Pelikan Ink of the Year 2021

[DilettanteG]

7 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

 I dunno.  I really like Olivine.  Way more than Aquamarine, the one from a few years ago -- which I had mis-ID'd in a previous post as Adventurine (although not that big a fan of Adventurine, either, truth be told; or Jade, for that matter...).

Still trying to make up my mind whether to get a sample of Moonstone or not.  As for Beryl?  It's a wait and see....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

Olivine is definitely the best Edelstein green. It lives in my M400 White Tortoise. Of course, Aquamarine lives in my M805 Ocean Swirl, so our tastes may differ.

 

I also quite like Moonstone. It's a nice reliable gray that's dark enough to read, but light enough that it doesn't look like diluted black. 

 

Honestly, these Edelstein inks have been pretty solid performers for me. Plus, the bottles are pretty.

[N1003U]

4 hours ago, DilettanteG said:

Olivine is definitely the best Edelstein green. It lives in my M400 White Tortoise. Of course, Aquamarine lives in my M805 Ocean Swirl, so our tastes may differ.

 

I also quite like Moonstone. It's a nice reliable gray that's dark enough to read, but light enough that it doesn't look like diluted black. 

 

Honestly, these Edelstein inks have been pretty solid performers for me. Plus, the bottles are pretty.

I agree with everything here. I would add:

 

1.) While Olivine is also my favorite under the Edelstein (and other Pelikan) green inks, I find Aventurine to be a solid medium green as well, for the not-very-often times I need a plain medium green ink. Adventurine is to me very plain-looking, and it does’t really call attention to itself, but it is, well, green, and that has value for me sometimes.

 

2.) Yes, the Edelstein bottles are pretty. I even watched one reviewer recently fawn over the large bottle opening an how easy it is to insert even the largest pens for filling. OK, fine. Could someone out there who actually has large pens, which generally also have  large nibs (say a large Namiki, or an MB149, or an M1000, or even an M800), and who uses Edelstein inks, explain to me how you fill your pens out of those bottles when they are less than even about 3/4 full? The ink chamber seems to be ingeniously designed so that no matter what angle one inserts the pen, it is not deep enough to draw ink unless the nib is relatively small, and when the bottle goes below about 1/2 to 1/3 full, forget it even with many smaller nibs.

 

Pretty yes. Practical? I don’t see it. I find I have to pipette ink out of the Edelstein bottles into an Ink Miser (or similar) device to fill many pens. In this sense, the traditional Pelikan ink bottles are more practical.

 

I suppose I could spend time wrestling with the bottle and trying to roll the feed into some ink until it is saturated, then slowly suck in that ink, then repeat a few times, but by then a pipette and a separate ink well is faster.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Olivine a semi-precious stone color....is not green martini olive...which upset many wanting a Martini olive green ink. I did get a second bottle of it.

 

Glad those folks wasn't into black olives; some are a bit reddish black.....wow, that could make a nice shading black....an olive ink.

 

Aventurine turned out to be a disappointment to me, doesn't shade much, but worst of all it writes a woolly line. And that on good to better papers. I did a test of some 8 green or greenish inks, and it fell to the middle, perhaps 5th, never in the top three. I don't remember exactly which papers I used, but they were good papers.

(It is possible with the matching paper to make Lamy Green, acceptable....at least two papers did ok with that ink.)

 

It makes no sense to make ink tests on poor paper..............my laser printer gets the 80g....and lately I've gone over to 90g for my copier as is. I don't print a whole lot out to edit by hand, so can afford the E-6 or so a ream; instead of E3.50 or so.  Sometimes I cheap out in the wrong places. (an old problem of mine) I can afford a beer's worth of money for a bit better paper. That bit, makes a whole lot when one chases shading inks.

[N1003U]

51 minutes ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Aventurine turned out to be a disappointment to me, doesn't shade much, but worst of all it writes a woolly line. And that on good to better papers.

I haven't noticed a lot of shading with Adventurine, either (a bit, but not much), but for my typical uses, that is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

I haven't really noticed that Adventurine is any more of less "wooly" than any of the other Edelsteins. I'll have to look closely next time I ink it up. I wouldn't surprise me though. If my memory is not failing me, Adventurine seems to me to chemically pretty wet (i.e. the surface tension is not so high), and it tends to spread out fairly readily even on low-absorbent papers, so if the paper is at all absorbent, it would probably tend to wick into the loose fibers more easily, if that were the case. Even if the paper were not absorbent, it would seemingly show the textures of the surface more easily than a more "cohesive" surface tension (one that "beads up" more readily).

****

 

Olivine is only one of the two Edelstein Ink of the Year colors I liked enough to also buy the "matching" M20x pen (the other being Smoky Quarz). I am still on the fence about the Moonstone pen. I am very curious to see what the corresponding pen for this apparently yellow-goldish shimmer ink is going to look like.

[Bo Bo Olson]

 

Howsoever I'm OCD/AR on feathering......(Oh ya, got to make a list of papers used to see how the ink reacts on different dance floors....laziness has it's price...., doubt if I can BS exactly....and it appears I lost my stick in ear memory stick.

 

How ever in FPN we all make lists or define things.......

 

BEF....bare eyed feathering/woolly, lumpy line....Seen while sitting....that the line is uneven...lumpy...bumpy line. woolly , that is feathering sometimes even tiny runaway threads spreading off the line. It is not a clean line.

 

Outside noticing the differences of nib and paper....I was not and am not into false judging of an ink (by maker), pen nor paper. I want a clean line, as clean as possible.

 

NEF....near eye feathering/lumpy or woolly line....seen while looking at it near my eye. Looks just about OK while sitting. There are many like that. When one takes a close look, it shows feathering/woolly line. No clean smooth line.

 

With a Big Honking Magnifying glass.1 1/2 inch by 3 x 4 inches or 2.7 by 7 1/2 x 10cm. (No you can't use your 10X loupe...everything has a woolly line under that.)

 

Mag F...what I'd consider a descent ink....if I like the tone, I will buy it again. Feathering/woolly line can be seen under magnification only.

 

NoMAG F.......great ink ...buy more...buy stock in the company. Hoard it. No feathering/woolly line at all, even when looking through the big, thick magnifying glass.

 

 

When not the millionaire boss, nit picking is a hobby. You know before I got into inks, I wouldn't have known a nit from a louse. I do now know what a lousy ink looks like to me. One with out a nice clean line on good to better papers.

[Switala]

On 11/01/2021 at 17:57, inkstainedruth said:

 Não sei. Eu realmente gosto de Olivine. Muito mais do que Aquamarine, a de alguns anos atrás - que eu tinha identificado erroneamente em um post anterior como Adventurine (embora não seja um grande fã de Adventurine, verdade seja dita; ou Jade, por falar nisso ...).

Ainda estou tentando decidir se devo obter uma amostra de Moonstone ou não. Quanto a Beryl? É uma espera para ver ....

Ruth Morrisson também conhecida como inkstainedruth

I was disappointed with the Moonstone, I tested on three pens varying nibs and paper to try to understand but I didn't get anything but an erased graphite with some contrasts that look like coal dust in some points. As for Gold beryl, I will wait for the most avetureiros to test to be sure that it will not affect the health of my pens ...