Diamine Blacks

[beluga]

I do like Diamine inks and after quite some time of using Herbin, Pelikan and Waterman inks I have come back to give Diamine a try again.

 

Their darkest black seems to be Diamine Jet-Black, but I noticed that this ink tends to dry out quicker than other Diamine inks - in particular on medium (I don't use anything finer than medium) nibs the ink flow dries up when the pen has not been used for 2 or more days.

As I tend to keep more than a dozen pens inked at any time, I naturally have a few pens inked with black too and this behaviour is quite annoying.

 

 

As Diamine inks are locally not available here, I need to order them over the Internet and have them sent here.

Before I try various bottles of Diamine blacks, could you recommend a fairly strong Diamine black that can stay in an unused pen for several days without drying up in the nib?

 

 

I also use Diamine Onyx Black at this time, which seems to behave better, but is a lighter black.

Diamine Jet-Black has recently been reformulated and I will give this ink another try too, unless someone has already tried this ink and can report that in this area the new Jet-Black does not differ from the old one.

 

 

Many thanks in advance for your comments and suggestions.

Edited October 28, 2012 by beluga

[jonwat]

Hi.

 

I have limited experience with Diamine blacks, having tried only Jet Black (old formulation) and Quartz black. In my experience neither of these is a particularly strong black when compared to my other black inks, Noodlers Black and Cross/Pelikan Black.

 

YMMV of course.

 

John

[vistafan]

Diamine Onyx Black is pretty dark, but I love Aurora Black.

[51ISH]

I like Diamine Inks too.....

 

They have some lovely colours.....but I am not even tempted by their blacks....

 

I think the black you are looking for..... is Aurora Black.

 

It doesn't dry too quickly, has very good librication, and if it's not the 'blackest black' it's pretty darn close..

 

Just my opinion you understand...

[beluga]

Thank you for the various Aurora recommendations, but I was looking for a black Diamine ink.

 

Ideally, I would like to limit myself to one brand of inks in my pens, even if that is asking for a lot, but it would - among other things - make switching ink colours less problematic.

 

I know some swear by Noodlers, some swear by Aurora, but for various reasons neither of these ink brands "does it for me".

 

Aurora has a nice black, but that is already 50% of their entire ink range and I had bad experiences (note the plural) with leaking Aurora bottles in my luggage. As my work involves extensive travel, this effectively eliminated Aurora from my list.

[vistafan]

As I recommended, Diamine Onyx Black is quite dark; albeit it is not as dark as Aurora Black, but it has good properties.

Edited October 29, 2012 by vistafan

[myn]

Diamine Onyx and Diamine Eclipse are the darkest blacks they produce. There is also a lot of praise for Diamine Archival Registrars Blue-Black that darkens as it dries and is the official ink used for registry, clergy and any thing requiring "official" signatures by government etc. - other then for these - all the other Diamine family of blacks tend to greyishness.

 

Diamine gives a very good colour representation of all their inks on their website here:

http://www.diamineinks.co.uk/listings.aspx?brandid=3

 

All the Diamine inks gush in my Italix Parson's Essential but work very well in all my other pens, Sheaffers, Parkers, Watermans etc. so you sometimes simply have to play to find the right ink for your favourite pen, as in nib adjustment or, as I did in my case, move to a drier ink. For you, you may simply need a very slight nib adjustment to have the ink flow a bit faster in your pen.

 

I've had no problems with Diamine ever drying in my pens after a couple of days. Having said that, some pens lend themselves to this such as my Waterman Phileas that no matter the ink brand, if it rests for a few seconds between words needs an extra stroke to get it started - again a slight nib adjustment would most likely address this for me but I don't find it bothersome so I leave well enough alone.

[View from the Loft]

I prefer Diamine Onyx out of their blacks. Has never dried out in any of my pens, seems to cope well with cheap school paper, and has never given me any trouble. It flows better than Diamine Jet Black, and to my eye anyway, is darker than Quartz.