Tried to mix my Karkos Black and Ostrich Solar Term: Sycamore Tree, and here are my findings

[Nemu]

This idea came about because I was thinking about my other unused inks, and remembered that at one point, I had filled a contaminated pen with the Sycamore Tree Ink and it came out looking a lot darker and clearer, which lead me to try and replicate it.

FINDINGS:
- This comes as a no-brainer at this point, but black is incredibly strong, and my Sycamore Tree is very, very light, This made it very difficult to make solutions which replicated my previous experience.
- 25/75 ratio was the best for dark green.
- 5/95 may be the best ratio based on speculation and observations.

 

CONCLUSION:
- Due to how light Sycamore Tree is, it is highly sensitive to the intensity of other inks. 25/75 yielded a usable result. Any larger ratio of black, and minimal differences, if not total domination of the black ink will be observed.

DELIMITATIONS:
-  Interactions with other nib sizes.

- Measured in Jinhao standard converters. No larger scale was used.

NOTE:
- Awful lighting makes it difficult to properly see the colors on camera. I'd advise you to zoom in.

RECOMMENDATIONS:
- Test out 5/95, 3/97, 2/98 ratios.
- Translate Jinhao standard converters into more established measurements.
- Attempt to replicate the experiment, with larger scales.

[OCArt]

Thanks for doing this test and reporting your findings.

[Mechanical]

It sure is nice to be able to turn ink contamination into something fun.  Good work!

 

A week ago, I filled a pen with Sailor Kiwaguro, changed my mind, and then discharged it back into the bottle.  But oops!  I put it back into a brand new (small) bottle of Diamine Grey.  Yes, these are totally different bottle sizes and shapes, but apparently I didn’t have my brain turned on.

 

Now, I’m waiting it out to make sure there’s no weird interaction.  We’ll see how it turns out. 🙂 

[inkstainedruth]

This is making me think of when I gave my husband a Sailor Vanishing Point I'd bought used (for about a third of the price of a new one) but found it a bit too heavy and awkward to use.  So I gave it to him (and then bought myself a Decimo and swapped out the F nib assembly from the VP into that and gave him the EF nib assembly.  I also gave him a bottle of Namiki Black to use in the VP.  A few years ago, he ended up coming with me to the Commonwealth Pen Show, and at one point we were sitting at the "swap" table in the center of the room.  He was saying that he maybe would like a slightly drier ink, and a guy sitting at the table suggested Noodler's Dark Matter.  So my husband ended up buy a bottle of that from one of the vendors at the show.  But then wanted to just do a fill with it when the pen got low.  And I was like, "Ehhhhh -- you might want to flush the pen out well FIRST -- I have zero experience with Dark Matter, so don't know how it will interact with Namiki Black....." 

Especially after having seen an old thread where someone decided to mix Noodler's Black with Noodler's Bay State Blue.  And put the mix in a pen right away.  And the results?  Let's just say, they weren't pretty....  I remember cringing when I saw the photos....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth