Inks You Feel Meh About But Have To Keep Using For Some Reason.

[Flaxmoore]

I was loading my work pens this morning and realized that there's an ink in there I don't really like, but I keep using for business reasons.

 

Noodler's HOD. It's a nice solid black, and my prescription ink. Bulletproof, decent flow, but I'm not the world's biggest fan of a black-hole black. Keep using it until I run out of it, one prescription at a time.

 

I don't like it so much (I'd really rather Platinum Carbon for a black-hole black, or Dark Matter for a little less intense), but I use it to get rid of it.

 

What's your ink you keep using for some unknown reason?

 

 

[Patrick L]

....There are lots of inks that I keep without ever using them ,for example I purchased several red ink bottles without obtaining satisfaction (apparently it's very difficult to manufacture a true red ink) before until I finally purchased the cult Sailor Irore ink ( the first batch version). I also purchased and will continue to purchase lots of other ink bottles that I use only once to see how they look like. I sometimes like them but I also sometimes dislike them.

So all these ink bottles just stay there , wondering about the sense of life....

[ErrantSmudge]

Lamy Blue. A really uninspired blue ink, that also fades (depending on the paper it appears). But I got a bunch of cartridges in a bundle from buying Lamy pens and I feel compelled to use them all up.

[Arkanabar]

Noodler's Red-Black. At its current (unmeasured) dilution, it works really well in my blue swirl Pelikan M200, and it's got a bulletproof component.

 

Noodler's Borealis Black, in a 4.5oz eyedropper boston round. Horribly, I've broken some of the tip of the eyedropper into the ink. It's my blacker-than-black, but it's truly featherocious; even at 1:1 dilution, I usually use it in Asian pens to limit its feathering, and use it for calligraphy practice with my Pilot Parallels.

 

Bad Black Moccasin. My wife bought this one, so as to have her own blacker-than-black. (And then she has me keep it for her, and fill all her pens, so ...) It dried up in one of her Nib Creapers, and I'm going to have to dig out and use the ultrasonic cleaner to get rid of all the residue. I also dilute it 1:1, and only use in pens that I can completely knock down and scrub with a toothbrush.

 

Parker Quink Permanent Black with Solv-X. This was the ink my dad used in his "51", gifted to me with the pen, and that's where I'm going to use it. But not before I use up a bottle of MB-Simplo Schwarz with SuperCleaner SC21 (a gift, found in the medical records room where I was doing my HIT clinicals).

 

These inks (and a few others) are the reason why I built my list of the Six Essentials. The really crazy thing is, I'm likely to mix my wife's bottle of Noodler's Widow Maker with a little of whatever black or other unused colors I have on hand to darken it (most likely into more red-black) when the Red-Black is gone, as there's no other way to use it up -- she much prefers her Noodler's Rattler Red Eel, but she won't let me give away the Widow Maker.

 

And then I'll probably do it again with the Rattler Red, cos there's no way she's going to use all of that up, either. I almost never refill her pens; I only rehydrate them.

[amberleadavis]

I keep using Dromgoole's blue steel. The color for me is demotivational, but the performance keeps me coming back.

[inkstainedruth]

At the moment, I'd have to say Noodler's Luck of the Draw LE. It's a tad greener than El Lawrence, but very flat, and if I'm not careful with the pen it's in (Noodler's Boston Safety) I end up with it all over my hands. The good news is that it's pretty permanent, once dry. The bad news? On Tomoe River paper it takes a while to dry, and a couple of times last week I was happy the the library book I've been using for some research has a plastic dust jacket.... Plus, even with liberal application of Ink Nix, I was having trouble getting off my hands.

But it is behaving better in the pen than KTC. And I'm FINALLY starting to get a feel about how much to fill the pen and not have "accidents" when I extend the nib....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[displacermoose]

Sailor DoYou. I'm generally an unabashed Sailor fan girl, but that one is so dark that it might as well be black. I love rich brown inks and it doesn't have enough of that. I use it as a stealth black sometimes which I'm feeling snarky about work, but it just doesn't do it for me. I'm not planning on getting rid of it because of its magical cleaning properties.

[Runnin_Ute]

I don't often use it, but Noodler's Black would fit in this category for me. I got it with a purchase from Goulet of a Pilot Metropolitan, Noodler's Black and a Leuchtturm1917 notebook in A5. That was in March of 2014. I have bought notebook #3, but the ink is probably around the bottom of the neck of the bottle. Which means I have used maybe 10 ml in four YEARS given that Nathan fills these to the brim. By contrast, I have maybe 20-30 ml left of Apache Sunset. I don't get rid of it, because I think everyone should have a black.

