Some Ink Tests

January 23

14 hours ago, Mechanical said:

Thanks, @Penguincollector, those closeups really help. I regret that Sailor Blue Flame isn't suitable for fountain pens. It's such a sparkler!

13 hours ago, Penguincollector said:

Thanks for looking! I have heard of people using Dipton inks in pens without any issues, but mostly lower cost wide nibs. I looked on the Sailor product page and it doesn’t mention binders of any sort, just a heavy dye load and/or shimmer for the Dipton line. I may try it in an inexpensive pen to see what happens.

I used Dipton Blue Flame in a few (admittedly cheap) pens without trouble, if you except drying up issues after a few days (wiping the nib with a moist cloth resolved that).

It's a bit less finicky than Birmingham Tesla Coil or OS Nitrogen once dry on paper, and wasn't that bad to clean from the pens (like many very saturated inks it took several flushes, but I didn't notice any staining).

January 24

20 hours ago, Lithium466 said:

used Dipton Blue Flame in a few (admittedly cheap) pens without trouble, if you except drying up issues after a few days (wiping the nib with a moist cloth resolved that).

I got the same results with Blue Flame.

On 1/22/2026 at 1:26 AM, Penguincollector said:

So per USG’s request, I revisted the Yamamoto Art Paper and took some close up photos of some inks that both of us have in common, plus a fun sheening ink that I have really wanted to try on this paper.

I almost see an outline on American Blue when I zoom in:

I definitely see one on Sailor 743:

Pilot BB shades nicely:

As did Asa-Gao:

Shin-Kai might also outline:

Sailor Blue Flame looks amazing:

I ran the Same inks on Cosmo Snow paper for comparison:

Mature American Blue outlines

Mature Pilot BB sheens

Mature Asa-Gao sheens

Mature Shin-Kai outlines

and here's mature Kon-Peki

January 28

A Blast From The Past:

Let's take a quick look at a couple of Pens from a while ago.

Neither one has their original nib any longer. Both have smooth writing Kaigelu #6 replacement nibs.

Let's take a look at the sections.

The barrels are interchangeable but the caps are not. The converters are not the same nor are they fully interchangeable. The Kaigelu converter fits into the Jinhao but the Jinhao converter doesn't seat properly into the Kaigelu.

Of interest is the size difference between the 2 Kaigelu #6 replacement nibs. The M nib is physically larger than the EF nib. I never noticed that before. 🤷‍♂️

January 28

2025 was a big year for Asvine (Continued)

V200

P20 - J16 - V126

January 28

I figured I would add this writing sample @USG requested in the daily pen thread over here. This pen has been inked since the fall, so it’s definitely matured in the pen. Paper is MUJI double wire notebook plain.

Here’s a sheen close up:

January 30

On 1/28/2026 at 1:06 AM, Penguincollector said:

I figured I would add this writing sample @USG requested in the daily pen thread over here. This pen has been inked since the fall, so it’s definitely matured in the pen. Paper is MUJI double wire notebook plain.

Here’s a sheen close up:

That's very nice PGC. I wonder how it would look on some Cosmo Snow? 😁

But what I really want to talk about today is the color of mature or ripened ink. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that unless you're an ink changing day-tripper, the color of an ink, the one you could count on, was the color it matured to in the pen. So years ago, in order to have a consistent ink color across many pages of writing, I abandoned re-filling through the nib, which, until it matured, would result in a period of lighter colored ink. I refilled cartridges before they were empty and refilled my piston fillers by removing the nib and injecting the ink directly into the barrel. This gave me a consistent ink color across many pages of writing.

The bottom line was that regardless of which blue ink I was using, they all ended up turning a dark midnight blue. That may have been then, but I find the same thing today.....

For example, Diamine Athol Violet has matured into a pleasant deep dark blue.

What do you guys think? Are you judging ink color by it's out of the bottle representation or what it matures into in a relatively short time of use?

@Penguincollector @Lithium466 @Mechanical

@Baka1969 @flodoc @inkstainedruth @InkyProf @Ceramicist

and our resident ink specialists

@yazeh @LizEF

And anyone else I forgot to mention.... Please comment.

