Hi everyone..

I had bought the Montblanc Blue-Black bottle recently and tried it with my medium nib 146 and the color would come out blue-black true but very washed out/faded and i didn't like it.. I tried it with a S.T. Dupont with a fine nib and the color was somewhat richer and darker, so i thought that it was because of the nib size difference..

Then today I got the cartridge blue-black and tried it on my medium nib Starwalker and guess what? The color is deep and rich (dark) as well.. so it seems like it has no correlation between nib size and the color.. i thought maybe difference between the bottle ink and the cartridge? Then why did the Dupont write dark with the bottle?

Very confusing.. anyone can shed a light on this mystery?

Montblanc (and Lamy) Blue-Black in the bottles is an iron-gall ink. It writes looking a little "washed out" but darkens over time as it oxidizes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_gall_ink). The ink ink the cartridges is not iron-gall and is a normal, everyday, non-reactive blue-black.

Oh wow I didn't know that.. thanks Savarez.

So if I would like to match the color of the cartridge blue-black on my 146, the bottled ink according to you basically won't give me that contrast except over time- even then- I checked some of my older writings with it it has not gone any darker since the first day..

Would seem strange that they have the same color label and give different colors when writing with them..

The MB bottled blue-black and the cartridge blue-black are two completely different inks. I read somewhere that the mildly corrosive nature of iron galls do not play well with the materials used to make cartridges, hence two different inks.

Yeah. If you want a nice well-behaved blue-black, I would suggest Waterman, Pelikan, or any of the lovely blue-blacks in the Noodler's range. You might even like the Fountain Pen Network's exclusive ink, Van Gogh Starry Night, proceeds from which help to keep this board up and running. When it comes to blues and blue-blacks, you have a world of choices. There's no reason at all you have to stick with MB.

I Love bottled MB Blueblack, tried waterman recently, and I find it dries too green. I do see a difference between older bottles of MB Blueblack (small dot) and the new ones (big dot). In my cotton swab text the latter is darker.

Thats also interesting.. all the regular colors are small dot and the blue-black i have (bottled) is big dot.. what does the size of the bubble/dot mean if anything?

Cartridges also come in small and large dots?

Doesn't make any difference. Just different lots, different settings on the label printer, etc. I've seen small and large dots with all the MB inks I've seen/tried.

I agree.