Where Do You Draw the Line? Price per Milliliter Threshold for Ink Purchases

[Bo Bo Olson]

1 hour ago, welch said:

Asa Gao is the most expensive, and

1 hour ago, welch said:

and most beautiful, ink I will buy. 

I do have very good to better papers....so it's not the paper's fault, nor the pen....that leaves the ink...QED.

IMO....Asa Gao is a so...so...  common blue ink, no shading (on some papers there very small amounts  if one uses a honking big magnifying glass), no sheen....nothing special. and at €30 gripe deleted because adults could read it.

 

Bottle is pretty, but I got a lot of pretty bottles of ES  to empty before it gets emptied to be refilled with any better and cheaper ink..

 

I will admit Kon-piki suits me better....and nice. I thought €25 was a lot of money but I had to try a Japanese ink...that were so raved about...I should have stopped there.

Once Japanese inks cost €78 here in Germany until Amazon started flying it in. So Japanese inks were not on my buy list. Ain't now either.

 

Dusty blue-purple ajisai is only that..........Welch if you can remember the old Rice Crispy add from the '60's, ajisai's  got no snap, crackle and pop. .......it don't even do somersaults which it should for that money. Better than common blue of the other....

Both put away.

To say I'm PO'ed abut paying a fortune for common run of the mill inks is an understatement.

[arcfide]

6 hours ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

I do have very good to better papers....so it's not the paper's fault, nor the pen....that leaves the ink...QED.

IMO....Asa Gao is a so...so...  common blue ink, no shading (on some papers there very small amounts  if one uses a honking big magnifying glass), no sheen....nothing special. and at €30 gripe deleted because adults could read it.

 

Bottle is pretty, but I got a lot of pretty bottles of ES  to empty before it gets emptied to be refilled with any better and cheaper ink..

 

I will admit Kon-piki suits me better....and nice. I thought €25 was a lot of money but I had to try a Japanese ink...that were so raved about...I should have stopped there.

Once Japanese inks cost €78 here in Germany until Amazon started flying it in. So Japanese inks were not on my buy list. Ain't now either.

 

Dusty blue-purple ajisai is only that..........Welch if you can remember the old Rice Crispy add from the '60's, ajisai's  got no snap, crackle and pop. .......it don't even do somersaults which it should for that money. Better than common blue of the other....

Both put away.

To say I'm PO'ed abut paying a fortune for common run of the mill inks is an understatement.

 

You're chasing shading and other sorts of things, which I think puts Iroshizuku out of your interest. For me, the Iroshizuku inks are some of the smoothest, brightest colors that are still well behaved and also relatively UV resistant for their dye-based composition. That makes them extremely nice options. I don't care that much about shading, and I prefer the intensity of color and the smoothness on the page, which makes the Japanese Iroshizuku blues, like Asa Gao, quite nice for me. I love to see a bright, glistening wet line. That makes it special, and I consider the pretty bottle and packaging to make it all the better. On a lot of otherwise excellent papers, I don't like the faded look of some shading inks sometimes, and that makes me want something with more brightness and contrast on those papers. Enter Iroshizuku. 

[Bo Bo Olson]

Do try some of the DA inks....they are saturated or depending on ink supersaturated with good lubrication. I do like DA's Royal Blue, which tinges towards royal purple.

DA also makes shading inks.

 

The thing was ever so many times I read how nice Japanese inks shaded....so I got bauhaus minimalist shading.

[RJS]

1 hour ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Do try some of the DA inks....they are saturated or depending on ink supersaturated with good lubrication. I do like DA's Royal Blue, which tinges towards royal purple.

DA also makes shading inks.

 

The thing was ever so many times I read how nice Japanese inks shaded....so I got bauhaus minimalist shading.

Do you prefer the extreme contrast shading, or subtle transition shading?

