What Was The Worst Behaved Ink You Ever Used?

[VivaTerlingua]

Haven’t encountered a well-behaving Noodler’s ink yet. Lots of lovely colors which is a shame.

[A Smug Dill]

Feathering is the bad behavior that bothers me most.

Me too. Ghosting and bleed-through I could overlook by consciously choosing not to write on both sides of a sheet of paper. (Yes, it's inconvenient, wasteful and costly.) On the other hand, the effects of feathering cannot be overlooked when I go to read what I bothered to write down in the first place.

 

Can't remember which was worse, Noodler's Polar Brown or J. Herbin's Vert Empire.

Noodler's Polar Green feathers much worse for me than Polar Brown, and does so on every type and piece of paper I tried. Noodler's 'Prime of the Commons' blue-black ink also feathers on everything, but not quite as severely.

 

Oh, and now that I think about it, the bottle of Operation Overlord Orange that I threw out also feathered atrociously.

 

Haven’t encountered a well-behaving Noodler’s ink yet.

Burma Road Brown, Mandalay Maroon, North African Violet, Green Marine, Golden Brown and Kiowa Pecan aren't nearly as prone to feathering, and they don't bleed-through on Rhodia paper (as far as I can recall).

 

X-Feather works fine for me most of the time, even if it can take a while to dry on paper.

Edited December 29, 2018 by A Smug Dill

[eharriett]

Noodlers Whaleman's Sepia clogged everything it went into, including the Charlie Pen it came with (and permanently discolored it). I got so flustered with the ink I gave it away. Since then I'd gotten a glass dip pen and I kind of want to try it again, see if my experience with it is better.

 

And about 50% of all traditional J. Herbin ink is nothing but colored water to me. Too thin, runny, and pale. The ones I like I really love. Everything else is among the worst I'd ever seen.

 

I have no problem with any other Noodlers ink (and I use a lot of it) and the problems others seem to have, I never experience. I guess I'm just lucky.

[djmaher]

Noodlers El Lawrence.

 

An ink everyone loves to hate.

 

An ink everyone hates to love.

 

Clogs/dries out/hard starts/no starts in every pen I've ever used it in (I think 7 pens),

 

I really like the motor-oil color. I cannot explain it.

 

I was told the the newer formulations of the ink behaved better.

 

Barely containing my excitement, I dutifully bought 2 (!) bottles. From two different vendors. Just to be sure.

 

Proceeded to have the exact same problems. Even tried all of the supposed "solutions" offered. I can't even remember them all now.

 

I want to like this ink.

 

I hate this ink.

 

I think I'll go find a pen and ink it up right now, with this ink.

 

I'm sure it will work!

 

I wonder if it will work?

 

I feel like I've just enabled myself, somehow......

Edited December 28, 2018 by djmaher

[VivaTerlingua]

Burma Road Brown, Mandalay Maroon, North African Violet, Green Marine, Golden Brown and Kiowa Pecan aren't nearly as prone to feathering, and they don't bleed-through on Rhodia paper (as far as I can recall).X-Feather works fine for me most of the time, even if it can take a while to dry on paper.

Thanks, I’ll give Burma Road Brown a go, that color is right up my alley.

[The Good Captain]

Noodlers El Lawrence.

 

An ink everyone loves to hate.

 

An ink everyone hates to love.

 

Clogs/dries out/hard starts/no starts in every pen I've ever used it in (I think 7 pens),

 

I really like the motor-oil color. I cannot explain it.

 

I was told the the newer formulations of the ink behaved better.

 

Barely containing my excitement, I dutifully bought 2 (!) bottles. From two different vendors. Just to be sure.

 

Proceeded to have the exact same problems. Even tried all of the supposed "solutions" offered. I can't even remember them all now.

 

I want to like this ink.

 

I hate this ink.

 

I think I'll go find a pen and ink it up right now, with this ink.

 

I'm sure it will work!

 

I wonder if it will work?

 

I feel like I've just enabled myself, somehow......

I've had no issues with EL in a Noodler's Neponset. Probably an older bottle but it seems OK at the moment!

[eharriett]

Noodlers El Lawrence.

 

An ink everyone loves to hate.

 

An ink everyone hates to love.

 

Clogs/dries out/hard starts/no starts in every pen I've ever used it in (I think 7 pens),

 

I really like the motor-oil color. I cannot explain it.

 

I was told the the newer formulations of the ink behaved better.

 

Barely containing my excitement, I dutifully bought 2 (!) bottles. From two different vendors. Just to be sure.

 

Proceeded to have the exact same problems. Even tried all of the supposed "solutions" offered. I can't even remember them all now.

 

I want to like this ink.

 

I hate this ink.

 

I think I'll go find a pen and ink it up right now, with this ink.

 

I'm sure it will work!

 

I wonder if it will work?

 

I feel like I've just enabled myself, somehow......

 

I enjoy that color too. I recently replaced El Lawrence with Robert Oster Motor Oil. I haven't seen anyone do a comparison of it yet, but that ink was close enough that I replaced and PIF'd my El Lawrence. Another daily use ink.

[Noihvo]

 

[djmaher]

eharriett,

 

Has anyone done a review of Robert Oster Motor Oil? Doesn't look like it here.

 

I'd like to see what the color looks like and how it behaves.

[eharriett]

I'm generally not the best at ink reviews. Hopefully someone will here. There's a a few online already, though:

 

One of the better ones:

https://www.mountainofink.com/blog/robert-oster-motor-oil

 

I learned about it as an ink flight ink sample and got a bottle. I don't do that very often. I usually wind up with a bunch of samples I wind up giving away, but every now and then, you find the one ink you are looking for that stands out above everything else. That was this one, to me.

