Ink Review: Diamine Misty Blue

[Chrissy]

Today I’m reviewing a sample of Diamine Misty Blue

This is a mid-range blue ink that leans slightly green. For those of you who used to like Montblanc Meisterstuck Diamond Blue, Diamine Misty Blue is a very good replacement for that one.

I felt it was a restful blue, a blue ink that is easy on the eye, that looked neither too dark nor too light nor too bright. A really pleasant mid-range blue that is quite an unusual shade. Almost like a vintage ink in appearance. Despite having lot’s of blue inks, I found it difficult to find some that were close to this colour until I took out my bottle of Montblanc Meisterstuck Diamond Blue. MMDB leans very slightly more green, but is still quite a close match to Misty Blue.

I found it an excellent flowing ink that was quite wet. It had excellent lubrication with all of the pens I used.
I didn’t see any woolly line, spread or feathering on most of the papers I tried it with, apart from the always predictable Field Notes paper.
With broader nibs it looks considerably more saturated than it did with finer nibs.
It showed through on some of the cheaper papers I experimented with. See the pictures.

I found it behaved very well. I didn’t experience any start-up or clogging problems with it. This was despite me leaving the caps off of all 3 pens while I found and cut pieces of different papers to try it on. Clean-up was particularly easy. No problem at all removing Misty Blue from hands or pens using soap for hands and plain water for pens.

I have read reviews where reviewers found that Misty Blue changed colour upon drying. This was not my experience with my sample. It’s the same colour now as it was when I wrote with it yesterday and earlier today. Whether it will change colour in a few days remains to be seen.

It was not particularly water resistant, but it didn’t disappear after a few minutes under water.

• This isn't sold as a waterproof ink, but shows reasonably good water resistance.
• Bearing in mind the review form paper I use is thick with a quite shiny surface at 100gsm, and I used a M nib, this ink dried after just 11-14 seconds when using the kaweco Sport F nib. Although it took longer to dry with both of my wetter nibs.
• No smear after dry.
• It has excellent flow and lubrication. I saw no skips or hard starts while I did swabs and dry time tests, and found and cut papers to try it on.
• It is currently available in 80ml glass bottles or 30ml plastic bottles.
• Diamine sell it directly to end-users on their web-site.
• It's a reasonable price.

Diamine Misty Blue.jpegDiamine Misty Blue 1.jpegDiamine Misty Blue 3.jpeg