Ink choices that avoid feathering

July 16, 2022

Hello All,

I am an experienced fountain pen user whose collection of nibs is flexier/wider/stubbier than average. After a lot of research I have some paper materials for personal correspondence that suit almost all my pens and inks. However, I write a lot of preprinted "get-out-the-vote" postcards on card stock from varied sources. Feathering is driving me crazy. So I'm asking your help to identify inks that perform better than average holding their line. I already have Noodler's X-Feather Black and X-Feather Blue. After writing this I plan to ask in Reddit's pen/ink trading forum for anyone willing to trade/sell their X-Feather Red or Brown. (Who would ever do that?) But the Blue and Black still feather on lots of postcard papers I have... so not a panacea. I already have Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Black, 4001 Brown, and 4001 Turquoise for my oldest pens. These, too, usually feather. Kon-Peki feathers a lot. Diamine Royal Blue one of the worst, but the UK company's Red Dragon is better than most.

I am hoping there are "sleeper" low-feather inks your experience suggests that I sample.

For postcarding I researched various ways of getting card stock. Even my most consistent supplier sends problematic stock at times. This is not the usual "copy-paper-feather" problem - It's smooth card stock: I've discussed it with Tech Support personnel at the big five paper companies in North America - there are such people - to discover card stock surfaces on paper nowadays distributed to big printers and paper merchants lacks a kind of pen-friendly sizing that used to be common in that paper business. So it's a 1. low demand and 2. supply-chain performance fail. Paper makers are canceling "product lines" that had the requisite sizing for fountain pens and other specialty printing inks. Crane's, for example, a well-known personal correspondence fine papers manufacturer, admits in their Tech Support department that they now have NO fountain-pen-friendly paper in their line. Crane's has been a solid USA personal stationery supplier for 221 years, and still makes the paper on which USA currency is printed. But my grandmother would be amazed there is no paper for her letters were she still here to write them.

I am aware I cause some of the problem with wet, wide-line pens. But even with this character flaw <grin> I deserve to have fun while I write easy-to-read lines. Thoughts, FPN people?

Thanks, in advance,

jonathan7007

July 17, 2022

I just tested an ink that I thought would feather but it was great.

You can also try adding a little bit of water to fill, for some inks, helps feathering.

Finally, if you want, you can send me a letter and include the worst card stock and I'll try every ink I have loaded and send it back to you.

July 17, 2022

Amber, what a kind offer - I will write you a note with samples enclosed. PM me a snail mail address?

Is this KWZ an iron gall formulation? I will go over to their site to see.

I do some of my postcard writing with teens, 20's, and 30s pens, so I was hoping some suggestions will be appropriate for these oldsters.

I have heard that watering ink helps but have not experimented with that. When I modify an ink with PhotoFlo it has increased feathering, which made sense to me because it's a surfactant.

July 17, 2022

IME, the the consistently well-behaved overall "line" of inks is pretty much all of Platinum's ink. Every one that I have is consistently more well behaved than the competing counterpart almost without fail. Among those, the absolute best behaved would have to be the Classic Ink line and the standard line of Black, Blue Black, and Red, with Blue Black being a well-behaved iron gall.

Some specific inks that I've found well behaved specifically would be the very dry Benitoite from Lamy's Crystal line as well as most of the Waterman and Parker Quink inks that I have tried, particularly their Black inks. My experience with Franklin Cristoph's inks makes me think they might also be reasonably well behaved, but I don't know if they would be a real standout. Some people also like Perle Noire from Herbin for this purpose as well, though I don't know how well it performs relative to the others I have mentioned.

July 18, 2022

What you've got is close to the best you can get. Here's a quick sample of a few inks on some Staples' index card (3" x 5"). It was bought a while back, I don't know how it relates to the current stuff and to the card stock that you have. This is, however, the only feathering paper that I could dig up quickly (this actually surprised me as I have a lot of bad paper on my desk at the moment, but apparently it mostly spreads and bleeds). I added two random inks, which I knew would feather (Dupont Black and Waterman Florida Blue, yes, it's that old) for comparison.

As you see, Pelikan Black is not that bad and is on par with ESSRI. Rohrer & Klingner Salix is comparable with ESSRI, while drier, and I didn't include it. So, iron galls don't do miracles. Considering that Platinum Khaki Black is quite dry, I'd say it performs not much better than Pelikan Black, if at all. I don't have Noodler's X-feather to include, since when I tried it few years back I wasn't impressed how it deals with lousy paper comparing to Noodler's Black and Sailor Kiwa-guro.

You may try Sailor Kiwa-guro and see if it'll be better than what you have right now. However, it may give somewhat inconsistent results because it's quite freely flowing and when there's too much of it, it will feather noticeably stronger. As I understand, you mostly use generous nibs, so Kiwa-guro may or may not be an improvement. I mostly use it in finer nibs and like it there. This is a personal preference, though. I also like Noodler's Black, which also behaves decently (notice the width of the line comparing to other inks) but, unfortunately, may be not particularly consistent between batches. Therefore, I cannot recommend it with confidence to deal with bad feathering.