Blue-Black On The Gray Side: In Which Dr. Inkenstein Goes on a Quest

Once upon a time, Dr.  Inkenstein needed a blue-black ink that leaned gray.  Muahahaaaa!


You don't normally think of spring and summer when you think, 'Blue-black inks!  Yeahhh!'  You kinda think, 'Autumn.  Gray.  Rainy.'


Unless it's a rainy spring day.  In which case, on with the show:

 Chesterfield Sodalite (which is, I THINK, some sort of Diamine ink) was my go-to,  gray-leaning blue-black.

However, when I recently loaded it in a hooded Jinhao 599,  the ink looked gray. Just gray. As in...gray.


And it seemed very dry. Draggy, even!  Perhaps it's IG? In any case, it doesn't seem to be the same ink color I started out with.

So began the Quest for something WET and lubricated, a blue-black that tends toward gray but still has identifiable blue components.

Not greenish. I love that, but have plenty of those!   I went to some fountain pen forums for suggestions and got several good ones.  AND some donated ink samples from KLP and Reprieve and others!

 

Thanks for your generosity!

.I next dip- tested as many inks as I could on a small piece of Rhodia. I used some of the inks sent by KLP and Reprieve (sincere thanks to you both for your generosity!), plus the few I had on hand that were suggested.

Only the Diamine Denim was actually loaded in an actual pen. 





The color in this scan isn't fully accurate, but you can see Diamine Twilight was too green, and JH Bleu Nuit too blue for this Quest, though both are lovely and useful colors. The Hudson looks almost as blue in the scan as Bleu Nuit but isn't.

Of my own inks, visually, the OS Manganese and Hero come close. Of the Ink Gifts, I loved the Tanzanite, Chopin, and HH. 

Next: Loading a few pens and taking them for a short test-drive. Stay tuned.