Diamine 150th Anniversary 1864 Blue Black Ink Review

Image via JetPens.com

I was excited when Diamine announced their 150th Anniversary inks, especially because I would be able to add a new blue black ink to my ever growing ink inventory. Blue black inks are my favorite of course, and I couldn't wait to see how it stacks up with the rest of my stash.

Diamine inks are some of the most user friendly inks on the market. They flow well in a wide range of nibs and maintenance is a breeze. They offer up a massive range of colors, and are very well respected in a sometimes crowded market. The 150th Anniversary lineup fits in well with their other offerings, albeit a touch more expensive due to the "Limited" tag.

When I first inked it up I was concerned with how dark the ink was, and that feeling did not pass the more I used it. It is very pretty, but very dark with minimal shading. I prefer lighter, or at least more shaded blue blacks. If you like darker blue black you should give this a shot because, as expected, it performs wonderfully.

Like Montblanc Midnight Blue, I inked it up expecting to love it, but it is just average for my tastes. My current Top 5 Blue Black inks would look something like this:

1. Montblanc JFK
2. Akkerman #10 Diep-Duinwaterblauw
3. Pilot Iroshizuku Shin-kai
4. Sailor Blue Black
5. Sailor Bung Box Blue Black

I could run another five to seven honorable mentions too, as there are a bunch of great blue black inks on the market. What are your favorites?

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

Kaweco Royal Blue Fountain Pen Ink: A Review

(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)

Kaweco Royal Blue is a blue ink that is similar to Waterman's Serenity Blue but exhibits more of a purple hue. It flows nicely from my Pelikan's italic nib and is neither too wet nor too dry. It has no odor to it (some inks do). The blue pops nicely on white paper but is more subdued on cream or other colors of paper.

This ink should be perfectly suitable for correspondence. I would feel comfortable using it in a business setting, but it might have too much purple in it for some tastes.

The ink does not exhibit any sheen, and the shading is minimal. With a fine point nib, the ink may be too light, but with wider nibs it has good saturation.

At $17.50 for 30ml on JetPens, this isn't the cheapest ink you can buy or the most expensive. If you like a blue ink with a purple cast to it, then this is a great choice. If, however, you prefer a truer blue or blue-black ink, then I would not recommend Royal Blue.

I prefer inks with a little more character--lots of saturation, shading, sheen, unique colors, etc. So, I doubt Kaweco Royal Blue will be in my regular rotation. But I'm impressed by its good flow and it behaves well.

Pros

• Good blue-purple color
• Good flow, not too heavy or dry
• No distinctive, annoying odor
• A good choice for a basic blue ink

Cons

• Does not exhibit sheen or much shading
• The purplish cast might make this less suitable for business use
• A little expensive

Fun with lighting!

Noodler's Nikita Ink Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

There is an endless array of colors out there that you can fill into a fountain pen to bleed out onto the page, but sometimes what you're after is a true, basic color. In the case of a basic, bright red, Noodler's Nikita fits the bill.

I've been using Nikita for quite a while now whenever I want to use a basic red — something you might expect out of a red gel ink pen. It's not fancy, there's hardly any shading, but it's a saturated red that grabs your attention. Sometimes that's just what you want from an ink — the opposite of subdued.

If you're familiar with Noodler's inks, then this one is what I consider an average ink in their line — and that's not a bad thing. Basically, you can expect a nicely saturated, well-behaved ink that just works and cleans out nicely. My main complaint with the ink is the dry time. It takes quite a while to dry in my experience. Other reviews I've found online seem to disagree, so take that with a grain of salt. I'm sure humidity, paper quality, and more factors come into play when drying time is measured. I happen to live in a very humid area (it was 91% earlier today), and that must be part of the cause for slow dry time.

Apart from that, Nikita is a lubricated ink that flows nicely from different pens and nib sizes. I never experienced any skips or hard starts — it's a really low-maintenance ink in all respects.

As far as shading goes, you won't find much of that here. If you use the right nib, you can detect some slight shading in lighter areas of the stroke, but it's subtle. There's a tad bit of feathering on some papers, but I didn't experience this with any of the accepted fountain pen friendly papers.

I'm fairly sure that this ink only comes in a 4.5 oz eye-droppper bottle, so keep that in mind if you want to go for the whole bottle. Those eye dropper bottles are nearly impossible to use for pens that need to be dipped into the ink in order to draw it up into the converter or reservoir. And you also score a free pen with the ink, though I'm pretty sure it's just an unbranded Platinum Preppy that you can use as an eyedropper pen.

I don't know my Russian history well enough (read: at all), but that's where the name for the ink comes from — Nikita Krushchev. I won't embarrass myself by trying to give a history lesson, but his story is pretty interesting.

All in all, this is my go-to ink if I'm looking for a bright red that gets the job done. If I were a grammar teacher, this would be the perfect ink for bleeding all over my students' papers as it performs OK on cheap paper as well.

Thanks to Joe Lebo for sending me a sample of this ink to try out!

You can find the bottles (or samples) of this ink from Goulet Pens.

На здоровье! (Cheers!)