Lamy Coral - Impressions

[chromantic]

I was all excited to get my bottle of Lamy Coral; I promptly filled 2 pens, Pelikan Pelikano M & Parker Vector F, and wrote a review. Unfortunately, I could not get an accurate scan no matter how hard I tried. So, I'm just going to offer my observations, with reference to yogalarva's and visvamitra's reviews.

 

Color: What I see is, primarily, a light-ish medium pink/orange color, sort of like powered Tang mixed with pink. At first glance, it looks pink, a second, closer look and then you're not sure. (I like colors like this, btw.) This pink/orange shades nicely to a lighter pink. While it's not terribly dark, I wouldn't call it pale, either; it's dark enough to stand out legibly on white paper.

 

yoga's samples do not at all look like the ink color I see - too dark and way too red - but my scans look like hers, only worse, even darker and redder. visva's scans look closer to what I see, except that hers are still a bit too pinky-red and not orange enough. (Again, I'm just comparing the color I see from my writing with the colors in their scans I see on my monitor.)

 

I should point out that the swab on Goulet Pens is also waaaay too magenta-pinky http://www.gouletpens.com/lamy-coral-50ml-bottled-fountain-pen-ink/p/LMY-LT52CL

 

The only swab that looks close to the ink I received is this one on ebay

but even here the color is a little too intense; still, it comes the closest.

 

Characteristics: Flow was good on the Pelikano M (it's a pretty wet writer), somewhat less so on the Vector, especially on block letters; cursive was marginally better and writing a bit more slowly helped. Flow on the Vector was actually better on the cheap memo pad paper than the Strathmore pad.

 

I've heard about 'dry' inks but this is the 1st time I've experienced it (if, indeed, that's what I was experiencing). While both pens wrote smoothly enough with this ink and I could see the shine of wet ink as I wrote, at the same time the ink felt kind of dry like I was writing with say, a dry erase marker rather than an FP with liquid ink. Very curious.

 

Drying time was <5 on M, <3 on F on the copy paper, just over 5 for both on the Strathmore

 

Shading - definitely some, more so on the Vector F though that may be due to lesser flow on that pen

 

Spread - none at all from either pen on memo, copy or sketch; the line from the Pelikano, which I consider fairly thick, looks much thinner with this ink than it did with either the Levenger Claret or the MV Brown, closer to my P45 Ms, in fact.

 

Feathering - again, none at all

 

Show-through - very slight

 

Bleed-through - some occasional, very slight on the copy

 

Smear - some with wet swap, moderate, I'd say

 

Wetness - some wash-off after 10 secs, didn't try for longer

 

Miscellaneous - Doesn't easily wash off skin, resulting in inky fingers. Some drops in sink not washed away immediately left noticeable spots when I sprayed water from faucet on them, had to scrub with brush. Haven't tried flushing from pen yet. Just flushed the Vector, probably one of the easiest and fastest flushes I've done, 3-4 plunger draws and it was gone; leaving it nib down on a wet paper towel pulled out a barely discernible whisper of color.

 

Price - $15/free ship 50ml bottle, $8/free ship 5-pack cartridges (from Amazon); bottle $2 cheaper on ebay - $10/$3 ship.

 

Final Thoughts: Not only is this an interesting, unique color, it's also the color that deserves to be called "Flamingo Pink" because this is what flamingos look like.

 

It's definitely not for official business use and I imagine teachers would cast a disapproving eye on course work done in this, as well. Perfectly fine for casual business/personal use - I could use this at work with no problems but that just entails crossing off check-lists, noting guest requests on a log sheet and pass-along notes to my co-workers, pretty much.

 

I think, though, that this is best suited to short things - notes, cards, brief letters, maybe journaling. I can't imagine wanting to handwrite something like War and Peace with this.

 

Again, very sorry I couldn't provide scans of my own but, hopefully, my observations might prove useful.

Edited April 29, 2016 by chromantic

[lapis]

Good review of a hard-to-describe ink. Yes, "somewhere in between pink and orange", or, was it the other way around? etc. In any case "Coral" sounds like a good name to me. I bought it when it just came out in October 2014 and was, as so often peeved that Lamy as usual doesn't offer it in a bottle here in Germany where it is in fact made (well, maybe). I have to order it from Sweden to get it in a bottle . Ditto their new Dark Lilac and Charged Green. As if that isn't scroogy enough, these two inks including the pens which "fit" aren't even yet available here, but they are in other countries.