EFNIR: Diamine Registrar's Ink

[LizEF]

Extra Fine Nib Ink Review: Diamine Registrars Ink

This is review #134 in my series.  Here's the YouTube video:

Post-recording notes: The color's fairly accurate in the images this time.  Color is a little too dark and not quite enough blue in the screen capture.  Cleaning was pretty easy, but did require a bit of rubbing with a cotton bud to remove some ink from the walls of the converter and section.  No sign of any nib corrosion (after 4 days).

And here is a screen of the final result, for those not interested in the video:

Scan of Completed Review:

Zoomed in photo:

Absorbent Paper Closeup (top is puzzle paper like thick newsprint, bottom is old 20lb copy paper):

Close-up of water test results:

Images also available on Instagram: @zilxodarap

Previous Review: Diamine Purple Rain.

Want to influence the inky sequence?  Take the "next ink" poll.

Need to catch up on The Adventures of Quin and Makhabesh?  Find the whole story here.

Hope you enjoy.  Comments appreciated!

[yazeh]

Wow, wow, wow

How I love IG inks. It seems to love not to feather on your crappy puzzle paper,, like its cousin Essri. 

If memory serves me right this was the old Cross IG, which was rebranded by Diamine. 

 

I didn't know they had punching bags/ boxer in medieval times, unless it was the past time of magical rams/goats

 

[LizEF]

5 minutes ago, yazeh said:

Wow, wow, wow

How I love IG inks. It seems to love not to feather on your crappy puzzle paper,, like its cousin Essri. 

All these IGs do well on absorbent paper and perfectly on copy paper.  There's at least one more to come (it's in my pen right now).

 

6 minutes ago, yazeh said:

If memory serves me right this was the old Cross IG, which was rebranded by Diamine.

I don't know details, but according to FPN's ink review index, Cross inks appear to be made by Pelikan (or at least the same as Pelikan and made by whoever makes Pelikan's).

 

6 minutes ago, yazeh said:

I didn't know they had punching bags/ boxer in medieval times, unless it was the past time of magical rams/goats

Apparently they had pizza, bacon cheeseburgers, and punching bags in medieval / pre-industrial times.  (At least, in my imagination, we've gone into a different world (not Earth), where sphinxes and wizards and magic are real.  I'm not entirely sure when this happened - probably inside the big sphinx - it might be that Marsell portalled all of us to another world...)

[Sailor Kenshin]

While I love blue-blacks, iron gall chases me off.  Thanks for the review, as always!  

 

Come for the reviews, stay for the story!  ...and the goats.

[LizEF]

6 minutes ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

iron gall chases me off

Like an old goat without a punching bag?

 

7 minutes ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

Thanks for the review, as always!

You're welcome!

 

7 minutes ago, Sailor Kenshin said:

Come for the reviews, stay for the story!  ...and the goats.

Thank you.

[lapis]

I love IGs, I love b-bs, but hate and/or ignore this ink because it is (or at least belongs to) the driest ink(s) I've ever used.

To be fair, let's say: "No ink is completely useless; you can always use it as a bad example."

[yazeh]

3 hours ago, LizEF said:

All these IGs do well on absorbent paper and perfectly on copy paper.  There's at least one more to come (it's in my pen right now).

 

I don't know details, but according to FPN's ink review index, Cross inks appear to be made by Pelikan (or at least the same as Pelikan and made by whoever makes Pelikan's).

My bad, I mixed up Cross with Chesterfield Archival Vault Ink

[LizEF]

51 minutes ago, lapis said:

I love IGs, I love b-bs, but hate and/or ignore this ink because it is (or at least belongs to) the driest ink(s) I've ever used.

To be fair, let's say: "No ink is completely useless; you can always use it as a bad example."

 

I didn't think it was all that dry, not all that different from the other IGs I've been testing...  But they are lacking in lubrication, and I suspect that makes them feel drier than they are.  Regardless, I'm sure someone will be happy to use up your share.

