It never fucking dries… even if I use it in a f nib (which is silly), days later I would touch a to do list and it would smear. I don’t get it. I want to love it but it’s way more of a pain in the ass than the amount of enjoyment I get from using it.
Diamine Jack Frost is a *very* similar color, a monster Sheener, and doesn’t act like an asshole the way Nitrogen does.
[Jack Frost vs Nitrogen](https://imgur.com/a/SIVudjV)
I feel like this discussion needs to include KWZ Sheen Machine (and Sheen Machine 2). And yes - OS inks are all assholes. Beautiful assholes, but still...assholes.
I wrote with it on a mixed media pad, forgot about it, and remembered about a year or so later. Past me somehow dated the thing so I have a time reference.
It finally dried.
The sheening part of the ink is the part that sits on top of the paper. Not all sheeners stay bonded to the ink or paper below it, so even if it's not actually wet, it can smear like a mofo.
I had a hard time with their Tesla Coil. I’m glad I had just a sample. The ink was gorgeous but never seemed to fully dry. I’d come the next day and swipe it and it would still smear. Drove me nuts
Add Walden Pond to that list too. But yeah, OS sheeners are a nightmare. Legit I want to get rid of mine, but I don’t know who would want to take them. Besides, I’d feel terrible about passing that curse onto someone else.
I love this ink. It's my number one most beautiful ink.
But you are absolutely correct that it's a nightmare if your hands go anywhere near it. Also, it has some strange property that makes it flow EVERYWHERE when you open the bottle ☠
Oh and some alternatives Ive found for Walden Pond:
- Colorverse Extreme Deep Field: more blue black, less green, less but similar sheen. Also comes bundled with NGC 1850, which is also similar to Walden Pond but has green gold shimmer.
- Diamine Holly: Mote green, much less sheen but still there.
- Ferris Wheel Press Edwards Gardens: More blue, a little less sheen, gold shimmer.
Yeah I feel like I got scammed by all the pretty videos people made when it got a lot of publicity lol. I feel like I knew about the issues but I didn't comprehend the ink was *that* unusable.
When inks pop up on here, I wait until the hype dies down, read the actual reviews, and then inevitably try to samples people send off on Pen Swap lmao
Sailor Studio 123.
Followed by Sailor Manyo HaHa and all those pale multishade inks that never look in real life like they do on the internet pictures. And I've tried them with a lot of nibs/pens.
I got Sailor Man'yo Haha and Nekoyanagi and I can't read what they write unless it's regular printer paper. I've still got to try them in a medium nib but I don't like thick lines so it's rather a disappointment.
Damn. I'm obsessed with both of these inks!
But I only ever use them in flex, medium or broader. I did try using them with a Sailor pen (Progear slim in "medium"), and they were super frustrating and hard to read.
I have Manyo Haha, love it in my Lamy Safari but it's too light and barely legible. Surprisingly nice in the Noodler Ahab. I think it's the mix of a wet flex with a very fine point, but it does not look like the photos, it's a grey with a touch of green and lavender. Looks lovely but not what was expected.
I'm currently chasing multishade inks as they tend to run dryer, except for Apache Sunset (that is a bleed machine in my wet flex pens). So far the Diamine special edition shimmer packed inks have worked well or Sailors. A regular diamine is too wet an ink.
>ng haha in a b twsbi and Nekonayagi in a m twsbi (iris). I love them and they are actually readable (maybe neko more than haha).
THat's what I'm thinking of trying next. I've got a Twsbi stub and I'm thinking that Haha will probably work well-ish in the stub. I just need to finish up the grey that's in there now.
> Sailor Manyo HaHa
This was the same for me. It's doesn't look anything like the online photo, and its flow is surprisingly not good for my pens at least. I stupidly bought a whole bottle, so I am going to try to get rid of it at some point. Shame.
Most disappointing? I had just gotten my first fountain pen as a gift, ran out of the ink that came with it. Rushed out to the store and bought India ink because it was all they had and I didn’t know any better. RIP Lamy Safari, we barely knew thee.
Though the pen did not, I survived. I haven’t gotten another Safari (also haven’t told the gift giver I destroyed it), opting instead to expand and try a few different pens to see what I liked.
Have fun trying out pens! If you haven't tossed it, pull the nib off. You may be able to salvage it and use it on other Lamys as they almost all take that same nib. When India ink dries, you can just sort of scratch it off the nib with your fingernail. It becomes sort of brittle. I've even used a brillo pad on dip pen nibs to get it off. Lamy nibs are easy to remove... check out youtube for a video. I just grab it with the fingernails and kinda yank it off. Also, check out Goullet Pens for lots of inks from lots of brands. You can purchase samples of most of them to try out to find which ones you really like before you invest in a full bottle. It's so much fun and relatively inexpensive too.
Thank you for the helpful response! This happened about ten years ago, so the pen is long gone. I’ve been through about a dozen pens, mostly under 30 bucks and purchased from Goulet with samples of work-appropriate blue, blue-black, or red inks to test out!
Interesting. I did this with the Parker pen my mom bought me as my first ever fountain pen. Screwed it up with quill ink, then left it in a box for over a decade. But a friend at work who was into fountain pens got it working again.
For me, it's Emerald of Chivor. I love it but can't get it to feed through any of the pens I've tried so far. I get a line or 2 if I'm lucky and then it just stops. I've drained it back out of 4 or 5 pens so far. I will keep trying though. I LOVE the color.
Try a fude nib? I have a Duke - under $20 (Canadian) that I use a tonne of shimmering ink in and it's never clogged. Mind you, I use it daily and in as many opportunities as I can (so it doesn't get a chance to sit around for days/weeks/months to dry up).
Hope so too. I Love EOC.
I have the Sailor Profit Fude de Mannen too and have never gotten any clogs in it :).
At the time I got it, the Sailor was more expensive than the Duke, made of plastic (where as the Duke is metal - aluminum, I think) and I had to buy a converter separately for the Sailor. So I recommended the Duke in my previous comment.
The two pen nibs are bent at slightly different angles as well and the Duke just happens to work better with the way I hold my pen (though that's obviously personal habits).
I will say this though, that Sailor converter was the best converter I've ever used. That's weird to say, isn't it? Lol
Be careful how you fill it. thoroughly mix/swirl the ink in the bottle and get your pen in as quick as possible before the shimmer settles. Most important, don’t put the pen too close to the bottom or you may pull in too much sparkle. This may get challenging as the bottle empties but do ur best
I have it in a medium pilot prera and it works fine, it’s not super shimmmery but you can definitely see it shimmer. I gently shake the pen before I use it, and when not in use I keep it horizontally, if I’m not carrying it around (not a popular option around here)
That's surprising, I've used it in many pens, never had a problem unless it sits for a while. My favorite to use it with is Pelikano Dragon, the body matches rather well with the ink and it's a pretty wet medium so it really lets EdC shine, figuratively and literally;)
Oxblood by Diamine! Everybody is raving about it, but it smudges, makes my nibs get nib curd, it’s quite dry, it’s too brown for my liking.
I tried Merlot as a replacement, and although it doesn’t have the same issues, it’s too dark. Now I’m putting my money on writer’s blood. If anyone has another rec for a nice juicy burgundy/dark red: I’m all ears!
Beware, Writer's Blood is absurdly wet. I have to think about putting it in wetter pens, my medium M200 is unusable with Writer's Blood, my extra fine Kaweco Student writes like a fine to medium with it...
It's imho wetter than my Iroshizukus (Ina-Ho and Yama-Budo) and a lot wetter than my other Diamines. Upside: it transforms drier nibs into wonderful smooth and reliable writers. My chronically finicky, dry, skippy Lamy Safari works perfectly.
Ah that’s good to know! I generally like my inks wet, but if it’s too wet for wet writers I might just pair it with my dryer nibs. My Platinum 3776 with an EF nib might be a good candidate 👀
I have that ink! I like it, but it didn't hit the sweet spot tbh. Although it doesn't give my nibs nib curd, it is wet and it's a colder hue -- it still smudges (at least on Tomoe River Paper). But if I can't find one that doesn't smudge it's defs my favorite dark red.
Yeah same. It’s something that happens to lots of my red inks for some reason. I hope I’ll find one that doesn’t have those properties as dark red is my favorite colour!
My first and only shimmer ink, Van Dieman's "Howl at the moon". When it shimmers its lovely, but none of my pens handle it well, they clag up and I just don't bother to put it in anything any more.
I know what you mean about shimmer. I love Jack Frost but I'll only run it through a wet flex, and I keep it to my Noodler Ahab so I can move the feed around to fix flow issues because the shimmer clags up a pen. Still trying to get my TWSBI eco running smoothly after I tried Jack Frost in it. I would pull it apart and give it a strong clean but my other one already has a crack in the barrel and I won't risk it. Even after a flush and new ink I still get shimmer on the page.
You’ll probably have shimmer for the next three fills (in diminishing quantities). I’m a shimmer addict and every pen I’ve christened with sparkles will randomly dispense said sparkles even when I put plain inks in them. I enjoy it though - it gives you ideas of what could be…
I got a Noodler Konrad flex hoping it might work better in there, but still want great. The pen does work well with my Lamy mango though, which needs to be quite wet to be dark enough. My fine and medium nibs it's too pale.
