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Quest for a Replacement Ink - Birmingham Pen Co - Frick Building Stained Glass


amberleadavis

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@kestrel Loves this ink.

 

large.939518097_stainedGlass.jpeg.a57eb6360e27ba1754eb3d141e79b757.jpeg

 

Unfortunately, Birmingham Pen Company isn't making it any longer and they are not planning on making it again.

 

So, he sent me a sample.

 

large.20220518_009.jpg.f328e8ca88ef8f1ff0d49854b290276e.jpg

Fountain pens are my preferred COLOR DELIVERY SYSTEM (in part because crayons melt in Las Vegas).

Create a Ghostly Avatar and I'll send you a letter. Check out some Ink comparisons: The Great PPS Comparison 

Don't know where to start?  Look at the Inky Topics O'day.  Then, see inks sorted by color: Blue Purple Brown Red Green Dark Green Orange Black Pinks Yellows Blue-Blacks Grey/Gray UVInks Turquoise/Teal MURKY

 

 

 

 

 

 

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First, I looked through my inks.

 

large.20220518_003.jpg.f70eeac07cc01f7e41094cf93f2cc2ea.jpglarge.20220518_007.jpg.c962890043f1bb166bb341b117df9fd2.jpglarge.20220518_005.jpg.0deb7e2841f3e0ab133bd78e9c049d5a.jpglarge.20220518_004.jpg.13079a967e2ef56f19184bcaaa075d47.jpglarge.20220518_002.jpg.34a0d562daa75f20c805160dd69619d4.jpglarge.20220518_001.jpg.0d789530c7e0b649200a2a239e086399.jpglarge.20220518_009.jpg.f328e8ca88ef8f1ff0d49854b290276e.jpg

Fountain pens are my preferred COLOR DELIVERY SYSTEM (in part because crayons melt in Las Vegas).

Create a Ghostly Avatar and I'll send you a letter. Check out some Ink comparisons: The Great PPS Comparison 

Don't know where to start?  Look at the Inky Topics O'day.  Then, see inks sorted by color: Blue Purple Brown Red Green Dark Green Orange Black Pinks Yellows Blue-Blacks Grey/Gray UVInks Turquoise/Teal MURKY

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Actually, I thought Purple Wampum wasn't too far off.

 

large.20220518.jpg.3da1c618dfc8750ef023f6906c023b77.jpglarge.20220518_009.jpg.f328e8ca88ef8f1ff0d49854b290276e.jpglarge.20220518_001.jpg.0d789530c7e0b649200a2a239e086399.jpg

Fountain pens are my preferred COLOR DELIVERY SYSTEM (in part because crayons melt in Las Vegas).

Create a Ghostly Avatar and I'll send you a letter. Check out some Ink comparisons: The Great PPS Comparison 

Don't know where to start?  Look at the Inky Topics O'day.  Then, see inks sorted by color: Blue Purple Brown Red Green Dark Green Orange Black Pinks Yellows Blue-Blacks Grey/Gray UVInks Turquoise/Teal MURKY

 

 

 

 

 

 

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So, I've now sent some CRVs out into the wilds to see if anyone else can find a great replacement.

 

large.20220519_032.jpg.8bc1ece1327f6823ea795e0a2bcbfa3b.jpglarge.20220519_031.jpg.5a39eeee40fe7ca1dd979d6d551bc25b.jpglarge.20220519_030.jpg.d764cd2d9b7c6e2c9916edc02709a3db.jpglarge.20220519_029.jpg.1fc8dd2a6529e6d1b22e183f3aae04ab.jpg

Fountain pens are my preferred COLOR DELIVERY SYSTEM (in part because crayons melt in Las Vegas).

Create a Ghostly Avatar and I'll send you a letter. Check out some Ink comparisons: The Great PPS Comparison 

Don't know where to start?  Look at the Inky Topics O'day.  Then, see inks sorted by color: Blue Purple Brown Red Green Dark Green Orange Black Pinks Yellows Blue-Blacks Grey/Gray UVInks Turquoise/Teal MURKY

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It seems to me that I've seen similar looking swabs on the Birmingham Pens website, but don't remember what offhand. 

