Hey GW.

I'm curious - when did you by your Cobalt? I've never had any problems with it unless it sat in the pen unused. Then the ink would be rather saturated and smear if i didn't allow it to dry fully. But I've never encountered the problems others have. Perhaps it's the paper I use?

I've found Cocoa to be feathery on lots of papers (not, as you know, on the FPN pads) and when I ran out never reordered. But it's a very nice, saturated brown.

Raven was deliciously black. And very balky. I bought my bottles... oh so long ago that I can't remember. 3 years? 5? I eventually tossed the Raven. Aurora is just so much better behaved and just as black and silky. I have not replaced my Cobalt just because I decided to try PR Black magic Blue instead. yeah, yeah, someday there'll be a review and comparison here.

Someone was under the impression (TRex, I miss you dude) that they changed manufacturing location but not recipes. But he got conflicting reports from different CSR's at Levenger. So I was wondering if the newer bottles of Cobalt were more finicky.

I bought my bottle of Levenger Cobalt Blue a couple of years ago. I always kept the bottle tightly capped, and whichever pen it was in capped when not actually marking on paper. I guess I just got a super-saturated batch. I suppose I could have diluted it with water . I'm glad I never put it in my Pelikan demonstrator!

The LCB from my bottle needed a medium to wet pen, maybe because of the saturation; the Sheaffer Javelin (the section of which I destroyed trying to clean LCB out :ph34r: ) would flow, then stop, then flow after I shook it, then stop, and repeat. Furthermore, my medium to wet pens laid down generous lines of the saturated LCB, which remained smudgy after drying.

If anyone is having a good experience with Levenger Cobalt Blue, I'd like to hear about it (which pen, which kinds of paper, etc.). It is a gorgeous color . Have you diluted it with water?

Hi Steve - i'm going to split this discussion for us then add more to this post...

of course, since I didn't have any problems, i never diluted it. It did get balky as I got to the dregs, but that's not unusual since it took me a long time to go through a bottle. Not for lack of using it but because I have TOO MUCH INK!!!

Anyway - 95% of the bottle was fine. I used mostly Levenger notepads, Crane silk laid for correspondence, or Royal Silk natural for longer letters. As i noted, the only time I had problems was when the pen sat unused (capped of course) for too long. "Priming" the nib usually fixed that. Or just refilling the pen. I used it in hm... what pen? Had it in a pelikan M400 for a long time, then my Namiki VP F and I always felt like that was *the* ink for that pen. It writes a quite dense but fine line so the cobalt was almost black in that nib. No smearing then either (given some drying time.) I also use HP Premium 32lb paper and of course, Jimmy Tom's notepads. I am sure I had it in other pens but can't recall which ones right now.

I did a smear test once in response to the gripes about this ink. I compared it to several other inks with drying times of 5, 15 and 30 seconds. It faired as well as any of the other brands with the exception of WM violet (old stock) which actually smeared worse than any other ink I had. I did these tests on 28lb jet print paper and on a cheap "Columbus" envelope. The best behaved of all of the inks was a mix of Cocoa and PR Copperburst. Dried superfast. about 50% of the inks smeared at 5 seconds. None but the WM at 15 and 30. Given the number of complaints about Cobalt though, it may not be that you got more-saturated batch, but that I got a less-saturated batch.

Aha!

So, KCat, you carefully control the choice of paper for your fountain pens!

I can do that at home, but not at work (a private ESL academy for adults), and I use my pens in both places.

All of the school's fresh paper and re-usable scratch paper is laser printer paper (easy to bleed through and feather into), and my students' written work comes on many different kinds of paper for me to mark.

Cobalt Blue did the worst, not surprisingly, on yellow-colored laser printer paper, which is scratch paper from old announcement flyers. The coloring makes the paper less absorbent, so the saturated Cobalt Blue just sits there waiting to smear again, again and again.

yes, that's one of the "benefits" of being a hausfrau running a home business part-time. And at my former job we had to supply our own lab manuals so had I been into FPs then, I'd have been able to choose Red n' Black or the like.

Good paper does make a big difference. And I am spoiled in that way.