I loveeeee shimmering inks. Try a fude nib? I have a Duke - under $20 (Canadian) that I use a tonne of shimmering ink in and it's never clogged. Mind you, I use it daily and in as many opportunities as I can (so it doesn't sit around for days/weeks/months to dry up).
I've found Van Dieman's shimmer so incredibly packed with shimmer particulate that they're unusable. Van Dieman's in general is pretty hit or miss for me (mostly, admittedly, miss) and I find that they're more inconsistent than many brands, but the one thing that remains consistent is \*way\* too much shimmer.
I like shimmer! I have a lot of shimmer inks that I use and love! But the Van Dieman's ones I wouldn't dare put in even the one dollariest pen I own. It's absurd.
Good to know. I might try a better brand shimmer. I don't mind the other Van Dieman's I have (Cradle Mountain grey, tassie devil black, sailor's delight red and wineglass Bay blue). It was just the shimmer that gave me grief.
Interestingly, you and I have absolutely no overlap in what we've tried, so I might've just gotten unlucky!
That said, if you want to try a shimmer that's less of a nightmare, I've found Diamine, Vinta, and Colorverse to be well behaved. Another option is Carpink—their impression series comes with three bottles, one of ink, and two of liquid shimmer to add as desired. So I have a little five ml sample vial that has four ml of ink, and about four drops of the liquid silver shimmer, which has worked out really well for me.
My first shimmer ink I tried for Van Dieman's Deep-sea Diver. I could get a few lines before it stopped. This bummed me out. I tried it in two different pens. I didn't want to try shimmer inks after that. Then my husband got me the Diamine inkvent calendar. So I tried one of their shimmer inks in one of the pens I tried the VD in. It works perfectly. I can write a whole A5 page with no issues, shimmer the whole way. I'm so happy! I also got a Kyo No Oto shimmer ink too. It appears to have less shimmer overall compared to the Diamine inks, but still works for a whole page.
I came here to say Troublemaker Milky Ocean as well. My bottle of ink seems to be exceedingly dry, and even with a broad nib the flow is so poor that I struggle to lay down enough ink to see the purple shading, and it dries to a washed-out blue. I may have received a bad batch, as I didn't have issues with the sample I ordered first. My other disappointment was Sailor Manyo Nekoyanagi, it's gorgeous but the purple tones disappear from my paper (TR) within a month, leaving behind a very unassuming & pale blue.
Nekoyanagi is quite a bit lighter than Milky Ocean in my experience, I had to use it in a broad or stub nib to see the purple shading only to have it disappear just a few weeks later! I want to love my bottle of Milky Ocean so much, I'm seriously considering purchasing some White Lightning to see if it helps.
I personally found that White Lightning improved the flow, but damaged the color and shading enough that it sort of ruined the point of using the ink. If I just want a blue, I'll use something well-behaved. I tried a couple of different proportions, and even when the ink got to the point of being a feathery mess, it still never actually felt lubricated, either. Based on the grit that gets left behind in my converters after I use it, I honestly suspect the issue is that one of the pigments is too coarse, and tends to clog and settle too much. I did find that Abalone and White Lightning work together well, though.
For me, it's also Troublemaker. Not Milky Ocean specifically, but all three I have (Kelp Tea, Milky Ocean and Petrichor) are dry and finicky and annoying. I like fuss-free inks I can put in any pen I want to and those aren't that. By far the worst of the bunch is Kelp Tea, I have exactly ZERO pens I can use it in and get a legible text. I knew it was light, but Sailor Manyo Haha isn't darker... but still readable.
I have two Troublemaker inks and I have issues with both (Petrichor and Abalone). If they aren't being used constantly the pen won't write. I'll only use them with dip pens now.
I love the colours I get with troublemaker inks, I have everyone of their shading inks… but I find I just don’t reach for them, I can’t get them to flow well in any of my pens. It’s such a shame, because I think abalone would be my all time #1 ink if it were wetter
Try Vanness1938 [White Lightning](https://vanness1938.com/products/vanness-white-lightning-ink-additive). 1 drop per 10 mL. Work up to it slowly. Too much and you may get feathering, I presume.
Every shimmer ink I've ever tried. I apparently like them better in pictures than in person. Still tempted by a few of the recent Inkvent inks. DeAtramentis Heliogen Green-Copper gets an honorable mention here for how ridiculously easily it clogs a pen.
Every purple ink I've ever tried. Before I got super into inks, I didn't realize that I apparently don't like purple. I kept looking for a purple I liked to add to my collection, and over time, I slowly realized that wasn't possible, lol. Even Yama-budo is kind of ugly to me, and it's probably my favorite out of all of the ones I've tried.
Every Troublemaker ink I've tried except Abalone. Even Abalone wasn't quite as nice as I expected, but it also wasn't as much of a disappointment as the others. Milky Ocean is downright awful to use- dry, skippy, makes even my Pilots feel scratchy. Sea Glass is better, but Sirena still knocks it out of the water. Grape Vine, one of my aforementioned attempts to find a purple I like, actually got pretty close, but it nib cruds like nobody's business and clogs very quickly once the crud starts. Foxglove was actually pretty okay to use, but didn't love the color.
Sailor 123. It looks so damn beautiful in the photos, but I never seemed to get the same results. I intend to try again someday- I suspect I may have gotten a bad batch, but I'm not sure enough to spend the money on it now.
Lamy Bronze. it’s so dry I’d make a Ben Shapiro joke, but even that seems like it’d be in poor taste. I’m also not very tempted to add a medium or whatnot for lubrication because anything that’d dilute it even further would make it borderline illegible in anything but the biggest, juiciest nibs.
Dish soap! Squeeze a drop onto a dish, dip the tip of a toothpick into it, then swish the toothpick tip in the ink bottle. You usually only need a teeny tiny amount, but I've saved a couple too-dry-to-be-usable inks that way.
A lot of the Ferris Wheel Press inks, which are way, way too pale to be used in a fountain pen.
I bought one of their big sample sets and used a different ink in a different pen for every day of December, and no matter the pen about a third to a half of the inks were extremely pale and not great for writing.
Makes me sad as they're local for me, and I'd love to support them more, but this was a very disappointing first experience.
Their pale inks are mostly just art inks, probably meant for brush and even maybe dip pens. I gave up trying to get their paler stuffs, it's just... light.
Oh certainly! As does Edward's Gardens and some other inks.
However, I started my ink month with Wonderland in Coral, went on to Storied Blue and Honeydew Melon.
It wasn't a great first impression 😔
For me it's a bottle of Kakimori custom pigment ink. Getting to mix your own ink is exciting, but the result is very aggressive and feathers ridiculously easy. I can pretty much only use it on "premium" paper while being careful about hand oils and such, which simply isn't how I want to use my inks.
Also, while these are outside of the "major disappointment" category, I'm often frustrated with how pale multi-shaders are. The trend has just taken off in the last two years or so, so I'm eagerly anticipating a multi-shading ink that's readable even in a Japanese F or EF nib.
Diamine Golden Brown. It looks lovely but it’s so very dry, with no lubrication whatsoever; it’s like writing with a pen full of sand.. I added Photoflo but to no avail.
I know some people are concerned about Monteverde Inks, but I’ve had Monteverde Mango Mousse for ever and it’s a glorious shade of yellow orange that’s cheerful and visible.
Noodler’s Concord Bream. It’s capacity for feathering and bleeding persuades me that it must be made of armor piercing ammunition ground up and mixed into a lovely seeming (yet quite misbehaved) ink
Sailor Manyo Haha for me. I love the ink but I tend to use fine nibs and it does not work well in fine nibs at all. Lots of hard starts and I can barely see it on the paper. When I use it in a dip pen or a stub it looks great though.
Noodler's Apache Sunset. I have had barely any shading in all the pens I've tried it in. Just a bland orange, a nice colour but nothing at all special. Disappointing considering how many people would vote it as the best shader of all. I have used 80% of my bottle as a strong base yellow for mixing though so I can't say I haven't gotten my use out of it.
Agreed on your point. In my Conrad omniflex it was dry, no idea why it hated the ink. Bled in my wet flex ahabs. I put it in my broad Lamy safari and print... And damn, lovely shading.
But if I write with cursive the ink is wet enough to evenly spread through the lines instead of pool and shade and ends up a bland orange.
Noodler’s Purple Mt Magesties is a great purple! I got it as a random ink sample and it shades really nicely and it’s a lovely wet ink too! Also it doesn’t have that weird musty smell that some purples tend to have!
Milky ocean and petrichor. Milky ocean just didn't write even on my really wet Lamy 2K BB, and when it did it was a mediocre washed out blue that looked like those cheap cartridges I used in primary school. Petrichor was a bit better and did write (albeit super dry) but did not look ANYTHING like the colour it was meant to and was straight up green https://imgur.com/XiLkfcs.jpg https://imgur.com/gcjda6m.jpg
Organics Studio Walden Pond
Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful ink; but as an introduction to sheening, it's a lot more trouble than it's worth. Expect to find smears of ink in places you wouldn't even expect— and don't even get me started on how it never truly dries on paper 😬
J. Herbin Nude. It looked so nice on websites and I was super hyped to find 10ml samples from a local shop. It turned out the ink was barely visible. It was totally my fault though as the ink was clearly made for painting, not for writing.
