great on their cheap office paper, so who knows...  The absorbent paper is understandable - almost nothing works well on it, since it's basically newsprint.  But maybe my copy paper is especially bad, or just wrong for iron galls, no idea.

 

Yes, I'm very happy with the new scanner - a great deal for under $100.

[I-am-not-really-here]

Starts dark and gets darker is not a characteristic that I find desirable, currently.  Too bad because I like purple-y inks, yet, this one just isn't pushing any buttons.

 

Thank you the wonderful review!

[LizEF]

22 minutes ago, I-am-not-really-here said:

Starts dark and gets darker is not a characteristic that I find desirable, currently.  

I think the Zoom shows that it doesn't start out that dark.  It's not pastel or pale by any means, but it starts out more in the middle, I'd say.

 

23 minutes ago, I-am-not-really-here said:

Thank you the wonderful review!

You're most welcome!

[Ergative]

I very much enjoyed watching your review. Your handwriting is similar to mine, and in a way that gives your review more credibility in my extremely subjective head.

 

It's interesting you describe scabiosa as a wet ink. I've seen it elsewhere described as being so dry as to be unusable, and indeed in my head I associate 'scabiosa' with dry, itchy scabs--perhaps also possibly a result of the color similarity. (Sorry for the mental image). I think it's for that reason that I've never tried it.

[IThinkIHaveAProblem]

Thanks Liz  

 

[yazeh]

Thanks for another great review, Liz 👍

Like Ergative, I cannot call Scabiosa a wet ink. I had to change the flow of my pen. Otherwise it felt like writing with chalk 

I also tried my Fine nib on various absorbent papers: from our town's weekly paper, Midori cotton, (which is  absorbent), Field notes and Hilroy notebooks, which will even show through oily bic  I could not reproduce Makhabesh's tail, in full fury

 

Oh and my easiest pens to clean are the ones with IG, so that's another surprise. 

 

Funny, how experiences differ

 

 

 

 

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, Ergative said:

I very much enjoyed watching your review. Your handwriting is similar to mine, and in a way that gives your review more credibility in my extremely subjective head.

Thank you!  It does seem like "similar use" would make a review more relevant.

 

1 hour ago, Ergative said:

It's interesting you describe scabiosa as a wet ink. I've seen it elsewhere described as being so dry as to be unusable, and indeed in my head I associate 'scabiosa' with dry, itchy scabs--perhaps also possibly a result of the color similarity. (Sorry for the mental image). I think it's for that reason that I've never tried it.

Yes, I've heard that too, but I'm wondering if it's because of the lower lubrication - it wasn't until I started this project that I really understood the difference between wetness/flow vs lubrication.  It's easy to assume that if the writing experiences is a bit "rougher" that the ink is dry.  But this ink seemed to flow very well from my pen, just without lubricating the nib as well as I'd like.

 

(As to your mental image - I wouldn't be surprised if every native speaker of English hasn't gone there.  )

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, IThinkIHaveAProblem said:

Thanks Liz  

 

You're welcome!

[IThinkIHaveAProblem]

I would also ad that for me, this is not a "wet" ink. Its not the driest I own (I Do have Registrar's after all...) but my bottle is certainly not "wet"

 

FWIW: I think of a "wet" ink as an ink that seemingly tries to escape the pen as it touches paper... Noodler's inks tend to do this, well, some bottles do... bottles with a little more surfactant that I would personally care for... they also tend to feather and bleed... 

 

I have found this ink to be on the dryer side, and very well behaved, even on less than stelar paper. Although it mostly gets used on Clairefontaine and Leuchtturm1917 in my house  

 

YMMV

[LizEF]

47 minutes ago, yazeh said:

Thanks for another great review, Liz 👍

You're very welcome, and thank you!

 

48 minutes ago, yazeh said:

Like Ergative, I cannot call Scabiosa a wet ink. I had to change the flow of my pen. Otherwise it felt like writing with chalk 

See my previous comment about flow vs lubrication.  I assume your increased flow resulted in sufficient lubrication to eliminate the chalky feel.  But...

 

49 minutes ago, yazeh said:

I also tried my Fine nib on various absorbent papers: from our town's weekly paper, Midori cotton, (which is  absorbent), Field notes and Hilroy notebooks, which will even show through oily bic  I could not reproduce Makhabesh's tail, in full fury

This makes me wonder if maybe my sample is a different formulation or from a batch with an oddity.  Also, I've been wondering if my absorbent paper could already be decomposing.   In the beginning, some inks worked well on it.  These days, nothing ever seems to work well on it - even inks that should.

 

50 minutes ago, yazeh said:

Oh and my easiest pens to clean are the ones with IG, so that's another surprise.

Really it was only the dried ink in the cap that was bad.  The rest I suspect was just the dye, or something in the ink that caused the dye to be clingy.  And, since it's a clear pen, and I'm using it to review inks, I'm more obsessive than I would be otherwise.  I'm guessing the next ink would have cleaned out whatever still clung...

 

53 minutes ago, yazeh said:

Funny, how experiences differ

Exactly!

