I was moved to create my first FPN ink review. The story's in the attached image, but to make a long story short, I found a couple of bottles of old Parker Super Chrome blue-black ink in an antique store in my home town.

According to Wikipedia, this ink was first sold in 1947 and ran until 1964. If anyone knows how old mine may be, please let me know. It's a great ink, and I'm happy that it survived so well. I'm looking forward to using it in my "51s" and "21" deskset!

I forgot to mention a couple of things in my written review. The Super Chrome dried pretty quickly on my FPN notepaper, Lamy branded pad, and my cheap multipurpose copy paper. Compared to the other pens I had inked up, drying time was about on par with my Visconti Pericle with PR Black Cherry, and it dried much quicker than my Namiki Falcon with PR American Blue and my Filcao Columbia with my homemade mix of PR American Blue/Delta Orange. In addition, no feathering of the Super Chrome was evident, and the ink had good shading. There was almost no bleeding through to the other side.

Here's a couple of scans, along with some photos of the ink and box, along with one showing the empty Quink bottle I also picked up. I played with the scan's colors to get them to match, but of course it was on my monitor. Mostly they looked too purplish and saturated, so I turned down the hue and saturation, and increased lightness a tad. The camera's pictures looked accurate.

Brian

Thanks for the review, the scans, and pics! I'm a fan of blue-blacks and this one looks just great.

Doug

The ink looks great! Just a word of caution, though, the ink was discontinued because it is corrosive.

Great review, but beware, I read somewhere that the ink is caustic (poisonous) and, ironically, can clog pens...

Superchrome contains isopropyl alcohol -- it will damage any pen with celluoid exposed to the ink, and any other pen material that is damaged by alcohol.

It's also corrosive -- I've gotten several Parker 21s with nibs corroded through.

Short term use will not be a problem if you rinse the pen well after using, I suspect, but don't leave it to dry up in anything!

Lovely color, too.

Peter

Thanks for the tips on the corrosive qualities, everyone. I'll keep an eye on it, and will pass on using it in either of my "51"s. I don't normally allow pens to dry out, and my Jotters seal pretty well, so they should be ok. I love this place!

I edited my original post to include some more information that I'd left out.

Brian

I think 51s are actually the best pens to use the ink in, if I'm not mistaken. The 51 was actually at least partly designed for use with the ink.

Hmm, you have a big heart to use Super Chrome in a Filcao Columbia

That ink was discontinued for a reason ... it eats pens!!

Edit: Very nice review, btw, but be careful with the ink.

Oh, I didn't mean I was going to use it in the Columbia....I was just using that pen and the ink it's filled with as a comparison for drying times.

Many thanks for "taking the risk" and doing this review. I am always very keen to see reviews of vintage inks. If you have any other (safer!) vintage inks, it would be really interesting to see reviews of them.

I have a nearly-full bottle of this ink that I got on eBay with a mix of other bottles. I don't use it because of its danger to the pens, but then again, a cheap Hero 329 or a refilled Pilot Varsity might be worth sacrificing - it looks that good in your scanned images!

Thanks for the review!

I just emptied it out of the Parker Jotter, and I really enjoyed using it. VERY easy flowing and vibrant color. As I mentioned earlier, I'll definitely continue using it in my cheaper pens.

You're welcome!

Absolutely not. A large part of the reason for the discontinuance of Superchrome was that Parker got tired of replacing corroded-through sterling silver breather tubes under warranty in Aero-metric "51"s. (The silver was finally replaced by plastic in the early 1960s).

Superchrome has a pH of about 12 -- highly alkaline. It's quite corrosive enough to eat any steel nib or any cellulose-based resin (celluloid, cellulose acetate, Omas Vegetal Resin). It will corrode plated metal parts of all descriptions. It is nasty, nasty stuff and should never go into a pen you care about.


Nope. The "51" pen was designed to make the sale of "51" ink possible. "51" ink was even more corrosive than Superchrome (hence the acrylic pen body), and it dried so fast that Parker had to invent the collector/hooded nib to keep it from drying out in an open-nib pen while the pen was in use. It wasn't at all kind to the Vacumatic diaphragm in the "51", but the public had made its demand for drying speed known. Parker discontinued "51" ink and switched to Superchrome in 1948. Quink, of course, was the Energizer Bunny that kept going all through Parker's era of evil inks and still keeps going.

What a pity cos the colour is what I've been looking for in blue black!! Any other blue black that looks close to this one?

Thanks for setting me straight and contributing to the thread, Richard. Like many here, I only know just enough to be dangerous.

The perfect shade of blue black pity it's pretty corrosive stuff.

Maybe you could use it with some cheap craft store dip pens?

Or buy a batch of Hero 329's from Speerbob. At $4 a pop, who cares if they only last half a dozen refills.

What modern ink, if any, approximates this ink in color and intensity?

Off the shelf? Nothing I know of.

However, if you want to play Mad Scientist, 2 parts Noodler's Air-Corp Blue Black to 3 parts Noodler's Le Coleaur Royale gets you into the ballpark and subtle adjustments will bring you the rest of the way.

But I will warn you that that mixing these two inks produces an incredibly saturated Midnight Blue ink with little to no shading. It is, however, "bb proof" and will never completely wash out of paper.

Hi Peter,

My experience seems to back you up. I've started using Super Chrome ink in a very beat-up Parker 51, largely held together with acetone. When I restored the pen I was picking out crystallized ink from between the fins on the collector with a razor. The result, I am assuming, of the previous owner letting it dry out.

So far no problems, but I do use it every day and rinse very well between fillings.

The ink is almost as nice as the iron gall ink's I use in my Pelikan M200 (no issues in over a year, but following the same methods above).

Kris

Geez! I have the exact same bottle of Super Chrome. I almost thought about putting it in an Estie! Thank God I read this thread first! What should I do with the bottle? I have tested it with my Dip Pens and it writes beautifully. It appears more of a dark purple than a blue-black.