Mixing Noodler's Inks

[Taiin]

So I have a bottle of Noodler's Bad Blue Heron and a bottle of Noodler's Fox. I'd love to mix the two inks and see if it forms a nice purple. But how do you go about mixing an ink while taking care to not contaminate the bottle? Use two different syringes to draw up the ink?

 

What proportion of the two would you try first? 1:1, to make things easy?

[bardiir]

Use two different syringes, mix in a separate container outside of a pen, let it sit for a few hours at least and watch if anything happens with the ink.

[Taiin]

What should I be looking for with the ink, after it is mixed in the separate container? Separation?

[Ted A]

What should I be looking for with the ink, after it is mixed in the separate container? Separation?

 

Anything that is not placid, still and calm or otherwise makes you nervous.

 

Bubbles, foaming, lumps forming, eating through the bottom of the container, explosions.

 

If it looks like something you don't want to put in your pen, don't put it in. Separation might or might not be a problem. With highly saturated inks there is often settling, separation if the ink sits for a while. Though that might be more inconvenience than you would want to do in this case. Depends on how well you like the result.

[Taiin]

Well, no separation or reactions after a period of time. But it isn't exactly a fetching ink combination! Oh well, I didn't use much ink at all, and it was quite fun regardless!

 

It is almost more of a brown-purple.

[lectraplayer]

I think you can mix anything with anything so long as you use seperate implements (like syringes and bottles) and you let it sit for awhile (from an hour to overnight) to observe for changes. I also wouldn't try it in my best pen right off either. You have to watch some inks, though. Noodler's Baystate inks are famous for this.

[inkstainedruth]

I think you can mix anything with anything so long as you use seperate implements (like syringes and bottles) and you let it sit for awhile (from an hour to overnight) to observe for changes. I also wouldn't try it in my best pen right off either. You have to watch some inks, though. Noodler's Baystate inks are famous for this.

Right. The Baystate inks should not be mixed with anything but each other. Someone tried mixing Noodler's Black with BSB and posted the results. They weren't pretty.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth