Ink Review: Diamine Ruby

July 20, 2016

My latest ink is Diamine Ruby

Diamine Ruby is another very good red ink. It's not quite as bright or as eye-catching as Wild Strawberry, or Classic Red, but Ruby is still a nice, red. It's a well behaved ink in all of the pens and on all of the paper I tried it with. It's not overly saturated but I saw plenty of attractive shading. It goes even further towards the pink end of the colour spectrum, and could easily be described as cherry or dark pink. It is certainly the colour of rubies though, so it's another ink that does exactly what it says on the bottle.

It wrote straight away without any hard starts or skipping. The flow is very good and so is it's lubrication at the nib. Although the flow feels slightly different to Wild Strawberry and Classic Red, it didn't feel at all dry. The dry time was quite quick and there were no smears after it was dry. However, it was a warm day when I did the review.

It has virtually no water resistance at all. The red inky water spread very quickly.

I think it's a very nice pink/red ink, especially if you prefer pink leaning reds. Kaweco Ruby Red was the most similar colour, but that leans more purple than Ruby, and is less saturated.

This isn't sold as a waterproof ink,and shows no noticeable water resistance.
Bearing in mind the paper I use is thick with a shiny surface, and I used a Lamy M nib, a Parker B nib and a Waterman F nib this ink only took 14-15 secs to dry. No smear when dry.
It exhibited very good flow and lubrication and I found it well behaved to write with. I saw no skips or hard starts while I did my swabs and dry time tests.
It is currently available in 80ml glass bottles or 30ml plastic bottles
Diamine sell it directly to end-users on their web-site.
It's a reasonable price.

March 14, 2017

Thanks for your nice review. I really like Diamine Ruby but being an Ink addict I'm also looking for similar inks. Out of the 4 inks in your comparison looks like the closest to Ruby is Diamine Classic Red.

Can you please elaborate a bit on which differences you see between the two inks?

Thanks in advance