Diamine Blue Black Ink Review

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

It's been quite a while since I've had the inclination to reach for a blue black ink for one of my fountain pens, but I've had a resurgence of interest lately and have decided to go with it. The first ink on my list of blue blacks is from Diamine. This is the standard variant, not the special 1864 150th-anniversary or registrar's versions.

Diamine Blue Black is something that I consider to be a very solid blue black ink by definition. The color is dark but still obviously blue, there's a nice level of shading, and there aren't any purple undertones present. With any blue black, the color is important and often a point of intense opinions. I'm not a fan of blue blacks that are so black that you can barely see any blue, but I'm also not a fan of washed-out, light blue black variations that look more like a watered down black. Diamine's interpretation of blue black makes my heart happy. It's a dark navy with plenty of inky mystery, but it also lets the lighter side show through on lighter strokes. It strikes the crucial balance of darkness and blue that meets my individual expectations.

Like all the other Diamine inks I've tried, this one is very well-behaved. I haven't noticed any feathering or bleeding, regardless of the paper I use. It's a dark ink, so there's a fair amount of show-through on the back side of the page I write on, but it's not too bad and it's easy to ignore if I'm using a nib that's under the bold size.

One thing that I did not expect about this ink is how wet it is. Especially in the 1.1mm stub nib I used for this review, the ink just flows out of the nib with ease. It doesn't seem to affect the line crispness, but it certainly increases the dry time. In my tests (in the very humid southeast US), it takes anywhere between 20 to 30 seconds for this ink to fully dry on Rhodia paper. It's a little quicker on uncoated paper, but not by much. If you want a quick-drying ink, look elsewhere!

Several other blue black inks I've tried in the past have a significant sheen that you can see in certain lights. I haven't noticed any sheen in Diamine's version. If you want an ink with a lot of fancy sheen, you should also look elsewhere.

Even though this ink is wet and doesn't have any sheen, I can't help but love the subtle amount of shading it presents. This looks particularly great in a large nib because you see a variance of dark, dark blue and medium blue as you write. What I really appreciate is that I can't see any hint of green, purple, or gray in the lighter shades of this ink. That's something I've noticed in other blue black inks that I don't like. Again, this is what makes Diamine's blue black a true standard for my book of inks.

And as you might expect with Diamine, it's also a great value. The 30ml bottle I picked up is less than $8, and the whopping 80ml bottle is less than $17. If cartridges are your thing, then an 18 pack of cartridges is only $8.25. If you only want to try this ink out first, I think the smaller 30ml bottle is a good choice.

Aside from the really long dry time, this ink is a stellar performer. It nails the definition of a solid blue black ink for me, and I'm looking forward to using it more in the future as I rotate more dark inks into my pen usage.

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

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Posted on August 12, 2020 by Jeff Abbott and filed under Diamine, Ink Review.

Uni Alpha Gel Slim Mechanical Pencil Giveaway

I’ve been testing out one of the new colors of the Uni Alpha Gel Slim Mechanical Pencils and I’ve come away impressed. If you like what Uni does, and don’t need the lead rotation of the Kuru Toga, then this could be a great choice for your mechanical pencil needs. They are available in 0.3 mm and 0.5 mm lead sizes and in a wide range of colors, so the winner can pick any model from this page. Read the rules below and enter away!

Posted on August 11, 2020 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Giveaways.

Sharpie Pen S-Gel 0.7 mm Pen Review

Back to School season often brings new pens to the store shelf. While Sharpie’s newest entrant, the S-Gel, has been around for months, only over the summer did we seem them infiltrate the stationery world at scale.

I grabbed a 4-pack of 0.7 mm pens from Amazon (two black gel, one each of blue and red,) to test, but if my grocery store shelves are any indication, you should be able to easily find them in the 0.5 mm and 1.0 mm tip sizes as well. Sharpie’s new Roller is also available as part of the big push we are seeing from the brand.

As many of us pen addicts already know, and as Sharpie is about to find out, the long-time stalwarts of the gel pen section of the store occupy that space for a reason. The Pilot G2, Uni-ball Signo, and Pentel EnerGel are household names, so Sharpie has their work cut out if they want to displace any or all of that trio.

So how does the Sharpie S-Gel stack up against some of the best gel ink pens of the past decade? Not very well.

The worst thing a pen can be is inconsistent, and that is what I am getting from this batch of pens. The black 0.7 mm is especially poor, with a nose cone I can feel scratching the page as the tip rolls across it. This makes for a scratchy, wide line, and a poor experience.

The blue gel pen is the antithesis of the black. In fact it is quite good and reminds me of the Pilot G2, which is a good experience to shoot for. The red gel pen is close to the blue - a little more scratchy, but nowhere as bad as the black.

With the variance I am seeing between the three colors and how they feel on the page, I would be hesitant to recommend these over any of the three excellent choices I mentioned above.

Being under the Sharpie umbrella gives these pens a leg up in marketing, but the performance isn’t there. I think the style is lacking a bit as well. I understand that making a great $2 gel ink pen at scale is difficult, but how about letting loose a little bit?

Sharpie doesn’t hesitate to do that with their permanent marker lineup. How about bringing some of that aesthetic into the gel pen world, instead of designing a pen that looks like every other pen it is competing against? Or maybe design something completely different and off the wall. We already have what they are trying to sell us, and better versions at that.

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