What Was The Worst Behaved Ink You Ever Used?

[Pentode]

ugh.... double-posted. Sorry.

Edited January 16, 2019 by Pentode

[kestrel]

Noodler's Highland Heather, now blissfully discontinued. Bought a bottle because of the tie in with the land of my ancestors. It clogged every pen I put it in. Truewriters, Sonnets, Wearevers, Estie, miscellaneous gushers for a total of six or seven different pens. Even my old reliable Elysee refused to write when loaded with Highland Heather. I tried diluting it. I added surfactants. I berated it with colorful metaphors and threatened it with foul curses from the works of Robert Burns. Nothing would make that ink flow. Finally, in desperation, I poured it out in a far corner of my yard and, within days, the grass died. I still have the bottle. It's a pretty bottle and it looks nice on the shelf. If I grind it up into glass powder and put it in a pen it will probably flow better than the ink it once contained.

[Intensity]

Maybe I'm lenient toward inks, but I tend to think that some inks are situational and require certain pen/paper/care combination to get the best out of them. I don't expect every ink to work in every pen and on every paper. I'd rather have inks that work Excellently with a properly worked out combination than a bland jack-of-all-trades ink. I consider carefully what pen to use with each ink, and sometimes I hate a certain combination, so I flush out the ink and fill it in another pen.

 

With that said, I hate feathering. It's the number one thing I can't stand in bad ink behavior. I can deal with bleed-through, as I tend to write only on one side of a page. (There's only one notebook I have with sufficiently thick pages. It allows writing with fountain pen inks without any show through/ghosting, so I can write on both sides. I's a random brand one I picked up at TJ Maxx (Molly & Rex). Can't do that with Rhodia, Clairefontaine, and especially Tomoe River. Even a bit of ghosting bothers me.)

 

I don't hate the inks I'm going to list that do feather (unless I write on very non-absorbent paper), but I still wish they didn't feather so readily. I own no inks that I hate, and I actually still really like the following--other than the fact that they easily feather, and I need to be careful what I write on and how quickly I write. Birmingham Pen Co. Southside Park Moss Green, Birmingham Pen Co. Waterfront Dusk. In general, most--but not all--Birmingham Pen Co's inks I've tried tend to feather. Something about their formulation. Pilot Iroshizuku inks can feather too, but I still love them. Fuyu Syogun and Ku Jaku, for example.

 

. . .

In regards to flushing out Organics Studio Walden Pond Blue -- yes it takes a while. But it's not impossible, and it helps if you use distilled water with a bit of ammonia mixed in for a more thorough flush. It took me 2 days to flush out my piston filler Omas pen where I had Iroshizuku Take Sumi for a while. I didn't expect that, and I had even soaked repeatedly with aforementioned ammonia mixture, and still the water kept coming out tinted for a long long time. I never got it 100% clear when I gave up and said it was good enough. Same happened when I used Robert Oster's Fire and Ice in the same pen and let it sit for a couple weeks. In that regard, Walden Pond Blue is not any more difficult to flush out. Just restrict it to pens with removable converters, and it's not difficult to manage. If any is saturated on the feed, unscrew the whole nib bottom-of-the-pen unit and soak it in distilled water+a bit of ammonia for a while, then rinse well, then soak again.

 

. . .

I don't like inks that look like marker in writing, with no shading at all. I can't think of any now, but I definitely hate those. I think some of Noodler's bulletproof inks have that appearance. Combine with feathering behavior, and you have my ultimate worst possible ink.

Edited January 16, 2019 by Intensity

[katerchen]

Diamine Sargasso Sea. Color itself looks good on paper (but never truly dries and will smear forever), has a tar-like consistency and clogs up a nib in no time flat.

 

Closely followed by Noodler's 54th Massachusetts

 

-k

[Honeybadgers]

wancher green. It's f**king HORRENDOUS.

 

it firehoses into rhodia paper, eats right through the coating and feathers like a monster. an EF nib on rhodia with wancher green lays down a double broad after feathering.

 

it dries INSTANTLY and is 100% dead waterproof, but it's an appallingly bad ink and I'm never going to touch my 100mL bottle of it again

[Pentode]

wancher green. It's f**king HORRENDOUS.

Wow.... interesting. Ive had no trouble with my bottle of Wancher Sencha Green. I cant remember which pens Ive used it in but my recollection is that it behaved more or less like Quink.