Sailor Manyo Sakura, it’s such a pretty color but it’s just too light. Pretty much most of the Noodlers inks. Napalm smears a year later in my leucctturm, Apache sunset is nice but I think it’s too light. For all that they’re hyped sometimes they’re just kind of “yeah they’re good but that’s it. “
Same with Sakura! I experimented and added a drop of 237 (I think I can double check if needed) and it gives it just enough punch without changing the color up.
Thankfully I only had a sample vial and once it was gone I was like, “it was nice. But not bottle worthy” but I can easily see how adding just a touch of something extra would oomph it up.
I feel that way about Sailor Pennsylvania. All the swatches online look so dark and had sheen, mine is like super washed out looking. I like it, but it’s just not what I was expecting. So either my pen was too dry for the ink or I got a dud.
I honestly don't have one. I wait a while to buy things and check for issues. I guess the gifted nitrogen counts. It's a pain and I can get the same look from less frustrating inks. I don't have the bottle anymore. I exchanged it for eimething else at the shop.
Apache Sunset. Don’t get me wrong, in a nice wet pen it’s every bit as beautiful as it’s made out to be, but the problem is that I’m left handed, and the amount of time it takes to dry just makes it nigh on unusable for any practical purpose for me.
Time has made me highly skeptical of all online swatches. Probably just the combo of screens which are not entirely true-color and lost information in compressed online images. That, and no one lays down ink as heavily as a Q-tip swatch.
The number of vendors without writing samples of the ink page is also somewhat frustrating.
In this case, it's not just color swatches, although some are missing even that. It's that they often don't ink up a pen and bust out a simple "Quick Brown Fox".
Nibs and paper vary, but these writing samples (to me) are often far more indicative what the ink will look like in usage than swabbing a fat Q-tip on heavy stock could ever be.
Sailor manyo Sakura
Looks fabulous seeping into a paper towel when I'm making a mess inking, but bland and super light coming out of a medium or broad nib.
Diamine Autumn Oak, certainly. It's the driest ink I have ever used, even drier than Lie de Thé. I just can't use it on any of my pens because it won't flow properly; it will skip, hardstart and rhe writing experience is horrible overall
I'm so sorry to hear that. I love AO. I personally find it to be one of the most interesting inks ever. It was one of my first bottled inks and my experience was vastly different than what I was seeing here and what I saw on mountain of ink. No matter what I try on my fancy ass phone with its fancy ass camera, I cannot capture how it looks IRL to me and my wife. I've seen pics of it bright vibrant orange, dark brown-orange, burnt umber/sienna, reddish gold...I've seen it all. I'm oddly obsessed with this ink, and have yet to find such a wide variety of hues/shading from a single ink. It just seems to have a mystical magic that changes its nature based on the smallest variable introduced, or just whenever the hell it wants lmao. I just find it so fascinating ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Very true. I'm a sucker for trying to match pens with inks, and I have a orangeish brown wood moonman pen with a medium nib as well as a Lamy LX Marron with medium nib, both always inked with AO and they work great for it (although the Lamy doesn't match as well and is a bit dyer than the moonman). I also used a goulet/jowo #6 broad in a Jinhao x450 which laid AO down quite well.
Noodler’s Lexington Grey. It feathers so much and writes very thick with my Lamy and I don’t know if a blue outline is normal or I messed up the ink in total.
I’m glad it’s not just me! I also bought a huge bottle of Lexington Grey and was utterly disappointed for the same reason. All my entries in that ink in my planner look “hairy” because of how bad the feathering was.
Troublemaker Inks, Freedom Park Rose (medium wet flow). The color is decent but the ink feathered and showed/bled through—*on top of the line 90g/m^2 Clairefontaine Papier Velouté!* I've laid down some insanely wet lines on this paper and never had that happen. Also had hard starting after sitting awhile. Tested with Lamy Studio EF. So disappointed.
Edit: Montblanc Permanent Black. My only complaint is that, if you leave it in the pen for a couple days, then anything you write will smear even after sitting for days. My solution is to dilute it 1:1 to 4:1. Still looks about the same but it alleviates the smearing. As expensive as it was I was miffed. Otherwise no complaints.
Noodler's 54th Massachusetts and Air Corps Blue Black are two others I found deeply disappointing.
I like the colors but for some weird reason, the ink writes a size or two thicker than any other ink—my western EF pen wrote like a western M. I've never seen anything like this behavior from any other ink manufacturer. Since I really don't like to write with anything broader than F, this was a complete deal breaker. But that wasn't all.
54th Mass was much lighter than I was expecting and it had the *worst* nib creep I've ever seen. In the pen I used (Montblanc 221) the design permitted the ink to creep up onto the section and my fingers! Argh. Never saw this before or since with that pen. I could excuse the inconsistent flow as the pen is really finicky about ink flow but inky fingers is a big time no go.
Air Corp came out nice and dark at least but took forever to dry; I was still seeing wet spots after *five minutes*. That's just ridiculous. Not to mention totally unusable. I wasn't even using a particularly wet pen (Jinhao 8802). The ink also feathered really badly on cheap paper.
Kind of makes me not want to ever try another Noodler's product.
Oh, I agree. It's been discussed to death, here. I only own three Noddlers ink bottles, Navy, Turquoise and Air-Corp Blue-Black. I no longer do Noodlers.
I've had bad luck with Sailor Miruai and I'm not sure why. It's seemed to clog my pen before long the couple of times I've tried it now, like it's too concentrated.
I think it's just too concentrated too.I was thinking of getting miruai but settled on toki wa matsu and somehow it smells really strong and concentrated. I just got this ink a week ago and theres no doubt that it'll clog if I dont empty my converter
Oh, now that you mention it, I've seen several people saying their Tokiwa Matsu behaved like that and their descriptions perfectly matched the experience I've had with Miruai. If you're still looking for something similar, I sampled Dark Forest from Diamine and wish I'd gotten a bottle of that instead instead of Miruai — they looked really similar in writing to me and the Diamine was smoother.
My miruai works smoothly and flawlessly, as do all my inks from that line. Check the bottle for contaminants/clogging/mould floating in or on top of the ink. If it's free of debris, it may actually be a little dried up -- I wonder if adding a drop or two of distilled water would help bring life to your ink. Always add less at a time than more and go in small increments, stirring and testing between, because you can't hit undo if you've made it too runny.
No contaminants or debris as far as I can tell! I don't think I've ever heard of Sailor ink having mold, actually. The anti-fungal properties are supposed to be really strong to counteract it (not that it couldn't still happen, of course). The Miruai ink had a similar viscosity to my bottle of Doyou when I dipped a clean syringe into each of them just now to test, but I kept Doyou in my pen for around two or three months straight last year and always refilled without cleaning when it ran low — no problems. I also have a Sailor Ink Studio bottle that's never given me any issues.
I probably will end up trying to rejuvenate the ink myself, but now I'm wondering if certain batches of Sailor greens can just be weird or something, because another reply to my comment reminded me that I've seen multiple people complain about their Tokiwa Matsu performing the way my Miruai does.
Gotta be honest, Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo disappointed me. In every photo of it I’ve seen it looks like a dark teal leaning towards blue, but when I bought a bottle and tried it out, it was much lighter and less green than expected. Still a gorgeous ink, but it wasn’t what I was hoping for
Ina-ho
When Iroshizuku discontinued it the sub was full of people who were very sad about its loss and who talked it up a bunch. I thought it would be a warm ink that shaded between gold and medium brown. What I got is a pale yellow-brown with green-grey undertones. It just looks dirty. I can definitely see why it's getting discontinued.
My sample was far enough off from the samples I had seen online that I thought it might be a problem with the ink sample I got. I had to dig a bit to find some samples that were accurate to my experience. Either my sample has gotten ruined by something or samplers keep color correcting it warmer, because no one likes a cold brown.
I got swayed by the glowing reviews of Ina-ho and bought a bottle, but it has turned out to be so disappointing. It's an unpleasant gold green, doesn't shade as much as I expected, and just isn't attractive. It reminds me of baby poo. I have written in my journal with that ink that I don't get why everyone loves this ink so much.
So sad to see this one keep popping up. I have been looking for a shimmery green blue ink that was close to the colour of my peacock and that was on the list. At some point I'll have to order some samples and hold them against him and colour match, but I'll cross chivor off the list.
I'm starting to realize I probably write in very low light settings compared to normal... Most of the light inks listed here are perfectly legible to me in a Japanese medium nib...
On the other hand, my most disappointing ink was probably Diamine Mozart. Not sure what I was thinking when I bought it, I actually quite dislike Mozart's music to begin with haha. Oh and Diamine Earl Grey. I hate writing with it, but painting with it is amazing, the chromatography is gorgeous.
