EFNIR: Waterman Intense Black

[LizEF]

7 minutes ago, Uncial said:

You seem to have got a darkness to this I've never managed. I've always thought of it as 'not so intense charcoal grey'.

Common complaint.  I'm thinking it's one of those cases where a super-fine nib concentrates the color.  It happens now and then, and is sometimes a good thing.

[AmandaW]

12 minutes ago, Uncial said:

I've always thought of it as 'not so intense charcoal grey

Right, I'm in. Will order immediately. 

[LizEF]

49 minutes ago, AmandaW said:

Right, I'm in. Will order immediately. 

[MissCellany]

Thanks as always for your delightful reviews! I'm intrigued by this considering how well it performs on copy paper. Might be a nice alternative to the iron gall inks I usually use for writing at work. Much to consider...

[LizEF]

33 minutes ago, MissCellany said:

Thanks as always for your delightful reviews!

You're welcome!

 

34 minutes ago, MissCellany said:

I'm intrigued by this considering how well it performs on copy paper. Might be a nice alternative to the iron gall inks I usually use for writing at work. Much to consider...

Yes, it does look like it might be a good candidate for office paper - unless your paper is really bad - then you might get some long feathers like my absorbent paper shows.  Of course, everybody's office paper is different, so who knows!  Sample first.

[Tas]

😊

[LizEF]

3 hours ago, Tas said:

😊

[LizEF]

Today I took microscopic (100x) pictures to get the line width of this ink - ~300µm:

 

...and also discovered (while playing with an LED light to see if it would impact the images) that this ink has some sheen or glittery look when enough light is shined at the right angle:

[dipper]

Some comments earlier in this thread mention and compare results using the old Waterman "Black".

 

Current production Waterman "Intense Black" is a different formulation from the old "Black".

 

I happened to be using the old Black as my regular ink some years ago, and still had a few ml in pen and in bottle when Intense Black appeared in local stationers.

A side-by-side chromatography test at the time showed the Intense ink had a new extra dye component, down at the bottom end of the chromatograph strip.

In continuing use, with the same pen and same paper, I noticed the ink lines were darker with the new version.

 

So that was a good choice of name by Waterman. The new and old are similar, but the new ink is indeed more intense!

[LizEF]

8 minutes ago, dipper said:

So that was a good choice of name by Waterman. The new and old are similar, but the new ink is indeed more intense!

Thanks for the additional info.  If I ever used the old Waterman Black, it was in a cartridge that came with my Laureat (1990s) and I don't remember it.   The most surprising thing to me about Waterman Intense Black (purchased in 2016) was finding yellow in the chromatogram.

[dhanks]

I use Waterman Intense Black regularly and it's plenty dark for me.  It has good ink properties and is (relatively) inexpensive.  It's an excellent everyday black, as are Pelikan 4001 black and Sheaffer Skrip black.  I haven't seen any need to look further than these for my purposes.

 

Rumpole

[dipper]

33 minutes ago, LizEF said:

The most surprising thing to me about Waterman Intense Black (purchased in 2016) was finding yellow in the chromatogram

 

Yellow does seem surprising. It is such a light bright hue!

 

However, three-colour inkjet printers make a reasonable "black" by printing all three inks overlaid together : Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow.

 

Better blacks and other dark tones are printed with a four-colour "CMYK" inkjet printer, still using that yellow ink in the mixes plus the "K" that is actually a true black ink. (Black pigment in a Canon printer I used long ago.)

 

Though opinions differ, traditional watercolour artists may advise that black pigments are a bad idea for watercolour painting. Much better to mix your own dark shadow colours using transparent subtraction primaries ( Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow ) plus a few other hues to make colour matching easier.

[LizEF]

32 minutes ago, dhanks said:

I use Waterman Intense Black regularly and it's plenty dark for me.  It has good ink properties and is (relatively) inexpensive.  It's an excellent everyday black, as are Pelikan 4001 black and Sheaffer Skrip black.  I haven't seen any need to look further than these for my purposes.

Thanks for adding your experience.

[LizEF]

10 minutes ago, dipper said:

Though opinions differ, traditional watercolour artists may advise that black pigments are a bad idea for watercolour painting. Much better to mix your own dark shadow colours using transparent subtraction primaries ( Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow ) plus a few other hues to make colour matching easier.

Yes, I hear that frequently, and not just from the watercolor artists!

[Arkanabar]

On 2/21/2022 at 4:44 PM, LizEF said:

The most surprising thing to me about Waterman Intense Black (purchased in 2016) was finding yellow in the chromatogram.

When my Dad gave up on his Parker "51" for the ugliest Pentel Rolling Writer he could find, he put it aside with with his then-current bottle of Quink Permanent Black with Solv-X, the only ink he ever used.  Some time after he passed, I asked my mom if I could have his old pen.  A year or two later, at Christmas, it came to me (and a number of other legacies, which she'd found in searching for the pen, to my various siblings) along with the ink.  In attempting to rinse the ink from the pen, and to draw the ink out with tissues, I found its two most prominent color components were a navy/slate blue, and a golden yellow.

[LizEF]

6 minutes ago, Arkanabar said:

...I found its two most prominent color components were a navy/slate blue, and a golden yellow.

Huh.  That's interesting.  I guess they were dark enough, or with little enough yellow, that you didn't notice the green...  I wonder why the ink chemists choose the dyes they do.  Perhaps the "odd" colors that we would never guess were needed add some additional behavior to the ink - flow, lubrication, something...  Thanks for sharing!

 

Glad you got to have your dad's pen.