Inks

Fine Historical Stationery

My favourite iron gall ink is the one made by Bach’s Tinten. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to get hold of it …and I fear by now it is not being made any more.

I have two ink bottles from them. One was bought in 2009 as a set with a quill and instructions. The other ink bottle was bought just by itself, i.e. without a quill and instructions.

You might have seen the ink bottle with the crimson ink before as it made an appearance in previous blog posts here at Bleistift.

When cleaning up this weekend, I came across the instruction sheet that came with the ink set. It’s rather nice, so I thought I share a translation with you here:

Fine Historical Stationery
Writing like in old times
At a time when new writing instruments are being introduced to the market by the industry almost every day, the desire for the original arises more and more often in many people. This desire is to be fulfilled by the historical stationery, individually handcrafted as in the old days, taking us back to a time when writing was a very personal way of expression.
The inks
The inks are made according to old recipes, some of which were thought to have been forgotten. Among others, the following natural colour materials are used:
Black inks are made from an acidic tannin-iron compound.
Coloured inks contain, for example, green walnut shells (brown), redwood and chochal lice (red), indigo (blue), turmeric with indigo (green), and various other ingredients, especially gum arabic as a binder.
The iron gall ink is a valuable document ink; its blue ink strokes turn black on the paper and cannot be decomposed – neither by acids, alkalis nor by constant sunlight.
The historic inks are bottled in jars faithfully reproduced from a 19th century model. As in those days, the ink jars are corked and sealed. To open the jar, you clasp it tightly with your hand and press your thumb against the cork. The sealing wax then pops open. The jars should not be left open for any length of time.
The quills
Since time immemorial, people have written with the goose quill, which was replaced at the beginning of the 19th century by the steel pen.
At the beginning of the 19th century, it was replaced by the steel nib and later by the fountain pen. Raven, eagle and swan feathers were also used for writing. The bird feather must not be left in the ink glass, because otherwise it will soften, since it is made of horn. It can be re-cut with a very fine knife. Keel and steel nibs are best for writing on smooth, well-glued paper. Letter, bank mail, and butt papers are preferred, or for special work, genuine skin parchments.

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Freshly inked

Freshly re-inked: My Super5 fountain pen in green (Dublin) is now part of my current pen rotation. The other two currently inked pens include the Lamy 2000 with an EF nib and the re-release of the Parker 51 in Teal with an F nib.

Fitting with the Super5‘s colour I fed it one of Kaco’s “Leaf” green cartridges.

I won’t show how the ink looks on paper as I didn’t clean the Super5 since its last use, so the ink colour I get is still a mishmash.

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M

Last year one of the UK jewellery chains had a huge discount on some Montblanc items. This included the Montblanc M which could be had for less than 50% of the current recommended retail price. You will understand how difficult it was to resist.

The Montblanc M with the Universalpatrone – good use of the available space

The Montblanc M was designed by Mark Newson and is quite unusual for Montblanc standards. Not everyone is keen on the looks of this pen, but I love it. If you were to classify fountain pens by appearance then the M would be much closer to the Lamy dialog 3 than to your average Montblanc. Its most exotic feature is the cap which is magnetically aligned and held in place.

Unlike many other Montblanc pens which come with a converter the M not only doesn’t come with one, there’s also none available that officially fits. I successfully used the Cross Verve adapter in the past, but my Cross adapter is now back in the Verve.

I am now using what I call a Lamy/Pelikan cartridge. Probably 20 to 25 years ago these no-name cartridges got popular in parts of Europe. You could always get no-name Pelikan/standard cartridges [1]Pelikan has a big share of the market for school fountain pens., but with the popularity of the Lamy Safari being used in schools the ink cartridge manufacturers thought of putting a Pelikan compatible end on a Lamy compatible cartridge. Clever stuff and if you don’t mind refilling your cartridge with a syringe (I don’t mind) then it is just perfect for the Montblanc M’s body with the tapered end.

The Lamy end of the Universalpatrone

The only problem is that these cartridges don’t seem to be popular in either the UK, where I live or the USA, where nearly all the Bleistift Blog readers are based – as I wasn’t able to find these in online shops. I hope online shops in the UK and the USA will stock them in the future. In Germany, you can get them under the name “Universalpatrone” on eBay and Amazon for less than 10 cents per cartridge if you buy a bigger pack.

The standard/Pelikan end of the Universalpatrone

Proper reviews of the Montblanc M:

Pencilcase Blog

Gentleman Stationer

UK Fountain Pens

Gourmet Pens

References

References
1 Pelikan has a big share of the market for school fountain pens.

M Read More »

Aurora’s Blue Black ink

Kirit Dal, who I have recently mentioned in the Lamy Horror Picture Show blog post, was kind enough to send me Aurora’s latest ink: Their take on Blue Black.

I have used quite a few blue black inks in the past, actually.. for a few year it was my favourite colour – but I have never used an Aurora ink before. Not only that, I somehow I also never really read up on them, so this ink led me into unchartered territory. If you have already used Aurora inks my discoveries will be nothing new to you, but for me this ink provided a lot of firsts. More about them later.

