Review: Noodler’s Ink

My bot­tle of Auro­ra black is run­ning dan­ger­ous­ly low, so it was time to go ink shop­ping. I don’t know as much about inks as I’d like to, so I’ve been read­ing what I can find online. What I’ve been read­ing are raves from all cor­ners about a brand I was for­mer­ly unaware of: Noodler’s.

Noodler’s is an Amer­i­can com­pa­ny that makes inks for pens. Most foun­tain pen ink brands are pro­duced by pen com­pa­nies. While I don’t deny the log­ic of for­mu­lat­ing an ink to match a pen or a design phi­los­o­phy, I take some com­fort that there are peo­ple out there pay­ing atten­tion just to the ink.

Noodler’s has a wide vari­ety of col­ors, but I pret­ty much only put two col­ors in my pens. I went to the Sty­lo Pen Shop and picked out a bot­tle of Hunter Green and a bot­tle of Polar Black. Noodler’s dis­tin­guish­es itself by its col­or­fast­ness. There are reports of peo­ple writ­ing with this ink, drop­ping the paper in water, and boil­ing it for five min­utes with­out any change in the tone or sharp­ness of the lines. That’s pret­ty impres­sive for water-sol­u­ble ink!

Noodler’s Hunter Green is some­what dark­er but most­ly more sub­dued than the Water­man green I’d been using in my Rotring Ini­tial. I left the cap off the bot­tle of Water­man’s green for sev­er­al hours to get it clos­er to the col­or I want­ed. Evap­o­ra­tion only removes the water, leav­ing a high­er con­cen­tra­tion of pig­ment in the ink that’s left. It start­ed out way too bright to be used for every­day writ­ing and end­ed up as a cheery deep emer­ald green. Noodler’s is more of a for­est green, not too far off from British Rac­ing Green. This leaves a bit more con­trast on the page, but is also a bit drab and does­n’t con­vey the opti­mistic light­ness that the Water­man has.

Polar Black is so named because it is for­mu­lat­ed not to freeze or thick­en in very cold cli­mates. It is not named for being as black as a polar bear (although I’ve heard that the polar bear has black skin beneath all the white fur, but who knows?). This is quite eas­i­ly the black­est ink I’ve ever worked with, and a truer black than any of the paints I worked with in school. Usu­al­ly water­ing down an ink will reveal a telling hue. Some are blue-blacks, The Auro­ra black that I’ve been using for a few years now is a warmer, red­der black. A drop of Auro­ra in a cup­ful of clear water turns it to a nice deep grey­ish pink. Polar black in clear water turns it to grey. I could not dis­cern any col­or shift revealed by dilu­tion. Noodler’s Polar Black is black. Not warm black or cool black, but black black. It’s real­ly vis­i­ble on the page. A tight scrib­ble in the Noodler’s next to the Auro­ra makes the Auro­ra look washed out. That’s quite an accom­plish­ment, as the Auro­ra ink makes most of the oth­er black inks look washed out.

Col­or choic­es aside, the Noodler’s ink sur­prised me with its prop­er­ties. Despite being water-based, the ink has an almost oily tex­ture to it. In some of their inks Noodler’s adver­tis­es their use of lubri­cat­ing addi­tives, so it would­n’t sur­prise me if some go into all of their inks. The green looks like green paint; sur­pris­ing to see a col­or so opaque in the bot­tle that the hue is clear­ly vis­i­ble look­ing into the bot­tle. I haven’t tried using it as a wash, but I almost would­n’t be sur­prised if it laid down total­ly opaque. I doubt that’s the case, but it is how the ink looks in the throat of the bottle.

I found the green to run very fast and wet. My first tests, admit­ted­ly on cheap com­po­si­tion book paper, result­ed in a thick line that spread dis­turbing­ly wide. The ink just flowed right out of the pen, lay­ing onto the paper thick and wet. It dried soon enough, but it’s cer­tain­ly an ink that needs a moment to breathe before the book is closed. On bet­ter paper, Noodler’s Hunter Green still lay down wet, but I did­n’t have the prob­lem with bleed­ing I did on the first goes. To be fair, after a few more sam­ples I went back to the orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion book and wrote out some lines and did not expe­ri­ence the same trou­ble with bleed­ing. So per­haps part of what I observed was the abun­dance of ink already on the nib, or an anom­alous sheet of paper. Nev­er­the­less, this ink flows very fast in my Rotring Ini­tial, which has by a change of ink been trans­formed from a fine point to a medium.

The Polar Black did not run quite as wet as the Hunter Green, but it still lay down a slick­er line than I’m used to. I did­n’t encounter the bleed­ing issue at all, and while I think my lines have got­ten a lit­tle heav­ier, I’m not sure I can tell whether they real­ly are or whether they appear to be heav­ier because the ink is so much black­er. The total black­ness of the line that goes down is tru­ly impressive.

As far as the claims of water­fast­ness go, I ran my own test. I did­n’t drop any sam­ples in boil­ing water, but I did run the above test sam­ple under run­ning warm tap water for sev­er­al min­utes and was very impressed with the results. Once again, the Auro­ra ink I’ve been using came in bet­ter than the rest… except for the Noodler’s, which made the Auro­ra look like dis­ap­pear­ing ink.

It should be not­ed that Sharpie ink does not come in bot­tles and is not a water-solu­able ink. The Sharpie marks here exist only for comparison.

In the end, it’s my feel­ing that this is not the end. These are inks whose prop­er­ties will have to be explored fur­ther and dis­cov­ered slow­ly. It’s clear that the folks at Noodler’s aren’t afraid to give their inks per­son­al­i­ty. There are peo­ple who think their pens should be heavy so that they feel the pen and work the bal­ance, there are oth­ers who pre­fer a feath­er­weight pen whose pres­ence dis­ap­pears until the hand is the only thing the writer is aware of. These are both valid points of view, but I fall into the side of those that pre­fer some heft. Noodler’s inks are not for those who want the process to dis­ap­pear into the back­ground. These are inks that stand up to be noticed and shout for atten­tion. This could be an absolute plea­sure for some­one who appre­ci­ates the char­ac­ter of the ink, or an annoy­ance for those who expect to for­get that there’s any­thing phys­i­cal in the process.

This has been said in oth­er places but bears repeat­ing here: any­one writ­ing doc­u­ments that should be pre­served even in the event of sun expo­sure or water dam­age should con­sid­er the Noodler’s line. There’s clear­ly a lot of research and devel­op­ment that goes into mak­ing these inks not just look good, but last under adverse con­di­tions as well.