January 31

On 1/30/2026 at 7:54 AM, USG said:

That's very nice PGC. I wonder how it would look on some Cosmo Snow? 😁

But what I really want to talk about today is the color of mature or ripened ink. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that unless you're an ink changing day-tripper, the color of an ink, the one you could count on, was the color it matured to in the pen. So years ago, in order to have a consistent ink color across many pages of writing, I abandoned re-filling through the nib, which, until it matured, would result in a period of lighter colored ink. I refilled cartridges before they were empty and refilled my piston fillers by removing the nib and injecting the ink directly into the barrel. This gave me a consistent ink color across many pages of writing.

The bottom line was that regardless of which blue ink I was using, they all ended up turning a dark midnight blue. That may have been then, but I find the same thing today.....

For example, Diamine Athol Violet has matured into a pleasant deep dark blue.

What do you guys think? Are you judging ink color by it's out of the bottle representation or what it matures into in a relatively short time of use?

@Penguincollector @Lithium466 @Mechanical

@Baka1969 @flodoc @inkstainedruth @InkyProf @Ceramicist

and our resident ink specialists

@yazeh @LizEF

And anyone else I forgot to mention.... Please comment.

Oh my goodness. No offense intended, but I honestly never gave it a thought. Here I go, down another rabbit hole!

January 31

On 1/30/2026 at 7:54 AM, USG said:

That's very nice PGC. I wonder how it would look on some Cosmo Snow? 😁

But what I really want to talk about today is the color of mature or ripened ink. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that unless you're an ink changing day-tripper, the color of an ink, the one you could count on, was the color it matured to in the pen. So years ago, in order to have a consistent ink color across many pages of writing, I abandoned re-filling through the nib, which, until it matured, would result in a period of lighter colored ink. I refilled cartridges before they were empty and refilled my piston fillers by removing the nib and injecting the ink directly into the barrel. This gave me a consistent ink color across many pages of writing.

The bottom line was that regardless of which blue ink I was using, they all ended up turning a dark midnight blue. That may have been then, but I find the same thing today.....

For example, Diamine Athol Violet has matured into a pleasant deep dark blue.

What do you guys think? Are you judging ink color by it's out of the bottle representation or what it matures into in a relatively short time of use?

@Penguincollector @Lithium466 @Mechanical

@Baka1969 @flodoc @inkstainedruth @InkyProf @Ceramicist

and our resident ink specialists

@yazeh @LizEF

And anyone else I forgot to mention.... Please comment.

I haven't been systematic about this, but I have learned that if I'm not initially pleased with a color, especially if it's lighter than I would like it to be, I need to leave it alone for a week and come back to it later. But I usually have 10-12 pens inked at a time, which means that some, at least, will stay inked for several weeks, and I can't say that I've noticed anything as dramatic as a convergence of all blue inks into the same dark midnight blue; it's more like a generalized deepening and concentration, but one that still leaves the colors looking like themselves. Again, that's a very impressionistic comment, not the result of close study.

A question: what's the chemistry behind "maturation"? Is it just evaporative concentration, or is it also a change in color due oxidation?

January 31

On 1/30/2026 at 5:54 AM, USG said:

But what I really want to talk about today is the color of mature or ripened ink. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that unless you're an ink changing day-tripper, the color of an ink, the one you could count on, was the color it matured to in the pen. So years ago, in order to have a consistent ink color across many pages of writing, I abandoned re-filling through the nib, which, until it matured, would result in a period of lighter colored ink. I refilled cartridges before they were empty and refilled my piston fillers by removing the nib and injecting the ink directly into the barrel. This gave me a consistent ink color across many pages of writing.

The bottom line was that regardless of which blue ink I was using, they all ended up turning a dark midnight blue. That may have been then, but I find the same thing today.....

For example, Diamine Athol Violet has matured into a pleasant deep dark blue.

What do you guys think? Are you judging ink color by it's out of the bottle representation or what it matures into in a relatively short time of use?