[Arkanabar]

Noodler's Red-black got slow-drying and smudgy on me. It probably got rather concentrated in the Pelikan M200 F that I'd filled it with, over and over, for a couple years. I added water to it, and it shifted from a super-dark brown to a burgundy. It also fixed the bad behavior.

I've had two super-dense blacks that are pretty featherocious on the cheap salvage paper I use for most of my writing (that is, printer paper that's been used on one side, and then 3-hole punched for writing on the other). One was Levenger Raven Black, and the other is Noodler's Borealis Black, which I now dilute 4:5 with distilled water. I can't recall now, some fifteen years later, whether I had issues of smudging and/or poor dry time. I can believe that I did, but can't certify it.

Finally, my wife let some Bad Black Mocassin dry up in an Ivory Darkness Nib Creaper. It's going to take an ultrasonic cleaner to get it all out. These days, I not only dilute it 1:1 with water, but also now am only willing to put it into Indian eyedroppers that I can completely disassemble and scrub the feed with a toothbrush.

von Manstein, I'm surprised that you had issues with Pilot Black. I put a cart from my wife's Kakuno into my Prera, and had none of the issues you did writing in an AC Moore/ Nicole journal. Did your cartridge come with a Parallel, or was it labeled for use in Pilot's Parallel pens? (Parallel cartridges usually have a small steel ball bearing in them.) That is a very different ink from conventional Pilot or Namiki black, far more dense and wet, and more prone to feathering, ghosting, and strike-through.

Pilot Iro turquoise. Only issue is nib creep, but a lot of ink crept into the cap.

Which turquoise? Ku-Jaku?

 

 

I agree with Noodler's Polar Brown. I recieved a sample and no matter what type of paper I used, it feathered. It left such a bad impression that I haven't tired any of other Noodler's inks.

Polar Brown is a very different critter from Noodler's regular inks, as (like all of Noodler's Polar inks) it contains an antifreeze. I find the regular brown to be generally well-behaved.

[Theroc]

Diamine Onyx Black is my nemesis.

Clogged every pen I ever tried it with, and before it did it would feather and bleed through all but the best FP-friendly paper.

My experience with it was so bad it put me off all black inks.

[Tasmith]

Organics Studio Nitrogen Royal Blue.

 

Love the amazing sheen, but it has ZERO water resistance.

 

Just touching it will smudge it. Almost impossible to clean out of a pen, just keeps coming and coming. If there is a dried speck that fell off the bottle's rim when taking the cap off (never had any other ink leave dried specks) on my desk and I touch it, I get a big smear across the desk, which takes forever to clean. No matter how careful I am filling a pen, I get ink everywhere.

Edited January 15, 2019 by Tasmith

[VivaTerlingua]

Organics Studio Nitrogen Royal Blue.

 

Love the amazing sheen, but it has ZERO water resistance.

 

Just touching it will smudge it. Almost impossible to clean out of a pen, just keeps coming and coming. If there is a dried speck that fell off the bottle's rim when taking the cap off (never had any other ink leave dried specks) on my desk and I touch it, I get a big smear across the desk, which takes forever to clean. No matter how careful I am filling a pen, I get ink everywhere.

 

Nitrogen (and Walden Pond, too) is so beautiful, but just simply unusable unless you dilute it, but then you lose the sheen. It's a shame.

[tknechtel]

Private Reserve's fast-drying ink, which I used about eight years ago – perhaps they don't make it anymore. It would just SHOOT out of my pens, ink everywhere! I gave it away to someone who wanted an inexpensive ink for her kids to experiment with, and she ended up throwing it out.

[inkstainedruth]

@ eharriett -- Whaleman's Sepia wasn't cloggy for me. It just didn't flow. Clung onto the sides of the ink chamber with its little finger and toenails going "Nope, nope, not gonna, you can't make me!" Sort of like a cat we had who would go splat with all four legs stretched out when we tried to put her in the carrier on "evil red box" day (i.e., annual vet visit -- we haven't had a red or burgundy colored vehicle for nearly six years, but it's still "evil red box" day), except eventually we could dump her in head first through the opening with the carrier end on. Whaleman's Sepia? Not so much.... Which was too bad, since it's a really interesting color.

@dj maher -- I haven't had that sort of issue with El Lawrence. I put it in my ebonite Konrad and it behaves very well, and it's one of my "go to" inks for filling out checks (our old bank said "Black or blue ink only!" but didn't bat an eye over *either* my (not black, but close enough) El Lawrence or my (indigo with purple undertone and not really but close enough) KTC....

 

I'd be interested in seeing a comparison between El Lawrence and Robert Oster Motor Oil -- but in my experience a number of the RO inks are on the dry side.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Astronymus]

Bottled Pelikan Black. No flow in any pen.

[Fuzzy_Bear]

Bookbinders Red Belly Black.

[Tasmith]

 

Nitrogen (and Walden Pond, too) is so beautiful, but just simply unusable unless you dilute it, but then you lose the sheen. It's a shame.

I used it in Rotring Art Pens. Works well in them, may hard start at times but will get flowing after I touch the nib tip to a paper towel.

[Pentode]

Worst behaved ink?

 

Zebra makes an incredibly cheap pen called a 301. They go for about $4. They come in a blister pack with two cartridges of something they call ink.

 

That stuff is just plain nasty. Somehow they made an ink that bleeds like crazy but clogs your pen at the same time. Nasty!

 

After a rigorous cleaning of both the pen and the cartridge and refilling the cartridge with Noodlers black I learned that the pen actually writes pretty well - much better than a $4 pen aught to - but the 301 has a reputation for being an awful pen simply because of the ink it comes with.

 

Did I mention it was nasty?