Inky T O D - What Makes An Ink Boring?

[CAG_1787]

 

 

I think there is some misunderstanding. I'm no native English writer / talker, so I may be failing to convey my idea to this forum.

 

Actually, some of the inks that I use and find delightful is considered as "not good" inks in here, within the majority of the reviews. Also, some inks behaved completely different (and again better) in my long term usage when compared to reviews here and elsewhere.

 

So, I wanted to say that "I think is no ink is boring from most pale to most vivid, from blackest black to reddest red" and asked afterwards, "what do you think?"

 

This thread is not intended to label anything, just wanted to create a conversation about inks' most prominent properties which changes the perception of it (i.e.: color, shading, vibrancy and saturation).

 

That's all

 

P.S.: Also, cheap was not in terms of cost, but in terms of look & feel.

 

I think you've discovered how personal (dare I say biased?) people's perceptions of inks are. We all have different considerations, varying in degrees of reasonableness. For instance, I have an utterly irrational distaste for inks with boring names. Totally stupid and inexplicable, but it affects how I choose to spend my money, and in the absence of broader ramifications, is fine for me. De gustibus non est disputandum, as Thomas Jefferson would say.

[FOUR X FOUR]

I'm just waiting for someone to post that Nathan has come up with a BSB that is safe for any pen.

[bayindirh]

Inks aren't boring. People with inks are boring (sometimes).

 

 

Maybe people mean "typical" or "common" or "conventional" rather than "boring." I've never looked at an ink, even an ink I didn't care for, and think, "God, what a boring ink." *Snooze* But I have read people's opinions about [whatever] and my eyes have glazed over.

 

Thanks for your answer. Maybe this is how they choose their words, I don't know them to this detail, yet

However, finding like-minded people feels good.

Edited March 15, 2017 by bayindirh

[bayindirh]

I prefer "boring" inks.

They have hidden depths, are quiet yet powerfully intense, and shading that would make a rainbow jealous. Bright eye searing and saturated colours are in ye face, with superficial charm, and a "hey, look at me!" attitude.

 

Actually I look for some character in the ink. To this day I found character in every ink that I looked from least saturated to most and in every color. I personally won't use some of them, but that's OK. Inks are like people I think. Not everyone appeals.

[bayindirh]

 

 

+2

 

Some people seem to forget that their boring and pompous words cannot be overtaken by their choice of ink.

 

Baggy

 

I think people should choose their words wisely, everywhere (I'm NOT nodding to anyone, or this forum). Words are way powerful than we know...

[bayindirh]

 

First of all, thanks for your written answer and your time. It's an effort and I bow to you, sir. Less saturated inks shade more, yes and look sometimes more complex. Maybe again, they mirror people in this regard. While they may not appear strong, they are rich and varied. They offer different perspectives and different looks with different pens or paper. So for me, they are opposite of boring. On the other hand, saturated inks are loudmouths, fun but not a perfect fit everywhere. They're not boring either. They're just different.

 

[bayindirh]

 

I think you've discovered how personal (dare I say biased?) people's perceptions of inks are. We all have different considerations, varying in degrees of reasonableness. For instance, I have an utterly irrational distaste for inks with boring names. Totally stupid and inexplicable, but it affects how I choose to spend my money, and in the absence of broader ramifications, is fine for me. De gustibus non est disputandum, as Thomas Jefferson would say.

 

Maybe yes. However I believe in power of words a lot, so I always try to choose my words wisely. Derogative words, in my opinion, is too hard to define anything whose sole purpose is to appeal someone.

 

Everyone of us have different "features" like that. For example, I have a problem with imitiation or emulation in anything. Decorative, non-functional additions to an item is a inefficient use of space and lowers quality in my eyes, but not everyone thinks like that and that's perfectly OK. So I can understand a blue-black with green undertones is very offputting for you, or a simple blue-black with a uninformative name, and I won't ever judge you for that.

 

That's said, It's OK someone to find an ink boring, but writing this with an authoritative tone and trying to convince everyone that it's a boring ink is not.

Edited March 15, 2017 by bayindirh

[BradGad]

You're talking about the regular one, right? Not the Iroshizuku ones.

Yes, Pilot brand Blue Black, that comes in the round 70 ml bottles.

Edited March 15, 2017 by BradGad

[PS104]

On the one hand "Still waters run deep"

on the other hand, to quote Woody Allen, "I'm deeply shallow"

​Take your pick.

[Arkanabar]

I have a bottle of ink that was PIFfed to me, that I call "I Can't Believe It's Waterman Florida Blue" -- in part because it's usually darker than Noodler's original Blue, and in part because it nearly matches the Noodler's in lightfastness. And it just seems boring to me. You can see scans from imgur. The line is "Waterman Bleu Effacable."

[Mercian]

One theme I see in this forum is "boringness" of a color and its personality & energy...