There are only so many things that can explain this:

Feed saturation. Obviously, the ink will appear darker when the feed is fully saturated and paler when the feed isn't.
Evaporation. One would hope that this explains the vast majority of such changes. I suspect it does, because I very rarely see the effect you describe, and I know from experience that a lot of pens seal very poorly against evaporation. Being in a desert, I have to use pens that seal well, and I have to use them frequently (unless they seal perfectly) in order to keep the ink flowing. While my review pen changes inks weekly, my other pens can go much longer.
- Note that this can happen in the feed, in the pen's ink chamber, and in the bottle/vial/cartridge before the pen is inked.
Chemical reaction to...
- Air: we know iron galls oxidize, perhaps other ink ingredients can as well. Indeed, Yunjintang Daydreaming of a Beauty, which I recently reviewed, seems to. It's a chromashading ink, and some reports suggest these inks aren't chemically stable.
- Old ink: either failure to clean thoroughly, or ink successfully hiding in some nook that thorough cleaning missed (it's possible) can, given long enough, re-dissolve into a new ink. I suspect this is part of how "cleaner inks" work.
- Left-over cleaning chemicals (e.g. if the pen wasn't rinsed thoroughly enough).
- Water remaining in the feed after cleaning.
- Pen materials: I don't know what caused my Kyo-no-oto Aonibi to turn purple in my Visconti Homo Sapiens, but careful testing ruled out old ink, evaporation, and oxidation. The only logical conclusion was a chemical reaction between the ink and some pen component.
Unstable chemistry in the ink itself. Whether of necessity (as may be the case with chromashaders / multichrome inks), by poor design, due to manufacturing error, or contamination somewhere along the line, this is certainly a possibility.
Contamination: I suppose we should add this as it's always possible the ink or pen was exposed to something that destabilized it.
Reaction to different papers. Chromashaders and inks explicitly designed to react to paper show that this is a distinct possibility. (But this is easily ruled out simply by using the same paper for testing, as seems to be the case for you.)

Those are the explanations I can think of off the top of my head.

The only other thing I can think to add is that with evaporation, there would come a point where the dye component is as concentrated as it can be. When this happens, my brain is suggesting (but I don't want to spend a lot of time evaluating its suggestion) that the ink color would be the same regardless of whether the feed is saturated or running at "normal" levels - because the higher concentration from running wet would not put down more dye than when the feed isn't running wet - it being as concentrated as it can be in both cases. That may not hold up to further thought, but I would rather go eat breakfast than think about it more. So I'm turning the thinking over to others.

January 31

I have put a bit of thought into this, but sometimes it feels like parts of these thoughts and observations are an annoying fly that I can see but can’t manage to swat. When a pen gets filled up with enough ink that it has time to mature- like when I use a cartridge or an older pen with “all or nothing” ink system, I tend to like the end of the fill, after it has evaporated a bit and gone through any/all the changes described above thread by @LizEF.

Right now, the Quink Washable Royal Blue in my Vacumatic has been in since the Saturday after US thanksgiving, and it’s so pretty! It’s the “safe for vintage” inks that this often happens with. When I use a light ink or a chromashader, those effects show mostly at the beginning of the fill. I loved the light blue Namiki cartridge in my MYU at the beginning of the fill, it had matured into a sky blue that was almost turquoise by the end, which was also beautiful, but more like Ama-Iro than a light blue. I have a vial of Troublemaker Abalone that has definitely gotten darker and less chromashading than when I first received it.

Well, there are my jumbled Saturday morning thoughts, I hope they make sense to at least one person reading.

February 2

On 1/30/2026 at 4:54 AM, USG said:

That's very nice PGC. I wonder how it would look on some Cosmo Snow? 😁

I just happen to have a few writing samples of mature ink on Cosmo Snow for you:

here’s the whole page:

Here’s a close up of Diamine Thunderbolt (inked fall 2025):

This Namiki Black has been in this pen for a year now:

February 3

On 1/30/2026 at 7:54 AM, USG said:

What do you guys think? Are you judging ink color by it's out of the bottle representation or what it matures into in a relatively short time of use?

Good question.

Most of the time out of the bottle, since the matured form is harder to reproduce. But lubrication is usually my most important factor, colour comes second... Then some inks I'll prefer in some pens that don't seal very well, and others I'll only like the "fresh" appearance (Diamine blue velvet for ex).

