Inky surprises

[stevekolt]

Which inks have truly surprised you? Either positively or negatively? I must say that R&K Alt Goldgrun has really turned me into a fan! Not real big on greens, but this ink is just so darn...warm. Love it. Another surprise for me is Diamine Earl Grey. A perfect match for my Pelikan M805 Stressman. On the other hand I originally was quite taken with R&K Scabiosa. Now, not so much.
Anybody else like to chime in?

[Jon Szanto]

On a whim, because I like dark greens, I had a friend purchase a Franklin-Christoph ink made for the Philly pen show, I think in 2016. It is just spectacular in every regard, and I've not followed up on any of their other inks. I just got gifted a small 'sample' bottle of their Noir Bleu and again, a lovely, well-behaved ink (though incredibly similar to some I have, such as Aurora Blue-Black).

I've also got a couple of Monteverde inks, not expecting much, but very certainly enjoying vibrant color and nice shading.

I happen to think The Golden Age of Pens was in one of the decades far in our past, but we may very well be living in the Golden Age of Fountain Pen Inks right now.

[KrazyIvan]

I never thought I would like Sailor Grenad so much.

[Scooby921]

At the moment I think the two I find most positively surprising are Parker Quink Blue-Black and J. Herbin Lierre Sauvage. I've read plenty of other folks opinions on the Parker, but I hadn't ever used it or really ever seen it. I bought a bottle just to try it. My first impression was that it's not any part "black". I expected it to be darker. The more I've used it the more I've grown to like it. I now understand why others love it. It simply works, no questions asked.

J. Herbin Lierre Sauvage is one I used a few months ago in a pen with a BB nib. I didn't like the ink at the time. I decided to buy a bottle to use as a Mystery Ink to see what others think of it. In using it myself, in an EF nib this time, I've grown to like it. I like the color, the very faint shading, and the overall writing properties. I sort of regret giving most of it away in MI sample vials. I'll now need to buy another bottle.

On the flip side I'm surprised at how poorly Organics Studio inks perform. I was warned that they are dry, but I didn't expect them to dry up in the nib and feed within 24 hours and constantly require me to add water to the feed to reconstitute the ink and use the pen. I also find them to have an astonishingly useless amount of sheen. The color of the ink changes completely and becomes annoying to look at. Nitrogen is a wonderful blue color. Once it's dry it's pink forever, or at least until you smudge it with a finger. Montblanc Season's Greetings brown is another one I have been surprisingly underwhelmed by. Every other MB ink I've used has been well-behaved. The season's greetings brown is garbage. I expected a dark brown with some glittery gold sheen. What I got was an ink that bleeds and feathers on every paper I've tried. Even out of an EF nib it is wet enough and thin enough to do terrible things to paper.

[migo984]

I’m very surprised by just how much I enjoy using Fountain Pen Revolution Blue-Black. It’s nothing really out-of-the-ordinary, and it comes in a very utilitarian plastic bottle, but the ink, when dried, is an elegant neutral shade, it has some water resistance (if that’s your thing), cleans very easily from every pen I’ve used it in so far, and it is excellent value at around $8 for 60ml. I’d buy an extra-large bottle of this ink if it were available on this side of the Pond.

For more info, here is a brief review I did a little while ago
https://fpgeeks.com/forum/showthread...ion-Blue-black

[FredRydr]

Mystery Ink No. 14 (a/k/a Akkerman No. 5 "Shocking Blue") surprised me very much, before I even knew what it was. I like it. I'm a sucker for dark blues with purplish-red sheen inks, like Akkerman No. 5, Parker Penman Sapphire, Private Reserve DC Supershow Blue, and Diamine Sargasso Sea.

[Scooby921]

Mystery Ink No. 14 (a/k/a Akkerman No. 5 "Shocking Blue") surprised me very much, before I even knew what it was. I like it. I'm a sucker for dark blues with purplish-red sheen inks, like Akkerman No. 5, Parker Penman Sapphire, Private Reserve DC Supershow Blue, and Diamine Sargasso Sea.

It's not the best value ink from Diamine, but Blue Velvet is similar. It's not quite as dark as a base blue, more royal, but I'm getting shading to a darker blue and there is a red sheen when it dries. This is after sitting in the pen for some time though. When it was freshly inked it was just royal blue with little shading and no sheen. After sitting in the pen and allowing some water content to evaporate it's a bit more saturated and sheeny. Still a touch expensive for a tiny bottle when you have other options.

