I have found that any of the Diamine inks are well behaved.
Your Best Behaving Inks
- Thread starter andrew98
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I have had good luck with my MB and Diamine inks, OK success with the Edelstein ink (although that is great in my 600), and marginal success with Levenger inks. The Noodler inks just don't seem to cut it for me.
Well-behaved inks on cheap paper ... Noodler's black has always been a good one, and I'd say that an iron gall (so far I've tried Diamine Registrar's with great success but I hear most I/G are good) would be another good choice.
I don't get to pick my paper or ink color for most things, so I greatly appreciate this thread. Thanks!
For a basic write-everywhere, do-everything black ink, Noodler's Black is hard to beat. And it's REALLY black! (No greens, blues, fuchsias, etc. lurking in the background)
This from Richard Binder on Iron-Gall inks
Iron gall ink
was invented more than 1500 years ago. It was used by innumerable nameless scribes to copy sacred manuscripts; by great secular writers and thinkers such as Voltaire, Shakespeare, and Leibniz; and by ordinary people. When fountain pens came into existence, iron gall ink made the leap to the new technology, and it is still in use today because it is a very permanent ink. But it has a couple of drawbacks. First, but of less serious consequence for most of us, is its reputation for destroying, over the course of centuries, the paper on which it is used.[SUP] [/SUP] Of more concern to you, as a fountain pen user, is that it is rather acidic: it can corrode metal pen parts such as steel nibs and cartridge nipples, and plated trim rings every part that comes in contact with it. Only gold alloys are safe from its ravages; if your pen features a gold nib and has no other metal parts that are continually exposed to the ink (such as a metal cartridge nipple), you can use iron gall inks such as Montblanc Blue-Black and Diamine Registrars ink with impunity.
My go-to brand right now is Pilot Iroshizuku. I have found that few understand the differences between inks which is great. I refer everyone to this great page which explains a lot about ink. http://www.marcuslink.com/pens/ink/index.html
Not to dispute either you or Richard but modern interpretations of i-g inks bear little resemblance to the i-g inks of old. The pen damaging aspects of the older formulations have been mitigated by the use of dyes inplace of the ferro-gallic reaction alone. One might argue that modern i-g inks are not truly i-g inks by the historical definition. The trade-off is one of pen safety v. ink permanency.
Certainly, one must practice a bit more pen maintenance when using i-g inks but I find them worth the effort. And I rarely have a pen that is loaded for more than a few weeks. Also, always flush my pens between fills.
My MV ink behaves well, as does R&K, sailor, lamy, Pelikan, and Parker
I use Noodler's X-feather a lot and it's very well behaved in my Lamy 2000 my other ink of choice is Noodler's Heart of Darkness. I like those inks because they are rather black and they resist ethanol very well.
All this talk about iron gall ink has made me curious though.
All this talk about iron gall ink has made me curious though.
Agreed.
I use Noodlers black for work and it is extremely robust in the kitchen.
Date labels and temp sheets have come out of the freezers or dishwasher still intact and still really black.
I got a little ink on the white wall and I couldn't clean it off. oops
So far I really enjoy writing with Rohrer & klinger Permanent blue, though it's not great in the waterproof department.
