Fountains of Ink
Quink black and Dryden Unforgiving Black, plus a few black and blue cartridges were all the ink I had for my several fountain pens until recently. No, not quite true. I did splurge on a bottle of Pelikan Edelstein “Tanzenite” when I got my first capless Pilot. But since it’s just a blue-black, it wasn’t a big stretch.
I really liked my first Edelstein, so I added Sapphire when I got my second (dark blue) capless and Moonstone (pencil gray) when I got the black capless. I enjoyed the pencil color. It was obvious a fountain pen wrote it, but the journal entries trick you into seeing pencil at the first glance.
After that I bought a few to satisfy my pens. I first tried Wordsworth “Racing Green”, which is almost yellow. Not what I was after. So I went with “shin-ryoku“, a forest green from the Pilot iroshizuku brand. It matches my Dryden emerald pen barrel very well.
Then my Wordsworth & Bläck bright red pen was begging for a red ink, so I stayed with the Pilot brand and fed it “tsutsuji” (Magenta), which is loves without reservation. Matching ink color to barrel is a bad habit, but like many bad habits, very satisfying.
Leaving that rut is easy when your pen barrel has no color. My clear Jinhao Dadao became my first test of both the Private Reserve brand (love it) and a brown ink (Sepia). This fat pen with its medium nib uses ink lustily, but it looks amazing on the parchment-style paper in my Expedition Ark journal.
I’m having a lot of trouble with my Montblanc Meisterstück 144. Hard starts and low flow. The tip seems fine and does well when dipped, so I gave it a good cleaning. That helped in the short term, but the black Montblanc brand ink seemed to gum up the works. I stuck a Q-tip in the inkwell and came out with grit. I guess it’s a very old bottle. So, I cleaned the pen again and ordered a new bottle of Midnight Blue.
My most recent purchase is a tiny bottle (10ml) of James Herbin Orange Indien. I just tried it in my Deep Yellow capless Pilot with a fine nib and the ink is hardly visible. That’s not a deal breaker, but I won’t continue using it with a fine point. I don’t own a bold nib yet, so I think it’s time I jumped on that bandwagon. Meanwhile, I’ve ordered Pilot “yu-yaki” (Sunset Orange) for this Deep Yellow capless and two other pens with orange barrels.
Right now I’m happiest with Private Reserve and Iroshizuku brands. What’s your go-to ink brand? Does it vary based on the pen brand or nib size?