 

First of all I notice two groups of ink producers: One of them is also FP producers...

 

...the other group doesn't build FPs at such volumes...

 

From my obervation, the first group's inks are generally more run of the mill, functional, and in reviews they are considered boring and the second groups are more favored for their colors and vibrancy...

 

What is your comment on this issue?

 

I think that you have summarised the cause of the phenomenon in your original post :-)

 

The companies that sell large numbers of pens formulate their own-brand inks so that the inks will work in their pens for a long time, without much cleaning or maintenance. In this way they avoid complaints from pen owners that the company's ink has clogged-up their pens - and the associated costs of repairing those pens.

In practice this usually means that these inks do not contain heavy dye-loads, which in turn means that they can tend to look a bit pale, or 'washed-out', or 'boring'.

 

The inks that these companies sell do work very reliably indeed, and they also often have fantastic properties such as remaining wet on the nib while drying very quickly on paper. These properties make writing with those inks a reliable and worry-free joy :-)

Which is great for us, but less-good for an ink company that doesn't sell loads of pens....

In order for a specialist ink company to be able to tempt us to buy its own inks instead of inks made by a high-volume pen manufacturer, they have to offer something that the pen manufacturers' inks do not. That, usually, is inks that are unusual colours, or brighter, 'more vibrant', or 'more interesting'.

Such inks require a greater amount of dyestuff in their formulation.

The dyestuffs often precipitate out inside a pen, which can make it skip, or 'hard-start', or even clog-up altogether if the pen user does not clean it sufficiently-diligently. A high dye-load will also make an ink take longer to dry out on the page, and make it prone to smearing easily.

 

See e.g. Parker's 'Penman' range of vivid inks from the 1990s - the colours were brighter and more vibrant than any ink I had previously seen; they were really beautiful to look at :-)

But Parker discontinued them in or around 1999/2000, saying that they had received too many complaints from people who said that Penman inks had clogged their Parker pens.

 

(Personally, I suspect it more-likely that the Penman inks were discontinued because they contained an ingredient that EU scientists found to be dangerous to the health of the workforce, and that the EU enacted legislation to protect the workforce that Parker deemed too-expensive to comply with, so stopped making the inks.

I think that the fact that no other ink manufacturer has ever successfully replicated a clone of Parker Penman Sapphire or Emerald or Mocha - despite the wails of the many of us who lament their loss - lends some credibility to my view.

After all, if the real reason is that many Parker pens were clogging, Parker could just have added a warning to the labels on the Penman inks' packaging to instruct users to clean their pens often, like Montblanc used to do with their iron-gall inks.)

 

As with many things in life, one has to decide which things one desires from an ink, and which things are 'deal-breakers'.

If one desires really vibrant colours or e.g. the je ne sais quoi afforded by iron-gall inks, one must be happy to clean one's pens more-often, and take care to never let an ink dry out in a pen.

 

If one hates cleaning pens, and more than anything else wants to be able to write reliably while using a carefree approach to pen maintenance, one buys pen manufacturers' inks.

 

FWIW, I use both types of ink.

E.g. no-one is going to want to try to read a dissertation/thesis (or a handwritten copy of one of my notoriously prolix FPN posts) if it is written in Bay State Blue, or with a 'Shimmer' ink. And school children are never going to want to waste their free time on keeping their pens clean.

OTOH, for a personal letter or a short note or journaling, a more-vibrant ink can be prettier to look at, feel more personal, or be more attention-grabbing. Or more 'fun' :-)

 

I also agree with bayindirh that people really ought not describe any inks as 'boring' - a better description might, perhaps, be to describe them as 'a safe choice' :-)

[amberleadavis]

Don't forget to look at the Inky Topics O'Day (Inky TODs). https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/282789-start-here-inky-t-o-d-topics-oday/ We have a topic about "serious" inks but perhaps we should add this one about "boring" inks?

[bayindirh]

I think that you have summarised the cause of the phenomenon in your original post :-)

 

The companies that sell large numbers of pens formulate their own-brand inks so that the inks will work in their pens for a long time, without much cleaning or maintenance. In this way they avoid complaints from pen owners that the company's ink has clogged-up their pens - and the associated costs of repairing those pens.

In practice this usually means that these inks do not contain heavy dye-loads, which in turn means that they can tend to look a bit pale, or 'washed-out', or 'boring'.

 

The inks that these companies sell do work very reliably indeed, and they also often have fantastic properties such as remaining wet on the nib while drying very quickly on paper. These properties make writing with those inks a reliable and worry-free joy :-)

Which is great for us, but less-good for an ink company that doesn't sell loads of pens....

In order for a specialist ink company to be able to tempt us to buy its own inks instead of inks made by a high-volume pen manufacturer, they have to offer something that the pen manufacturers' inks do not. That, usually, is inks that are unusual colours, or brighter, 'more vibrant', or 'more interesting'.