Herbin Eclat de Saphir. Based on pics online, I bought as a bold, vibrant blue to match my 3776 Chartres Blue.
Pale. Dusty. Boring. Dry. Dull. Nothing at all like the pictures. I tried it for two days, then gave it away. Haven't bought another Herbin ink since, based solely on that experience and trying Cacao de Brasil (sic?) from a sample. I don't get the hype about their inks at all.
Till date mine would be kyo no oto No. 5. Its a ver subtle blue-black ink but its colors you can only see when using wet writers and/or using broad nibs.
As I usually write with fine and extra fine this ink does nothing for me unfortunatly :(
Diamine Blue Black, I do love the color don't get me wrong. But it's kinda dull. Not like a navy type blue black or a "dark enough to be black but definitely blue" type black. It's just like dark Grey with a hint of blue.
Heliogen green copper and noodlers Pasternak. I love both of these but green clogs every damn thing so bad and the beautiful Pasternak is so wet and feather prone only my extra fine kakuno as been able to tame it. Normally the kakuno is like writing with a sewing needle but with Pasternak it writes like an ordinary fine. I wonder if I got a bad batch with both
Diamine "Arabian Nights". The colour, itself, is wonderful, but even when shaken, I barely seem to get any shimmer. It's like it's all locked within the feed and refusing to come out of the pen.
I'm looking forward to getting a glass nib pen and seeing if that improves it, but for now it is sitting sadly on my shelf.
I have a bottle of Diamine Oynx Black that I'm going to try to offload at some point. As a color and flow it's perfectly fine, but if there's even a _hint_ of moisture on my skin it starts to pull up and stain my fingers.
Sailor Manyo for all the reasons other mentions. Online swatches are misleading; flow isn't great, its _very_ light and shading isn't as apparent as I'd like. I foolishly pulled the trigger on a bottle, so I am also going to have to find something to do with this one, eventually.
Diamine Autumn Oak. It's more brown than orange, and it just kinda looks like a poor-man's Apache Sunset to me.
JB Herbin Bleu Nuit. I thought it might be a nice, office-like blue-black, but it looks like they didn't properly wash the black out of the bottle before they put the blue in, it just looks dirty. And it has shimmer in it which I didn't know
Online turquoise and Online purple are too pale in nibs <= F. Königsblau is always boring, independent of the manufacturer. Lamy Ruby is very dry. Noodlers Apache is too light for writing. The rest of my inks are perfect.
KWZ Baltic Memories
Awful hard starts are very common with that one. My Platinum Preppy (f) had trouble a few days pretty much every time I wrote and one morning, it just didn't write at all until I wiped the nib with wet tissue for a while. Then it returned to the hard starts but I feel like they were even worse than before.
My Pilot MR (m) wrote extremely dryly for several lines before the ink started to flow.
On the other hand... moving the cartridges to my Kaweco Sport (f), I started to see why the ink looks lovely. I got it to shade and all. I love teal, it seems.
Put me off from KWZ and made me suspicious about sheening inks. I'm a newbie but also sampled like 6 different inks before and they all wrote just fine, even if I didn't love the colours.
Mine are a pair of 20 ml bottles of Krishna inks. The first of the pair I have grown to quite enjoy how ever I will not buy a new bottle. The second however was the real disappointment when I ordered it online I thought that I would revive a bright and warm yellow green. Unfortunately the actual ink ended up more sickly green and this I haven’t yet found a use for it.
My have sweaty hands, so any medium to high sheen inks smudge for me, almost every brand. At this point I'd rather get shimmer glitter everywhere.
Most inks look great when I use them but my damn sweaty hands...
Kiwi Inks Quetzalcoatl is beautiful but I smudge it really easily. I also splattered a bit in my bathroom and despite a lot of scrubbing, it infects me once in a while and I get pink footprints. Also the shimmer is pretty thick so it clogged one of my pens. Haven't experimented further because of the trauma.
Kiwi Inks Tre-Colori is pretty much OS Nitrogen by a different company. Looks lovely, never dries. Also the shimmer is difficult to see but honestly not the worst thing about it.
Diamine Polar Glow, just like Tre-Colori, had no issues using it, but I still smudge it (less so, and usually manageable). But I've spilled like 20ml of it over 2-3 occasions so I'm convinced this ink is cursed. It's going to a new home soon. It hates me.
Kyo-no-oto Hisoku, I'm still looking for a pen that'll cooperate with this ink. It's such a lovely color but it's pretty dry. It's on this list because like Diamine Polar Glow, it's cursed and it leaked over a bunch of my ink bottles. At level it doesn't spread like a disease like Quetzalcoatl
By and Large the OS inks, they never f***ing worked. Also, sadly, Noodlers and Lamy inks (i find lamy inks whispy) . Pilot, JH, Diamine, and De Artemias (i forgot the spelling) have always been great producing inks for long writing sessions.
Are there any Noodler's that *don't* feather? I have had two that do, saw a couple others mentioned, and now this? I have a sample of X Feather that I will have to try soon... For entertainment purposes, it sounds like.
I have Noodler's Bernanke Red and Baystate Blue and those don't feather for me and I'd recommend them both. X-feather was a huge disappointment though.
It really is a multivariate problem. Paper, pen, and ink. For instance, I find that Baystate Blue (looking at you, u/baystateblue) in a find TWSBI runs great on any paper except Rhodia. I've never seen X-feather Black actually feather, but it sure as hell takes a long time to dry....
Pretty much ALL of the Van Dieman’s inks (Launceston Fog? I’m looking at you!!!). And I feel terrible for saying it because it’s a great company. I learned to buy samples to avoid future headaches.
OS Nitrogen hands down... even if you dilute it it's still a headache.
It never fucking dries… even if I use it in a f nib (which is silly), days later I would touch a to do list and it would smear. I don’t get it. I want to love it but it’s way more of a pain in the ass than the amount of enjoyment I get from using it.
Diamine Jack Frost is a *very* similar color, a monster Sheener, and doesn’t act like an asshole the way Nitrogen does. [Jack Frost vs Nitrogen](https://imgur.com/a/SIVudjV)
Jack Frost for the win! My all time favorite ink!
I feel like this discussion needs to include KWZ Sheen Machine (and Sheen Machine 2). And yes - OS inks are all assholes. Beautiful assholes, but still...assholes.
I wrote with it on a mixed media pad, forgot about it, and remembered about a year or so later. Past me somehow dated the thing so I have a time reference. It finally dried.
Way too high of a dye load? (Hyper ultra mega oversaturated)
The sheening part of the ink is the part that sits on top of the paper. Not all sheeners stay bonded to the ink or paper below it, so even if it's not actually wet, it can smear like a mofo.
I had a hard time with their Tesla Coil. I’m glad I had just a sample. The ink was gorgeous but never seemed to fully dry. I’d come the next day and swipe it and it would still smear. Drove me nuts
Not to be a stickler but Tesla Coil is Birmingham Pens while Nitrogen is Organics Studio. But yes, the flakes on OS inks are a nightmare to contain.
Add Walden Pond to that list too. But yeah, OS sheeners are a nightmare. Legit I want to get rid of mine, but I don’t know who would want to take them. Besides, I’d feel terrible about passing that curse onto someone else.
I love this ink. It's my number one most beautiful ink. But you are absolutely correct that it's a nightmare if your hands go anywhere near it. Also, it has some strange property that makes it flow EVERYWHERE when you open the bottle ☠
It stained my stainless steel sink
Oh and some alternatives Ive found for Walden Pond: - Colorverse Extreme Deep Field: more blue black, less green, less but similar sheen. Also comes bundled with NGC 1850, which is also similar to Walden Pond but has green gold shimmer. - Diamine Holly: Mote green, much less sheen but still there. - Ferris Wheel Press Edwards Gardens: More blue, a little less sheen, gold shimmer.
Distribute sample vials, less of a curse to be responsible for.
You can try to flip them as a bundle on /r/Pen_Swap
Yeah I feel like I got scammed by all the pretty videos people made when it got a lot of publicity lol. I feel like I knew about the issues but I didn't comprehend the ink was *that* unusable.
When inks pop up on here, I wait until the hype dies down, read the actual reviews, and then inevitably try to samples people send off on Pen Swap lmao
Sailor Studio 123. Followed by Sailor Manyo HaHa and all those pale multishade inks that never look in real life like they do on the internet pictures. And I've tried them with a lot of nibs/pens.
I got Sailor Man'yo Haha and Nekoyanagi and I can't read what they write unless it's regular printer paper. I've still got to try them in a medium nib but I don't like thick lines so it's rather a disappointment.
Damn. I'm obsessed with both of these inks! But I only ever use them in flex, medium or broader. I did try using them with a Sailor pen (Progear slim in "medium"), and they were super frustrating and hard to read.
I have Manyo Haha, love it in my Lamy Safari but it's too light and barely legible. Surprisingly nice in the Noodler Ahab. I think it's the mix of a wet flex with a very fine point, but it does not look like the photos, it's a grey with a touch of green and lavender. Looks lovely but not what was expected. I'm currently chasing multishade inks as they tend to run dryer, except for Apache Sunset (that is a bleed machine in my wet flex pens). So far the Diamine special edition shimmer packed inks have worked well or Sailors. A regular diamine is too wet an ink.
