Has Waterman stopped making bottled inks‽

[RJS]

On 9/4/2025 at 4:23 PM, justsomerandombloke said:

It always flows reliably. It also gives feedback on Pilot VP nibs. I.e. I can feel how it flows. It's also the only ink that I had and found not skipping on Rhodia made 90gsm paper (for example, Clairefontaine vellum), and only when used with a particular Parker 41.

 

I had the opposite experience with Diamine Chocolate Brown and Burnt Sienna, and Pilot Sepia from cartridges, with lots of flow issues. Haven't tried other brown inks that I can remember.

 

(I've been using only M nibs for quite a while).

 

 

It's safe to say I'd describe that paper as 'skippy'. I like it with the correct pen/ink combo, but with a number of inks you'd need to avoid hand oils touching the paper, and with some inks they'll exhibit slipping even on a fresh page!

 

Some pens seem to get around this issue, for the most part- those with more feedback or tooth- while some of my favourite pens, which seem perfectly adjusted, misbehave on this paper. 
 

Certain inks also seem unaffected by the paper, even if hand oil is on it- like Pilot Blue Black, just as one example. When it comes to browns... you're going to have to conduct some trial and error.

I hate skipping, as it pushes you to try to adjust your writing style to prevent it. Clairefontaine 90gsm is a good tester for the behaviour of pen/ink combos, though! I wouldn't advise adjusting pens specifically for a fussy paper- change inks first, and if that doesn't work, change the paper or pen. In the past I have tried tweaking pens for that very paper, and came away from it feeling it was a fool's errand.

[LizEF]

5 hours ago, RJS said:

It's safe to say I'd describe that paper as 'skippy'. I like it with the correct pen/ink combo, but with a number of inks you'd need to avoid hand oils touching the paper, and with some inks they'll exhibit slipping even on a fresh page!

FWIW, I use Rhodia 80gsm dot pads for my reviews and as a sort of "scratch pad", and 90gsm Clairefontaine Ivory Vellum as found in Rhodiarama journals every day (also TR52gsm Hobonichi).  I have no hand oil problems with any paper.  This is likely because I live in an arid climate and have almost no skin oils.  (I'm reasonably certain that if I literally had no skin oils, my skin would have sloughed off like a snake's and I'd be in agonizing pain.  Perhaps we have a doctor in the house to confirm, but I digress...)

 

My point is that you cannot say the paper is universally to blame and that all people everywhere will have this problem with the same paper.  I did suggest that @justsomerandombloke test for this problem, and would recommend the same for anyone experiencing similar problems.  That's not the same as the paper itself being inherently a problem.  Just as papers have different attributes, so too do humans and climates.

[RJS]

18 hours ago, LizEF said:

FWIW, I use Rhodia 80gsm dot pads for my reviews and as a sort of "scratch pad", and 90gsm Clairefontaine Ivory Vellum as found in Rhodiarama journals every day (also TR52gsm Hobonichi).  I have no hand oil problems with any paper.  This is likely because I live in an arid climate and have almost no skin oils.  (I'm reasonably certain that if I literally had no skin oils, my skin would have sloughed off like a snake's and I'd be in agonizing pain.  Perhaps we have a doctor in the house to confirm, but I digress...)

 

My point is that you cannot say the paper is universally to blame and that all people everywhere will have this problem with the same paper.  I did suggest that @justsomerandombloke test for this problem, and would recommend the same for anyone experiencing similar problems.  That's not the same as the paper itself being inherently a problem.  Just as papers have different attributes, so too do humans and climates.

I've had no such significant skipping problems with any other paper, so I can confidently blame the paper in this instance. I've also got quite dry hands and never had to watch out for issues with oils, or use a buffer sheet. Maybe it's a duff batch I got? I have other Clairefontaine paper that isn't troublesome like the Rhodia branded 90gsm stuff (such as the 80gsm dot pads you mention), though they're all lovely and smooth. I bought two pads at the same time, but kept a few pages empty in one just for testing pen/ink combos for their propensity to skip. It is notable that parts of the pages, even fresh pages, start out more prone to skip.

