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Thread: TWSBI Blue Black Ink

  1. #1
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    Question TWSBI Blue Black Ink

    This is a review I just submitted to Jet Pens, where I got my bottle of TWSBI Blue Black:

    This is a squirrely ink. One minute it's happily on the ground chomping an acorn. Next minute it's up in the tree furiously waving its tail in distress. My first impression was that it's a very dry ink -- and it has an awful smell. This suggested why it would be "water-resistant." It's not a conventional ink formulation. Philip Wang of TWSBI has said it's "a modern variation of an iron gall ink." [ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IU6...iVLZa01cg/view ] This not only accounts for the ink's dryness but also for it's absolute water resistance in my testing. (I use a glass-nib dip pen to place the ink on paper straight from the bottle. Then I allow at least a week to dry before soaking it, fully immersed, in tepid water for two minutes.) All that is the happy part. Oh, and the bottle is gorgeous!

    The more squirrely part is that the color is not consistent. Depending on the paper you put it on it can be a very dark blue or a flat, almost pale blue. And characteristic of iron gall ink, it oxidizes over time and gets darker. Ink I put on some paper a month ago is nearly black today. On other paper, it's still a blue, although darker. Also, if it is an iron gall type ink, pens will need to be more regularly cleaned out. This may not be the kind of ink you can put in a pen you only use once a month.

    Finally, I think this ink gives me mild headaches. I've worked with iron gall inks before, and that never happened. This only happens when using it with a dip pen, having the bottle open on the desk for a long period of time. This is probably a good ink for archival purposes. If you're an artist needing some color consistency, this may not work so well.

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    Default Re: TWSBI Blue Black Ink

    Thanks for your review. Thanks also for including your email thread with a TWSBI employee about the ink.

    Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

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