on saleNoodler's Baltimore Canyon Blue - 3oz Bottled Ink

As I am forever plagued with bad memories of washed-out out passages from my life in the very humid and rainy environments in which I spent much of my life, I can only bring myself to use water resistant inks. This presented something of a problem when I went to look for a nice pure blue with this property, as apparently there are considerations involved when making such a hue. This ink has more than fulfilled my search, and it's a joy to see on the page without any special maintenance considerations. It's relatively fast drying, well-behaved, and becomes nearly waterproof when set.

I've come back to BCB after a break and am very pleased with it. It checks all the boxes for me. I'm a newish fountain pen geek, both enthusiastic and a bit eccentric. Ink reviews are tricky. Fountain pen writing depends on at least four strong variables: ink, feed, nib, and paper. Change any one of them and you may get something quite different. So allow that your results will vary from mine. I'm using an EF nib in a 100 gsm Miliko dot journal. I do a lot of fine lettering, so my ideal ink must pass three tests: (1) EF Fine. An EF nib should deliver an EF line. But some inks are just too generous and make fat lines that just don't care that you want EF. (2) permanent. It is INK after all; it should not wash off the page. (3) dries. By the time I get to the end of the line, the first words should not smear. And when I close the journal, let's not have any facing page blottage. (4) a fourth, bonus test: I like inks that show some shading.BCB hits all the marks. It is a close second to Noodler's Blue Black as my favorite blue.

Great color, wet writing ink that dries fairly quickly. Negligible shading. I haven't tested the water resistance.

I've only been at this whole fountain pen business for a few months, so there's a LOT I don't know. Thus my opinions are not exactly, uhhh, informed. So, discount generously. I had hoped BCB would be my go-to everyday blue, but after using it a bit, I realized I'm not a fan of it's sheen feature. To my eye, the sheen flattens out some of the shading I like to see, and even tips the color a bit towards violet. Depending on what you're looking for that may be a feature to consider. Get a sample at least and try it. Your eye may like it better than mine does.

I've tried a number of Noodler's blues. Most of them feather way too much (54th Mass, Upper Ganges, Legal Blue). I also have a few of the iron gall inks (Diamine and Rohrer & Kilngner). They both perform very well, but skew heavily towards blue-black (or just totally black in the car of Registrar's). I wanted a real bright blue. Baltimore Canyon Blue is it. It is quite water resistant. It preforms well on lower quality papers. There is some talk of it having a red sheen. I can maybe see it on my Rhodia dotPad, if I squint and imagine a little. Perhaps those of you who use Tomoe River will be able to see it. The only downsides are that it can take a while to dry (more than 20 seconds on the Rhodia paper with a medium TWSBI Eco) and it's one of the expensive Noodler's colors. I've found my blue ink.