Private Reserve Dakota Red

[jlh8114]

I received this bottle of PR Dakota Red today in a trade from Aslan. I see Christmas card possibilities and mixing potential in this ink. Below are scans taken at 100 ppi with minimal white point calibration, and using sRGB IEC61966-2.1 working color space in the scanner and in Adobe Photoshop.

 

Edited to add: An additional use of this lovely red ink will be to write checks to the KY Revenue -since it looks so much like blood.

 

Handwritten review:

 

Permanency:

 

Swabs:

Edited March 6, 2008 by jlh8114

[Goodwhiskers]

Nice color! I'm not insinuating anything about Kentucky Revenue (in the event forgery were to be attempted on your check, I presume it would more likely happen elsewhere on its journey), but check forgers don't use mere water. If you have one of Noodler's black colors, a little of that mixed with PR Dakota Red would make it look even more like dried blood and leave a forgery-resistant trace. Mixing might void Noodler's test reward, but I doubt a forger would spend enough effort to make the trace go away.

[Ondina]

Nice color and wonderful review!. Thanks.

[Aslan]

Jyll

 

It looks so much better in your handwriting I think we should undo the trade! NOT!

 

Very nice review. I have explained to all my other inks that the Dakota Red has gone on to a better place....

 

 

John

[rogerb]

It might be interesting to compare it with Diamine Claret, to which it looks, on my screen, very similar:

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v693/rogerb40uk/DiamineClaret.jpg

 

I think that, if my nib had been finer, the sample smaller (and my writing better!), they would've been very similar!

 

The written bit especially...the Claret swabs appear a little more 'blue-ish'.

Edited April 18, 2008 by rogerb

[JSorrell]

I feel I should note I've had a problem with Dakota Red that keeps it out of my regular rotation. I love the Platinum Preppy pens that come with Noodler's 4.5 ounce ink bottles sometimes, and use them all the time for class notes. I filled one with Dakota Red a few weeks ago and noticed maybe a week later that the underside of the nib was covered in gunk. The ink dried out and left behind a solid mass that was sticky and unsightly. No other ink has done that yet.

 

I absolutely love the color though. It's a great ink.

[James P]

Not to disparage any particular ink maker or color, but because of a number of problems both I and my customers have experienced, the Pear Tree Pen Company no longer sells Dakota Red. Again, this is not a reflection on the many fine inks made by Private Reserve.

[RedRob]

Dakota Red is a wonderfully bright cardinal red color, if a bit orangey. In my experience it looks a lot like the Cross Apogee scan. I like this ink a lot indeed and have used it for a few months in a MB Virginia Woolf. Ufortunately it does leave quite a lot of residue when drying and has made this otherwise fairly wet pen skip quite a lot. I've tried rinsing, cleaning, soaping, but to no avail. It still skips. I have now switched to Sheaffer (slovenian) Red which is a very close match (if a bit more bloody and less orangey). I've had no problems with the Sheaffer Red. I thought the PR Dakota red did not match the Woolf, but after seeing James's message, I think I'll reconsider before giving it another try in a different pen.

[JDlugosz]

Not to disparage any particular ink maker or color, but because of a number of problems both I and my customers have experienced, the Pear Tree Pen Company no longer sells Dakota Red. Again, this is not a reflection on the many fine inks made by Private Reserve.

What kind of problems? As a newcomer, one of my original purchases was Dakota Red. I loaded it into a $1 Hero student pen to try every color.

[James P]

Dakota Red had several issues which led me to discontinue carrying it for sale. The first issue was a tendency for granules or other inky residue to be deposited on the nib and feed surfaces. While I never left it around long enough for there to be any clogging, I would expect that, unchecked, clogging would be the inevitable result. Other customers reported similar issues with it. Dakota Red also had a tendency to develop SITB, or some crusty layer would separate out and float at the top of the bottle. When I brought it to the attention of Private Reserve, they told me they had a bad batch and replaced it with a supposedly fresher supply. Two weeks later and I had the same problem. Two weeks after that, all bottles of Dakota Red were taken from my shelves.

 

Again, I'm not slamming Private Reserve. I generally love their products. But I like to sell products in which I have confidence and I no longer have it in Dakota Red.

 

James

[Usui]

I'm going to have to add another gunk complaint to this ink. Just inked my new safari F today with this ink, and I get a nice red booger down the slit, and junk underneath the nib. Writes well enough, but I don't know how this gunk will do. More to come, I'm sure.

[lovemy51]

thanx for the review, jlh8114

 

i like the way it looks against the gold fiber yellow paper!!

[Inkapable]

.... Just inked my new safari F today with this ink, and I get a nice red booger down the slit, and junk underneath the nib...

I think a thorough flushing would help.

 

Would others comment on using a solution of distilled water with Tryphon's InkSafe or SterilInk (2 oz. water and 1 or 2 drops of either product) for a final flush?

[slowhand]

For what it is worth..I thought the 'gunk' was just me! I loaded Dakota red into my P51..which I knew could be a challenge, but it's pretty bad with this ink. Won't use it either. Steve

[Randal6393]

Odd. I have been using Dakota Red for the last six months and have not seen any of the problems you are talking about.

 

Hopefully, it is related to one batch of the ink and will go away soon. But, if I had had the same problems, I wouldn't be using the ink either.

 

C'est la vie,

 

[publius]

I purchased some of this in cartridges, to fit a couple of pens which were just too small for any converter I could get (except the Monteverde, of which I had several fail). Waterman's red, which is what I wanted, is not sold in cartridges, but the colour of the Dakota Red looked good.

I was not disappointed ; the colour I found excellent, & the writing properties completely acceptable. It is, however, absurdly tenacious. When cleaning a pen which had been filled with Waterman's Florida Blue most recently, I soaked the works in water, then laid them on tissue to dry, & repeated the process until the coloured spot left by the remnant water mostly disappeared. After the first soak, the spot was mostly red rather than blue, & I ended up repeating the process several times. This functioned, by the way, as a sort of amateur chromatography experiment : the Florida Blue formed a halo around the Dakota Red, showing that the latter is far less mobile, which agrees with the way it hung around.

[Peter from Sherwood Park]

Thank you for this -- this seems like an honest-to-goodness red. I have to try it.

[Cerbeos]

Just picked up a bottle of this ink today, and wow! Being Private Reserve I was expecting it to be wayyyy to wet for my Prelude (Sherwood Green just gushes out of it!), but I put some in it and its perfect!!!

 

For a personal comparison to anyone out there with a Pilot Precise Ballpoint V5 or V7 pen...It looks almost identical to the ink that comes out of mine. Very nice color and great to write with. Thumbs up to PR and great review!