KenCrooker.com

Fingers Were Meant to be Inky

/ / Fountain Pens, Ink, Reviews / 2 Comments

Quick Look: Six Bung Box Inks

Bung Box Inks: Hard-to-Find Liquid Treasures

There’s a small, boutique stationery shop in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan called Bungubox that opened it’s doors in 2012. They were pretty much a mom-and-pop type of place, catering to local residents looking for nice pens and other writing supplies. Bungubox started commissioning various manufacturers to create exclusive items for their store.

One of these partnerships was with the company Sailor, who they commissioned to make a line of inks for them under the name Bung Box. Sailor’s Jentle inks are widely regarded as beautiful, high-quality inks, so it’s no surprise that the Bung Box colors were also very popular.

Sailor is one of the “Big 3” Japanese pen & ink manufacturers…with Pilot and Platinum being the other two.

Sometime last year (2015), word got out about the Bung Box inks, and all hell broke loose. People from all over the world began ordering the inks, making the shop proprietors scramble to fulfill orders and cleaning the inks off the shelves. The availability of Bung Box inks goes in and out as supplies run out and the inks need to be reordered & made. At this moment, at least some of them are available, so I ordered a pile of samples to check them out (at $42 for a 50 ml bottle, they’re extremely expensive inks…so I just stuck with samples).

Holy Gosh! I see why they’re so popular.

Below are images and descriptions for six of the Bung Box inks. There’s not a dud in the bunch.

Quick Look: Bung Box Inks, showing swatches and writing samples with Ink of the Witch, Piano Mahogany, and Silent Night

… Read More

/ / Fountain Pens, Ink / Leave a Comment

Inksperiment: FrankenPurple

Recipe: A random blue cartridge that came with a Monteverde Invincia and a few drops of Noodler’s Red-Black

Origins:

I recently got a fountain pen that doesn’t take converters. It came with one cartridge (Standard International Short), but I managed to get it jammed inside the barrel of the pen. So I had to destroy the cartridge to get it out. I had a few more laying around, so it wasn’t a big loss.

So I used a blue cartridge that came with my Monteverde Invincia, and I hated the color. It was a lame, weak blue. I’m not sure if it was Monteverde ink or not, but it was unacceptable. Instead of throwing it out, I figured I’d experiment a bit and mix in another color and see what happens. So I put in a couple drops of Noodler’s Red-Black, thinking I’d get a nice, rich purple.

What came out was more of a weird brown-black with purple overtones. I wasn’t crazy about it, but I figured I’d use it up to see if it would grow on me. It didn’t. But I did discover some interesting things about it (click the image below to enlarge it).

Inksperiments - FrankenPurple Initial writing sample of words and doodles… Read More

/ / Fountain Pens, Ink, Reviews / 2 Comments

Quick Look: New Chesterfield Antique Inks

New Chesterfield Antique Inks

Chesterfield recently released four new antique inks. They were on a serious sale from XFountainPens, so I picked up a 50ml bottle of each. I think most Chesterfield inks are re-branded Diamine colors. I’m not sure if these new ones are also Diamine, but I’m blown away by all four of them.

The image below shows writing and swab samples of all four. I apologize in advance for my horrible writing. I’m a menace with a dip pen. I’ve got some quick write-ups below the photo, so get your butt down there and read them.

Writing samples of the new Chesterfield Antique Fountain Pen Inks using a dip pen and a q-tip… Read More

/ / Babble, Commentary, Fountain Pens, Ink / 2 Comments

If I … Could Save Slime … In a Bottle …

Classic example of SITB (Slime in the Bottle) with a sample of Private Reserve Ink

After I got into the hobby of collecting fountain pens, I (of course) started sampling all kinds of ink to go with them. After ordering like two batches of samples, I started reading these horror stories about a condition called SITB, or Slime (or stuff or s#$t) in the Bottle happening with a brand of ink called Private Reserve (PR). There were a few reports of it happening with other brands, but PR seemed to be responsible for the bulk of these reports.

After hearing about this issue, I decided to just avoid the brand, although I still had a few samples that I bought before hearing about it.

Fast-forward to tonight. I wanted my eight-year-old son to practice his penmanship, so I brought out his Kakuno and asked him what color ink he wanted. He chose dark red, so I grabbed my sample of Private Reserve Black Cherry and a syringe and went to fill it up.

I had trouble sucking up the ink in the syringe, and I was thinking “what the heck is going on?” I pulled the syringe out of the sample bottle and found a semi-solid wad of ick crammed into the needle.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that tonight was my first and last experience with Private Reserve. Gross.

Have any of you experienced SITB with PR or any other brand? Leave a comment and let me know!

/ / Fountain Pens / Leave a Comment

Quick Nib & Ink Comparison #1

Comparison of some fountain pen nib writing samples to compare line width and inks

I just finished up two reviews and have three more pens inked up for the next round, so I have a pile of pens around me ready to write. I figured I’d capture writing samples from each of them for a quick comparison of nib grades and inks.

The first four samples are all from “Extra Fine” nibs. I use the quotes because it’s very, very clear that different companies have different ideas of what the grades mean.

The last two samples are from Chinese pens. The nibs aren’t marked, but I generally expect Medium grades from these. Of course, the concept of “Medium” varies wildly among Chinese pens, so take that for what it’s worth. Both the Duke and Yiren pens write a finer line than my Jinhaos. Whether this puts them into the Fine/Medium category or just the Medium category probably depends on your own definition. For me, I put both squarely in the “True Medium” column.

So after comparing these samples, I have a few thoughts on the matter:

  1. Yes, it’s true: Japanese pens are finer than their Western counterparts of the same grade. The Lamy 2000 EF (German) is much broader than the Pilot VP EF (Japanese). The TWSBI Diamond 580AL EF (Taiwanese) falls somewhere in between. I expected the Pilot to be comparable to the TWSBI, but it’s about half as broad as that. I’d almost call the Pilot EF closer to Ultra Extra Fine…but I’ll reserve judgement on that until my Platinum “official” UEF comes in, and I can see how it compares to the Pilot.
  2. The Goulet EF nib (made by JoWo, a German company) is even broader than the Lamy 2000 EF. It seems to be slightly finer than the Duke and Yiren pens, though, so I’d probably classify the Goulet EF as Fine/Medium.
  3. What does the term “EF” even mean? I’ve got four EF samples here, and they’re all vastly different. The difference among them is striking. I recently tried a Visconti EF DreamTouch nib…and that was easily the broadest EF (or F for that matter) nib I’ve ever written with. What gives?
  4. Chinese fountain pens are a real adventure. Their QC is up and down, and you never really know what to expect from their pens (I’ve tried three Jinhao pens so far, and haven’t had the best of results from them…I have to wonder what everyone else likes about them). So far, this Duke and Yiren both seem like really nice, consistent writers. And they’re both beautiful pens, too.
  5. Yiren is the Chinese Bigfoot! How cool is that? I have no idea if the pen is named after that creature, but it makes me smile to think that it is.

So what are your thoughts? Are the nibs on your pens just as “all over the place” with regard to line weight, or has you’re experience been more consistent?