Your most repulsive ink purchases....

[IThinkIHaveAProblem]

J Herbin Diablo Menthe

 

gorgeous colour... too bad I don't own a firehose to apply it with, so it ends up so pale as to be illegible 

 

 

[kestrel]

The original Noodler's Highland Heather.  It clogged every pen I tried it in.  Vintage pens, modern pens, broad nibs, medium nibs, fine nibs, a Mike Masuyama nib, and a Richard Binder nib.  I tried dilutions up to 1:1.  No difference.  Added Photo-flo.  Same thing.  I finally resulted to Old Scots invective.  No difference.  I liked the bottle so I dumped the ink in a back corner of my yard and it killed the grass where it fell. 

 

Then there was Robert Oster Khaki.  My sample was a gift and the color was a dead ringer (pun intended) for a human corpse after several days immersion in salt water.  That one went in the trash.

 

Intentionally scented inks.  All of them.  They make my nose itch and/or my eyes water.  Nasty.

[Penguincollector]

  On 4/4/2025 at 1:46 AM, IThinkIHaveAProblem said:

J Herbin Diablo Menthe

 

gorgeous colour... too bad I don't own a firehose to apply it with, so it ends up so pale as to be illegible 

 

 

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  I feel the same about Sailor’s Ice Gray, and it’s part of a set that includes an EF pen. I tried them together and I might as well not have inked the pen. It worked out somewhat better in a fude, but still very pale, more for coloring the background on my penguin coloring pages than writing. 

[Ron Z]

  On 4/4/2025 at 1:56 AM, kestrel said:

I liked the bottle so I dumped the ink in a back corner of my yard and it killed the grass where it fell. 

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New item on the Noodlers list: "Hazmat permit required for disposal."

[Penguincollector]

  On 4/4/2025 at 3:18 AM, Penguincollector said:

  I feel the same about Sailor’s Ice Gray, and it’s part of a set that includes an EF pen. I tried them together and I might as well not have inked the pen. It worked out somewhat better in a fude, but still very pale, more for coloring the background on my penguin coloring pages than writing. 

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  Now that it’s had a few days to settle in the fude, it’s a bit darker, but still not something that I would use for writing. It’s a gorgeous color. 

[inkstainedruth]

  On 4/4/2025 at 1:56 AM, kestrel said:

Intentionally scented inks.  All of them.  They make my nose itch and/or my eyes water.  Nasty.

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I'll agree with you on some scented inks.  Tried De Atramentis Patchouli and it was just nasty smelling.  And was disappointed in the scent of of couple of lavender scented inks.  But I've tried several rose-scented ones that are just lovely smelling: J Herbin Rose, and De Atramentis Red Roses and Black Roses (slight preference color-wise to the D'A Red Roses).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[inkstainedruth]

  On 4/6/2025 at 7:52 PM, Ron Z said:

 

New item on the Noodlers list: "Hazmat permit required for disposal."

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Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[kestrel]

  On 4/6/2025 at 7:52 PM, Ron Z said:

 

New item on the Noodlers list: "Hazmat permit required for disposal."

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The only ink I ever tried that should have had its own Material Safety Data Sheet.

[hbquikcomjamesl]

"Most repulsive" That's absurdly easy for me: the bad batch of Sheaffer blue, from probably over a decade ago, that looked like grayish cyan dishwater.

 

  On 4/6/2025 at 7:52 PM, Ron Z said:

New item on the Noodlers list: "Hazmat permit required for disposal."

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That actually sounds like the sort of name they'd come up with.

[welch]

Noodler's Blue Eel. It was supposed to lubricate piston-fillers, so I put some in an Onoto K-pen. The Onoto Ks have no way to remove the piston or hood and I'd been using it for six months or so. Blue Eel crawled and opened up a leak that had not existed before. I had also filled a Wality piston pen, and Blue Eel leaked behiind the piston to fill up the blind-cap area.

 

Ink that is too wet for its own good.

[midnightblues]

Pure Pens People's Charter - I was expecting a rich sheeny red, and I got an unpleasant brownish red that looks a lot like drying blood, and not in a nice way. It might benefit from a different nib. Rouille d'Ancre displeased me at first try, perhaps I should test it again as I had expectations of something much more pink and I got a weird orangey thing. 

