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  • ArtJourney

    Fank you for doing the water brush test! I think I love you now!! That ink is much more water resistant than I thought it would be.

    • Stephen Brown

      What do you mean love me NOW ;-) ?

      • ArtJourney

        Ha! Yep, the water brush test swung it… I love you more today; post water brushing, than yesterday; pre water brushing… It’s the litte things Stephen, that mean so much! ;o)

  • Ns_Zhivago

    Stephen, Thank you for the review. But I’m surprised about the cleaning as I’d heard that this ink tends to stain. Some have compared it to Noodler’s BSB, though not quite as bad. You haven’t experienced any staining or other cleaning issues with it?

    • Stephen Brown

      Hm, fascinating! No, in all honesty, I have never had any trouble with this ink. It was easy to clean from that demonstrator Noodler’s flex pen, too!

    • Breck

      I’ve had T. in my Sheaffer Agio for weeks now and a few days ago it freaked me out by leaking. Stil don’t know why. But getting the Tanzanite off my fingers was not too bad.

  • http://twitter.com/sakisaki6 SakiVI

    So no Bilberry? Am sad.

    • Stephen Brown

      Well, one doesn’t preclude the other :-) . Bilberry won’t be THE next one, but it will be A next entry in the Inkcyclopedia :-) ..

      • http://twitter.com/sakisaki6 SakiVI

        True, but it does push Bilberry back to have another purplish ink done first.

  • http://peninkcillin.blogspot.com Peninkcillin

    Ah what a coincidence. I just loaded this ink up in a pen to review it. The review will be on my blog in a couple of weeks but I’m using the ink daily until then.

  • The Ruffled Quill

    Hi Stephen, Great review and I like the new zoomed in sharpness! Not a colour that I would have thought about picking but now well another one to the list!
    have a good one…

    • Stephen Brown

      Glad the zooming in worked: this remains a trial and error thing!

  • Maja

    Hmmmmm. Did I see a Noodler’s Ahab pen with the FPGeeks logo on it at the 2:49 mark?? :)
    PR Tanzanite was one of the very first inks I ever bought and it’s still an old favourite, so thanks for doing an INKcyclopedia review of it. I have a tanzanite ring, and I must say, it doesn’t look anywhere near as dark as this ink!

    • Stephen Brown

      “Hmmmmm. Did I see a Noodler’s Ahab pen with the FPGeeks logo on it at the 2:49 mark?? :) ”
      Possibly ;-) .

  • Ao Kiu

    My Private Reserve Tanzanite ink was growing so much gunk in
    it that it became like solid jelly. I checked all my other 25 bottles of
    Private Reserve and there are 7 full bottles which are either cloudy or show
    floating gunk in it. When I contacted Terry Johnson he even didn’t find it necessary
    to answer my emails! I’ve had it with Private Reserve Inks!!

  • Breck

    Stephen, I don’t understand what the purpose is of the writing samples below the three passed lines where you start out with Flex. And then go to medium, broad and italic. You did medium, broad and italic above already. So first you write with the fine, medium, broad and italic “The quick brown fox etc.”. Then the test for intensity with the three passes. And then there is this Flex line and another set of medium, broad and italic. What is this second one? (You write within it Private Reserve Tanzanite not the fox thing)

    • Stephen Brown

      I try to put a little more pressure on the nibs in the second part. With the flex pen, the effect is most pronounced, obviously. It’s just a way of trying to bring out the shading as well as I can, and to show off the ink a bit more.

  • Syed Ali

    Hello Doc Brown,
    Thanks for your review. I do have Tanzanite in a sampler vial but I had never tried it out. I have to give it a test drive now to see the 3 color shading, now I’m curious.

    I wanted to request if you could do a review of the Sailor Jentle Epinard. That is my most favorite ink and i complements nicely with another Sailor ink, the Jentle Ultra Marine. I usually write one page in Epinard and the facing page in Ultra Marine and it turns out looking quite nice.

    I know you already did an orange color, the Apache Sunset, and I still have to watch that review, but have you thought about doing some Caran d’Ache inks? I have CdA Amazon and CdA Saffron, both great inks, would like to see what you think of them.

    Thanks again for doing these reviews. I know it must take a lot of your time to do them and I wanted you to know it was appreciated.

  • Markos

    About the lighting and the camera. Making videos about inks thus colour, is a pain. This is because you have to film it under the right light, with the right camera and then someone will watch it on a certain screen. Different screens will show different shades of colour. When you buy the ink it might look different in your pen, but then again, it also depends on the pen you’re using! So, taken all these variables in consideration, I think that Stephen is doing a great job here. Most importantly he tests the other properties of the inks that is very useful to know and colour-indipendent, like shading, bleed-through, feathering etc which look very nice on this camera. And to finish, he offers the images of the whole test so, I can’t think how you could improve the presentation, really. Just keep the great vids coming.
    The ink: This looks like a great ink. I love the tone of the colour, and I will surely try it. The purple-ish blues are more interesting than the plain old blue colours that I’m getting a bit bored by. For now I have only tried the PR Midnight blues which I also like very much, and I would like to try out (maybe you could make a vid about it) the black magic blue which looks interesting. Another thing. The bottle is so practical. I like the wide opening, it really is so handy. I know that it might not look that cool, but it surely helps a lot.