February 3

I'm pretty close to what Lithium says. I'm constantly using my pens and I feel like I'm mostly gettting the "fresh out of the bottle" behavior. I'm concerned with color, but I spend more time trying to get a good match for flow and lubrication between pen and ink and paper.

February 5

Colours change and the reasons are various. Old masters (and jobbing artists) encountered the same issue with oil paints ages ago and we still have problems with book covers (especially red), clothes, cars etc. fading or looking different under different lighting conditions.

As we all know, some inks, such as iron gall-type ones, darken on some papers owing to oxidation but don't darken on some other paper; some inks change colour as they dry and some just seem to have a mind of their own as they sit in a pen.

Two examples: Diamine WES Imperial Blue looks slightly purple when freshly written but later seems just blue after drying; Montblanc Midnight (original, permanent version) has some blue when the pen is newly filled but looks almost black when the ink has sat in the pen for a week. And that's apart from the influence of nib width, ink flow, paper itself etc.

The permutations are considerable, which is why I have started keeping a record in a little notebook of what does what, when and how. But I'll never get to the bottom of it all!

February 5

And then there are weird inks, like Robert Oster Bishop to King -- which goes down on the page as turquoise and morphs into a purple color as it dries. I don't know whether it's oxidizing (the way an IG ink would) or what, but it's certainly interesting....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

February 9

On 1/31/2026 at 9:46 AM, InkyProf said:

I haven't been systematic about this, but I have learned that if I'm not initially pleased with a color, especially if it's lighter than I would like it to be, I need to leave it alone for a week and come back to it later. But I usually have 10-12 pens inked at a time, which means that some, at least, will stay inked for several weeks, and I can't say that I've noticed anything as dramatic as a convergence of all blue inks into the same dark midnight blue; it's more like a generalized deepening and concentration, but one that still leaves the colors looking like themselves. Again, that's a very impressionistic comment, not the result of close study.

A question: what's the chemistry behind "maturation"? Is it just evaporative concentration, or is it also a change in color due oxidation?

I don't know if it's the exact same blue color... 🤪 but after a while they all start to look like dark blue ink. Anyway, I'm really in the same camp as you. Back in the day I had a case with about the same number of inked pens in it that went to the office with me. I knew that the ink darkened but didn't think much about it. I just filled cartridges and barrels and left the nibs and feeds alone.

I'm not sure I agree with you that the colors end up looking like themselves although I remember noting that the degree of dakening was pen specific... Some darkened the ink faster than others and sometimes to a greater extent.

The Wing Sung 601 with Iroshizuku Kon-Peki comes to mind as being relatively immune to the process while a Parker Sonnet with Monteverde Capri Blue is the poster boy for ink darkening.

Evaporation has to be a factor but somehow it seems more than that???

February 9

On 1/31/2026 at 11:49 AM, LizEF said:

There are only so many things that can explain this:

Feed saturation. Obviously, the ink will appear darker when the feed is fully saturated and paler when the feed isn't.

Evaporation. One would hope that this explains the vast majority of such changes. I suspect it does, because I very rarely see the effect you describe, and I know from experience that a lot of pens seal very poorly against evaporation. Being in a desert, I have to use pens that seal well, and I have to use them frequently (unless they seal perfectly) in order to keep the ink flowing. While my review pen changes inks weekly, my other pens can go much longer.

Note that this can happen in the feed, in the pen's ink chamber, and in the bottle/vial/cartridge before the pen is inked.

Chemical reaction to...

Air: we know iron galls oxidize, perhaps other ink ingredients can as well. Indeed, Yunjintang Daydreaming of a Beauty, which I recently reviewed, seems to. It's a chromashading ink, and some reports suggest these inks aren't chemically stable.

Old ink: either failure to clean thoroughly, or ink successfully hiding in some nook that thorough cleaning missed (it's possible) can, given long enough, re-dissolve into a new ink. I suspect this is part of how "cleaner inks" work.

Left-over cleaning chemicals (e.g. if the pen wasn't rinsed thoroughly enough).

Water remaining in the feed after cleaning.