Such inks require a greater amount of dyestuff in their formulation.

The dyestuffs often precipitate out inside a pen, which can make it skip, or 'hard-start', or even clog-up altogether if the pen user does not clean it sufficiently-diligently. A high dye-load will also make an ink take longer to dry out on the page, and make it prone to smearing easily.

 

See e.g. Parker's 'Penman' range of vivid inks from the 1990s - the colours were brighter and more vibrant than any ink I had previously seen; they were really beautiful to look at :-)

But Parker discontinued them in or around 1999/2000, saying that they had received too many complaints from people who said that Penman inks had clogged their Parker pens.

 

(Personally, I suspect it more-likely that the Penman inks were discontinued because they contained an ingredient that EU scientists found to be dangerous to the health of the workforce, and that the EU enacted legislation to protect the workforce that Parker deemed too-expensive to comply with, so stopped making the inks.

I think that the fact that no other ink manufacturer has ever successfully replicated a clone of Parker Penman Sapphire or Emerald or Mocha - despite the wails of the many of us who lament their loss - lends some credibility to my view.

After all, if the real reason is that many Parker pens were clogging, Parker could just have added a warning to the labels on the Penman inks' packaging to instruct users to clean their pens often, like Montblanc used to do with their iron-gall inks.)

 

As with many things in life, one has to decide which things one desires from an ink, and which things are 'deal-breakers'.

If one desires really vibrant colours or e.g. the je ne sais quoi afforded by iron-gall inks, one must be happy to clean one's pens more-often, and take care to never let an ink dry out in a pen.

 

If one hates cleaning pens, and more than anything else wants to be able to write reliably while using a carefree approach to pen maintenance, one buys pen manufacturers' inks.

 

FWIW, I use both types of ink.

E.g. no-one is going to want to try to read a dissertation/thesis (or a handwritten copy of one of my notoriously prolix FPN posts) if it is written in Bay State Blue, or with a 'Shimmer' ink. And school children are never going to want to waste their free time on keeping their pens clean.

OTOH, for a personal letter or a short note or journaling, a more-vibrant ink can be prettier to look at, feel more personal, or be more attention-grabbing. Or more 'fun' :-)

 

I also agree with bayindirh that people really ought not describe any inks as 'boring' - a better description might, perhaps, be to describe them as 'a safe choice' :-)

 

Thanks for the long and detailed reply. I can understand the motivation behind the more boutique or non-fp-producer ink companies. BTW, this is how the ink technology goes further or the industry tries new things.

 

I can call these inks as more "functional" inks, since they are designed with function and reliability in mind, not pop or zap. It's like a difference between a sedan and supercar. First one has much more utility and more practical, but second one is more fun and higher maintenance.

[bayindirh]

Don't forget to look at the Inky Topics O'Day (Inky TODs). https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/282789-start-here-inky-t-o-d-topics-oday/ We have a topic about "serious" inks but perhaps we should add this one about "boring" inks?

 

If you think that this can be converted to a Topics O'Day, I'll be flattered. However, I was reading Edelstein Amber review and someone who didn't like the color worded it as "a boring orange". So an ink which is considered a treasure by many people can be thrown to wall with a single boring by someone. That's what personal taste and choice looks like.

 

Since FPN has a such diverse taste on everything, this thread will live much longer than my guess it seems.

[amberleadavis]

Based on your suggestion, let's Inky TOD - what makes an ink boring. You have proposed a hypothesis, so let's test it out.

[Bluey]

An ink is boring if it's the same as another current one.

[Sasha Royale]

If the ink flows smoothly to the paper and dries in reasonable time, it is good ink.

Ink color is vivid. Ink color is subdued. Ink color is saturated. It is not the ink that is

"interesting" or "boring", unless a particular ink CHOOSES to be interesting or boring.

[Mercian]

An ink is boring if it's the same as another current one.

I heartily endorse your pithy wisdom here, but only if I am allowed to add the following caveat:

 

...unless it is a doppelgänger for PPS! ;-)

 

(Or Emerald or Mocha.)

[bayindirh]

I believe no ink is boring, but only different. An exception maybe the inks that damages pens, but I'm not sure even in this regard.

[JustWrite Pen Company]

As an ink maker, albeit on a very small scale (eight inks so far) I found this thread incredibly interesting. As a fountain pen fanatic enthusiast I've always regarded the ink as the heart and soul of the writing experience and the pen itself as the body.

 

Neither can exist without the other and it's amazing how the writing experience can be diminished by a poor ink, even in an exceptional fountain pen, yet an exceptional ink in a cheap fountain pen can make that pen seem to sing and dance.

 

My own personal definition of a boring ink is a pale, washed out looking ink with no shading, no sheen, no depth and no variation with different nibs, papers and writing style.