Franklin Christoph Terra Firma Ink Review

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

One of my favorite things to do at pen shows is to check out the Franklin Christoph booth to see what kind of new model pens they have on display. It's hard to get a good look since most of the unique stock sells out pretty quickly. Either way, if you end up purchasing a pen from the fine folks at Franklin Christoph, they offer to fill it with an ink from their own line. There's roughly a dozen colors to choose from, and I've enjoyed every one that I've tried. My most recent experiment was Terra Firma, a delightfully shade-happy red-brown ink.

Normally, I don't pay much attention to brown inks — they've never been something to catch my eye when ink shopping. This particular ink caught my eye because of the pronounced shading it exhibits. I love an ink that shades well, regardless of the color.

A few weeks later, I've determined that I like a bit more red in my inks of this color, but Terra Firma is a solid, respectable ink even if it's not my favorite color.

First off, this is an extremely well-behaved ink with surprisingly good dry times. The ink consistently dries in 12 - 15 seconds in the 1.1mm stub I've been using. Not bad at all. When it's time to clean out a pen, this ink only requires one flush to clear out all the color from the pen. That's about as easy as it gets.

The color of this ink screams "earth" or "dirt" as soon as you start writing. The Latin for Terra Firma is "solid earth," which probably wasn't a coincidence when the ink was named. Due to the red shades in this ink, it reminds me a lot of the soil in the area I grew up. Everyone calls it "Alabama clay," and it is almost identical to the color of this ink. Based on comparisons, it's somewhere in between a standard medium brown and a brown-red like Oxblood or Ancient Copper (both from Diamine). It looks good on paper, and it's deep enough to pass as a "business-friendly" shade.

Now, my favorite characteristic of this ink is the shading. This ink loves to shade. I highly recommend putting this ink in a broader nib (preferably a stub or italic) so that you can see the full range of color hidden inside the medium brown top layer.

The ink comes in a 2 oz. bottle in either a traditional screw cap or a eyedropper cap. The eyedropper cap has a nozzle that makes it a piece of cake to fill eyedropper pens without any mess or an actual eyedropper or syringe.

Franklin Christoph inks are $12.50 a bottle from their online store.

Back From DC

What an amazing trip.

The pens above were my big purchases, and I'll have more on both soon. If you missed any of the action, follow me on Instagram and Twitter, and be sure to scroll through the #DCPenShow2016 hashtag.

Back to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

The Franklin-Christoph SIG Nib: 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.)

Recently, I lucked out and bought a Stabilis 65 in tiffany from a seller on Fountain Pen Geeks. The pen came with a Masuyama steel needlepoint nib I was eager to try. Unfortunately, I found the needlepoint scratchy (expected) and very dry (unexpected).

But I loved the pen, so I decided to order a different nib for it. That's when I discovered you can buy a new grind from Franklin-Christoph called the SIG (stub-italic-gradient) nib. The nib is in between an italic and a stub with less sharpness than an italic but a crisper line than a stub. The gradient means that, depending on the angle you hold the pen (shallow or steep), you get more or less line variation.

I purchased a medium SIG for my new Stabilis 65. It arrived a few days later and, I must say, I adore this nib. It is smooth. It's not hard to find the sweet spot because the whole nib is sweet. The edges don't gouge the paper (like some super crisp italics), and there's just enough line variation to distinguish the nib from a stub.

The Franklin-Christoph steel nibs don't have any spring to them, but in this case, it doesn't really matter as the nib itself offers such an enjoyable writing experience.

Franklin-Christoph nibs simply screw into the grip, so you can purchase a nib and use it with any Franklin-Christoph pen. Just make sure you know which size nib your pen requires (#5 or #6).

My Franklin-Christoph Stabilis 65 in tiffany with the medium SIG nib is already one of my favorite writing pens. You can get a Stabilis 65 from Franklin-Christoph with the SIG nib for $159.50 in black or emerald. Unfortunately, the tiffany acrylic was a special run and is no longer available. If you just want the SIG nib, you can order the ^5 nib for $40 and the #6 nib for $45. All the SIG nibs are steel, but hopefully Franklin-Christoph will produce them in gold as well in the future.

(I purchased both the pen and nib with my own funds and was not compensated by Franklin-Christoph for this review.)

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