What is the worst ink you've ever encountered? And why?

[Pippin60]

Private Reserve Invincible Blue, and Noodlers Luxury blue, both water proof and the most washed out chalky blues I've ever seen

[Scrawler]

There is a discussion on necroposting somewhere in this forum, I will go look for it later. The general consensus seems to be that (especially related to ink and ink reviews) that the original poster matters less than the general information and opinions about inks. This actually provides a way for many of us to read things that we other wise would not have.

 

I had and have no intention of discouraging necroposting. That was a motive that you and others seem to have assigned to me in error. I only felt that it was helpful to be aware of the time difference when formulating a response, particularly a contradictory one. That's rather the opposite of being against necroposting.

I apologize.

[mhosea]

I apologize.

 

Thank you. It is rare to receive an apology on a forum. I am sorry that I was not more clear. I am wondering now whether I should resist the temptation to post from my iPad because it tends to make me terse to the point of being easily misunderstood.

[inkstainedruth]

I apologize.

 

Thank you. It is rare to receive an apology on a forum. I am sorry that I was not more clear. I am wondering now whether I should resist the temptation to post from my iPad because it tends to make me terse to the point of being easily misunderstood.

 

Obviously, you need to write with a pen on paper, scan or photograph it and then upload it to FPN! :roflmho:

Seriously, though, I see it as "no harm, no foul". Some threads I've read are several years old, and whether I personally post or not depends entirely on the topic.

For the most part I've found people on FPN to be pretty rational and polite (dare I say civilized?) -- if sometimes highly opinionated.... I've seen very few topics closed by the moderators due to vitriol (even the arguments about the pros and cons of BSB tend to be of the "we'll agree to disagree" variety, or said with a winking emoticon or an amusing comment. So I'm not at all surprised that someone apologized to you.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

edited to add: Apologies for temporarily hijacking the thread. We now return you to your regularly scheduled rants over poorly behaving inks....

Edited August 24, 2012 by inkstainedruth

[Torculus Resupinus]

I think we need to be clear about whether people who resurrect an old thread are replying to an OP who might not be able to answer any more or adding their own contributions to a cumulative topic. It was pretty clear to me that not only those who have been responding in the last few days but those involved in 2007 were doing the latter. Everyone was implicitly grateful to the OP for starting the ball rolling, no-one at any point was challenging the OP about what they'd said!

 

I have two inks (out of a couple of dozen) that I return to very seldom, just to make sure they're as disappointing as I thought they were. Both are splendid colors with behavior problems. I've tried them both in most of the pens I have. Diamine Kelly Green doesn't just give me nib creep -- when I've left a pen for more than 24 hours, it looks as though the nib has grown moss. Noodler's FPN Galileo Manuscript Brown is so free-flowing it makes my tightest EF write like a B. I haven't yet tried diluting them, but I will do so the next time it occurs to me to try again. Who knows?

 

Trying to find a suitable substitute for Kelly Green, I tried J. Herbin Vert olive and was disappointed in the color, but that's not the ink's fault. J. Herbin Lierre sauvage has done very well. Just got a vintage bottle of Sheaffer Skrip Washable Emerald Green and am looking forward to trying it out for markup (I need to be able to distinguish my editor's queries from authors' red and blue corrections).

[andru]

Diamine Kelly Green doesn't just give me nib creep -- when I've left a pen for more than 24 hours, it looks as though the nib has grown moss.

Yep!

 

Trying to find a suitable substitute for Kelly Green, I tried J. Herbin Vert olive and was disappointed in the color, but that's not the ink's fault. J. Herbin Lierre sauvage has done very well.

Try mixing Herbin Vert Olive with Lierre Sauvage (much more Olive than Sauvage, something in the range 5:1 to 10:1). Seriously. This is one of the best grassy greens I've seen or mixed. And it will put that Vert Olive to use. Only problem is it doesn't have the right surface tension to perform well in flexies.

 

Just got a vintage bottle of Sheaffer Skrip Washable Emerald Green and am looking forward to trying it out for markup (I need to be able to distinguish my editor's queries from authors' red and blue corrections).

I love vintage Skrip Emerald but, based on a sampler, I bought a bottle on eBay which was oxidized to a turquoise-teal; hope you had better luck.

 

Edit: Wanted to add, Diamine Meadow is similar to Kelly Green (but a tad duskier), and doesn't seem to grow moss!

Edited August 24, 2012 by andru

[mhosea]

I did want to add that another contemporary consideration is that when this thread began, it may have been interpreted variously as "worst ink" or "most disappointing ink", whereas now we have a thread specifically about the latter going on. Of course sometimes these may be the same thing, but one may be quite disappointed for some interesting reasons without thinking that a given ink is a waste of a good ink bottle.

Edited August 24, 2012 by mhosea

[inkstainedruth]

I think part of the problem is that until we click on a topic, we don't necessarily know how old the thread is. The new content page (and, IIRC, the subforum main pages) will show the topic, who started the thread, and when the most recent post was made (and by whom). But it doesn't say anywhere that the thread is several months to several years old, until you actually go to that topic and read the first thread.

Topics like this, the age of the thread doesn't necessarily matter -- the material is still relevant, or mostly so. Threads such as "should I buy X or Y pen?" or "Such and such Pen Posse is meeting for pizza during the DC Pen Show on Friday night" or "Anyone have experience with this Ebay seller?" are *much* more time sensitive or time-constraint related.

Several times I'll have started to look at what catches my eye as an interesting topic, only to discover that I'm way out of date and the matter has been already settled.... And given the number of "Hi, I'm new" posts I've seen in the past 6 months (when I was the "Hi, I'm new" person myself), it's no wonder that topics get recycled or threads get resurrected.

When I started, I read the Parker Forum. Or tried to -- at the time it was something like 175 PAGES of topics....

When I switched over to hitting the "Read New Content" button when logging in, I found FPN to be both more managable and expanding: managable in that I could skip over a lot of threads (e.g., "It's in the Montblanc Forum -- I don't care since I don't have any Montblanc pens") but expanding (in that I found a lot more different topics of interest).

Like this one -- it helps new people in particular to evaluate their priorities a bit:

"I like the color of this ink but FPNer X says that it's got flow problems, so maybe I should try this similar looking one instead. Or maybe I should get samples of both, because I've got a really wet writer...."

Sorry -- I appear to have hijacked the thread again....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Bo Bo Olson]

Pelikan Royal Blue is Momma's Best Ink, the stuff is designed to wash out of cloths, and has an eradicator (Pirat which works on Lamy blue too) to erase it on paper.

 

There it is the best ink in the world, for Momma's. In Germany the Teachers frown big, big time at home work that has been scratched out....and it's always in the same booklet, so re-writing the home work from scratch is not just a sheet of paper, but the rest of the book. :bonk:

 

Pelikan Royal Blue is absolutely the best ink in the world to sit in a fountain pen for a couple of Generations in the back of a drawer.

 

So it's not the worlds worst ink.

 

And it will shade if asked pretty please on better paper.

 

Of course back in the days of B&W TV I bought it because of the Dollar to the DM course made it much cheaper to buy in the US than Parker or Sheaffer.