[LizEF]

5 hours ago, RJS said:

I've had no such significant skipping problems with any other paper, so I can confidently blame the paper in this instance. I've also got quite dry hands and never had to watch out for issues with oils, or use a buffer sheet. Maybe it's a duff batch I got? I have other Clairefontaine paper that isn't troublesome like the Rhodia branded 90gsm stuff (such as the 80gsm dot pads you mention), though they're all lovely and smooth. I bought two pads at the same time, but kept a few pages empty in one just for testing pen/ink combos for their propensity to skip. It is notable that parts of the pages, even fresh pages, start out more prone to skip.

A bad batch or the combination.  If, for example, dry time is a chemical reaction between ink and paper, then it's only reasonable to assume that one's skin oil and the paper could also possibly have a chemical reaction as well as a physical one...  Also, I've seen a skin oil issue with exactly one ink and paper - I forget the ink, but the paper was Iroful (which is known to be more skin-oil sensitive than most papers).  The fact that it was only one ink suggests this problem isn't a simple one, but rather a complex or "combinational" issue....  (That conclusion is supported by the fact that not everyone complains about the same problem with the same paper.)

 

Another way to put it is that the paper has a propensity to skip for you.  That doesn't guarantee that it will for any other given user - if it did, FP users would quit buying it and it would slowly vanish from the FP market.

[RJS]

On 9/15/2025 at 3:33 PM, LizEF said:

A bad batch or the combination.  If, for example, dry time is a chemical reaction between ink and paper, then it's only reasonable to assume that one's skin oil and the paper could also possibly have a chemical reaction as well as a physical one...  Also, I've seen a skin oil issue with exactly one ink and paper - I forget the ink, but the paper was Iroful (which is known to be more skin-oil sensitive than most papers).  The fact that it was only one ink suggests this problem isn't a simple one, but rather a complex or "combinational" issue....  (That conclusion is supported by the fact that not everyone complains about the same problem with the same paper.)

 

Another way to put it is that the paper has a propensity to skip for you.  That doesn't guarantee that it will for any other given user - if it did, FP users would quit buying it and it would slowly vanish from the FP market.

Hi Liz, I am not sure if you're getting the previous poster confused with me... my (potentially peculiar) Clairefontaine/Rhodia 90gsm is prone to skipping with multiple pen/ink combos, sometimes even on the first line of the page that didn't come in contact with my hands. Take a brand like Pilot with their smooth nibs and combine it with a trickier ink, and I can see skipping on most words, on this paper. Switch to a well behaved ink, like Pilot Blue Black or Waterman Serenity Blue, for example, and the skipping goes away entirely. Or switch to a pen with more feedback and tooth and most inks fall in line.
 

I would agree that no two individuals have identical cursive, so the angle I hold pens may play a part. Humidity and ambient temperature could also play a part, but the paper skips here in Germany the same as it did for me in heavily air conditioned China. While I don't deliberately use pens with inks I found match poorly together, I would have expected to have found new combinations that skip on other papers, but I can think of no comparable writing experiences to the 90gsm the other poster also had issues with.

 

Edit: I suspect the most likely cause would be a peculiar batch of paper, where something went a bit awry with the coating. As you say, if it was tricky with everyone, it would be widely reported. Over the years I've seen quality control issues with all sorts of things in this hobby- pens that wouldn't write, a decidedly midnight black Diamine ink labelled blue, a bottle of Salix that produced an unusably faint line, etc. A few weird items amongst many hundreds of products isn't too surprising. I don't mind it- the process of trying to establish whether the item is actually different to expectations (without simply buying another from a different seller) can be interesting.

[LizEF]

3 hours ago, RJS said:

Hi Liz, I am not sure if you're getting the previous poster confused with me...

