TUNNEL LIGHTS

If you have been following my tweets then you know that I have been wanting a Fountain Pen for sometime now. After a few weeks of online searching, peaking in and out of different office supply shops I came across this one here at office depot.

It was the only one they had, and the woman said that they would not be carrying fountain pens anymore. This had been reduced to more than half its original price, so it was a very good deal. I enthusiastically took to my journal and scraps of paper and was quite pleased.

A few days had passed and the quality of the ink had become an issue. The ink that came with it, Parker’s quink black, tends to spread after drying and bleeds through lowgrade paper (i.e copy paper, scraps, and notebook paper) but does not bleed through in my journal. The other issue I had with this ink was that it was not a true black. After drying, it has a tendency to try a dark grey that gets lighter as the ink runs out.

So my next purchase was this,

it is Higgins Eternal black ink. This ink said that it was good for use in calligraphy pens, fountain pens, art pens, and air brushing guns.

DO NOT USE THIS IN YOUR FOUNTAIN PEN. This ink was horrible, it spread more than the Quink ink that the pen came with. It wrote and dried grayer than the quink black and bled through the lower grade paper and my journal pages and It also smeared.

This ink is terrible for fountain pens.

The next ink I went to was Higgins Calligraphy black. The box said that this ink was also good for use in calligraphy pens, fountain pens, art pens, and air brushing guns. This ink was blacker than the Eternal but still grey compared to the quink. It also spread less than the Eternal but more than the quink. The completely irritating quality of this ink was that it did not have a good flow at all. My script handwriting has lots of loops and quick dashes, with this ink, they all disappeared. It seems to prefer lines that are vertical lines only. Again this ink was not good for me. If you write in print, this in is ok but script/cursive it’s a very bad ink

There was a week of research that followed and there were two inks that I found to stand out on the pen websites and seemed to suit my needs. The first was the ink that everyone raved over called aurora black ink. This by far all the reviewers and other pen people said that aurora black ink is the gold standard that all other fountain pen ink is measured against. It was said to not have any bleed through, possess a rich and deep black color, no spreading, and the quality of paper did not matter. The only other ink that was said to posses all these qualities was Noodler's Bulletproof BLACK EEL Fountain Pen Ink. This was the ink that I purchased at castle in the air (http://www.castleintheair.biz/) in Berkeley California. Where John whom was EXREAMLY knowledgeable helped me with excellent customer service that was not phony or pushy but truly genuine and wanted to make sure I got the right product.  So thank you John

This ink is FANTASTIC, not only does it posses all of the qualities it says it has (no bleed through, possess a rich and deep black color, no spreading, and the quality of paper does not matter) It also claims to be water proof. I have not tested that one out yet. It wrote smoothly as a ink should, with loving care for my loops and horizontal lines and quick dashes. It did not dry grey or have any hints of grey and it is thick, like one expects to see from ink, but it does not clog. This ink was about 15 dollars so its not cheap but the quality of ink seems as if it will last me a while. Ill hang my hat on this ink and give the aurora a try when this bottle is through.