 

[yazeh]

58 minutes ago, lapis said:

I love IGs, I love b-bs, but hate and/or ignore this ink because it is (or at least belongs to) the driest ink(s) I've ever used.

To be fair, let's say: "No ink is completely useless; you can always use it as a bad example."

Even in a wer Pelikan?

[lapis]

Yup, even in all of my wet Pelis.

[A Smug Dill]

9 hours ago, LizEF said:

No sign of any nib corrosion (after 4 days).

 

That's good to hear! 😅

[Schaumburg_Swan]

4 hours ago, lapis said:

I love IGs, I love b-bs, but hate and/or ignore this ink because it is (or at least belongs to) the driest ink(s) I've ever used.

To be fair, let's say: "No ink is completely useless; you can always use it as a bad example."

 

Hi Lapis,

 

indeed a very dry ink. To me this means "It's not a bug - it's a feature" 😉

One of the best inks for my antique eyedroppers, great for vintage ef/eef pens.

The very fine line is not ruined by wetness, here I find Herbin Perle Noir useless.

 

Best

Jens

 

[Schaumburg_Swan]

... just one more point:

The color starts as blue-black and turns black or cold black after some time, depending on the paper used...

 

Best

Jens

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

That's good to hear! 😅

  I threw it in to stave off questions that seem inevitable with iron galls.

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, Schaumburg_Swan said:

indeed a very dry ink.

Here's An Ink Guy's video, starting at the Viscosity test (spoiler alert - it's very wet):

 

Take it for whatever it's worth to you.

[arcfide]

I think comparing An Ink Guy's viscosity tests against the recent thread on surface tension is illuminating. I suspect that how you arrive at the wetness that An Ink Guy tests for makes a big deal in how the ink feels. For instance, the wet Sailor Black ink feels very different than the wet Parker Quink Black, despite sharing a close viscosity range. I'm not sure what the exact ingredient is, but I suspect that the high dye-load high surfactant inks that are very wet feel different to the lighter dye-load, water-heavy inks (which I think IG might be a part of). 

[LizEF]

3 hours ago, arcfide said:

I think comparing An Ink Guy's viscosity tests against the recent thread on surface tension is illuminating. I suspect that how you arrive at the wetness that An Ink Guy tests for makes a big deal in how the ink feels. For instance, the wet Sailor Black ink feels very different than the wet Parker Quink Black, despite sharing a close viscosity range. I'm not sure what the exact ingredient is, but I suspect that the high dye-load high surfactant inks that are very wet feel different to the lighter dye-load, water-heavy inks (which I think IG might be a part of). 

Yes, I think "feel" is the key.  Learning to separate flow from lubrication is actually very difficult (at least, it was for me).  I wish I'd come up with a more scientific way to test flow back when I started doing reviews, so that I could have consistent comparisons across all my inks.  (Oh well.  Live and learn, right?)  I think now that the best way is to write out a fixed amount of text (at a rate as consistent as a human can manage¹), perhaps on a more absorbent paper (since it will suck the ink out faster, and it's cheaper and less painful to use a lot of.  The amount would likely have to be a page or more.  Then I would note whether the ink lightened at any point in the writing - if so, drier flow, if not, wetter flow.  The sooner it lightens, the drier the flow.  At least, this seems reasonable to me, and most useful for folks who generally write with their ink...

 

¹  Oh, an excuse to buy a pen plotter!  Can they go fast enough to test ink flow?  Hmmmmmm.  (Hard to justify $170+ and the space to keep it in use...)

[lapis]

$170 for a blotter?

For a very long time now, I've been thinking of whipping out the few blotters I have, and stuffing them into our Paper & Pen Paraphernalia (w or w/o Reviews and Articles) sub-forum here.

In the sense of practicability (not aesthetics), the "best" blotter IMO is still the age-old Herbin thing, in your vicinity coming in -- i.e. going out -- at a "mere" $30. Try that  on fer size!

[LizEF]

8 minutes ago, lapis said:

$170 for a blotter?

Plotter - P, not B.    A mechanical device that writes with a pen:

[Sailor Kenshin]

Those are cool.