Huh.  Interesting.  I suppose that anything is possible - we have such a finicky hobby!   And my experience has been that quality control of nearly everything has gotten worse in the past decade - not sure if that's a "generational ethos" kind of thing or corporate greed or employee retention or what, but it seems to be wide spread.

 

Anywho, thanks for explaining your experience in detail.  I hope that it is a fluke and not a predictor of what I'll discover in my 7 unopened Rhodiaramas!

[Mercian]

14 minutes ago, LizEF said:

I suppose that anything is possible - we have such a finicky hobby!

 

Finicky? Us‽ 

 

Ooh, how very dare you madam‽ We are not 'finicky'!
We are connoisseurs; we are experts in the fields (aesthetic and haptic) of our preferred communication medium!
A well-informed happy few, who know our own minds...

 

(Although, OK, I must admit to being an ornery and misanthropic curmudgeon, and that I regard the title character in The Princess and the Pea as being un-discerning, and too-easily-pleased! )

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

Finicky? Us‽ 

Not us, our pens (usually their nibs, but sometimes other parts) and our inks and our papers - they're all so very, very finicky!

 

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

We are connoisseurs; we are experts in the fields (aesthetic and haptic) of our preferred communication medium!

Of course we are!  Why else would we put up with and master suck finicky inanimate objects?

 

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

(Although, OK, I must admit to being an ornery and misanthropic curmudgeon, and that I regard the title character in The Princess and the Pea as being un-discerning, and too-easily-pleased! )

[inkstainedruth]

4 hours ago, Mercian said:

 

Finicky? Us‽ 

 

Ooh, how very dare you madam‽ We are not 'finicky'!
We are connoisseurs; we are experts in the fields (aesthetic and haptic) of our preferred communication medium!
A well-informed happy few, who know our own minds...

 

(Although, OK, I must admit to being an ornery and misanthropic curmudgeon, and that I regard the title character in The Princess and the Pea as being un-discerning, and too-easily-pleased! )

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[justsomerandombloke]

7 hours ago, RJS said:

Clairefontaine/Rhodia 90gsm is prone to skipping with multiple pen/ink combos

I can confirm this. This was one of the reasons I gave up fountain pens for a few years, could not stand skipping.

 

Another reason was that I didn't realise that pens with the seal that's not ideal, will dry out really fast in my indoors that have very low humidity for 7 months of the year.

 

I use M VP's most of the time, and my paper and ink should be tuned to those pens. I now use Silvine Executive notebooks with very textured paper, and that paper behaves really well.

 

Another factor in skipping might be the width of the nib. In my [rather limited] experience, finer nibs skip less, and Liz likes her EF's.

[LizEF]

55 minutes ago, justsomerandombloke said:

and Liz likes her EF's

Actually, I review exclusively with a Japanese EF (which has taught me tons about finer nibs) because when I started off in FPs, I wanted to use them for some things, but the inks coming out of my Pilot Penmanships never matched what I saw online.  In reality, I no longer use Japanese EF other than my reviews and occasionally otherwise.  The vast majority of the pens I use from day to day are either Japanese or western fine nibs.  Occasionally a stub.  And one Japanese medium. (But this still falls within your note about finer nibs, and yes, could be why I've never encountered skipping on this paper.)

[justsomerandombloke]

59 minutes ago, LizEF said:

The vast majority of the pens I use from day to day are either Japanese or western fine nibs

So you actually should be LizF

[LizEF]

1 minute ago, justsomerandombloke said:

So you actually should be LizF

  Perhaps so, but when I started here, I was very EF.

[RJS]

2 hours ago, justsomerandombloke said:

I can confirm this. This was one of the reasons I gave up fountain pens for a few years, could not stand skipping.

 

Another reason was that I didn't realise that pens with the seal that's not ideal, will dry out really fast in my indoors that have very low humidity for 7 months of the year.

 

I use M VP's most of the time, and my paper and ink should be tuned to those pens. I now use Silvine Executive notebooks with very textured paper, and that paper behaves really well.

