Is Lamy Blue Ink Really This Awful?

[dapprman]

A recent change in Lamy inks has been reported here on FPN and on several review sites over the past few months. Lamy Blue Black seems to be slightly redder toned lately, and far less washed out than it used to be. And their standard black actually looks black (as opposd to grey).

I've not noticed any difference in their black over the last 11-12 years since I moved on to it from Parker. I've always found it a decent black which just greys slightly on over absorbent paper. My present bottle is a couple of years old so I may not have tried the new version yet and may find it even nicer

[sansenri]

Just stepping in here to say I suspect that Lamy has changed their formula for the blue ink in recent years, because I have had it both ways: the pale, washed out, sickly blue that either looks like faded periwinkle right away, or within 3 days. And I have had deep, saturated, rich royal blue with red sheening that has not yet faded, even on non-Tomoe-River paper.

 

Either I got some super-saturated cartridges that had time magic worked onto them to fundamentally change the formula of the ink when I bought some new pens, or they changed their ink formula in the last 2-3 years. I suppose I could write the company and ask, but... I'm kind of hoping someone will do a modern Lamy Blue review in the ink forums at some point in time.

 

The odd thing is I experience the same thing with the same ink bottle...

My experience with it suggests two things

the fading is highly paper dependent (this is a washable blue, if the paper is more acidic it could be it contributes to fading the ink)

the evaporation of ink in the pen (pen left for some time unused) - or at length, in the bottle, causes a strong darkening of the ink.

[sansenri]

 

How does 4001 Royal Blue compare to Lamy Blue?

 

(I have used 4001 Brilliant Black extensively, but I have virtually no experience with Royal Blue.)

 

They seem very similar to each other to me. By memory Lamy looks slightly darker (but that might be my older bottle...)

In terms of behavior they are really similar, very fluid, but somewhat dry in the nib (not a contradiction, by dry I mean they are not so slippery as some other inks, due to lack of too much surfactant), I tend to like the behaviour, and certainly they are both very very safe to use in vintage pens.

[AL01]

Thank you.

 

I am just wondering if I should get 4001 and Lamy Blue...

 

I just can't decide between the two...

[ErrantSmudge]

Lamy Blue comes in a much cooler bottle, if that helps the decision.

[Anne-Sophie]

I have always used converters with my to go washable blue.

 

After finding out that the Lamy cartridges that were included with my oldest Safaris/Vista/Al-Star had evaporated significantly, I decided to try one of them.

 

I hesitated because of all the talks of the unfortunate unsaturated, weak, barely visible Lamy Blue. I kept the cartridges as back up, on the go refills.

 

I was so pleasantly surprised by Lamy Blue that I decided to use another half evaporated cartridge, then the ones that were 60% or 70% full.

 

I have been a Lamy accumulator for quite some time, so I have the equivalent of 2 or 3 packs of Lamy blue cartridges.

 

I love the color, the cartridge sturdiness and especially its capacity.

 

In my school days, I had gotten into the habit of refilling cartridges every evening. I took notes long hand and had 2 then 3 fountain pens filled with my favorite washable blue ink. I used and use washable blue ink because I can make corrections with ink erasers.

 

Lamy, please make your ink erasers available to all your retailers, worldwide. It is very very annoying to not be able to get them, easily, in the U.S.

[Enkida]

 

The odd thing is I experience the same thing with the same ink bottle...

My experience with it suggests two things

the fading is highly paper dependent (this is a washable blue, if the paper is more acidic it could be it contributes to fading the ink)

the evaporation of ink in the pen (pen left for some time unused) - or at length, in the bottle, causes a strong darkening of the ink.

 

 

I'm growing inclined to believe it's evaporation too. I don't really look at the catridges when I throw them in or out of my pens, I just lump them all together. Recently I've been buying pens that I've found in little pen stores carrying old LE colours of Safaris and AL Stars just because the store stock doesn't move quickly. So it may be that I've been grabbing highly evaporated cartridges from years previous. Anyway I scanned both cards below in at the same time (the cardstocks really are different colours) just to show the difference I see.

 

"New" written with Lamy A nib, "old" written with Lamy 1.1 stub.

 

Edited June 5, 2019 by Enkida

[AL01]

Lamy Blue comes in a much cooler bottle, if that helps the decision.

 

I'll go with Lamy Blue again.

 

I miss that ink...

 

I already have 4001 Blue/Black anyways, (which is fairly different from Lamy Blue/Black.)

[uceroy]

The Lamy blue that came with my AL-star is also a nice dark blue. It fits perfectly with the ocean blue AL-star 😁💙

[sansenri]

 

I'll go with Lamy Blue again.

 

I miss that ink...

 

I already have 4001 Blue/Black anyways, (which is fairly different from Lamy Blue/Black.)

 

Lamy and 4001 blue are rather affordable inks, so I would not be too concerned. You could even buy both.

 

One thing to mention, both of them are easily mixed with other Lamy, Pelikan 4001, or Edelstein inks.

I have even tried mixing 4001 with Diamine.

Try 10 parts of Pelikan 4001 Royal blue + 1 part of Diamine Bilberry for example.

The fading issue disappears completely! The result is a blue-purple.

You can do the same with 10 parts blue and 1 part (or even less) 4001 black.

They are easy inks to play around with, without issues. (Be more careful if mixing with Diamine)

[Calabria]

 

 

I'm growing inclined to believe it's evaporation too. I don't really look at the catridges when I throw them in or out of my pens, I just lump them all together. Recently I've been buying pens that I've found in little pen stores carrying old LE colours of Safaris and AL Stars just because the store stock doesn't move quickly. So it may be that I've been grabbing highly evaporated cartridges from years previous. Anyway I scanned both cards below in at the same time (the cardstocks really are different colours) just to show the difference I see.

 

"New" written with Lamy A nib, "old" written with Lamy 1.1 stub.

 

I'm confused by this post. The "new" ink

seems much darker - which goes against the "evaporation" theory. Anyway, I'm liking the blue cartridge in my new blue Aion so much I'll get a bottle and check this out myself.

[Enkida]

The "new" ink is the cartridges that just came in pens I recently bought. Pretty much the only time I buy Safaris or AL-Stars these days is when I go into a pen shop and see that someone didn't clean out year xyz's limited edition, and the shop is merely not well-enough visited that they have some leftovers.

 

So for example, my "new" Lamy Blue ink came from a cartridge I got out of the Lamy AL-Star LE Champagne, which was released many years ago.

 

This is why I changed my opinion to thinking maybe this darker blue ink is the result of evaporation, because the ink loaded into the Champagne AL-Star would have surely been before any recent reformulation.

Hope that explains it

[Calabria]

Enkida - so, new means old stock, and old means new stock? 🙂

I do see the attraction of looking for nos pens!

Derek