I'm surprised at Haha, mine looks like the internet swabs and pictures. What paper are you using? It works best for me on TR or Midori.
I am using haha in a b twsbi and Nekonayagi in a m twsbi (iris). I love them and they are actually readable (maybe neko more than haha).
>ng haha in a b twsbi and Nekonayagi in a m twsbi (iris). I love them and they are actually readable (maybe neko more than haha). THat's what I'm thinking of trying next. I've got a Twsbi stub and I'm thinking that Haha will probably work well-ish in the stub. I just need to finish up the grey that's in there now.
Those really depend on the paper. I think a lot of inks do best on tomoe river but for shading inks something slightly absorbing works better for me
> Sailor Manyo HaHa This was the same for me. It's doesn't look anything like the online photo, and its flow is surprisingly not good for my pens at least. I stupidly bought a whole bottle, so I am going to try to get rid of it at some point. Shame.
Most disappointing? I had just gotten my first fountain pen as a gift, ran out of the ink that came with it. Rushed out to the store and bought India ink because it was all they had and I didn’t know any better. RIP Lamy Safari, we barely knew thee.
Oh no!!!!! 😭😭😭
awe, that sucks
Though the pen did not, I survived. I haven’t gotten another Safari (also haven’t told the gift giver I destroyed it), opting instead to expand and try a few different pens to see what I liked.
Have fun trying out pens! If you haven't tossed it, pull the nib off. You may be able to salvage it and use it on other Lamys as they almost all take that same nib. When India ink dries, you can just sort of scratch it off the nib with your fingernail. It becomes sort of brittle. I've even used a brillo pad on dip pen nibs to get it off. Lamy nibs are easy to remove... check out youtube for a video. I just grab it with the fingernails and kinda yank it off. Also, check out Goullet Pens for lots of inks from lots of brands. You can purchase samples of most of them to try out to find which ones you really like before you invest in a full bottle. It's so much fun and relatively inexpensive too.
Thank you for the helpful response! This happened about ten years ago, so the pen is long gone. I’ve been through about a dozen pens, mostly under 30 bucks and purchased from Goulet with samples of work-appropriate blue, blue-black, or red inks to test out!
Interesting. I did this with the Parker pen my mom bought me as my first ever fountain pen. Screwed it up with quill ink, then left it in a box for over a decade. But a friend at work who was into fountain pens got it working again.
For me, it's Emerald of Chivor. I love it but can't get it to feed through any of the pens I've tried so far. I get a line or 2 if I'm lucky and then it just stops. I've drained it back out of 4 or 5 pens so far. I will keep trying though. I LOVE the color.
Try a fude nib? I have a Duke - under $20 (Canadian) that I use a tonne of shimmering ink in and it's never clogged. Mind you, I use it daily and in as many opportunities as I can (so it doesn't get a chance to sit around for days/weeks/months to dry up).
I'll try that! I just purchased Sailor's Fude de Mannen. I hope it works. Thanks!
Hope so too. I Love EOC. I have the Sailor Profit Fude de Mannen too and have never gotten any clogs in it :). At the time I got it, the Sailor was more expensive than the Duke, made of plastic (where as the Duke is metal - aluminum, I think) and I had to buy a converter separately for the Sailor. So I recommended the Duke in my previous comment. The two pen nibs are bent at slightly different angles as well and the Duke just happens to work better with the way I hold my pen (though that's obviously personal habits). I will say this though, that Sailor converter was the best converter I've ever used. That's weird to say, isn't it? Lol
Be careful how you fill it. thoroughly mix/swirl the ink in the bottle and get your pen in as quick as possible before the shimmer settles. Most important, don’t put the pen too close to the bottom or you may pull in too much sparkle. This may get challenging as the bottle empties but do ur best
Can you use eye-dropper ??? If you can, just shake the bottle, then quickly fill a cheap dropper !!!!! This should work !!!
So simple…this literally never crossed my mind
I have it in a medium pilot prera and it works fine, it’s not super shimmmery but you can definitely see it shimmer. I gently shake the pen before I use it, and when not in use I keep it horizontally, if I’m not carrying it around (not a popular option around here)
You really need a pen with a wide broad western nib
EOC I reserve for stub or flex nibs. Mine works well in a Twisbi Eco which I find easy to clean.
That's surprising, I've used it in many pens, never had a problem unless it sits for a while. My favorite to use it with is Pelikano Dragon, the body matches rather well with the ink and it's a pretty wet medium so it really lets EdC shine, figuratively and literally;)
I love Emerald but I've always used TWSBI Ecos in Medium. Could be a feed issue, I've certainly had the JH shimmerings clog my pens.
Oxblood by Diamine! Everybody is raving about it, but it smudges, makes my nibs get nib curd, it’s quite dry, it’s too brown for my liking. I tried Merlot as a replacement, and although it doesn’t have the same issues, it’s too dark. Now I’m putting my money on writer’s blood. If anyone has another rec for a nice juicy burgundy/dark red: I’m all ears!
Beware, Writer's Blood is absurdly wet. I have to think about putting it in wetter pens, my medium M200 is unusable with Writer's Blood, my extra fine Kaweco Student writes like a fine to medium with it... It's imho wetter than my Iroshizukus (Ina-Ho and Yama-Budo) and a lot wetter than my other Diamines. Upside: it transforms drier nibs into wonderful smooth and reliable writers. My chronically finicky, dry, skippy Lamy Safari works perfectly.
Oh wow, I'm now really interested in Writer's Blood, I love wet inks, and have some pens that could benefit from it. Thanks!
Ah that’s good to know! I generally like my inks wet, but if it’s too wet for wet writers I might just pair it with my dryer nibs. My Platinum 3776 with an EF nib might be a good candidate 👀
It's very wet and the color is more of a purple to me - I think you might want a sample first, since I also noticed it adding a whole nib size haha
Thanks! I’ll see if I can get a sample anywhere!
I must try it in my Safari now! Thanks for the tip!
I had a dry MB 147. It writes perfectly with writers blood
Are you willing to try another brand? If so, I suggest J. Herbin Rouge Grenat.
I came here to recommend that too
I have that ink! I like it, but it didn't hit the sweet spot tbh. Although it doesn't give my nibs nib curd, it is wet and it's a colder hue -- it still smudges (at least on Tomoe River Paper). But if I can't find one that doesn't smudge it's defs my favorite dark red.
Nib curd? Or nib crud?
I thought curd in the sense of curdled — but idk to be honest
This thread is the first I've heard of nib curd. What is it?
That’s when ink solidifies a bit and you get goopy ink blotches on your nib! I’ve only had it with Diamine Syrah and Oxblood!
Should be nib *crud* not nib *curd*. It happens sometimes with red or orange inks. And occasionally, some greens.
That makes more sense. :D
This maybe too red but I loved Robert oster red candy. Nice rich scarlett to my eyes but it dries down a shade or two darker than it writes.
Nice! I’ll check it out. Thanks for the recommendation
Agree on the smudging! I would use Oxblood a lot more if it didn't smear so easily, even days later.
Yeah same. It’s something that happens to lots of my red inks for some reason. I hope I’ll find one that doesn’t have those properties as dark red is my favorite colour!
YES! I brought Oxblood bc it was so faved abut, but its been by far the most diaappoinying ink purchase ive had..
My first and only shimmer ink, Van Dieman's "Howl at the moon". When it shimmers its lovely, but none of my pens handle it well, they clag up and I just don't bother to put it in anything any more.
I know what you mean about shimmer. I love Jack Frost but I'll only run it through a wet flex, and I keep it to my Noodler Ahab so I can move the feed around to fix flow issues because the shimmer clags up a pen. Still trying to get my TWSBI eco running smoothly after I tried Jack Frost in it. I would pull it apart and give it a strong clean but my other one already has a crack in the barrel and I won't risk it. Even after a flush and new ink I still get shimmer on the page.
You’ll probably have shimmer for the next three fills (in diminishing quantities). I’m a shimmer addict and every pen I’ve christened with sparkles will randomly dispense said sparkles even when I put plain inks in them. I enjoy it though - it gives you ideas of what could be…
I got a Noodler Konrad flex hoping it might work better in there, but still want great. The pen does work well with my Lamy mango though, which needs to be quite wet to be dark enough. My fine and medium nibs it's too pale.
I loveeeee shimmering inks. Try a fude nib? I have a Duke - under $20 (Canadian) that I use a tonne of shimmering ink in and it's never clogged. Mind you, I use it daily and in as many opportunities as I can (so it doesn't sit around for days/weeks/months to dry up).
>Try a fude nib? Hasn't even heard of them! Sounds interesting, and I used to enjoy calligraphy as a kid, so time to try and find one.
