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I had a chance to pick up some great sheening inks from Birmingham. They arrived packaged well and I wanted to share a little bit of the experience and joy! These inks have supplanted Vinta and Wearingeul as my favorite. Organic Studios inks were too sticky and reports of the ink smearing months later turned me away. I feel there are a lot of Blue inks that sheen Red or Pink so I was happy to try a different hue. Well as these came in 100 cc bottles (Emerald Fusion and Insterstellar Bronze) and a 60cc bottle (Extradimensional Umber) it's a good thing I enjoy it! BTW, I suspect they may make their inks in small batches so it may not be unusual for the order to ship a week or so after. Their site didn't indicate the inks were in stock or in low supply, but fortunately they respond quickly to emails and questions. I have not seen much of these inks in reviews or on youtube so I wanted to share my experience. So these are monster sheeners though in my pens relatively well behaved. This is Emerald Fusion on Copy Paper w/ it's nuclear green glow sheen. To my eye, there is no feathering or spread. Despite using a heavy flowing ink in my broadest nib (outside the parralells)there was no bleed through and the backside of the page was usable. On Rhodia, the ink looks okay w/ a slightly more sheen but it was hard to capture. BTW, here is my Opus 88 demonstrator with Emerald Fusion which has a crazy purple hue! You have to brave and foolish to put this kind of ink in a clear demonstrator, but I am happy to note that it all came out after I finished taking photos. I did though add a pen cleaning soap to help swish out the green that seemed to hide behind the little plunger. Definitely don't want to leave this ink sitting around unused if you're worried about stains. Finally, we come to Tomoe River There is a bit more ghosting but again I'm using a xtra broad nib. BTW, there is hardly any water resistance (for all papers)... if you get a drop or two on the page, you can dab it and see what was written. It's the only fault, but I imagine it'd be like baystate blue levels of staining if it were resistant. I usually don't like greens, but I've taken to this and R&K Alt Gold Grun. I'll add some pictures later of the other two inks.

An email I received today from the guys at Birmingham Pen Co. Introduced me to their new ink comparison tool, the Inkvestigator. As one of their fans, I’ve often found it difficult to decide between some of their inks that appear to be very close to one another. This new tool helps with some of that decision making. It is found at the bottom of the INKS pull down menu, and for the moment is only operational for their line of “Crisp Inks,” although that is still a considerable number of inks. You click on the ink you are interested in on the list, and its swatch appears below. Then you can add as many inks as you want to view together. They appear as stacked tiles, which you can then drag and drop to move them around for comparisons. You can lay part of one over another to fit them on the relatively small portion of the page allotted for viewing, and rearrange them however you please. You may remove one or all the swatches with the provided buttons. It’s a useful and welcome tool for their website, and will become even more functional when their complete line of inks can be viewed. More good work from Birmingham. (No affiliation). https://www.birminghampens.com/pages/inkvestigator

Just got an email that www.birminghampens.com / Brimingham inks are half price. Not a bad deal. Didn't notice the sale being mentioned here yet, but have seen some interest lately in their inks.