[Chrissy]

I was surprised by how well Diamine Majestic Blue performed for me when I tried it again after a long period of not using it. It wrote perfectly, had fabulous red sheen, didn't spread or feather on my papers, and I never once managed to smudge it even after repeatedly trying to do so. As soon as I reached the bottom of my A4 sheet of Tomoe River paper, I turned over and immediately wrote on the other side. No smudging at all, and it didn't even mark my page lines like Montblanc Red Chine had done the day before.

I've been underwhelmed by Montblanc Saint Exupéry. I filled my new Montblanc Solitaire 146 piston filler with it, and I was convinced there was a blockage in the feed. Verticals skipped regularly, it seemed dry across the page, and it wrote like the pen was running out of ink all of the time. So I emptied it out and refilled with De Atramentis Aubergine. Now my Solitaire F nib is now writing like a hosepipe....

[Sailor Kenshin]

Alas. Based on reviews and scans, I thought Lamy Petrol was going to be my go-to, forever dark green ink, until I tried it. Now I am trying not to hate it.

On the other hand, I first thought Diamine Midnight was meh. Now I have it in one pen or other all the time.

[Sammyo]

On the other hand, I first thought Diamine Midnight was meh. Now I have it in one pen or other all the time.

I have to agree with this, I too always have Diamine Midnight in a pen.

My go-to ink that I now love is Pilot Blue-Blank. For a simple, inexpensive ink, it has a lot of character! It shades, it sheens, it is saturated, it never hard starts, it is easy to clean, etc... Colour me impressed for a bog standard, base ink!

Sent from my SCV36 using Tapatalk

[Paddler]

I have been astonished by inks a few times, but never surprised.

[naimitsu]

Bungbox 4B.
I hate blue-blacks. They've always been rather blah for me. Most of them aren't a strong enough blue for my taste, and they weren't close enough to black to be professionally useful for me.
However, 4B is almost black out of the EF nib on my Montblanc Brahms, but it does lighten every now and then to remind you that it is a blue. Add to that the sometimes subtle sheen and decent behavior on crap paper, it's been in the Brahms since I inked it. I've even refilled it when it runs out!

Pilot Iroshizuku Momiji
This was another one that I expected to pretty much hate. I had seen a bunch of writing samples that displayed it's pink-ness, which is a massive no-go if you know me. However, I tried it on the suggestion of a friend (I think it might have been Sammyo) and inked the TWSBI 580 EF with it, I was sold. From an EF, it is concentrated enough to present itself as a vibrant red, with the slightest tinge of pink when I write too much too fast. The variation from vibrant red to almost day-glow pink made it a multidimensional color, which most bright reds I've tried did not have.

Montblanc Mahatma Gandhi - Saffron
I've always been rather ambivalent about orange. It's neither a red nor a yellow, but a middling color that seemed to lack something. It was one of the Mystery Inks from Laura's batch and it struck me as a very cheerful color from the get go. It was also vibrant without being retina-searing (I'm looking at you de Atramentis Gandhi!).

Noodler's Polar Black
It's a Noodler's, so my expectations wasn't very high... but if I remember correctly, the ink that came out struck me as rather... oily. Not that it had the rainbow sheen seen in an oil slick, but that it looked weirdly thick as it came out. I half expected it to jump up at me and turn me into Venom. It sorta gave me the hebejebes, which is not something I expected to feel about an ink.

de Atramentis Document Red
It's opaque. I never realized how not opaque even the darkest ink seemed until I put this in a demonstrator.
It was like I had filled the pen with liquid plastic. It just looked... wrong.
And the ink color was rather washed out looking, which was the opposite of what I was expecting from such an opaque liquid.

[KKay]

Diamine-Midnight is a great ink. Also try Diamine-Asa Blue. Both of the inks perform wonderfully for me. I don't have glass bottles of them, but I hope to in the future. In fine nibs they are just great workhorse inks. In wetter pens they are awesome. The inks both clean out of your pen easily too.

Pelikan-4001 Dark Green surprised me. It is another great ink, sadly I don't have that one either.