I bought 2 boxes of Levenger ink and it finally arrived earlier this week. I bought a box of the standard colors and another box with the wild colors.

I only tried 2 colors so far. I inked up my yellow VP with Colbalt Blue and I inked up my Ancora with Raven Black.

The Colbalt Blue was almost a PR Tanzanite color. Deep, saturated colors with lots of lubercation.

I Tried the Raven Black in my Ancora Perla with a Broad nib. I was shocked by how well this ink wrote. This is pitch black ink with lubercating qualities that rival Aurora Black and Parker Quink Black. This is one heck of a great ink. If will do a further review and post it when I have time. I am anxious to try out the other inks!! I just cannot believe that I waited this long to thry them out!!!

If anyone else has experience with Levenger ink, I would like to hear it!!!

TNS

I bought a bottle of Levenger's Raven Black, but never opened it. I'm glad to hear it is a good ink though when I do open it. By the way, once I discovered Noodler's Black my other blacks hardly ever get used. I enjoy the reviews of Private Reserve and Noodler's inks immensely, but it is equally wonderful to see reviews of the other brands.

TNS - how are the drying times on those inks relative to Waterman Florida Blue, Blue-Black, or some of the Noodlers inks? I had been quite interested in them but, IIRC, heard that they are slow to dry (problematic for me as a leftie).

Hi,

From my experience they bleed and dry in a split second.

Dillon

I bought a bottle of the Levenger Cocoa about a week ago, and I'm really happy with everything about it. I'd heard that Levenger inks can be on the dry side, but I can't see any sign of that at all. The colour itself is very rich, very chocolate-like. In fact, it's not unlike Waterman Havana in some respects. And, on a more trivial level (but I'm sure that I'm not the only one to care about such things), the bottle and the box look good. I now wish that I'd bought a few of the other colours while I was in the US, as you can't, as far as I know, get Levenger products in the UK.
Neil

I have the classic six pack and a few of the wild colors. The cobalt and cardinal are two of my favorite inks(after Penman Sapphire). Haven't noticed any problems with drying times or feathering on the paper I use.

Larry

I've always liked Raven Black, Amethyst, Cobalt Blue, and Cocoa for their standard colors. Out of their "Slightly Wild" line, I prefer Pinkly and the turquoise "Bahama Blue."

I have been using the inks with broad nibs and the flow is fantastic, as far as bleeding, I have not really nocticed but the drying times are very quick. The Raven Black is almost an instant dry while the Colbalt Blue drying time is faster than usual. I am really enjoying these inks!!!

So how much ink is in each bottle???

I am pretty sure it is the standard 2 OZ bottles.

The box says 50ml, and the ink is $8 per bottle. I'm not sure if 50ml equals 2oz (or, for that matter, why an American ink is marked in metric!)
Neil

Hi,

Since I run by the metric system, it is useful for me. 2 OZ in ink means 50 ML 57.5 ML, and 6.25 ML.

Dillon

Hi,

They round off too much, but that is what they say.

Dillon

I'm a big fan of Cobalt and Cocoa though I am out of both and am making do with other inks (PR Black Magic Blue is very close to Cobalt - at least in a fine line.) Cocoa was a bit too fast for me. yup, it dries quickly, but on cheaper papers it would feather badly. What got was that on Levenger notecards it feathers a lot, while none of my other inks do. But they may have tweaked the formula in the last 3 or 4 years. It's been a while since I bought any of these. Amethyst is a perfectly presentable purple and Cardinal is one of the few reds out there I'd call a "true" red. I wasn't too fond of Raven, but I think my bottle got contaminated with an organic chemical (long story) and this mucked it up. So i had to toss it.

The Cobalt has, in the past, had a reputation for not drying. The only time I had problems with this was if I had let the pen sit with the ink in it for many days. This meant a good bit of condensing of the ink in the nib and feed which meant more dye being laid on the paper and therefore smearing and long drying time. It will smudge on your basic Office Depot security envelope.

overall, i like their inks. no interest in the lighter colors though I hear good things about Pinkly.

Maybe because the US are an official member of the metric community for a long time (19th century), they just never enforced the national use of the metric system.

Since 1893 , all the regular U.S. weights (pounds etc.) and measures (inches etc.) are defined by their lengtht or weight in meters or kilograms,

http://ts.nist.gov/ts/htdocs/200/202/lc1136a.htm

So you can't escape it

Ah, I see! Thanks for the explanation. Mind you, I'm in no position to point out inconsistencies, as I live in a country where food and drink packaging is all in metric, but the road signs are still in miles (even though petrol is priced by the litre)!
Neil

You're welcome. I believe, most Americans are not aware of that, either.
For the UK: you should't try to measure distance with candy-bars, obviously

Greetings from the fully-metric continental Europe ...

My only experience with Levenger's is the bottle of Blue Bahama that came with my True Writer. It left a residue on the feed that looked gunky, so I dumped it. Bottle's nice, though. I kept that.

As far as I know, Levenger ink is available only directly from Levenger, in Florida, USA. The Levenger people do fulfill international orders (outside the 50 U.S. states and Puerto Rico), but not through their webstore, and they need to get those customers' approval for shipping and customs duty fees before filling those orders. I have always gotten excellent service and support from Levenger (I'm in the U.S.) by snail-mail, e-mail, telephone and their webstore.

I apologize to anyone who would like a photograph or scan of what I say below. I haven't started using that technology yet.

Among Levenger inks, I've used Cobalt Blue, Cocoa (brown), Raven Black, Gemstone Green and Fireball (orange-red). They all produce beautiful, intense, high-contrast colors, even after they dry. Raven is truly opaque, too. They all write smoothly, especially Cobalt and Raven. Cobalt's only fault is that it dry-smears, even after many months. Raven becomes smear-resistant after a day. The other three are smear-resistant immediately upon drying. Cobalt has stained one of my Lamy Safari converters.

I've run water over paper marked with the Levenger inks I've used, and caused an accidental spill of water across an entire page written in weeks-dry Raven. All five of them spread into the paper. Raven, Cocoa and Gemstone preserved enough of the original marks to remain legible (but probably not enough for the United States Postal Service). Marks in Cobalt and Fireball disappeared completely into their stains.

I haven't yet tried Pendemonium's advice about rubbing uncolored candle wax over a snail-mail address to protect it from water, but that does sound effective.