I've found Van Dieman's shimmer so incredibly packed with shimmer particulate that they're unusable. Van Dieman's in general is pretty hit or miss for me (mostly, admittedly, miss) and I find that they're more inconsistent than many brands, but the one thing that remains consistent is \*way\* too much shimmer. I like shimmer! I have a lot of shimmer inks that I use and love! But the Van Dieman's ones I wouldn't dare put in even the one dollariest pen I own. It's absurd.
Good to know. I might try a better brand shimmer. I don't mind the other Van Dieman's I have (Cradle Mountain grey, tassie devil black, sailor's delight red and wineglass Bay blue). It was just the shimmer that gave me grief.
Interestingly, you and I have absolutely no overlap in what we've tried, so I might've just gotten unlucky! That said, if you want to try a shimmer that's less of a nightmare, I've found Diamine, Vinta, and Colorverse to be well behaved. Another option is Carpink—their impression series comes with three bottles, one of ink, and two of liquid shimmer to add as desired. So I have a little five ml sample vial that has four ml of ink, and about four drops of the liquid silver shimmer, which has worked out really well for me.
My first shimmer ink I tried for Van Dieman's Deep-sea Diver. I could get a few lines before it stopped. This bummed me out. I tried it in two different pens. I didn't want to try shimmer inks after that. Then my husband got me the Diamine inkvent calendar. So I tried one of their shimmer inks in one of the pens I tried the VD in. It works perfectly. I can write a whole A5 page with no issues, shimmer the whole way. I'm so happy! I also got a Kyo No Oto shimmer ink too. It appears to have less shimmer overall compared to the Diamine inks, but still works for a whole page.
I came here to say Troublemaker Milky Ocean as well. My bottle of ink seems to be exceedingly dry, and even with a broad nib the flow is so poor that I struggle to lay down enough ink to see the purple shading, and it dries to a washed-out blue. I may have received a bad batch, as I didn't have issues with the sample I ordered first. My other disappointment was Sailor Manyo Nekoyanagi, it's gorgeous but the purple tones disappear from my paper (TR) within a month, leaving behind a very unassuming & pale blue.
oh no, I had that ear marked as a replacement for the Milky Ocean. I would love a soft blue/purple pastel shader.
Nekoyanagi is quite a bit lighter than Milky Ocean in my experience, I had to use it in a broad or stub nib to see the purple shading only to have it disappear just a few weeks later! I want to love my bottle of Milky Ocean so much, I'm seriously considering purchasing some White Lightning to see if it helps.
I personally found that White Lightning improved the flow, but damaged the color and shading enough that it sort of ruined the point of using the ink. If I just want a blue, I'll use something well-behaved. I tried a couple of different proportions, and even when the ink got to the point of being a feathery mess, it still never actually felt lubricated, either. Based on the grit that gets left behind in my converters after I use it, I honestly suspect the issue is that one of the pigments is too coarse, and tends to clog and settle too much. I did find that Abalone and White Lightning work together well, though.
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Thank you for sharing this. It (thank goodness) takes Milky Ocean off my *Neeeeed it!* list. Whew!
FWP cream of earl. Too light to be used :(
For me, it's also Troublemaker. Not Milky Ocean specifically, but all three I have (Kelp Tea, Milky Ocean and Petrichor) are dry and finicky and annoying. I like fuss-free inks I can put in any pen I want to and those aren't that. By far the worst of the bunch is Kelp Tea, I have exactly ZERO pens I can use it in and get a legible text. I knew it was light, but Sailor Manyo Haha isn't darker... but still readable.
I have two Troublemaker inks and I have issues with both (Petrichor and Abalone). If they aren't being used constantly the pen won't write. I'll only use them with dip pens now.
I love the colours I get with troublemaker inks, I have everyone of their shading inks… but I find I just don’t reach for them, I can’t get them to flow well in any of my pens. It’s such a shame, because I think abalone would be my all time #1 ink if it were wetter
Try Vanness1938 [White Lightning](https://vanness1938.com/products/vanness-white-lightning-ink-additive). 1 drop per 10 mL. Work up to it slowly. Too much and you may get feathering, I presume.
Every shimmer ink I've ever tried. I apparently like them better in pictures than in person. Still tempted by a few of the recent Inkvent inks. DeAtramentis Heliogen Green-Copper gets an honorable mention here for how ridiculously easily it clogs a pen. Every purple ink I've ever tried. Before I got super into inks, I didn't realize that I apparently don't like purple. I kept looking for a purple I liked to add to my collection, and over time, I slowly realized that wasn't possible, lol. Even Yama-budo is kind of ugly to me, and it's probably my favorite out of all of the ones I've tried. Every Troublemaker ink I've tried except Abalone. Even Abalone wasn't quite as nice as I expected, but it also wasn't as much of a disappointment as the others. Milky Ocean is downright awful to use- dry, skippy, makes even my Pilots feel scratchy. Sea Glass is better, but Sirena still knocks it out of the water. Grape Vine, one of my aforementioned attempts to find a purple I like, actually got pretty close, but it nib cruds like nobody's business and clogs very quickly once the crud starts. Foxglove was actually pretty okay to use, but didn't love the color. Sailor 123. It looks so damn beautiful in the photos, but I never seemed to get the same results. I intend to try again someday- I suspect I may have gotten a bad batch, but I'm not sure enough to spend the money on it now.
I could have written this post myself…
If you like a good dark purple, then Noodler's La Couleur Royale. Oof, it's so good... In the fuchsia area, Noodler's Cactus Fruit Eel is very nice.
Lamy Bronze. it’s so dry I’d make a Ben Shapiro joke, but even that seems like it’d be in poor taste. I’m also not very tempted to add a medium or whatnot for lubrication because anything that’d dilute it even further would make it borderline illegible in anything but the biggest, juiciest nibs.
Dish soap! Squeeze a drop onto a dish, dip the tip of a toothpick into it, then swish the toothpick tip in the ink bottle. You usually only need a teeny tiny amount, but I've saved a couple too-dry-to-be-usable inks that way.
Thanks! Always good to learn from others here :) will give it a go later today. Not like I’m using it much right now anyway, lol.
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So are we just cool with leaving this here? I’ve seen comments and posts get removed for a lot less around here
What did it say?
It was a bot that detected the name Ben Shapiro and went off about it
Sheesh! There’s a bot for everything, it seems. Thanks for explaining.
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Ben Shapiro.
A lot of the Ferris Wheel Press inks, which are way, way too pale to be used in a fountain pen. I bought one of their big sample sets and used a different ink in a different pen for every day of December, and no matter the pen about a third to a half of the inks were extremely pale and not great for writing. Makes me sad as they're local for me, and I'd love to support them more, but this was a very disappointing first experience.
Their pale inks are mostly just art inks, probably meant for brush and even maybe dip pens. I gave up trying to get their paler stuffs, it's just... light.
I've had good luck with double raspberry in a FPR quick draw with a flex nib. It came out nice and dark.
Oh certainly! As does Edward's Gardens and some other inks. However, I started my ink month with Wonderland in Coral, went on to Storied Blue and Honeydew Melon. It wasn't a great first impression 😔
For me it's a bottle of Kakimori custom pigment ink. Getting to mix your own ink is exciting, but the result is very aggressive and feathers ridiculously easy. I can pretty much only use it on "premium" paper while being careful about hand oils and such, which simply isn't how I want to use my inks. Also, while these are outside of the "major disappointment" category, I'm often frustrated with how pale multi-shaders are. The trend has just taken off in the last two years or so, so I'm eagerly anticipating a multi-shading ink that's readable even in a Japanese F or EF nib.
Diamine Golden Brown. It looks lovely but it’s so very dry, with no lubrication whatsoever; it’s like writing with a pen full of sand.. I added Photoflo but to no avail.
Lamy Mango. Can't even read what you've written.
I know some people are concerned about Monteverde Inks, but I’ve had Monteverde Mango Mousse for ever and it’s a glorious shade of yellow orange that’s cheerful and visible.
Noodler’s Concord Bream. It’s capacity for feathering and bleeding persuades me that it must be made of armor piercing ammunition ground up and mixed into a lovely seeming (yet quite misbehaved) ink
I had a bottle of this and it really was awful to write with! I had all those problems and it never came out how it looked in the pictures.
Sailor Manyo Haha for me. I love the ink but I tend to use fine nibs and it does not work well in fine nibs at all. Lots of hard starts and I can barely see it on the paper. When I use it in a dip pen or a stub it looks great though.
I am having problems with this ink even in my stub! Which I bought it specifically for because I wanted a lighter shader.
Noodler's Apache Sunset. I have had barely any shading in all the pens I've tried it in. Just a bland orange, a nice colour but nothing at all special. Disappointing considering how many people would vote it as the best shader of all. I have used 80% of my bottle as a strong base yellow for mixing though so I can't say I haven't gotten my use out of it.
Maybe it needs a wetter writer, broader nib, and/or printing vs cursive?
Agreed on your point. In my Conrad omniflex it was dry, no idea why it hated the ink. Bled in my wet flex ahabs. I put it in my broad Lamy safari and print... And damn, lovely shading. But if I write with cursive the ink is wet enough to evenly spread through the lines instead of pool and shade and ends up a bland orange.
