Lamy Crystal Ink - Obsidian, Hand-Written Review

[Enkida]

You're welcome! It's an enjoyable black with some character. Glad you all are enjoying this review so much!

[txomsy]

Great review. Love it. Thanks a lot.

[Gloucesterman]

+1 for a great review. As someone wrote "earlier" your style made me want to read the who thing. Very enjoyable blend of content, context and illustration.

 

In addition, I learned a new word - pangram and decided to learn and use one different from the most common one. For now I will work on using -

 

“Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs”.

 

I am very tired that the dog always gets zapped and a bad rap while the fox does its hi-jinks and escapes easily!

 

Again thanks for the wonderful review. I learned a lot and had fun!

[Enkida]

You're quite welcome, and always remember: Foxy diva Jennifer Lopez wasn't baking my quiche!

[lapis]

FWIW: I like this black as it writes well, is wet, nicely lubed and leaves (on white, inexpensive copy paper) a relatively water-resistant line... plus... it is washable in the sense that the few small drops which landed on my middling-to-dark emerald T-shirt (100% cotton) could in fact be completely washed out in one normal clothes-wash. BTW the drops were caused by me having to pry off the lid's sealing disk which was stuck to the glass rim.

[MissCellany]

This was a great review, thank you! I love your style- it made a review of (what could be seen as) a rather tame ink be really interesting! I might have to do a little review of the bottle of Colorverse Black Hole I've been digging lately... >.>

[lapis]

Here are paper chromatography strips of the Obsidian (to the left) and Lamy's old "Black" (to the right). These don't seem to substantiate in any way the findings mentioned above that the Obsidian is "darker and has more copper sheen", while the Black is "warmer". That wasn't my intent here and I'm not arguing about that, either.

What did impress me, however, was my own finding that as soon as I tried my own bottle of Obsidian out on paper, it appeared to have a good hint of teal in it. But it was instead a touch of chocolate or Grand Canyon in it which was what I had expected as soon as I first saw the images up in Post #1. I guess it is/was my screen.

Well, whatever, these chromatography strips do seem to demonstrate is that both inks have at least a good portion of two and the same ingredients (for the dark grey and gold), as well as varying amounts of two other quite similar dyes (for a purple or violet and a middling blue).

[Honeybadgers]

As far as black inks go...

 

I like lamy crystal obsidian. It's currently third in my list of blacks. Better performance on bad paper than heart of darkness, but missing that joie de vivre of noodlers dark matter, or the intense, black-hole blackness of hero black (seriously the square glass bottle hero black is LUDICROUSLY black)

 

I think the only thing that lets it down is it comes in a lame bottle. It's borderline sailor bad. Big wide mouth but so shallow that you can't fill half your pens without tipping it, even when full. And the inner cap liner comes loose and sticks to the mouth, which is a pain in the ass.

Edited August 4, 2019 by Honeybadgers

[ErrantSmudge]

And the inner cap liner comes loose and sticks to the mouth, which is a pain in the ass.

 

That has happened to me as well, with a bottle of Lamy Topaz.

 

For a company that prides itself on its design prowess, these new Crystal ink bottles are beyond embarrassment for Lamy. Besides the issues you noted, the bottles provide only the barest hint of the ink color via a small band on the cap, and for some colors the bands look near identical. I labeled the three Crystal inks we have in order to tell the difference between them.

[praxim]

Agreed. I have 5, each labelled, which does not improve their appearance. They are also too shallow for some nibs even when tilted.