New Blackstone Barrister Waterproof Inks

[JustWrite Pen Company]

Coming soon exclusively to Pensive Pens in Australia and Anderson Pens in the US.

 

Four new Barrister waterproof ink colours:

 

Barrister Blue/Black :: Barrister Brown :: Barrister Red :: Barrister Purple.

 

 

 

Blackstone Barrister inks are well behaved, saturated, waterproof, permanent fountain pen inks made in Australia by Blackstone Ink. Barrister inks are 100% waterproof and are unaffected by complete immersion in water. They are fade resistant and highly resistive to bleach, alcohol and mild acids.

 

Barrister inks are nano pigment inks made with sub-micron sized pigment particles instead of the usual soluble dyes. These nano particles are so small that they can easily pass through fountain pen feeds and are treated with a special soluble polymer to overcome their natural attraction to each other.

 

Blackstone fountain pen ink is packaged in reusable Polypropylene bottles. Polypropylene is one of the toughest plastics in existence and these bottles are practically indestructible. These bottle can be re-purposed as ink carry or storage bottles and Polypropylene is completely recyclable.

 

Barrister waterproof inks are available in black, blue-black, blue, red, purple and brown

[Steveg58]

Hi Kevin, I was eyeing off the blue for the next time I made an order but you have just made my choice a lot more difficult.

On another subject one of the local people saw my Maxim and was keen on getting one ... are you likely to be making any more?

[Lloyd]

Do you ship to the US?

[amberleadavis]

OH yes, I hear them calling my name.

[dcwaites]

Blackstone Barrister Pigmented Inks

A Review

Note: This is a review I did of four of the above-mentioned inks that were sent to me by Kevin.

Blackstone have developed a new series of permanent inks, using pigments. These are all part of the Barrister series. The Blue is a new formulation, the pigment version replacing the previous Ferro-Tannate recipe.

 

Colours

Black. The Black is a deep, saturated, black hole Black. Even with a nib on the dry side of Medium, there is no grey. Just solid Black.

 

Red. The Red is a simple, pure Red. Like the Black, there are no gaps or thinned out areas in the written line.

 

Brown. The Brown resembles the Red as it goes down, but becomes more distinct, and browner, as it dries. This is a simple Brown, with the same consistent colour that the Red and Black show.

 

Blue. Like the other three colours, the pigmented Barrister Blue is a simple, pure medium Blue colour.

 

Behaviour

 

Feathering – None

 

Bleeding – Only on the poorest quality of papers, and then only spotting.

 

Spreading – The Black, none. The other three, only a little. This may be because the coloured inks wet the nib tipping better than the Black, causing the nib to write a slightly wider line

 

Shading – The Black shows no shading, only deep, solid Black. The other three may show a little, depending on the paper.

 

Sheen – The Black, Red and Brown show no sheen, but the Blue does show a little on Tomoe River paper.

Staining and Clogging

Being pigmented, the inks may leave a residue on the internal surfaces of the pens, but they don’t leave a permanent stain. The residue can be removed with a wet cloth, tissue or cotton bud if required.

The inks are made from nano-pigments. They don’t seem to show any settling of pigment, nor have I noticed any tendency to clog the feed, or dry out in the nib.

 

Permanence

These inks are permanent under normal situations. They weren’t moved by hot water, nor by window cleaner (ammonia).

 

Test Results

Modena Notebook. This Italian notebook is one of my most difficult notebooks. It bleeds with almost any ink, except very fine nibbed pens and pigmented inks

Barrister Black – Axiom Fine – No Bleeding

Barrister Blue – Caliarts Ego EF – Slight Bleeding

 

Daiso Combine B5 Notebook – Blue Cover. The paper in these notebooks is not quite as good as the paper in the Pink covered notebooks. For example, Parker Penman Sapphire and Monteverde Horizon Blue in wet pens bleed through a little.

Barrister Black – Axiom Fine – No Bleeding

Barrister Blue – Caliarts Ego EF – No Bleeding

 

Conclusions

These are nice, well-behaved inks that seem to work well in all but the poorest papers. They are permanent to most reasonable standards. Being pigmented, they should not fade with time. They resist hot water and window cleaner (ammonia), with only the most minor shifting of any of the dried ink.

The only comment I have that is not 100% positive is about the colours. Apart from the Black, which is about as black as it can get, the other colours are just a bit on the plain side. However, that is probably just a property of the inks being made from pigments.

As it is, the inks are respectable, reliable, functional inks that would, as their name suggests, be quite acceptable in a business setting or courtroom.

And being permanently permanent, any attempts to remove or alter them would result in damaging the paper.

Samples of the four inks I have, on Tomoe River paper

A slightly blown-up scan comparing three similar, permanent, Blue inks for Shading and Sheening on Tomoe River paper

Edited July 27, 2018 by dcwaites

[WolvertonMountain]

A pigmented, permanent, PURPLE...

Yep, I'll take the Barrister Purple.

[JustWrite Pen Company]

Hi Kevin, I was eyeing off the blue for the next time I made an order but you have just made my choice a lot more difficult.