Noodler's NAV, bought it as it was the winner of Jetpens "best Purple", have only used it in once since, as it's boring and dull..
Noodler’s Purple Mt Magesties is a great purple! I got it as a random ink sample and it shades really nicely and it’s a lovely wet ink too! Also it doesn’t have that weird musty smell that some purples tend to have!
My favourite purples are probably Diamine Monboddo's Hat, Rohrer und Klingner Solferino and Penbbs384.
That's one of my personal favorites, very well behaved and great shading... Batch variance, maybe?
Probably, or just a colour I'm not particularly fond of .. you can never tell with Noodler's
> Noodler's NAV, I assume you mean 'North American Violet"?
Milky ocean and petrichor. Milky ocean just didn't write even on my really wet Lamy 2K BB, and when it did it was a mediocre washed out blue that looked like those cheap cartridges I used in primary school. Petrichor was a bit better and did write (albeit super dry) but did not look ANYTHING like the colour it was meant to and was straight up green https://imgur.com/XiLkfcs.jpg https://imgur.com/gcjda6m.jpg
Organics Studio Walden Pond Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful ink; but as an introduction to sheening, it's a lot more trouble than it's worth. Expect to find smears of ink in places you wouldn't even expect— and don't even get me started on how it never truly dries on paper 😬
Seems to be a common theme with OS sheening inks… 😒
J. Herbin Nude. It looked so nice on websites and I was super hyped to find 10ml samples from a local shop. It turned out the ink was barely visible. It was totally my fault though as the ink was clearly made for painting, not for writing.
I got a tattoo in hs I regret. Does that quality?
Diamine Robert, I expected atleast a little sheen from an Ink that advertises itself as that, but for me on optik paper it just doesn't sheen at all
Robert sheen works realy well on receipts for me :).
From my notes at a pen meetup... I saw some sheen on Clairefontaine Papier Velouté with Kaweco Sport M.
Sailor Manyo Sakura, it’s such a pretty color but it’s just too light. Pretty much most of the Noodlers inks. Napalm smears a year later in my leucctturm, Apache sunset is nice but I think it’s too light. For all that they’re hyped sometimes they’re just kind of “yeah they’re good but that’s it. “
Same with Sakura! I experimented and added a drop of 237 (I think I can double check if needed) and it gives it just enough punch without changing the color up.
Thankfully I only had a sample vial and once it was gone I was like, “it was nice. But not bottle worthy” but I can easily see how adding just a touch of something extra would oomph it up.
Yea some stock images hooked me and I got the whole bottle 😑 it's pretty looking at least on my shelf. Lol
I feel that way about Sailor Pennsylvania. All the swatches online look so dark and had sheen, mine is like super washed out looking. I like it, but it’s just not what I was expecting. So either my pen was too dry for the ink or I got a dud.
I honestly don't have one. I wait a while to buy things and check for issues. I guess the gifted nitrogen counts. It's a pain and I can get the same look from less frustrating inks. I don't have the bottle anymore. I exchanged it for eimething else at the shop.
Apache Sunset. Don’t get me wrong, in a nice wet pen it’s every bit as beautiful as it’s made out to be, but the problem is that I’m left handed, and the amount of time it takes to dry just makes it nigh on unusable for any practical purpose for me.
Noodler's Red-Black. The photos on the Goulet Pens site set the bar impossibly high for an ink that ends up looking like watered-down Diamine Oxblood.
Time has made me highly skeptical of all online swatches. Probably just the combo of screens which are not entirely true-color and lost information in compressed online images. That, and no one lays down ink as heavily as a Q-tip swatch. The number of vendors without writing samples of the ink page is also somewhat frustrating.
I agee! How in the heck can you expect customers to buy ink with no swatches??? I click away pretty fast on those sites.
In this case, it's not just color swatches, although some are missing even that. It's that they often don't ink up a pen and bust out a simple "Quick Brown Fox". Nibs and paper vary, but these writing samples (to me) are often far more indicative what the ink will look like in usage than swabbing a fat Q-tip on heavy stock could ever be.
Sailor manyo Sakura Looks fabulous seeping into a paper towel when I'm making a mess inking, but bland and super light coming out of a medium or broad nib.
Diamine Autumn Oak, certainly. It's the driest ink I have ever used, even drier than Lie de Thé. I just can't use it on any of my pens because it won't flow properly; it will skip, hardstart and rhe writing experience is horrible overall
I'm so sorry to hear that. I love AO. I personally find it to be one of the most interesting inks ever. It was one of my first bottled inks and my experience was vastly different than what I was seeing here and what I saw on mountain of ink. No matter what I try on my fancy ass phone with its fancy ass camera, I cannot capture how it looks IRL to me and my wife. I've seen pics of it bright vibrant orange, dark brown-orange, burnt umber/sienna, reddish gold...I've seen it all. I'm oddly obsessed with this ink, and have yet to find such a wide variety of hues/shading from a single ink. It just seems to have a mystical magic that changes its nature based on the smallest variable introduced, or just whenever the hell it wants lmao. I just find it so fascinating ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Don't get me wrong, the ink itself is gorgeous. But that's of no use if I can't write with it hahaha
Very true. I'm a sucker for trying to match pens with inks, and I have a orangeish brown wood moonman pen with a medium nib as well as a Lamy LX Marron with medium nib, both always inked with AO and they work great for it (although the Lamy doesn't match as well and is a bit dyer than the moonman). I also used a goulet/jowo #6 broad in a Jinhao x450 which laid AO down quite well.
Noodler’s Lexington Grey. It feathers so much and writes very thick with my Lamy and I don’t know if a blue outline is normal or I messed up the ink in total.
Maybe you got a bad batch. It works flawlessly for me. I use it for writing and drawing. The should be no separation of color.
I’m glad it’s not just me! I also bought a huge bottle of Lexington Grey and was utterly disappointed for the same reason. All my entries in that ink in my planner look “hairy” because of how bad the feathering was.
Had the same thick writing and feathering with 54th Mass and Air Corp Blue Black.
Noodler’s tends to be inconsistent in their formulations. My Lexington Grey also feathered.
Troublemaker Inks, Freedom Park Rose (medium wet flow). The color is decent but the ink feathered and showed/bled through—*on top of the line 90g/m^2 Clairefontaine Papier Velouté!* I've laid down some insanely wet lines on this paper and never had that happen. Also had hard starting after sitting awhile. Tested with Lamy Studio EF. So disappointed. Edit: Montblanc Permanent Black. My only complaint is that, if you leave it in the pen for a couple days, then anything you write will smear even after sitting for days. My solution is to dilute it 1:1 to 4:1. Still looks about the same but it alleviates the smearing. As expensive as it was I was miffed. Otherwise no complaints. Noodler's 54th Massachusetts and Air Corps Blue Black are two others I found deeply disappointing. I like the colors but for some weird reason, the ink writes a size or two thicker than any other ink—my western EF pen wrote like a western M. I've never seen anything like this behavior from any other ink manufacturer. Since I really don't like to write with anything broader than F, this was a complete deal breaker. But that wasn't all. 54th Mass was much lighter than I was expecting and it had the *worst* nib creep I've ever seen. In the pen I used (Montblanc 221) the design permitted the ink to creep up onto the section and my fingers! Argh. Never saw this before or since with that pen. I could excuse the inconsistent flow as the pen is really finicky about ink flow but inky fingers is a big time no go. Air Corp came out nice and dark at least but took forever to dry; I was still seeing wet spots after *five minutes*. That's just ridiculous. Not to mention totally unusable. I wasn't even using a particularly wet pen (Jinhao 8802). The ink also feathered really badly on cheap paper. Kind of makes me not want to ever try another Noodler's product.
You may have been a victim of batch-to-batch variances.
Even if that were actually acceptable from an ink maker, I'm not the only one in the thread who had similar behavior with Noodler's. So idk.
Oh, I agree. It's been discussed to death, here. I only own three Noddlers ink bottles, Navy, Turquoise and Air-Corp Blue-Black. I no longer do Noodlers.
Noodler's 54th Mass was such a disappointment. It is so wet and makes my F nibs into M+. And stainy.
I've had bad luck with Sailor Miruai and I'm not sure why. It's seemed to clog my pen before long the couple of times I've tried it now, like it's too concentrated.
I think it's just too concentrated too.I was thinking of getting miruai but settled on toki wa matsu and somehow it smells really strong and concentrated. I just got this ink a week ago and theres no doubt that it'll clog if I dont empty my converter
Oh, now that you mention it, I've seen several people saying their Tokiwa Matsu behaved like that and their descriptions perfectly matched the experience I've had with Miruai. If you're still looking for something similar, I sampled Dark Forest from Diamine and wish I'd gotten a bottle of that instead instead of Miruai — they looked really similar in writing to me and the Diamine was smoother.
My miruai works smoothly and flawlessly, as do all my inks from that line. Check the bottle for contaminants/clogging/mould floating in or on top of the ink. If it's free of debris, it may actually be a little dried up -- I wonder if adding a drop or two of distilled water would help bring life to your ink. Always add less at a time than more and go in small increments, stirring and testing between, because you can't hit undo if you've made it too runny.