I do understand your frustration, though -- back when they had the B&M store in Pittsburgh, I never managed to get there when they had Smithfield Street Bridge Blue in stock.  Nick gave me a couple of samples at one point, and I have sort of been hoarding them.  And of course it's not in their lineup at ALL now (and hasn't been for several years :crybaby:).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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My sincerest thanks to @amberleadavis for putting this out there.  I have this bad habit of falling for inks that then go out of production, sometimes without warning (Levenger Fireball, Noodler's Violet Vote) and sometimes with (Pelikan Smoky Quartz).  Frick Stained Glass is one of the former.  The good folks at Birmingham told me that one of the dyes used to make FSG is no longer available so the first production run was also the last production run.  Now I save my dwindling supply for special occasions (like Amber's sample) and hope to find a substitute or find a bottle for sale somewhere. 

 

I figure if I can find a bottle of Wirt Blue Black anything is possible.

Dave Campbell
Retired Science Teacher and Active Pen Addict
Every day is a chance to reduce my level of ignorance.

fpn_1425200643__fpn_1425160066__super_pi

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I can tell you that I totally felt loved when I got a sample of this and fireball and both of these inks are something special.

Fountain pens are my preferred COLOR DELIVERY SYSTEM (in part because crayons melt in Las Vegas).

Create a Ghostly Avatar and I'll send you a letter. Check out some Ink comparisons: The Great PPS Comparison 

Don't know where to start?  Look at the Inky Topics O'day.  Then, see inks sorted by color: Blue Purple Brown Red Green Dark Green Orange Black Pinks Yellows Blue-Blacks Grey/Gray UVInks Turquoise/Teal MURKY

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hmmm.  That might be worth a shot.  Birmingham Pens used to be xfountainpens.com and (in addition to the Chesterfield inks, where were apparently re-labeled Diamine inks) they sold a line of inks that I suspect were rebranded De Atramentis inks (same type of bottle and same color names).  And back when Birmingham Pens still had the B&M store, they did carry De Atramentis as one of their brands.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstaineduth

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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6 hours ago, Carrau said:

I’m not a big purple user, but perhaps DeAtramentis Alexander Hamilton (Aubergine) has some similarity?

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/330250-de-atramentis-alexander-hamilton/

 

 

That was the color I was thinking.

 

2 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

Hmmm.  That might be worth a shot.  Birmingham Pens used to be xfountainpens.com and (in addition to the Chesterfield inks, where were apparently re-labeled Diamine inks) they sold a line of inks that I suspect were rebranded De Atramentis inks (same type of bottle and same color names).  And back when Birmingham Pens still had the B&M store, they did carry De Atramentis as one of their brands.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstaineduth

 

I know they are now made in house.

Fountain pens are my preferred COLOR DELIVERY SYSTEM (in part because crayons melt in Las Vegas).

Create a Ghostly Avatar and I'll send you a letter. Check out some Ink comparisons: The Great PPS Comparison 

Don't know where to start?  Look at the Inky Topics O'day.  Then, see inks sorted by color: Blue Purple Brown Red Green Dark Green Orange Black Pinks Yellows Blue-Blacks Grey/Gray UVInks Turquoise/Teal MURKY

 

 

 

 

 

 

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@lapis did this comparison.

 

spacer.png

Fountain pens are my preferred COLOR DELIVERY SYSTEM (in part because crayons melt in Las Vegas).

Create a Ghostly Avatar and I'll send you a letter. Check out some Ink comparisons: The Great PPS Comparison 

Don't know where to start?  Look at the Inky Topics O'day.  Then, see inks sorted by color: Blue Purple Brown Red Green Dark Green Orange Black Pinks Yellows Blue-Blacks Grey/Gray UVInks Turquoise/Teal MURKY

 

 

 

 

 

 

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10 minutes ago, amberleadavis said:

I know they are now made in house.

True.  They had started doing that while they still had the B&M store, and I think that for some of the early inks they made they switched sources of the ingredients (I have an "early" bottle of Shadyside Walnut Street Brown -- the store was half a block off Walnut Street in Pittsburgh's Shadyside neighborhood -- and I remember hearing that the later version was a very different color as a result).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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I thought I remember you going to visit there.

