Best Ink For Moleskine?

[aawhite]

My experience is using Moleskine journals with Waterman Florida Blue and Sheaffer Blue. With both inks, if the pen is a wet writer; the ink tends to bleed through. A dry writer, even a broad nibbed dry writer, works best.

[agentdaffy007]

Pelikan Blue-Black is good because it's pretty damn dry.

 

Not as dry as ST Dupont Black, but that one is wayyy too dry.

[skipperhughes]

I have found that Aurora Blue and Black perform quite well in my molskines

[bwnewton]

I use the following regularly with great success: Lamy Blue Black, Lamy Blue, R&K Scabiosa, R&K Sepia

[DEFishback]

Another vote for Aurora Black. (I have switched over to the Kokuyo Campus notebooks, however. These offer much better bleed resistance than Moleskine and a decent level of smoothness without the hard finish and long dry times of Clairefontaine.)

[EnviroDAWG2]

Noodler's Blue Ghost.

[XiaoMG]

I opened up a large Moleskine notebook of mine and wrote a few lines with a bunch of inked pens.

 

On one hand, I have occasionally on some pages had reasonable luck getting fountain pens inks to behave, but the page I just tried was more typical of my experience, where most of them performed fairly poorly. Legible? Sure, but far from ideal.

 

It should come as no surprise that pencils, ballpoints, and gel pens turned out the best results. My Mitsubishi Hi-Unis, Tombow Mono 100s, and other high-quality pens all perform fine, though graphite transfer can be annoying and the line darkness isn't all that impressive (after a few months, even 4B tends to be hard to distinguish from HB or 2B, excepting line width). The best gel pens (Uniball Signo series, Pilot's Hi-Tec-C, and Pentel's Slicci lines) perform very admirably, and lay down crisp lines even with points as wide as 0.5mm (the <0.4mm are best though). If you want wider than that, a ballpoint is about the only real option.

 

For fountain pens, it depended as much on the nib size as it did on the ink. X-Feather, Noodler's Black, and Kiwaguro do pretty well as long as the nib isn't too big. An EF Edison and my Platinum Preppy 03s were on the large end of acceptable, and the former didn't work well even with Noodler's Black. Baystate Blue did alright from some F-nibbed 78Gs in terms of feathering, but the show-through and bleed was pretty noticeable. Iroshizuku Kon-Peki and Ku-Jaku were pretty bad from juicy Pilot Custom 74 fine (and soft-fine) nibs, but were alright when flipped over. They are certainly not cut out for that kind of paper though. The lighter the touch and the finer the point, the easier it was to get a good line. Aurora Black was not all that impressive, and performed about as well as the Iroshizuku inks. Seiboku was also slightly disappointing from a Pilot F for its feathering, though bleedthrough was minimal.

 

I'd say the best were easily Noodler's Black from a Pilot EF, and Kiwaguro from a Pilot F. X-Feather will be in the same league, though I didn't test it with the same class of nib. Those were pretty close to the performance from the gel pens.

[Scylax]

I use the extra-large soft-backed moleskines because I haven't found anything of the same size and cover type. I find the paper far from ideal but I have found some workable combinations:

 

Noodler's Bulletproof Black seems to be good even in very wet pens - even my medium Lamy 2000 doesn't cause bleed or feathering, nor does my fine Visconti Rembrandt.

 

Waterman Black in an extra-fine Carene is good, but I haven't tried it in other pens.

 

Waterman Blue seems to do well in medium and stub carenes - again I haven't tested in other pens

 

Lamy Blue is okay in most nibs but can be a problem in wet writers

 

 

 

Problem inks: Waterman Rose (bleed), Lamy violet (so. much. feathering ), PR Electric DC Blue (show through/bleed), Diamine Ancient Copper (bleed), Diamine Syrrah (bleed) - but I haven't done tests using most of these inks in different pens so with a different nib your mileage may vary.

[gentlyom]

In my experiences with Moleskine 5x8 journal squire and lined journals, and lined planers, gel pens, uni-ball rollerballs and fountain pens are all good. But have not yet used any very dark fountain pen inks on it, though I used black roller balls with no problems.

 

Fountain pen inks tried without bleeding, feathering:

 

Waterman: Florida Blue, South Sea Blue

J Herbin: Blue Azur, Blue Myosotis

Diamine: Sepia

 

Fountain pen used when writing: Pelikan 200 & 400s w/ M or F nibs; Lamy CP1 w/ F or 1.1mm nibs. Also, I do not put a lot of pressure when I write.

[Samovar]

Since I move to Japan, I have mostly been using Apica and Tsubame, but my go to ink for the Moleskine used to be Lamy Blue-black.

Edited April 30, 2012 by Samovar

[79spitfire]

I use pencil mostly in mine, but it is a blank sketch book...

 

In all fairness, the sketching or art books have much thicker paper and take fountain pen use well.

[a m a r g o]

Waterman's Florida Blue and Green... using at maximum a medium nib!

[maryannemoll]

My answer would be, none. Just use a pencil.

[79spitfire]

Jotter ballpoint?

[alvarado]

my answer would be a bit off topic, find another notebook, forget mole.

[akustyk]

I recently tested a few inks on a Moleskine notebook with a Lamy EF nib. These inks are safe, don't feather or bleed through: Waterman Florida Blue, R&K Salix, Montblanc Midnight Blue, Noodler's Black, and even Noodler's Liberty Elysium. I've read that Moleskine paper tends to vary greatly, so take these results with some caution. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the paper. It does badly with gushers and broad nibs, but does well with EF nibs.

[Bo Bo Olson]

ballpoint....

 

pencils work good too!

 

Not realizing a decade or more ago, all the folks raving about Moleskine were ball point users, as soon as I got back into fountain pens I was going to run out and buy some.

 

Thank god I read the small print here.

 

A EF nib and some sort of super fast drying Noodlers is as far as I know the only way to fly when one uses substandard paper like Moleskine.

 

Of course I have no experience Moleskine. :clap1:

 

Skillcraft once make a ball point. The vastly underpaid blind assemble them. If you work for the Government you can still get them. A perfect match, cheap paper and a cheap ball point.

Edited January 20, 2013 by Bo Bo Olson

[mirosc]

A EF nib and some sort of super fast drying Noodlers is as far as I know the only way to fly when one uses substandard paper like Moleskine.

 

No.

There are many other options (like posted here and in the anti-moleskin-bashing thread).

[Bo Bo Olson]

There is no way to bash a product that is substandard for fountain pens use.

 

If you have to use only narrow or very narrow nibs, there is a problem with the paper. If one has to have a list of inks that some have been able to use with the paper, there appears a problem.

It is not a fountain pen friendly paper.

 

I admit surprise that there are other inks than super fast drying Noodler inks that can be used. What I had read before had not mentioned them.

 

If they don't consider the fountain pen market big enough to re-size their paper for fountain pen use, there is a problem with their ball point pen using management.

 

It is a ball point pen paper, nothing else.

[daTomoT]

Noodler's X-Feather works for me.

 

Also, any dry ink really. Inks like Pelikan 4001, R&K Salix/Scabiosa or any other Iron Gall ink. Lots of things really.