Noodler's Chekhov

[Melnicki]

So here is just a three-pen minireview. I have more in the works with this ink. The color is awesome but not as expected. It is undeniably reddish-orange (nice shading! esp for a bulletproof ink!) but it is not the mustard yellow nor peach I anticipated. What's suprising about this ink is that it looks TOTALLY different under sunlight. under incandescent or fluorescent light, it looks like i'm showing it here, but under sunlight it looks yellow (indeed!) but the samples i have seen with my own eyes from Phthalo are peach (she has posted them somewhere here in the deep recesses of FPN, although i actually saw a paper copy in a letter from her)... I saw Deirdre's paper copy in person, but there were windows in the room we used, so that may be responsible for the non-orange yellow color I saw. Actually, Deirdre's paper copy looked exactly like her famous scans... Deirdre, have you had any experience with this (looking reddish?) I know Deirdre takes pictures for her "scans" so perhaps there was natural lighting around?

 

anyway, color-inconsistency (or just mystery?) aside, the operability is poor. when it feathers, blech... when it doesn't feather it looks awesome (a good half the time), but in those cases, it always takes forever to dry. and it dries on the nib sometimes, maybe somewhere between 4-10 hours of disuse? In some pens, this happens slightly even after 30 min of disuse (my big Stipula XF nib!)

 

I'll still use this ink, but it was a let-down. but like the other russian series i've tried (rachm, tolstoy), it is very very unique.

 

http://lh5.ggpht.com/mmelnicki/SMRzu9t91TI/AAAAAAAAAZE/yngOurfaGI8/s800/080907%20chekhov.jpg

From Fountain Pen Ink

Edited September 8, 2008 by Melnicki

[jandrese]

Many of the foreign Noodlers' inks are let-downs. Severe drying on the nibs and in the sections in addition to feathering, ink component separation, and outright clogging of pens. I'm on my second (replacement) bottle of Chekhov. It has loose particles and so severely clogged my specially modified Parker Sonnet, which is normally a wet writer, that I had to disassemble it and sonicate the feed to clean it up. The orangeish inks (The Sun Never Sets, Empire Red, etc.) seem to suffer the most from this although El Lawrence also has similar problems but to a lesser extent. Dostoevsky is just disappointingly thin in color. Nathan must hate foreigners because few, if any, domestic production inks suffer these problems.

[Iridium]

Nathan must hate foreigners because few, if any, domestic production inks suffer these problems.

 

Perhaps he used the easiest-to-formulate cellulose-reactive dyes first, and therefore achieved more broadly satisfactory results in the domestic bulletproof inks.

[Melnicki]

it is surprising, when you consider that the swisher's eternal series (and LL and II/VV) have been largely trouble-free. (eternal brown is a bit dry and the particles separate out easily)....

[bossy]

a nice orange color.

[Melnicki]

I had given up on this interesting color of ink, but then I managed to remember that my Kaweco Ink Ball pens start up right away after YEARS of disuse. It must be something about the ball preventing air flow and thus evaporation. Wouldn't it be great to use with those inks that dry up on the nib (and in the feed) too quickly?

 

The answer is: yes it is!!! Chekhov works flawlessly in my Kaweco Ink Ball. No problems AT ALL. in fact, the line from a Kaweco Ink Ball is quite thin, so the spreading on some papers isn't really an issue. Hooray!

 

Now I can't wait to see if Rachmaninov is useable. If it is, I'll be buying myself a bottle! (Rachmaninov has been SO difficult to wash out of pens due to clogging within the feed... argh...)

Edited December 6, 2008 by Melnicki

[Deirdre]

It's a ketchup-and-mustard ink -- it looks exactly like you mixed them together, except sometimes it looks more like ketchup, and sometimes it looks more like mustard.

[Melnicki]

It's a ketchup-and-mustard ink -- it looks exactly like you mixed them together, except sometimes it looks more like ketchup, and sometimes it looks more like mustard.

 

oh my goodness, that's hysterical! :roflmho:

 

(and i'd have to agree, too)

 

i used to mix the ketchup and mustard, as a kid, when my parents would take me to Roy Rogers fast food chain, where they had all the condiments at a do-it-youself station, and i'd make mixes of all different combinations to dip my french fries in. Maybe that was a prelude to me becoming a scientist, and/or mixing FP inks?!

 

But anyway, yes, I've mixed the ketchup and mustard, and yes, Chekhov looks like that!