Fountain pens are my preferred COLOR DELIVERY SYSTEM (in part because crayons melt in Las Vegas).

Create a Ghostly Avatar and I'll send you a letter. Check out some Ink comparisons: The Great PPS Comparison 

Don't know where to start?  Look at the Inky Topics O'day.  Then, see inks sorted by color: Blue Purple Brown Red Green Dark Green Orange Black Pinks Yellows Blue-Blacks Grey/Gray UVInks Turquoise/Teal MURKY

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Yeah, I miss their store a lot, even if parking was bad (there was no parking on the street where they were located, and Walnut Street itself is pretty busy (metered parking and a parking garage and parking lots a block over the other direction that are often full and you're more likely to get a ticket if you run over the time than the street parking; and both were quite expensive per hour).  So I would park on the cross street on the other side of Walnut when I could, which, if I could make it in and out of the store in under 2 hours, was safe because that was residential parking with stickers for the residents but you did have 2 hours parking safely and it wasn't a bad walk (that part of the city is fairly flat).  Although one time, my husband dropped me off and then came back and picked me up -- we were supposed to go for a drive later in the day, but I wanted to check out to see if they had the new Pacific Blue al-Star in.  They did, but the color didn't wow me.  OTOH, I ended spending about 3 times as much that morning -- Nick had JUST gotten a new shipment of De Atramentis inks (and was still sorting them out on the counter) and I got three, including Sky Blue and Van Dyck Brown (forget now what the third color was).  Plus, I noticed that they still had some of the pink TWSBI 580-ALR pens, so one with a B nib got added to the shopping cart as well.  

Naturally, when my husband came to pick me up, he was just sort of rolling his eyes.... :blush:

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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So, do we have any suggestions for @kestrel?

Fountain pens are my preferred COLOR DELIVERY SYSTEM (in part because crayons melt in Las Vegas).

Create a Ghostly Avatar and I'll send you a letter. Check out some Ink comparisons: The Great PPS Comparison 

Don't know where to start?  Look at the Inky Topics O'day.  Then, see inks sorted by color: Blue Purple Brown Red Green Dark Green Orange Black Pinks Yellows Blue-Blacks Grey/Gray UVInks Turquoise/Teal MURKY

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I am playing with Diamine Deep Dark Purple this weekend, diluting, adding a little black, maybe some brown.  Nothing terribly close yet.  Diamine Damson looks like a good possibility and PR Ebony Purple.  I will order samples this week.

Dave Campbell
Retired Science Teacher and Active Pen Addict
Every day is a chance to reduce my level of ignorance.

fpn_1425200643__fpn_1425160066__super_pi

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  • 4 weeks later...

I look forward to your results. I haven't given up.

Fountain pens are my preferred COLOR DELIVERY SYSTEM (in part because crayons melt in Las Vegas).

Create a Ghostly Avatar and I'll send you a letter. Check out some Ink comparisons: The Great PPS Comparison 

Don't know where to start?  Look at the Inky Topics O'day.  Then, see inks sorted by color: Blue Purple Brown Red Green Dark Green Orange Black Pinks Yellows Blue-Blacks Grey/Gray UVInks Turquoise/Teal MURKY

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I don't have BPC Stained Glass, but you may wish to consider Franklin Christoph Tenebris Purpuratum .   Another thought is Van Dieman's Blackberry Jam.  If you haven't already checked it out, you may also want to consider BPC Waterfront Dusk.  

"Today will be gone in less than 24 hours. When it is gone, it is gone. Be wise, but enjoy! - anonymous today

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, amberleadavis said:

I look forward to your results. I haven't given up.

Although I can't directly compare with the appearance of the Birmingham ink on paper, the following inks may be as close as possible:

deAtramentis Aubergine

R&K Scabiosa

Sailor 735 or 935

KWZ Gummiberry

Diamine Grape

R&K Aubergine - unobtanium?

Colorverse Magnetosphere - unobtanium?

you may consider Pelikan 4001 Violet as a honorable mention ... ;)

 

 

One life!

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