Left to right: Aurora, Mont Blanc (new), Diamine, Lamy (old)

Comparison

I compared the Aurora Blue Black to a few other blue black inks: Mont Blanc Midnight Blue (the newer Austrian version), Diamine Blu eBlack and Lamy Blue Black (the older iron gall version).

On Rhodia paper Lamy’s Blue Black was the most grey ink – and the only one that visible darkened after writing, so the assumption is that other inks don’t contain iron gall.

The Diamine was the most turquoise ink, and the worst behaved – meaning it was best at penetrating the paper and having a cheeky look out on the other side.

Mont Blanc’s Midnight Blue was the most purple and also the darkest.

Aurora’s Blue Black was the bluest of the inks and provided the following surprises.

A lid and a plug…

 

Surprise 1: packaging

The first surprise came when I saw that the ink bottle was the best protected against spilling in transport I have seen so far.

Not only was the bottle in the box shrink-wrapped, under the lid there was also a plastic plug. I shouldn’t have tried removing it with my fingers as the air pressure in the bottle was different to the one in my environment and I had a right mess on my fingers and on the paper sheet under the bottle.

 

Surprise 2: a well behaved ink

The second surprise came when I started using the ink.

It was actually a better behaved ink than expected. By that I mean that it prefers to orderly stay on the paper instead of naughtily sucking into the paper and bleeding through. It also seems to dry faster than your average ink ..always a good thing. I do have blotters on my desk at home and in the office, but faster drying inks are just less trouble, plus if you have to use a blotter the bits of the writing where the ink was still wet usually end up looking lighter.

Left to right: Aurora, Mont Blanc (new), Diamine, Lamy (old)

Even on poor quality photocopying paper it behaved very well, only showing signs of bleed through where the nib left a lot of ink on one spot.

On a Field Notes original/Kraft notebook with Finch Paper Opaque Smooth 60#T #Bright White’, the worst Field Notes paper I know it didn’t bleed though either.

One more thing to notice: this ink has some shading (but it’s certainly not the new shading king) and the dark areas are pretty dark. Depending on how wet your fountain pen writes this ink might look either greyish blue or nearly black.

Surprise 3: half erasable

The third surprise came when I tried to write with this ink on a Royal Mail postcard.

Testing on Royal Mail postcards with a Super5 0.7 in Delhi Orange

Having established that it’s a well behaved ink I thought I test it on a Royal Mail postcard as very few inks will work on this treated surface without spreading out across the paper. The surprise here was that the ink started to lose its blue component, as if the post card acts as an ink eraser. I have made a similar experience with the Thank You cards I got printed after our wedding in 2008. The ink on the Thank you Cards I wrote became invisible after a few weeks.

To test what’s going on with the Aurora Blue Black on this post card I tried an ink eraser on this ink. Immediately the blue component started to disappear [1]In many countries pupils have to use ‘Royal Blue’ inks which are erasable with chemical ink erasers, originally invented by Pelikan. When I was young they were called in killers and were … Continue reading.

Rinse time

To finish it all off I had a look how these inks behaving after enjoying a refreshing rinse under a cold water tap for several seconds.

Left to right: Aurora, Mont Blanc (new), Diamine, Lamy (old)

The Aurora ink suffered most. Virtually all of the blue seemed to have washed away with only the grey component remaining.

Unsurprisingly the iron gall ink seemed least affected, but it is of course harsher on your writing equipment. Well, not to put your fountain pen written documents under running water shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, though.

Conclusion

The Aurora Blue Black is a great ink. You get some shading, you get well behaved, and you get a nice colour, serious but not too boring.

I hope to have a closer look again after having used this ink for several months.

 


I would like to thank Kirit Dal for sending me this ink. I think he might be the first seller in the UK to stock this ink. I have been told that he is well known at pen shows in the UK, but I haven’t been to any pen shows yet, so haven’t been able to meet him yet in person.

You can find more reviews of this ink at Squishy Ink  and Pen Chalet.

References

References
1 In many countries pupils have to use ‘Royal Blue’ inks which are erasable with chemical ink erasers, originally invented by Pelikan. When I was young they were called in killers and were very common. You usually can’t use normal ink to write over the erased ink. Instead you use a special ink from the other side of the ink eraser. There used to be better ink eraser you can write over with normal ink. These were available around the year 1990, if I remember right, but I haven’t seen any like that in a long time.

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Diamine’s Enchanted Ocean

An ink sample I got from Scribble.

Not any blue, but an Enchanted Blue

..but not any Enchanted Blue, this is the Enchanted Ocean.

It combines the seriousness of a blue-black ink and the joyfulness of Hello Kitty merchandising, which means that you will be embarrassed to take it out at work as well as feeling awkward taking it out at a children’s party, too.
Diamine Enchanted Ocean
Photographed against the light to make the sparkles more obvious.

Diamine Enchanted Ocean

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