Waterman Mix

[Vipersdad]

I have a number of small amounts of Waterman inks.. Can I mix them all together?  I have mixed Waterman Blue with their green for a hunter green.  I just thought about combining all my little amounts into one bottle.  I realize it might be a "mud" color.

 

V.

[Penguincollector]

    I think you can, but you may want to leave the mixture sitting undisturbed for a week before using, and check to see if any solids have formed. I have mixed Waterman blue and purple, and the two blues with no problems, but not more than two colors. Those muddy ink colors are coming into vogue lately, so you’ll be au courant. 

[inkstainedruth]

@Vipersdad -- I don't know enough about the formulations for Waterman inks to be able to advise you one way or the other.  

But Penguincollector is right -- don't put a mix into a pen until you see how the inks interact with each other (although they're probably more benign than the photos someone posted a number of years ago about trying to make the "ideal" blue-black ink, using Noodler's Bay State Blue and Nooder's Black.  And the pH of the two inks were sufficiently different that they ended up reacting chemically and the mix started coming out of the pen the mix was put in in solid chunks!  And even before that?  Some of the writing sample was blue, and some of it was black, and occasionally there WAS a mix (but mostly not).  

Don't remember now what thread the photos were in, of if they're still available -- but they sure made me cringe!  And I felt so sorry for the person who had tried it....  (I don't know if adding something to help the colors blend better would have helped or not, given how different the pH between the two inks was).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Vipersdad]

Thank you for the responses.  Just finished cleaning and re-inking a number of pens.  After looking at my ink inventory I am going to leave my Waterman inks alone.

 

Just received a batch of Birmingham Pen Co. inks to try out:  Iron Ore, Blue Ribbon, Ohio River, and Pitted Nickel.

 

Regards,

 

Vipersdad

 

[inkstainedruth]

Oh, I'm going to have to look up those Birmingham inks now -- especially "Ohio River" (since I live in the first town down the Ohio from Pittsburgh, and less than a mile from the river itself).

And wondering now, after looking that one up on their website, if I should see about picking up a bottle of it at some point (if for no other reason than to see how close a match it is, colorwise, to the MB Leo Tolstoy LE ink...).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[zmija]

I've been using a mixture of Waterman Serenity Blue and Intense Black inks (3:1 or 4:1, as a sort of blue black) in my pens for a while now, and it works very well for me. No problems.

[inkstainedruth]

Wouldn't it just be easier to get a bottle of Waterman Mysterious Blue?  Or does your mix give you a more desirable (for you) blue-black color?  

WMB is my "go-to" ink for my Red Shadow Wave Vacumatic because after I got it (won it in an auction at a pen show a number of years ago) I took it to one of the repair people to have it checked out.  And was told that the diaphragm seemed fine.  So asked if he had ink and he said he had that one.  So that's what the pen got filled with, and I ran it for roughly 3 years without ANY sort of maintenance other than refilling it as needed....

It's a very nice blue-black color, IME, and very well-behaved, especially in a vintage pen.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[zmija]

Waterman Mysterious Blue is not my color at all. I don't see any black in it, but there is a bit of green. Mixing Waterman Serenity Blue and Intense Black gives me a real blue black.

@inkstainedruth - I know that color on the screen is probably different than on the paper, but I'll try to show:

 

Mysterious Blue is (IMHO) rather dark blue than blue black. 

This is a nice color if you like it.

But now I'm in the blue black world  

[Ceilidh]

Mixing Waterman inks used to be a common theme in the ink forums. Somewhere on FPN there are recipes for some Waterman mixes concocted by Richard Binder. From my notes:

Binder Burgundy - waterman purple and skrip red

Binder Blurple - waterman purple and florida (serenity?) blue

Binder blaqua - waterman black (4 parts) and south seas (inspired?) blue (5 parts)

 

The last one is a lovely dark teal and I always have a small bottle of it mixed. It's a little different than the teal you get from mixing the blue and green. Amounts can be varied in all 3, according to your own taste. Diamine Syrah is rumored to be based on Binder Burgundy. 

[inkstainedruth]

12 hours ago, zmija said:

Waterman Mysterious Blue is not my color at all. I don't see any black in it, but there is a bit of green. Mixing Waterman Serenity Blue and Intense Black gives me a real blue black.