[TheGreatRoe]

Without a doubt Noodler's Berning Red. It feathered on everything. In every pen. The feathering was so bad it rendered my small--but not unusually so--handwriting unreadable.

 

It was so bad it turned me off of Noodler's as a whole. It taught me that Noodler's cared more about what he felt was a clever label and name than he did about the ink.

[Flaxmoore]

Mine are pen dependent, it seems.

 

Sheaffer Blue-Black doesn't flow for anything in anything but a Sheaffer. Pelikan 205? Nah. Sheaffer Pop, sure.

Pelikan Blue-Black was the opposite. Only flowed at all in a Pelikan.

[Flaxmoore]

Without a doubt Noodler's Berning Red. It feathered on everything. In every pen. The feathering was so bad it rendered my small--but not unusually so--handwriting unreadable.

 

It was so bad it turned me off of Noodler's as a whole. It taught me that Noodler's cared more about what he felt was a clever label and name than he did about the ink.

 

Noodler's to me has been very strange. They make some of my absolute favorites. Ellis Island, 54th, but they also make inks that rank among the worst I've ever seen.

 

Couple in his political stance and I choose not to support that. I have the choice, so I'd rather give the money to Monteverde, Diamine and Pilot.

[TheGreatRoe]

 

Noodler's to me has been very strange. They make some of my absolute favorites. Ellis Island, 54th, but they also make inks that rank among the worst I've ever seen.

 

Couple in his political stance and I choose not to support that. I have the choice, so I'd rather give the money to Monteverde, Diamine and Pilot.

 

I don't agree with his politics, but I can ignore it--to each their own. My problem is that the time he spends coming up with labels and names that he thinks are zingers, and giving those long diatribes on YouTube explaining the names and labels, needs to be spent on QC. If it was a good product, I could shrug it off as an eccentricity, but I've fired people for goofing on when their turning in a subpar performance.

 

There are colors and inks he makes that I like, but if I give in and buy a bottle, who knows how that ink differs from what it's supposed to be?

[carlos.q]

Bottled Pelikan Black. No flow in any pen.

Here is a good example of different experiences from different people. Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Black is absolutely wonderful in my vintage Pelikan pens.

[eharriett]

Mine are pen dependent, it seems.

 

Sheaffer Blue-Black doesn't flow for anything in anything but a Sheaffer. Pelikan 205? Nah. Sheaffer Pop, sure.

Pelikan Blue-Black was the opposite. Only flowed at all in a Pelikan.

Really? Are you talking vintage Skrip or modern stuff? Vintage Skrip is some of the most perfect ink I’ve ever used.

[Tweety06]

Noodler's Rachmaninoff for me - if I stop writing for a couple of seconds, it hard starts. I wanted to use the super-bright color to mark up documents, but it's quite unusable for that purpose.

[inkstainedruth]

Here is a good example of different experiences from different people. Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Black is absolutely wonderful in my vintage Pelikan pens.

 

I've had the same experience. IMO it's a nice ink that gets underused because I don't use black ink much in general. But it looked fabulous coming out of the 50s era 400 with the OB nib. I suspect the other poster was putting it into drier writers. In a wet pen, it's great (and has more water resistance than I would have given it credit for....

4001 Royal Blue, OTOH? ZZZZZZ. Just sort of boring. Nothing wrong with it behavior wise -- but it's boring. And I don't care much for a lot of purple-leaning blues to start with.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Flaxmoore]

Really? Are you talking vintage Skrip or modern stuff? Vintage Skrip is some of the most perfect ink I’ve ever used.

 

Modern, but only the BB. The Blue and Red are among my favorite inks.

[Flaxmoore]

 

If it was a good product, I could shrug it off as an eccentricity, but I've fired people for goofing on when they're turning in a subpar performance.

 

 

As have I. You have to earn the swagger.

[putteringpenman]

Diamine Blue Velvet. Lovely color but it smears days after writing.

 

All the other Diamine inks I've tried haven't had this issue though.

[Astronymus]

Here is a good example of different experiences from different people. Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Black is absolutely wonderful in my vintage Pelikan pens.

Only my glas dip pens would handle it.

[carlos.q]

Only my glas dip pens would handle it.

Like I said, different experiences from different people.

[Uncial]

Diamine Blue Velvet. Lovely color but it smears days after writing.

 

All the other Diamine inks I've tried haven't had this issue though.

I only have this in carts, which may make a difference, but I've never had a problem with it.