Pen materials: I don't know what caused my Kyo-no-oto Aonibi to turn purple in my Visconti Homo Sapiens, but careful testing ruled out old ink, evaporation, and oxidation. The only logical conclusion was a chemical reaction between the ink and some pen component.

Unstable chemistry in the ink itself. Whether of necessity (as may be the case with chromashaders / multichrome inks), by poor design, due to manufacturing error, or contamination somewhere along the line, this is certainly a possibility.

Contamination: I suppose we should add this as it's always possible the ink or pen was exposed to something that destabilized it.

Reaction to different papers. Chromashaders and inks explicitly designed to react to paper show that this is a distinct possibility. (But this is easily ruled out simply by using the same paper for testing, as seems to be the case for you.)

Those are the explanations I can think of off the top of my head.

The only other thing I can think to add is that with evaporation, there would come a point where the dye component is as concentrated as it can be. When this happens, my brain is suggesting (but I don't want to spend a lot of time evaluating its suggestion) that the ink color would be the same regardless of whether the feed is saturated or running at "normal" levels - because the higher concentration from running wet would not put down more dye than when the feed isn't running wet - it being as concentrated as it can be in both cases. That may not hold up to further thought, but I would rather go eat breakfast than think about it more. So I'm turning the thinking over to others.

Hi LIz, that was a great analysis. And before breakfast too !

Thank you for weighing in, your expertise is appreciated.

You covered all the bases. 😀👍

Of particular interest was the bit about it happening in the feed, the barrel/cartridge, and in the bottle before the pen is filled....

February 9

On 1/31/2026 at 1:21 PM, Penguincollector said:

I have put a bit of thought into this, but sometimes it feels like parts of these thoughts and observations are an annoying fly that I can see but can’t manage to swat. When a pen gets filled up with enough ink that it has time to mature- like when I use a cartridge or an older pen with “all or nothing” ink system, I tend to like the end of the fill, after it has evaporated a bit and gone through any/all the changes described above thread by @LizEF.

Right now, the Quink Washable Royal Blue in my Vacumatic has been in since the Saturday after US thanksgiving, and it’s so pretty! It’s the “safe for vintage” inks that this often happens with. When I use a light ink or a chromashader, those effects show mostly at the beginning of the fill. I loved the light blue Namiki cartridge in my MYU at the beginning of the fill, it had matured into a sky blue that was almost turquoise by the end, which was also beautiful, but more like Ama-Iro than a light blue. I have a vial of Troublemaker Abalone that has definitely gotten darker and less chromashading than when I first received it.

Well, there are my jumbled Saturday morning thoughts, I hope they make sense to at least one person reading.

You make sense. 👍 A lot is going on.

Now you have me thinking about the end of a fill. I find the pen has more flow and a wetter line at the end. Another factor in how the ink looks darker.

I don't have any more Light Blue Pilot ink but I have the box it came in.... 😀

February 9

1 hour ago, USG said:

Hi LIz, that was a great analysis. And before breakfast too !

Thank you for weighing in, your expertise is appreciated.

You covered all the bases. 😀👍

Of particular interest was the bit about it happening in the feed, the barrel/cartridge, and in the bottle before the pen is filled....

You're most welcome!

35 minutes ago, USG said:

I find the pen has more flow and a wetter line at the end.

At the very least, this might maybe possibly be partly explained by the extra air in the ink chamber. That air can expand when heated (e.g. by your hand) and thus "push" the ink out. It's how we explain eyedroppers burping. I suppose someone would have to test whether this might explain wetter flow at the end of a fill, but it seems like a possibility. FWIW.

February 9

On 2/5/2026 at 1:37 PM, inkstainedruth said:

And then there are weird inks, like Robert Oster Bishop to King -- which goes down on the page as turquoise and morphs into a purple color as it dries. I don't know whether it's oxidizing (the way an IG ink would) or what, but it's certainly interesting....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

Hi Ruth... I'm going to chalk it up to Ink manufacturing inconsistencies !!!!

I went back to see what my samples of Bishop to King looked like on various paper.

My Bishop to King is Blue. Never looked turquoise and doesn't morph into purple, although it got a little"Diamine Imperial Blueish" on Canopus paper purple...