[Mercian]

  On 4/15/2025 at 8:42 PM, midnightblues said:

Pure Pens People's Charter - I was expecting a rich sheeny red, and I got an unpleasant brownish red that looks a lot like drying blood, and not in a nice way.

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This description might be enough to persuade me to try the stuff!

 

Did you find that it gave the advertised green sheen?
Or did that get lost in the brown sludginess?

[Penguincollector]

  Word around town is that Oblation’s Olive ink is contaminated somehow. A friend bought three bottles and they all had SITB. The last one he opened at the store, so they could see that it wasn’t the way he was using or storing it.

[RJS]

It was funny reading this thread and seeing a few different inks I really like mentioned. Oxblood, for example- I love the colour and it performs well too. I've also liked pretty much every Waterman ink on the market. Each to their own! 

 

Montblanc Lucky Orange is the first disaster ink that springs to mind- uninspiring colour and it would dry up if you dared to pause and think for 10 seconds.

 

Inks that bleed badly also repulse me. It often tends to be an issue with dark orange and burgundy inks. I can't recall the exact names now, but I've had inks from Barock and Monteverde that I knew I'd have to use on very specific papers only due to hefty bleed through and feathering. Neither has had a second refill yet. It's probably only because I own lots of very nice paper that I don't have more bleeding/feathering issues in general- I know from cheap copy paper how poor many fountain pen inks can be away from their comfort zone. Waterman seem to be the champions of mediocre paper.

Skipping inks are also a pain- two very pretty Diamine blues hated Clairefontaine paper- Sargasso Sea and one other. If the pen/paper combo usually works well, with multiple inks, that strongly suggests the problematic ink is a fussy one.

[Runnin_Ute]

  On 4/3/2025 at 3:09 PM, PAKMAN said:

Repulsive Inks for me are Inks that are so thin looking that they seem to have a drop of color in a bottle of water.  Examples are early Edelstein inks and most of the Levenger inks other than cobalt.

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I'm actually a big fan of several Levenger inks, and don't find that to be the case with any of my favorites....

Blue Bahama, Amethyst, Forest Green, and yes, Cobalt Blue (and the long discontinued Pomegranate which was a wonderful sheening ink, before sheening inks became cool). Raven Black is the only black I have ever finished a bottle of. 

[midnightblues]

  On 4/15/2025 at 10:17 PM, Mercian said:

 

This description might be enough to persuade me to try the stuff!

 

Did you find that it gave the advertised green sheen?
Or did that get lost in the brown sludginess?

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it did sheen...and then smudge! If you would like it lmk, I can drop it in the post to you!

[Sailor Kenshin]

Everflow True Blue, which I ended up re-naming Neverflow True Spew; its color was lovely, but the bottle had little white rods floating in it.

 

A couple of Inkvent inks smelled like…?  Whatever.  The stench was strong, and gave me a blinding headache.

 

Levenger Raven, aptly named, feathers like a pillow fight.

[Bo Bo Olson]

The new, dull, non-shading 4001 muddy dark green....

I found someone to give it too, just before it would have gone down the bathroom sink.

I found I had a cartridge of Diamine Sherwood green from some 15 years ago, and it is a very much better ink on CT than dull, boring non-shading 4001 dark Green.

My apologies for comparing the two.

 

I didn't have Waterman Havana Brown, but read enough to avoid it.

 

MB Joy (Pelikan Edelstein Mandarin was for me, the better ink, even shaded a bit.)...and I've never used the MB Yellow my wife bought for me...all three of those inks. I imagine I'll be disappointed by MB Miles Davis. Not very many people cared for the wishy-washy Blue ink, so doubt if I'll like it either. 

 

 

R&K Ocker, and another light one, neither are listed as still being made. My fault on them.

 

Krishna inks, were supposed to be shade and sheen monsters....could be I'd been more satisfied, had I been aware that most sheen inks have to be tilted. 

The three I had didn't shade well either. Mumbai..the worst of the three, Moonview, & Sea at Night.

 

MB Permanent Grey. ...reminds me of Parker Quink black...another ink that remained a poor black ink from generation to generation.

 

The old Oyster gray/new Cool Gray was worth the new gouging price.

 

Diamine Ancient Copper is not worth the crud. I had read, so many didn't have any trouble, so thought the problem had been solved. Not by me. Just trashed canned the cruddy ink.