This month’s Ink Of The Month is something a bit different. Writer’s Blood is the result of a collaboration between Diamine and the Reddit fountain pen community which has produced a wonderful dark cherry coloured ink.
When I first saw Nick Stewart’s sampling of the ink I was really taken with it and promptly spent the next two months combing the internet looking for a clue to its release date which finally came when Cult Pens announced it should be available from the 19th February happily for me and everyone else who wanted to order a bottle or two Cult Pens started taking pre-orders, and on the 19th it shipped.
So yesterday I loaded it into a spare TWSBI Eco, with a Medium nib, and started testing it out.
Ink on the nib.
The first thing I noticed is how wet this ink is, when loaded in a pen I’ve always found to have a steady flow this really gushed; as you can see from the text test, below, it was laying down a lot of ink, however, it didn’t take too long to dry.
Next, I did a Q-Tip test, and this produced an even colour and when I did the stripe test it simply darkened as I added more layers and there was no sheen.
The writing experience with this ink was very smooth particularly when you take into account, I was testing it on sketch book paper. I’ve since done some writing tests on plain notebook paper of varying qualities and the results have been the same.
I definitely recommend this ink if you like red inks, or are just curious to see the results of an online community’s efforts to create a new ink, and what is a nice surprise is despite this being a specially created ink it is still the same price as any other bottle of Diamine ink, £5.90GBP.
My final thought would be this; because it is quite a wet ink you might need to try it out in a couple of pens until you find the right combination of pen and ink; to paraphrase Mr Ollivander, “The ink chooses the pen, Mr Potter.”
Disclaimer: The ink was purchased at retail price and given to me as a gift. The opinions expressed in this review are my own; and I am not connected with either the retailers or manufacturers in any way.
The Indian Marmalade Company 