 

But on the other hand, since December 2012 I have finished off two 62.5 ml bottles of Pelikan 4001 Blue Black and am about a third of the way through a third bottle. (My Pelikan 140 which I acquired in August 2017, has been filled with it almost continuously since its arrival. (One fill of DIamine Sherwood Green since then)

[Tseg]

Take-Sumi Iro in my Dupont Olympio XL. It is a nice or a plain black ink, however you want to look at it, but the feel of the line I get coming out of the pen and laying smoothly on paper I've not been able to produce with any other color. I realize I match ink to pen by the writing experience it gives the pair, with little regard to color. Speaking of Apache Sunset in the post above, I have Yu-Yake Iro, which is a similar take on orange and red with amazing shading, but it is just a bit too pale/pastel to ink up a pen and do extended writing. I'll dip a nib and use the color for accents or a highlighter now and then, but if I filled a converter or piston fill it would dry up inside as much as I use it.

[chromantic]

There's too many nice inks out there to continue using an ink I don't like. I just stop using it and, eventually, pass it along.

[DrDebG]

Lamy Blue - it came with a pen.

[TheDutchGuy]

I love the deep colours and amazing shading of an ink like Robert Oster Fire & Ice. Or, to name another favourite, Diamine Ancient Copper (how can you not love that one?) Totally amazing stuff. But write an entire page with such inks at work, and it becomes a neon sign. It jumps out at me. Books are not printed in such colours for a reason. My eyes prefer a quiet appearance, so I do most of my longer sessions with more boring inks. Those would be Sailor Jentle, Sailor Kiwa Guro, Sailor Shikiori Yonaga, Waterman Mysterious Blue and Pelikan 4001 Blue Black. All blue-black inks except Kiwa Guro, which is deep black.

 

There are two inks that I love so much that use them sparingly. That's a contradiction. Reason: I don't want to get used to them. I want them to wow me every time I write with them. I'm afraid it will wear off somehow. Those two would be Visconti Blue and Graf von Faber-Castell Cobalt Blue.

[KLscribbler]

Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Black. It is my most-used black ink, but "most used" in this case is very relative - I bought my current (62.5ml) bottle in 2005 and I've not even used up half of it! So you can really tell how much I "like" black as an ink color

 

So why do I keep it around? Well, occasions for using black do crop up occasionally (e.g. official form-filling business), although in such situations, I will typically try to sneak through using an off-black (e..g Sailor Doyou, Noodler's ACBB) instead.

 

The more important reason I keep 4001 Black around is that it's a good benchmark ink for testing purposes. It is pretty much the quintessential dry black ink - very consistent flow rate, well behaved, easy cleanup, good behavior on papers, very neutral tone. The predictability of the ink's behavior is quite useful in pen testing and that is the purpose for which I use this ink the most.

 

Thankfully, 4001 Black doesn't seem to go bad or get SITB.

[ENewton]

When an ink disappoints me, I don't set it aside, even after I've discovered a suitable substitute for it.

 

For example, I loved Robert Oster Purple Rock at first, because on many papers it varies between an attractive grayish purple and an attractive purplish gray, but I soon realized that it looks green on certain papers and turns green over time on others. Not the prettiest green either. I've discovered that Birmingham Lilac Wind would be good substitute, but I'm using up the Purple Rock first.

[zaddick]

For me, life is too short to use ink I don't like. So I don't. I give it away to people who will use it or I occasionally dump it and reuse the bottle.

 

Luckily I can afford to have a few bad ink experiences. I realize not everyone can. We are blessed to live in an age of so much choice and, for most inks, the option to try a ssmple. Keep trying until you find one you love!

[JakobS]

I tend to consider inks I am interested in to a degree that I am rarely ever surprised with their appearance or behavior and thus rarely am disappointed with an ink, maybe 2-3 inks out of 60+ I have bought. The 2-3 inks I won't use are because of their behavior is off, and not the color, the color has never been unexpected with any ink I have gotten.

Edited May 15, 2018 by JakobS

[PAKMAN]

Inks I don't love, I don't use. I have like 80 colors of ink and just keep 3 or so pens inked at a time. I have occasionally gotten rid of inks I hated by selling at a pen show or giving away at Pen Club meetings. Too much trouble to sell them otherwise so they just sit in the cabinet.

[Almu]

Sailor Souten. The color isn't bad at all, but I get hard starts all the time with this ink. I don't dare to throw it away, but I don't exactly enjoy using it either

[hinky]

I tend to consider inks I am interested in to a degree that I am rarely ever surprised with their appearance or behavior and thus rarely am disappointed with an ink, maybe 2-3 inks out of 60+ I have bought. The 2-3 inks I won't use are because of their behavior is off, and not the color, the color has never been unexpected with any ink I have gotten.

^This

 

I also check out ink reviewers whose swabs of other inks look the same as mine (and use the same paper too 😅) to address the whole differences in monitors/screens. I haven't been disappointed with any of my ink purchases. I have around 40 (only 😂) bottles of ink and (mildly) dislike just two of them. Not because of color or behavior, but because of the smell 😅.

[PaganArcher]

Apache Sunset. Under no circumstances have I been able to reproduce the dramatic shading that draws so many to this ink. It's always more a return a searing yellow that's too light to be legible and so vibrant as to be painful. But I have found certain uses for it as leather dye and for the few ink washes I've made.