If You Could Only Choose One Ink for a Lifetime...

[arcfide]

5 hours ago, langere said:

That's always a great choice - used to be my favorite ink.  I love the "shininess" of that black.

 

Did you switch to a different black ink as your favorite or did you just move on to other colors? 

[langere]

14 hours ago, arcfide said:

Did you switch to a different black ink as your favorite or did you just move on to other colors? 

 

Yes, rarely use black anymore.  I now have way too many blues and they can stand in for black for official documents

 

Erick

[Bo Bo Olson]

I was glad to retire and be colorful.

[avlisyar]

Tough choice and it comes down to two (2) ...

Visconti Blue (My first Blue and still my favorite Blue)

Sailor Doyou (How could you not like a Brown ink that at times looks Black and is so easy to clean out of a pen)

 

OK ... Visconti Blue wins

[RJS]

2 hours ago, avlisyar said:

Tough choice and it comes down to two (2) ...

Visconti Blue (My first Blue and still my favorite Blue)

Sailor Doyou (How could you not like a Brown ink that at times looks Black and is so easy to clean out of a pen)

 

OK ... Visconti Blue wins

It is a great ink. A pity they trebled the price, though. It was far from my first blue (excluding blue blacks)- that prize goes to the disappointing Pilot washable blue from my school days. It was one of the very first blues I bought when beginning this hobby, though, and was easily the best of those. Diamine Majestic Blue showed me back then how it could be tricky pairing inks with pens and paper, as that had a horrid tendency to skip in most pens I had then when writing on Clairefontaine.

[carlos.q]

On 3/29/2024 at 11:24 PM, kestrel said:

One ink for a lifetime would be a 1:1 mix of Diamine Sapphire and Diamine Horizon Blue.

Did you mean Monteverde Horizon Blue or Diamine ______ Blue? 🫤

[Vintage_BE]

On 3/24/2024 at 10:17 AM, Dip n Scratch said:

Parker Super Quink Blue/Black with Solv-x. I first started my fountain pen journey with that ink while at school. Which was a handful of decades ago.

My brother in law was a (grade) school principal for many years. He recently cleared out his cupboards in preparation for a move and asked me whether I was interested in some old ink bottles .. turns out one of them is a Parker permanent black 32 ounce bottle which is still half full. The black has faded to grey with some blueish tones. So I am fortunate to discover Solv-x many years after its disappearance. 

[TSherbs]

very cool find, and I actually like that faded blue-black look...

[arcfide]

How close is that Solv-X Permanent Black in color to the currently manufactured Parker Quink Black? Many people accuse the modern ink of being a blue-leaning grey more than a black, so I wonder how closely the modern ink matches the older ink's "faded" color? 

[Vintage_BE]

1 hour ago, arcfide said:

How close is that Solv-X Permanent Black in color to the currently manufactured Parker Quink Black? Many people accuse the modern ink of being a blue-leaning grey more than a black, so I wonder how closely the modern ink matches the older ink's "faded" color? 

Sorry no idea, the “contemporary” black ink that I use is Waterman and Rohrer & Klingner. That being said, these inks aren’t “deep” black in colour, either.

[arcfide]

19 hours ago, Vintage_BE said:

Sorry no idea, the “contemporary” black ink that I use is Waterman and Rohrer & Klingner. That being said, these inks aren’t “deep” black in colour, either.

 

Modern Waterman Black should be very close to modern Parker Quink Black, so a comparison between your Solv-X bottle and the Waterman would be interesting. 

[Vintage_BE]

10 hours ago, arcfide said:

Modern Waterman Black should be very close to modern Parker Quink Black, so a comparison between your Solv-X bottle and the Waterman would be interesting. 

Apologies, I wrote Waterman whilst I should have referred to to Pelikan.  The Parker “black” has faded as you can see from this photo. 

[arcfide]

19 minutes ago, Vintage_BE said:

Apologies, I wrote Waterman whilst I should have referred to to Pelikan.  The Parker “black” has faded as you can see from this photo. 
 

 

Thanks for the sample! Interesting. I know that Brilliant Black is quite a bit different in color than the Parker and Waterman inks, so the color comparison isn't as useful, but I see what you mean by the fading. However, I do have some modern Waterman/Parker that will look close to that shade on some papers, though I don't know if exactly so. I think Iroful does this most dramatically. On some of these papers, the blue in the Waterman/Parker ink comes out very strongly. 

[Mercian]

On 4/22/2024 at 4:56 AM, arcfide said:

Many people accuse the modern [Parker Quink Black] of being a blue-leaning grey more than a black

In my experience of modern (2000s) Parker Quink ‘Black’, it is an ink whose colour leans green, rather than blue.

From narrow-nibbed/‘dry’-writing pens, to my eye it looks very green-grey.

It does look darker, and ‘blacker’, from pens that write ‘wetter’, e.g. my 1984 Parker 75 ‘M’ makes Quink ‘Black’ look far more black than does my 1994 Parker Vector ‘M’.

 

Also, my experience is that, on some papers - the same ones that make Quink ‘Washable Blue’ ‘vanish’, and that make Quink ‘Blue/black’ rapidly turn teal in colour 🤪 - Quink ‘Black’ fades to that green-grey colour fairly rapidly.

N.b. my experience is with cartridges of the ink, which date to the early, and the late, 2000s.
The ink may have been reformulated since then.

[torstar]

Herbin eclat de saphir

 

(once my last 2 bottles of Parker Penman Sapphire run out)

 

 

[txomsy]

I would pick Montblanc Permanent Blue. A classic, permanent, well behaved ink with a nice hue.

 

[Lithium466]

23 hours ago, Vintage_BE said:

Apologies, I wrote Waterman whilst I should have referred to to Pelikan.  The Parker “black” has faded as you can see from this photo. 

That Parker looks just like good old Quink black as I remember it from the 2000's. Current Quink black is much closer to Waterman Intense black, some say it's the same. Doesn't have that blue/green lean anymore.

[langere]

I have used Noodler's Legal Lapis in the past, but over the years it has turned into more of a teal color.  I was thinking Blue/Black, but it's really more teal...

 

Erick

[torstar]

On 4/23/2024 at 2:33 PM, txomsy said:

I would pick Montblanc Permanent Blue. A classic, permanent, well behaved ink with a nice hue.

 

 

MB has vastly improved the quality of its inks since competition made them take notice

 

Good for everyone concerned, great choice!!

 

[trenchfoot]

Baystate Blue.
It is stimulating.
And in the context of the question, I think it would be amusing to be stuck with it forever.
I used to drive a truck whose horn would get stuck on if you turned the steering wheel a certain way. Same idea.