On another subject one of the local people saw my Maxim and was keen on getting one ... are you likely to be making any more?

 

Yeah I do plan to make some more Maxims but at the moment I'm really enjoying working with metals. I love working with brass, especially the really old brass but I've been working with stainless steel and aluminium too. They are both interesting to work with but challenging.

[JustWrite Pen Company]

Do you ship to the US?

 

Anderson Pens will have them in a few weeks.

[JustWrite Pen Company]

Now available at Pensive Pens... https://pensivepens.com.au

[Steveg58]

@Kevin, Should Australian orders go to JustWrite or Pensive Pens? Do you have a preference?

[JustWrite Pen Company]

@Kevin, Should Australian orders go to JustWrite or Pensive Pens? Do you have a preference?

 

These new colours are exclusive to Pensive Pens. I'm not selling them on JustWrite.

 

Pensive Pens have a great range of products for fountain pen enthusiasts and is well worth checking out.

 

James Finniss who owns Pensive Pens is a genuine fountain pen enthusiast. He developed the Serendipity Pen with Robert Oster and he makes some beautiful fountain pens as well which are available on Pensive Pens website.

 

Recently James took a bad hit when his workshop was flooded and Yagan Kiely (Macchiato Man), another well known figure in the Australian Fountain Pen Community has started a GoFundMe Fundraiser to help James replace his equipment so he can get back to making pens.

 

As Yagan pointed out, James isn't the kind of guy to ask for help but we're a small FP community here in Australia and we should support each other to help keep our passion and our industry alive and flourishing. If you can help by supporting the GoFundMe Fundraiser or by patronising Pensive Pens, either would be great.

[carlos.q]

Can these inks be mixed? I would really like a bluer-leaning purple and would consider buying two bottles (purple and blue) to make my own mix.

[dcwaites]

Can these inks be mixed? I would really like a bluer-leaning purple and would consider buying two bottles (purple and blue) to make my own mix.

 

I did mix a little bit of the red with the blue. Unfortunately the subtractive effects are greater with pigmented inks, so it looked muddier than I liked. Mixing the purple with the blue might work, but we haven't seen the Blue-Black yet.

[Steveg58]

Alas I will not be buying any Blackstone Barrister inks. I decided I would get a pen and some inks and then at the last moment I needed to create a login for Pensive Pens. I really hate having to create a login per online shop. It is unnecessary and hostile to shoppers. I've previously had issues with the Pensive Pens site over pop up messages while I was trying to shop there.

[WolvertonMountain]

... I really hate having to create a login per online shop...

 

I quite like having a separate and distinct login for each online store I patronize.

If there were a centralized database of online shop logins and a hacker gained access to this database, that hacker could then access and plunder all the shops with that login.

I would NOT like that scenario.

 

Clifton

[Steveg58]

@WolvertonMountain. Most online shops do not require you to create a logon at all. There is no actual security necessity for it. It is all about tracking and managing the customer. Marketing 'wisdom' says that most people dislike managing multiple logons and will tend to stick to the shop they already have a login for.

[JustWrite Pen Company]

 

I did mix a little bit of the red with the blue. Unfortunately the subtractive effects are greater with pigmented inks, so it looked muddier than I liked. Mixing the purple with the blue might work, but we haven't seen the Blue-Black yet.

 

Yes, you get quite a different result when you mix the inks than you do when you mix the pigments prior to making the ink. Barrister Blue Black is made by mixing black pigment with blue pigment then making the ink. If you mixed the Barrister Blue and Barrister Black inks together it won't look quite the same. As Dave said, it will look 'muddy'.

 

They can be 'safely' mixed together though.

[JustWrite Pen Company]

@WolvertonMountain. Most online shops do not require you to create a logon at all. There is no actual security necessity for it. It is all about tracking and managing the customer. Marketing 'wisdom' says that most people dislike managing multiple logons and will tend to stick to the shop they already have a login for.

 

Steve, I understand what you're saying. If you send me an email I will try to work something out for you.

[WolvertonMountain]

@WolvertonMountain. Most online shops do not require you to create a logon at all. There is no actual security necessity for it. It is all about tracking and managing the customer. Marketing 'wisdom' says that most people dislike managing multiple logons and will tend to stick to the shop they already have a login for.

 

Ah, yes, Steve... The ubiquitous "most" argument for which no studies or other statistics are presented to backup the "most" argument.

Since I have utilized online stores for many, many, many years, here's my use statistics:

Excluding other forums, email accounts, health institutions, financial institutions, and utilities, I have usernames/passwords for 103 different stores. Of those, the only time I remember seeing "guest checkout" being available was for Fountain Pen Revolution which I began using earlier this year. Certainly not "most" in my experience.

Of course, Steve, my statistics are misleading and contain two huge fallacies. Can you spot the two huge fallacies?

 

Clifton

[truthpil]

Yes!!! Now I can forgive you for changing the Barrister Blue formula so it's no longer leaning toward blue-black.

Perhaps now I can finally get that 100% waterproof midnight blue I've been searching for...