J Herbin inks with a dip pen?

I recently moved over to writing my letters using a dip pen (in no small part due to curiosity from browsing this forum). I enjoy it quite a bit and have been looking at going beyond just india ink. I really like some of the colors of from J Herbin inks (empire green in particular), but have read that FP inks don't work well with dip pens in many cases. Does someone have experience using a dip pen with this particular ink or something similar?

Where did you read that? All I have are FP inks and I use them with dip pens all the time, including Herbin Vert Empire. Heck, even the Rohrer & Klingner bottles say "For fountain pens, steel-nibbed pens, dip pens, and individual writing utensils for calligraphy." And those little notches on Herbin bottles? They're for your dip pen to rest (and the Herbin glass dip pen).

So go ahead, use and enjoy. For what it's worth, all I've heard is that India ink is not safe for fountain pens because it will quickly gunk up the works...that's why ink for fountain pens was invented. But there's no reason why FP ink won't work for dip pens.

Edit: Just did a search and apparently it IS an issue, which is news to me. I guess calligraphy ink and India ink works BETTER for dip pens, but I've never encountered a problem using my FP inks.

Edit again: Apparently, the really saturated "sticky" inks (like Noodlers and Private Reserve) don't work. I don't use inks from those brands as a rule anyway, so I guess that's why I haven't had a problem. Go ahead and use Herbin and try out some R&K...you'll be fine.

FP inks work with dip pens, but not usually as well as dip ink is because it's thinner. you can actually use acrylic paint with dip pens... i find i need to dip a while lot more when trying to use FP ink, and the colours come out darker then in my fountain pens since it flows much more ink then a regulated fountain pen feed. but it does work

Here ya go:

Agreed! J Herbin is fine. I like their inks because I tend to get better shading. I test each new ink with a glass dip pen and haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary with J Herbin. I now have more Herbin inks than any other brand - must be a favorite of mine. Being a lefty I like their dry time. I haven't done scientific testing, but they work well for me so I'll stick with the line.

I've found dip pens to sometimes be a little finicky about inks for reasons that aren't always clear. For example, I have a glass dip pen that doesn't seem to like my Speedball black or purple inks, but works well with J. Herbin dip pen inks. But the J. Herbin inks that I have, a blue and a green, are actually meant for dip pens only, so I don't know about their fountain pen versions. And my metal dip pen nibs, although they mostly work well enough with all of my other dip pen inks, don't necessarily work equally well with each. I have some issues using them with fountain pen inks, but they can work, and again there is some variation with specific nibs and inks. My main concern is that an inadequately cleaned dip pen nib or holder might contaminate the bottles that I use for fountain pens, so I decant small amounts into vials if I want to try them for a dip pen.

But about J. Herbin, they do have many other colors of dip pen specific inks. The vendor I linked to, for example, has them in gold, brown, red, yellow, and other colors. So if you aren't sure, and don't need them to go in fountain pens also, you could just get those.

Thanks for all the replies (and sample shot) everyone! As usual, B&B pulls through in great style!

If you get Vert Empire, don't expect the color to fly off the page. It's a really muted, "soft" green, almost like they took bright green and mixed it with grey. Next to a bright green like Edelstein Aventurine, you really see the difference. Some people really don't like it, but I love it. Some greens annoy me if I use them too long; this is one that's easy on the eyes and has a real vintage style.

It reminded me of a clothbound book cover the first time I used it.

Got it, thanks! Green is my favorite color and I was looking for something a little muted so that I could use it for letters and have it look a little different without annoying the reader. On that note, is there anything else someone would recommend looking into?