Krishna Permanent Black Iron Gall

[bokaba]

Krishna Permanent Black Iron Gall

 

I recently purchased a 20ml bottle of Krishna Permanent Black (Iron Gall) from Vanness Pens. I believe this is the only commercially available black iron gall fountain pen ink with the exception of the the G10 Gutenberg Bible Ink (and the defunct Stipula Black). 

 

I used a Pilot Plumix with a medium stub nib for this review on Rhodia dot pad.

 

Feathering/bleed: none

 

Flow: moderately wet, but leans toward the drier side

 

Permanence: supposed to be highly water resistant; test to follow

 

Saturation: medium

 

Color: starts as light gray and then dries to a darker, warm black/gray with brown undertones and a dash of purple. Very interesting for a black ink

 

Packing: simple glass jar with plain packing

[inkstainedruth]

Looking forward to the water resistance tests.  And I'd also be curious about how UV resistant it is.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[yazeh]

Interesting one. Iron gall inks truly need videos or time lapse ideally to show the true transformation and the beauty of them.......

[Schaumburg_Swan]

Hi,

 

very interesting! A shading black ig. 🙂

Should be hard to get here at the moment...

 

Best wishes and thank you

Jens

[bokaba]

Here is the water resistance test. The Black IG is darker in person, my scanner appears to have had some trouble picking it up. The other is Krishna IG Blue Black, which I have yet to review.  Krishna claims the inks are made with kadukka seeds, which contain some acidic content, rather than oak galls. 

[yazeh]

For a permanent ink, It's quite impermanent, isn't it?

[inkstainedruth]

That's why I was wondering about the UV resistance.  Most of the IG inks I've tried have little to none.  Even though I had some that worked well on those plastic-y Post It flags initially, I went back to using Noodler's Kung Te Cheng on them (I use them in the notebooks where I keep track of what inks work well -- or not -- in specific pens, color coding to some extent by brand).  So I have (currently) 3 composition books where I have four pages dedicated to each pen and have a line per ink saying whether it works well, is slow drying, etc.  And dozens of various colors of post-it flags sticking out of the top and side, noting the pen brand, model, nib width (and if I have multiples) pen color).  Of course it's not complete, and doesn't have the pens that still need repairs on them, and I've occasionally missed making notations.  

And KTC works on the flags.  IG inks work to start with, but then fade beyond all recognition, often after a short amount of time.

Too bad about the lack of water resistance to this ink.  It had sounded interesting.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[bokaba]

I think this level of water resistance appears to be par for the course for modern fountain pen inks with the exception of Diamine Registrar's, Akkerman 10, and ESSRI (can't confirm as I haven't tried it yet). Nonetheless, the Krishna Blue Black had better water resistance than the Black. 

[bokaba]

Just as a follow up, after more than two years, the sample has turned entirely brown like some of those old illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages. Will post the aged sample soon.

[yazeh]

8 hours ago, bokaba said:

Just as a follow up, after more than two years, the sample has turned entirely brown like some of those old illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages. Will post the aged sample soon.

Looking forward to your photos

 

[Karmachanic]

9 hours ago, bokaba said:

he sample has turned entirely brown like some of those old illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages.

 

Cool!  I'll get a bottle, open it up and use 2/3ml to let is some air, then set it aside for two years.

[bokaba]

Here is the sample after more than 2 years. It is really more brown than my scanner picked up.

[yazeh]

@bokaba Wow, that's really brown. Normally the process should'Ve taken a century or two with good old fashioned Iron gall inks

[Mr.Rene]

3 hours ago, yazeh said:

@bokaba Wow, that's really brown. Normally the process should'Ve taken a century or two with good old fashioned Iron gall inks

Maybe the ink was formulated with gall nuts instead tannic acid, the tannic acid makes the ink black not brown...gall nuts have not tannic acid high concentration.

Regards.

[yazeh]

On 4/25/2023 at 8:58 PM, Mr.Rene said:

Maybe the ink was formulated with gall nuts instead tannic acid, the tannic acid makes the ink black not brown...gall nuts have not tannic acid high concentration.

Regards.

Makes sense

 

[bokaba]

This ink is supposedly made from some type of seed