Daily Carry Inks - Spill Test

Thought I'd test the current inks I'm carrying in my pens to see how they hold up in a spill situation in the office environment. I take usually take notes in a Black n' Red notebook with 24 lb Optik paper. This is a medium priced general office notebook. It's not quite at the level of a Rhodia or Clairfontaine paper, but it is far superior to office legal pads, spiral notebooks, and copier paper. It performs very well with fountain pen inks and I use a Red n' Black notebook as my ink journal to track each time I ink up a new pen,

Today's test covers these inks:

• DeAtramentis Document ink. Since DA Document inks are mixable, I like to mix colors to see what I come up with. This particular color is a mix of Turquoise, Fuscia, and Brown.
• Noodler's 54th Massachusetts. This is my all-time favorite ink. totally waterproof and a beautiful color with variations depending on the nib width.
• Noodler's Legal Blue. I recently discovered this color and I am finding I keep coming back to it. It is also waterproof.
• Noodler's Bad Green Gator. Probably my favorite permanent green.
• Noodler's Bulletproof Black. This is the gold standard for low-cost, well-behaved, permanent black inks.
• Noodler's Empire Red. A rare permanent red ink. A bit on the light side, and will dry out on a pen that does not seal well.
• Noodler's Kung Te cheng. Probably one of the most permanent inks on the market. Will dry out on the nib if not constantly used. Great for addressing envelopes. Nice purple blue color.
• Noodler's Luck of the Draw. A new ink introduced by Noodler's at the 2018 Baltimore Pen Show in March. It is nearly permanent, with a bit of color that will wash away leaving behind a permanent line. Named after the land lottery that was used when Baltimore was founded.
• Noodler's Zhivago. A nice, semi-permanent greenish-black. Nicely lubricated. Flows well in finer nibs.
• Pilot Blue Black. This is a standard Pilot (Namiki) ink. Normally available in cartridges only in the United States, but I bought a 350 ml bottle on line from Japan. One of the best-behaved inks you can use. I trust my vintage pens with this ink. It is even semi-permanent, leaving behind a solid blue line after a soak of many hours.

As you can see, most of my daily carry inks are very permanent. I've tested these inks in soaks of 6 - 10 hours with the same results. The only two inks that bleed color onto the paper in a spill are Zhivago and Pilot Blue Black. Even so, they are very nice office inks and preserve your writing in almost any situation.

Noodler's Luck of the Draw vs Pilot Blue-Black vs Franklin Christoph Blue 72

I returned from the 2018 Baltimore Pen Show with a new pen and some new inks. The new pen was a Franklin Christoph Model 02 with a steel fine cursive italic nib by Mike Masuyama. Franklin Christoph always sets up your pen at the show and lets you pick an ink to load in it for the first time. I chose the FC Blue 72 (of the Pantone color number) because their web site listed it as water resistant and they sell cartridges in bottles of 40 for a very good price. I figured I would try it out to see if I could find an ink cartridge with a water resistant ink I could use for daily work at the office.

While at the show, Luxury Brands, who represents Noodler's Ink, had a table demoing the show ink from Noodler's called Luck of the Draw. I gave it a try and sort of liked the understated gray-green color. With the teaser that it was one of Noodler's water resistant inks, I bought a bottle from a vendor. Took it home and loaded it into a Pilot Metropolitan with a medium nib.

Meanwhile, I have a Pilot VP fine with a Pilot Blue-Black cartridge on my desk, which I like to have readily available for quick notes. I know the performance of the Pilot Blue-Black from extensive testing and have confidence that anything I write with it will be permanent -- even in a flood. I thought it would be interesting to do a comparison between the three very dissimilar inks.

So, the results of the test is scanned at 1200 dpi into a jpeg and posted below.

The left scan is the original writing on Rhodia Dot Pad 80 gsm paper. This is a high quality paper I would expect the best inks to perform well on.

Of course, all three inks look perfect in the original scan.Pilot Blue-Black is always a well-behaved, easy starter. It dries quickly and has a nice professional color. Never dries on the nib. I find the FC Blue 72 to be a superb ink for office use. I can leave it uncapped for minutes at a time between notes and it never dries. Starts right up. It is even fairly well lubricated and glides onto the paper. I like the color too. Luck of the Draw reminds me of a graphite pencil with B softness. It's a somewhat retro color that really draws my attention. Understated, yet easy to read. This also makes a good office ink.

Well, it's obvious how they held up after the six hour soak in water. The Pilot B-B came through as expected. No surprise there. The Noodler's LOTD is definitely permanent with only a slight amount of dye washing away. The FC Blue 72 was disappointing in that it completely faded away. No trace to be found after six hours in water. It's too bad because I really liked its performance in my pen and on both Rhodia and my office Black 'n Red notebooks. If you don't care about permanence, give Blue 72 a try. It's a very good value for a very well-behaved ink, and the color is beautiful, too.