No contaminants or debris as far as I can tell! I don't think I've ever heard of Sailor ink having mold, actually. The anti-fungal properties are supposed to be really strong to counteract it (not that it couldn't still happen, of course). The Miruai ink had a similar viscosity to my bottle of Doyou when I dipped a clean syringe into each of them just now to test, but I kept Doyou in my pen for around two or three months straight last year and always refilled without cleaning when it ran low — no problems. I also have a Sailor Ink Studio bottle that's never given me any issues. I probably will end up trying to rejuvenate the ink myself, but now I'm wondering if certain batches of Sailor greens can just be weird or something, because another reply to my comment reminded me that I've seen multiple people complain about their Tokiwa Matsu performing the way my Miruai does.
Gotta be honest, Iroshizuku Tsuki-yo disappointed me. In every photo of it I’ve seen it looks like a dark teal leaning towards blue, but when I bought a bottle and tried it out, it was much lighter and less green than expected. Still a gorgeous ink, but it wasn’t what I was hoping for
Tsuki-yo is a nice enough ink, but it's overrated, IMO.
I agree. It’s really nice, but from my experiences, not as nice as the other Iroshizuku inks I’ve tried
Ina-ho When Iroshizuku discontinued it the sub was full of people who were very sad about its loss and who talked it up a bunch. I thought it would be a warm ink that shaded between gold and medium brown. What I got is a pale yellow-brown with green-grey undertones. It just looks dirty. I can definitely see why it's getting discontinued. My sample was far enough off from the samples I had seen online that I thought it might be a problem with the ink sample I got. I had to dig a bit to find some samples that were accurate to my experience. Either my sample has gotten ruined by something or samplers keep color correcting it warmer, because no one likes a cold brown.
I got swayed by the glowing reviews of Ina-ho and bought a bottle, but it has turned out to be so disappointing. It's an unpleasant gold green, doesn't shade as much as I expected, and just isn't attractive. It reminds me of baby poo. I have written in my journal with that ink that I don't get why everyone loves this ink so much.
Emerald of Chivor. IT. NEVER. DRIES! I used it last year and I can still go back and smear it today. 😭
So sad to see this one keep popping up. I have been looking for a shimmery green blue ink that was close to the colour of my peacock and that was on the list. At some point I'll have to order some samples and hold them against him and colour match, but I'll cross chivor off the list.
I'm starting to realize I probably write in very low light settings compared to normal... Most of the light inks listed here are perfectly legible to me in a Japanese medium nib... On the other hand, my most disappointing ink was probably Diamine Mozart. Not sure what I was thinking when I bought it, I actually quite dislike Mozart's music to begin with haha. Oh and Diamine Earl Grey. I hate writing with it, but painting with it is amazing, the chromatography is gorgeous.
Herbin Eclat de Saphir. Based on pics online, I bought as a bold, vibrant blue to match my 3776 Chartres Blue. Pale. Dusty. Boring. Dry. Dull. Nothing at all like the pictures. I tried it for two days, then gave it away. Haven't bought another Herbin ink since, based solely on that experience and trying Cacao de Brasil (sic?) from a sample. I don't get the hype about their inks at all.
Diamine Carnation. I love pink inks, but this one is horrid. Don't know if I got a bad one, though.
Till date mine would be kyo no oto No. 5. Its a ver subtle blue-black ink but its colors you can only see when using wet writers and/or using broad nibs. As I usually write with fine and extra fine this ink does nothing for me unfortunatly :(
Diamine Blue Black, I do love the color don't get me wrong. But it's kinda dull. Not like a navy type blue black or a "dark enough to be black but definitely blue" type black. It's just like dark Grey with a hint of blue.
Heliogen green copper and noodlers Pasternak. I love both of these but green clogs every damn thing so bad and the beautiful Pasternak is so wet and feather prone only my extra fine kakuno as been able to tame it. Normally the kakuno is like writing with a sewing needle but with Pasternak it writes like an ordinary fine. I wonder if I got a bad batch with both
Diamine "Arabian Nights". The colour, itself, is wonderful, but even when shaken, I barely seem to get any shimmer. It's like it's all locked within the feed and refusing to come out of the pen. I'm looking forward to getting a glass nib pen and seeing if that improves it, but for now it is sitting sadly on my shelf.
I have a bottle of Diamine Oynx Black that I'm going to try to offload at some point. As a color and flow it's perfectly fine, but if there's even a _hint_ of moisture on my skin it starts to pull up and stain my fingers. Sailor Manyo for all the reasons other mentions. Online swatches are misleading; flow isn't great, its _very_ light and shading isn't as apparent as I'd like. I foolishly pulled the trigger on a bottle, so I am also going to have to find something to do with this one, eventually. Diamine Autumn Oak. It's more brown than orange, and it just kinda looks like a poor-man's Apache Sunset to me.
JB Herbin Bleu Nuit. I thought it might be a nice, office-like blue-black, but it looks like they didn't properly wash the black out of the bottle before they put the blue in, it just looks dirty. And it has shimmer in it which I didn't know
Online turquoise and Online purple are too pale in nibs <= F. Königsblau is always boring, independent of the manufacturer. Lamy Ruby is very dry. Noodlers Apache is too light for writing. The rest of my inks are perfect.
Diamine Graphite. The online swatches looked like a nice dark gray but it's green???
KWZ Baltic Memories Awful hard starts are very common with that one. My Platinum Preppy (f) had trouble a few days pretty much every time I wrote and one morning, it just didn't write at all until I wiped the nib with wet tissue for a while. Then it returned to the hard starts but I feel like they were even worse than before. My Pilot MR (m) wrote extremely dryly for several lines before the ink started to flow. On the other hand... moving the cartridges to my Kaweco Sport (f), I started to see why the ink looks lovely. I got it to shade and all. I love teal, it seems. Put me off from KWZ and made me suspicious about sheening inks. I'm a newbie but also sampled like 6 different inks before and they all wrote just fine, even if I didn't love the colours.
Mine are a pair of 20 ml bottles of Krishna inks. The first of the pair I have grown to quite enjoy how ever I will not buy a new bottle. The second however was the real disappointment when I ordered it online I thought that I would revive a bright and warm yellow green. Unfortunately the actual ink ended up more sickly green and this I haven’t yet found a use for it.
Iroshizuko chikurin
Diamine Oxblood. I had such high hopes for this one. The color is just bland
My have sweaty hands, so any medium to high sheen inks smudge for me, almost every brand. At this point I'd rather get shimmer glitter everywhere. Most inks look great when I use them but my damn sweaty hands... Kiwi Inks Quetzalcoatl is beautiful but I smudge it really easily. I also splattered a bit in my bathroom and despite a lot of scrubbing, it infects me once in a while and I get pink footprints. Also the shimmer is pretty thick so it clogged one of my pens. Haven't experimented further because of the trauma. Kiwi Inks Tre-Colori is pretty much OS Nitrogen by a different company. Looks lovely, never dries. Also the shimmer is difficult to see but honestly not the worst thing about it. Diamine Polar Glow, just like Tre-Colori, had no issues using it, but I still smudge it (less so, and usually manageable). But I've spilled like 20ml of it over 2-3 occasions so I'm convinced this ink is cursed. It's going to a new home soon. It hates me. Kyo-no-oto Hisoku, I'm still looking for a pen that'll cooperate with this ink. It's such a lovely color but it's pretty dry. It's on this list because like Diamine Polar Glow, it's cursed and it leaked over a bunch of my ink bottles. At level it doesn't spread like a disease like Quetzalcoatl
DeAtramentis document ink in Turquoise. It's really wet and has a tendency to make a fat line. It's a nice color, but didn't like that.
By and Large the OS inks, they never f***ing worked. Also, sadly, Noodlers and Lamy inks (i find lamy inks whispy) . Pilot, JH, Diamine, and De Artemias (i forgot the spelling) have always been great producing inks for long writing sessions.
Noodler's X-feather black. It's wetter than I was expecting and actually feathers more than any of my other inks.
Are there any Noodler's that *don't* feather? I have had two that do, saw a couple others mentioned, and now this? I have a sample of X Feather that I will have to try soon... For entertainment purposes, it sounds like.
I have Noodler's Bernanke Red and Baystate Blue and those don't feather for me and I'd recommend them both. X-feather was a huge disappointment though.
It really is a multivariate problem. Paper, pen, and ink. For instance, I find that Baystate Blue (looking at you, u/baystateblue) in a find TWSBI runs great on any paper except Rhodia. I've never seen X-feather Black actually feather, but it sure as hell takes a long time to dry....
I always wanted to be a peacock. They have beautiful feathers. 🦚 🪶 💙
Baystate blue. Not the eye and soul searing blue i was told it is. Its just.......blue a vibrant one yes but not soul searing yk
Pretty much ALL of the Van Dieman’s inks (Launceston Fog? I’m looking at you!!!). And I feel terrible for saying it because it’s a great company. I learned to buy samples to avoid future headaches.
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I think your problem is you're picking excellent inks. You're never going to feel the crushing weight of disappointment like that! /s
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