 

[LizEF]

4 minutes ago, IThinkIHaveAProblem said:

I would also ad that for me, this is not a "wet" ink. Its not the driest I own (I Do have Registrar's after all...) but my bottle is certainly not "wet"

As this was three reviews ago (I'm using ink 112 right now), it's hard to remember the details.  It may be that I should have said "a bit wetter than average" (for example).  But I'll have to stick with what I originally wrote as that me knew what she was talking about better than this me.

 

It is seeming like maybe I have an oddity, though, so it's good for any potential buyers to see everyone else's experiences - sort of a "buyer beware" kind of thing.

 

7 minutes ago, IThinkIHaveAProblem said:

YMMV

Precisely.

[IThinkIHaveAProblem]

2 minutes ago, LizEF said:

As this was three reviews ago (I'm using ink 112 right now), it's hard to remember the details.  It may be that I should have said "a bit wetter than average" (for example).  But I'll have to stick with what I originally wrote as that me knew what she was talking about better than this me.

 

It is seeming like maybe I have an oddity, though, so it's good for any potential buyers to see everyone else's experiences - sort of a "buyer beware" kind of thing.

 

Precisely.

people like to complain about noodler's inks lacking consistency from batch to batch (I have fallen victim to this, my 54th mass is borderline unusable, feathering and spread and bleed... the exact opposite of most of the reviews I have read! ) and while Nathan's production methods to lend themselves to greater variance from batch to batch, Waterman changed their basic colour formulas for (I think either BB or Serenity...) and didn't tell anyone... and then IIRC when asked about it said that "no change" had occurred... when side by side comparisons show it definitely changed! (I feel like I read a thread about that at some point... )

 

Then again, we may simply differ on what we consider to be a wet and/or lubricated ink

 

so, yeah, we're back to YMMV

thanks again for the review , please keep them coming 

 

 

[LizEF]

57 minutes ago, IThinkIHaveAProblem said:

Waterman changed their basic colour formulas for (I think either BB or Serenity...) and didn't tell anyone... and then IIRC when asked about it said that "no change" had occurred... when side by side comparisons show it definitely changed! (I feel like I read a thread about that at some point... )

Yes, Waterman Mysterious Blue.

 

57 minutes ago, IThinkIHaveAProblem said:

Then again, we may simply differ on what we consider to be a wet and/or lubricated ink

Exactly.  That's why it's great to have many reviews from many reviewers, and to consider all of them when one is trying to decide whether to buy an ink - especially if you can't sample first!

 

58 minutes ago, IThinkIHaveAProblem said:

thanks again for the review , please keep them coming 

  Gladly!  No plans to stop.  I've got ink to last me through September 2022, and I plan to keep going at least until then.  It has become a way of life.

[ENewton]

I would also characterize the flow of Scabiosa as relatively wet, and in my hand, it has not caused any nib to drag along the paper.  I agree that people differ as to what they consider a wet ink, and for many an ink low in saturation is inevitably labeled dry.

[LizEF]

19 minutes ago, ENewton said:

I would also characterize the flow of Scabiosa as relatively wet, and in my hand, it has not caused any nib to drag along the paper.  I agree that people differ as to what they consider a wet ink, and for many an ink low in saturation is inevitably labeled dry.

Interesting!  It's like we need a scientist to test this.   An Ink Guy agrees with us.  But @InesF is in the process of showing us that An Ink Guy's measurements may not equate to what any given person perceives as wetness....  So while we're waiting for more science, we'll just have to rely on our individual impressions - and samples, lots of samples!

[gyasko]

I rather like Scabiosa for its color, shading and iron gall properties.  I believe it’s fairly popular among iron gallers.

[bluemagister]

I have both Salix and 2 bottles of Scabiosa and find them to be fairly dry inks that perform well in an M nib with a decent flow.  They're pretty solid performers for the price point and I do like that the colors darken over time; this is a treasured feature of IG inks.   They are also very waterproof after setting and I never had cleaning troubles if I remembered to use the pen daily and flush after 10 days or so. 

 

With that being said, I prefer Pelican 4001 Blue-Black as my go-to IG blue because it's cheap, durable, easy to clean, and pretty tough once it sets.  It also has excellent shading in larger nibs.  Platinum Classic Lavender is much more expensive but behaves a little better than Scabiosa and still has a lovely shade of purple. Still, every so often I feel a need to get Scabiosa into a 14K pen and write with it. 

 

Great review!!!

[LizEF]

49 minutes ago, bluemagister said:

I have both Salix and 2 bottles of Scabiosa and find them to be fairly dry inks that perform well in an M nib with a decent flow.  They're pretty solid performers for the price point and I do like that the colors darken over time; this is a treasured feature of IG inks.   They are also very waterproof after setting and I never had cleaning troubles if I remembered to use the pen daily and flush after 10 days or so. 

 

With that being said, I prefer Pelican 4001 Blue-Black as my go-to IG blue because it's cheap, durable, easy to clean, and pretty tough once it sets.  It also has excellent shading in larger nibs.  Platinum Classic Lavender is much more expensive but behaves a little better than Scabiosa and still has a lovely shade of purple. Still, every so often I feel a need to get Scabiosa into a 14K pen and write with it. 

 

Great review!!!

Thank you!