I've been having a blast taking notes with this new ink. I've found it to be smooth flowing and lubricating, with an average drying time. The best quality to me though is the gorgeous color -- it's nice and contrasty, showing wonderful variation of color when shading.

To my eye the color is not that far away from Noodlers Swishmix burgundy, and I would place red-black in the burgundy family. I admit that I find the red-black more interesting in every way. It does take longer to dry than the Swishmix ink, and that's a plus in my book since it allows an italic nib to be used to greater effect, with more contrast between thin and thick strokes. It also means less feathering, particularly on cheaper paper.

This ink has been classified as "near-bulletproof". The "10 seconds" and "20 seconds" are smear tests.






And a close-up:



The pen used was a Conway Stewart 58 with a 0.7 mm oblique stub nib.

Stephen

After many months of being out of ink rotation, I'm again enjoying this ink. Maybe it's a winter ink or maybe I bought too many inks last year.

Thanks for the review.

Red-Black is one of my favorites.

Always good to see a new perspective. Thanks!

Thanks for posting this review! I've been trying to decide which colours to get. I thought about this one, but in other online samples it looked too dark, so I had decided on the burgundy. Seeing your sample, I think I would like this better. It's such an interesting colour, and I love the lighter and darker shading. You've won me over with your mini-review.

Wait 'til you see what it does in a broad nib.

I wonder if somebody could show /tell us what this ink does with thinner nibs - does the nice two-color effect still show up?

Thanks,

Erick

It's a very spooky unpredictable ink. The result depends on the paper and on how wet the pen is. Drier pens produce a "boring" constant sort of color. Wet pens give the tricky results. Using a wet pen, with some papers you get a shading effect and with others you get black with red fringing. Your results will vary--and that seems to be the whole idea. I love this ink.

Be sure to shake before loading the pen. Sitting on the shelf, the ink will separate with the red dye coming to the top. Once in the pen it seems to stay mixed well enough.

I think I'm going to love this ink.

Thanks for your review. After reading it I picked up a bottle of red-black and it has instantly become one of my favorites. It performs great in my Pelikan M1000. The wet writing nib in this pen produces some interesting variations. Thanks again.

GD~

Wow, that looks great. I thought the ink would either be burgundy or brown, but it's kind of like a Black Cherry. Very cool.

Black Cherry would be a very good alternate name for it (when the ink is in the mood). I call it Martian Blood.

My only complaint about it is that on certain papers the drying time is FOREVER. (like several minutes).

It's also my understanding that it's fully bulletproof, but I haven't done tests on it. (yet).

No. The red washes away (quite easily) but the black is bulletproof.

Well that saves me from running tests.

Well, I'll probably run a cursory test anyway to see how dark the black is. I would imagine it stays pretty dark.

I got a bottle of this ink from a fellow FPN'er who disliked it. I liked it about as much as he did. I promptly (within days, I think) traded it to yet another FPN'er for a bottle of Lex Gray. The other day I was looking at old journal entries. Either the Red-Black mellowed with age, or I've matured in the last few months. I now find those old Red-Black entries GORGEOUS!

I may have to buy another bottle, unless that label-less de facto FPN passaround bottle is again looking for a home!

~~King

A belated thank you for this review. I'm definitely looking to get a bottle myself!

Red Black was the first Noodlers ink that I bought and is still one of my all time favorites.....

If you think it does great things in a broad nib... you should try it in a .7mm stub.... great toning ...

Yep Red-Black is an awesome ink, definitively one of my favorite ink! I just wish it would dry faster...

Also I'm still debating whether I'll risk using it my first celluloid pen (when I receive it!).

Great looking Ink. This was on my list to pick up . I know that to get my hands on this ink.

Thank you for the great review!

Classic

I really like this ink. It plays nicely with Moleskine paper and has a sort of cool "vintage" look when dry.

Nice colour and review. Yet another ink to buy.

Ronin

Wow, I love that!

Nice review: and a very cool ink. Thanks.

Really nice! I've wondered about buying inks that exhibit some type of shading. This may be my first.

Red-Black was my first Noodler's also, but I've always thought it just looked brown, which is definitely not what I wanted. Maybe I need to shake it up, as someone suggested earlier. I mostly use it in my Lamy AL-Star (M nib) which writes fairly wet.

Well I've had this for a couple of weeks now and have reserved it to my broad nibbed Imperial where it gives me results quite like Stephen-I-am's. It's a very pleasant ink - I couldn't use it all the time, but for occasional use it really is a nice variety.

This ink/color seems amazing! I would love to have it.. Thank you for the review

nice color, but... 10 secs and smears!... does it ever dry?

Yup, it dries! I'm in Melbourne, which has typically 45-55% humidity and Red-Black dries in seconds. It looks lovely, but the intensity of colour and shading depend very heavily on the flow characteristics of the pen involved. Al in all, an excellent ink!

I finally got it and love it!!

Thank you for the great review, this is the one that convinced me to get it. The scans looked so amazing I just had to have it.. the other reviews had so much negative remarks on it I wonder which ones of them I might come to notice eventually but so far this ink is perfect