 

Another factor in skipping might be the width of the nib. In my [rather limited] experience, finer nibs skip less, and Liz likes her EF's.

The only skipping I'll tolerate is that telltale skip or two that lets you know you're about to run out of ink!

 

I do tend toward fine nibs myself, but had assumed, without testing, that broader nibs laying down lots of ink would be less prone to skipping! 
 

Edit: When I say fine nibs, I was thinking usually Western fine and either Japanese fine or medium... I've never gone so fine as a Japanese EF (as far as I can recall, at least!!).

[RJS]

On 9/17/2025 at 5:09 PM, LizEF said:

Huh.  Interesting.  I suppose that anything is possible - we have such a finicky hobby!   And my experience has been that quality control of nearly everything has gotten worse in the past decade - not sure if that's a "generational ethos" kind of thing or corporate greed or employee retention or what, but it seems to be wide spread.

 

Anywho, thanks for explaining your experience in detail.  I hope that it is a fluke and not a predictor of what I'll discover in my 7 unopened Rhodiaramas!

I went to buy a birthday card today, and saw the card shop also sold Rhodia hardcover notebooks.... after our recent conversation I couldn't help but pick one up, as it has the now infamous 90gsm Clairefontaine paper.

 

Safe to say it is nothing at all like the paper in my circa 2011 Rhodia pads, despite the same labelling! It's not as smooth as any other Clairefontaine paper I have, even their 1 euro pads! It's nice enough, just not at all what I was expecting. I can't imagine any pen/ink combo skipping on it! Make of this inconsistency what you will. 😄

[LizEF]

43 minutes ago, RJS said:

I went to buy a birthday card today, and saw the card shop also sold Rhodia hardcover notebooks.... after our recent conversation I couldn't help but pick one up, as it has the now infamous 90gsm Clairefontaine paper.

 

Safe to say it is nothing at all like the paper in my circa 2011 Rhodia pads, despite the same labelling! It's not as smooth as any other Clairefontaine paper I have, even their 1 euro pads! It's nice enough, just not at all what I was expecting. I can't imagine any pen/ink combo skipping on it! Make of this inconsistency what you will. 😄

The paper in my Rhodiaramas is labeled "Papier Vélin Velouté 90g/m² fabriqué en France par Clairefontaine".  It has never ever been anything like my Rhodia dot pads.  Nor is it the same as the paper in my yellowish "La Gamme - The Selection" pads with "Papier Vélin Supérieur Ivoire - Ivory High Grade Vellum Paper" (also 90gsm) (same sizes and format as the white paper "dot pads", but different paper).  None of these is anything at all like that paper in the Clairefontaine French rule spiral notebooks (and pocket size stapled notebooks which use the same paper).  And none of that is anything at all like Triomphe.  These are all the Clairefontaine/Rhodia products I've tried.

 

The Rhodiarama paper is more absorbent and has some tooth.  It's closest to that Ivory High Grade Vellum, but not identical.

 

I dislike the paper in the French rule notebooks (the only FP-friendly paper I've tried and dislike).  But I've never had issues with any of these papers as far as FP friendliness goes.  But then, I don't use triple-extra-super-broad firehoses filled with Noodler's inks...

 

No idea whether that bit of rambling is at all useful, but there it is.  Am still hopeful that even the newer unopened Rhodiaramas (3 of my 7) will be OK, but maybe a little less hopeful...

[MissCellany]

Absolute Brown has been discontinued? Gosh, that's a shame- I love it in my fine Vacumatic. Alas, we shall persevere!

 

Apologies for the on-topic comment

[Misfit]

I loved the earlier name for that ink, Havana Brown. I wonder why they chose to get rid of it. 

[inkstainedruth]

I suspect maybe because "Cuba"....  But hadn't really thought about it until you brought it up, because I've got the relabeled bottle of Absolute Brown.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Misfit]

I should have been more clear. I wonder why they dropped the brown ink. They have so many blues.