Orange Inks – an update …

Hi folks. When I last week uploaded the report about orange inks, I was already sure, that I have missed at least one orange ink. After a while it was clear, which ink it was: Diamine Blaze Orange. Verdammt, god verdomde, fy fæn, dammit – those were the words which came straight to my mind in order to compensate my own stupidness. Because it came even worse, actually! Oh yes! I have forgotten also the more yellowish Rohrer & Klingner Schreibtinte Helianthus. The last one I found when I searched for the Diamine ink which is filled in one of the typical unpretentious 30ml-mini-plastic-bottles, which are easily to oversee in the cave I call my treasure chest of ink (or the other way round).

Well, I decided not to stuff the report from last week with the two new inks but writing an addendum. Since it was appropriate, I compared both inks (remember: orange and yellow) with its most fitting “counterparts” from the last report – just see the images. By the way, in the writing samples, I call the Diamine Blaze Orange wrongly “Blazing” Orange, I apologize for this mistake.

Diamine Blaze Orange

Pro:

• good shading
• wet but not very wet
• going to be saturated
• no bleed through on Rhodia paper and Oxford (I did not checked Ikea)
• good properties in terms of show through on same paper mentioned above. But of course, the ink is higher saturated so you really see something on the reas side oft he paper.
• Cheap! I had hope this ink would be very similar to the expensive Montblanc ink Lucky orange (remember: Diamine Amber does not differ so much from MB Golden Yellow), but my hopes were destroyed, both inks look different (not on the photographs I uploaded here).

Con:

• Again, the narrow opening of the little bottle. It allows only converters or slimmer piston pens to slip into it. But bigger glass-bottles from Diamine do not show this kind of flaws (than again, these ones do not allow to incline (as Pelikan-4001-ink bottles do) to let pens get refilled more easily.
• The ink itself is quite proper, I don’t see any issue. But I expect the same draw backs on cheap papers as for the other orange inks.

Rohrer & Klingner Schreibtinte Helianthus (Sunflower)

Pro:

• very “flashy”
• nice shading
• no bad properties on Rhodia or Oxford papers
• very wet (yes, for people who like it on the dry side oft he spectrum, this is a con)
• although not very fancy, I like the design oft he bottle and the label
• quite cheap ink

Con:

• nothing very particular, but the ink dries out at the bottle (threads) so that an orange powder remains (see image). I recognized the same behavior at the Montblanc Golden yellow ink (without mention it in the last report). This is actually not an issue, but the powder may fall down on your clothes, so take care! I had no issues so far with congested feeds or so, but I use to clean the pens quite often. Thus, in case you get the ink dry out in your pen you might run into problems. I am not willing to test that out.

Writung samples