 

I don't like extreme contrast shading, and find it a bit unpleasant to read back pages of. I love subtle shading, however, which can be combined with sheen, to produce writing with character. Japanese inks have not disappointed me, and tend to have terrific characteristics such as a silky flow.

That said, it irks me no end that Europeans have to pay 4x the Japanese price for inks. When I lived in China I payed the Japanese price there too. I've only bought 4 Japanese inks in the past year as a result, and only one of those cost over €15 (Sailor Manyo Ume, which is a North American [Western?] exclusive). I'll stock up on my next trip to the far east, which will probably be next summer, now that my sister and my nieces are based in Shanghai.

[Bo Bo Olson]

I'm looking for extreme shading now, having a number of medium shading inks, and these two $$$ subtle transition shading on some of my better papers.

 

Someone mentioned Aurora Blue, shaded. I'd only used it once before and hadn't noticed. Could be I was using a Pelikan wet nib.

 

New means new to me, in they are used pens. I had to run them across the buff pad.

 

I ran my new Safari B and a new F Online across my seven good to better testing papers.

The dry nibbed Online shaded...from low-light, and on my top 170g papers  mid-;low.

 

The Safari B was on the whole too wet. On CT Safari B shaded some, Online more.

The rest of the papers Aurora Blue with the wet nib were from none, very little, little.

Little on my 170g papers.

 

Aurora Blue does shade, depending on if one has a dry and or narrow nib. but it's not an ink I'd hunt for shading. It is just a blue ink, no saturation depth, and on a narrow nib, a light blue.

[RJS]

3 minutes ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

I'm looking for extreme shading now, having a number of medium shading inks, and these two $$$ subtle transition shading on some of my better papers.

 

Someone mentioned Aurora Blue, shaded. I'd only used it once before and hadn't noticed. Could be I was using a Pelikan wet nib.

 

New means new to me, in they are used pens. I had to run them across the buff pad.

 

I ran my new Safari B and a new F Online across my seven good to better testing papers.

The dry nibbed Online shaded...from low-light, and on my top 170g papers  mid-;low.

 

The Safari B was on the whole too wet. On CT Safari B shaded some, Online more.

The rest of the papers Aurora Blue with the wet nib were from none, very little, little.

Little on my 170g papers.

 

Aurora Blue does shade, depending on if one has a dry and or narrow nib. but it's not an ink I'd hunt for shading. It is just a blue ink, no saturation depth, and on a narrow nib, a light blue.

Maybe have some of your broader nibs tuned to write drier?

[Bo Bo Olson]

I have 120 pens, so if I dig hard enough, I should be able to separate, nails and semi-nails that are dry.

That Safari sure wasn't dry, despite being a nail. My MB Noblesse OB is also a wet pen...something I'd not expected.

It's just I didn't know I had a need for those dry nibs.

 

Looked and have a no name that I've not used before with a 'golddaur' nib, barely semi-nail, 3-4 Parkers P-45, and one English designed bottle neck pen body, P25 from the '70's with BP more in a stuck way in a walnut humidor and a old Pelikan 400 with a D nib...the nails nail. And a Pelikano.

My Parker P-50 is a wet pen...that's the one with the nib is part of the body.

 

I spent the last 15 years saying away from nails, and semi-nails..of some of the latter have snuck in.

 

Ah, my Geha 725 is very dry for a semi-flex. I had to buy Waterman blue ink back when it was Florida blue....replaced that ink with DA Royal Blue.

 

THAT WILL HAVE TO WAIT I have over 30 pens inked......... And I just now, inked two more.

 

 

[PAKMAN]

I have enough ink now to last 5 lifetimes. From 2022 to present I have only bought one bottle of ink a $25 bottle of Scribe Indigo. With 75 bottles of ink surely I can find something to put in a pen that I will like. Probably the most expensive bottle I've purchased was an Iroshizuku ink. I am quite unlikely to look at the price per ml when I do buy another bottle of ink, it's just not that big of a deal to me.