I own a rainbow of beautiful colors, mostly from Diamine, but what I really miss a a truly black ink for formal days. I have a big bottle of Parker Quink Black, but I almost never use it as it’s actually a middle-to-dark-gray ink even with my flowiest pens.
So what are your favorite, deeply saturated black inks?
Bonus points if it’s (very) affordable and easily available in Europe (so no noodlers).
Pilot Black isn’t easy to get but is very plain and black enough for me, very cheap in a 350ml bottle.
J. Herbin Perle Noire is more saturated and cheap in 100 ml/500 ml bottles (the latter being harder to find but old inventory sells for cheap).
I’ve been using Platinum Carbon Black for a while, and absolutely love it. Bonus points for it being waterproof.
How cheap is it in the EU though? Japanese pigment inks are very expensive to get for me (~25€ a bottle seems to be a good deal, not including shipping).
Love Perle Noire. Well behaved, but nicely saturated and lubricated. Pelikan is pretty good too, almost a supersaturated brown IIRC. Waterman is not amazing, but super safe and nicer than Parker. Sheaffer looks very dark, but feathers on anything except really excellent paper.
The best looking and most interesting feeling black ink I ever used was an old bottle of Doctor brand black, made by Hero. It was like writing with an oil slick, both in appearance and feel, and while a bit of a pain to clean, it didn’t seem to clog pens. It was the only bottle of ink I’ve ever had go moldy though, so I’m not surprised it’s hard to find these days.
Waterman’s is not very saturated, it’s more on the reddish side, and it isn’t that cheap. Perle Noire doesn’t have any issues I know of with even vulcanized rubber pens (though I wouldn’t keep them inked for months with any modern formulation), so the “safety” is pretty good…
Pelikan is indeed brown tints that are saturated enough to look kind of black on most papers.
Have you tried Lamy black ink?
It should be available pretty much everywhere.
Arora black. Darkest of dark
Here’s a review from some searching. No affiliation with the link at all.
https://penactually.wordpress.com/2017/06/30/ink-review-aurora-black/
@fountainpens @wfh I’ll respond with “Noodler’s X-Feather” anyway. At least in NL, BE, DE you can buy this affordably at https://www.24papershop.com/inkt/merken/noodlers?color=154 (I have no affiliation, but only good experiences ordering from Peggy)