@inkstainedruth - I know that color on the screen is probably different than on the paper, but I'll try to show:

 

Mysterious Blue is (IMHO) rather dark blue than blue black. 

This is a nice color if you like it.

But now I'm in the blue black world  

Are you sure you've got the samples in the correct order?  Because my bottle(s) of WMB look more like what you've got labeled as Serenity Blue (and vice versa).  

As for Diamine Oxford Blue, it's been a long time since I've used it so don't have a good reference point.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[zmija]

9 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

Are you sure you've got the samples in the correct order?  Because my bottle(s) of WMB look more like what you've got labeled as Serenity Blue (and vice versa).

 

The order is correct. This is strange. I bought my first and only WMB bottle in 2023 (+/-) and it looks exactly like above. Now I don't know if everything is okay with this ink... 🧐

[inkstainedruth]

Hmmm.  Wondering now if the bottles got mislabeled somehow.  Which in itself would be really sort of odd.

I picked up some bottles of ink a while back at an estate sale, and one of them didn't have any label on it at all (but I'm guessing from the cap color and the ink color that it is in fact Lamy Turquoise (and certainly is a Lamy bottle).  But also picked up a couple of bottles of ink where I can't tell if they're FP safe at all -- a bottle of Rotring Brilliant Green and a bottle of something that appears to be a royal blue, and the label on THAT bottle just says "The Travelers Writing Ink AM".... with no indication of what the color is called (the plastic "tools" box I found all the inks also had a dip pen and some pencil leads; and IIRC maybe some ink cartridges (some still in the original packages), but don't remember offhand what brand the cartridges were now).

As for whether your ink is "okay" or not?  I'd say that as long as there doesn't seem to be any sort of mold in it, it's probably okay to use.  Did you buy it new (i.e., sealed up)?  Because I just recently finished a bottle of WMB that I know is probably at least that old, if not older -- and it was fine (I emptied what was left into the new bottle because there was too little left in it to get a nib submerged in it enough to do a good fill (WMB is my "go to" ink for the vintage Red Shadow Wave Vac -- it behaves well and also just looks SOOOOOO good coming out of that pen.  And when I had the pen checked out after getting it in an auction at a pen show, and wanted to make sure I didn't need repairs on it, the repair guy (Mike Kennedy at Indy Pen Dance) asked if it was okay for him to test it with water, and then told me that the pen seemed fine.  And I said, "You got ink?"  And he said, "I've got WMB...."  And I ran that pen for something like three years, without any sort of maintenance, other than refilling it as needed when it got low on ink.  

While I have a huge number of inks at this point, in a vast variety of brands (both new and vintage inks at that, and with a wide varieties of properties and chemical composition) I NEVER want to be without WMB -- JUST for that particular pen....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[zmija]

@inkstainedruth - I think the case of Waterman Mysterious Blue ink is indeed mysterious. Here is a review written by Mountain of Ink: https://mountainofink.com/blog/waterman-mysterious-blue

The WMB ink in this review has quite a bit of green in it. Mine isn't quite as green, but it's nothing like blue-black. Maybe it was reformulated? Anyway, my WMB is technically OK and everything is fine with it, only the color is a bit strange. Or maybe it darkens in the bottle after a few years? Here is another review (by The Writer's Armory):  https://www.thewritersarmory.com/blog/waterman-mysterious-blue   and here it's definitely dark blue. I'm not sure if you could call it blue-black. It appears that Waterman Mysterious Blue is actually 2 or 3 different ink colors  

[inkstainedruth]

Yeah that Mountain of Ink review doesn't look ANYTHING like my bottles of WMB have been.

As for the The Writers Armory review?  The first image looks pretty like what my bottles of WMB look like on the page.

Hmmm.  Maybe that's why it's called "Mysterious" Blue?

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Ceilidh]

3 hours ago, zmija said:

 

The order is correct. This is strange. I bought my first and only WMB bottle in 2023 (+/-) and it looks exactly like above. Now I don't know if everything is okay with this ink... 🧐

The sample in the middle looks about right if it's got black mixed in, as your label says. I don't see one labeled as Serenity Blue.

[zmija]

1 hour ago, Ceilidh said:

The sample in the middle looks about right if it's got black mixed in, as your label says. I don't see one labeled as Serenity Blue.

 

Yes, there is the mix only (in the middle). No pure Serenity Blue. I believe @inkstainedruth knows that this is.