I have some old MbRG cartridges, plus a part bottle of MbRG and I decided to have a look at them to see if they were the same. Not that I mistrust the half bottle that I bought on ebay, but I love playing around with ink and it was MbRG's turn.
I recently bought a mixed box of inks, and in there was an old plastic Mb bottle that originally contained black ink. It had dehydrated to powder, so I just put some distilled water in there to see what happened. A few days later, I had black ink and no sediment in the bottom. That was a good start! Then I did a chroma test on that ink.
I do chroma tests on almost every ink that I buy, so that I know what dyes made it. Just cut a piece of kitchen roll into strips of about 1" wide or slightly less, get a cotton bud. Very gently just dip the bottom part of the cotton bud into the ink (so as not to waste too much) and dab it onto the towel strip about an inch up from one end. Then put a piece of sticky tape on the other end and hang up the strip ideally on a shelf where you have another shelf below. Then on the lower shelf, stand a glass half full of tap water and let the bottom of the towel strip touch the water in the glass by not more than a few mm. The water will soak up the strip and take the original dyes up with it. Don't leave it too long though. Just until you can see the water level on the strip is clear of the last dye - a couple of minutes.
The chroma test on the black ink that I had rehydrated showed it contained blue and yellow/orange dyes, with a little black between them. An unusual result for black ink.
Then I did the same chroma tests on my MbRG cartridges, (one from each of two different packs) One chroma tested as the same blue dye that was in the black ink plus yellow dye. Slightly more yellow that that in the black ink, plus a little black in between them.
From that result, I now have a simple recipe to make MbRG. Using two plastic pipettes or syringes, add equal amounts of Montblanc Royal Blue and Montblanc Golden Yellow into a sample vial. Then get a wooden cocktail stick or kebab stick and carefully dip the end into Montblanc ordinary black ink. Stir the mixture in the sample vial with the end of the cocktail stick. That makes the dark green ink. Swab test that on a cotton bud to test how dark it is. Very carefully add tiny, tiny amounts of black on the end of the cocktail stick, and keep swab testing until it's a good dark green. If it's a little on the blue side, add another drop of Golden Yellow. Please don't add too much black or it will be too dark.
I compared it against my MbRG cartridge and they were exactly the same colour.
Happy Mixing.
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