Today we have a Sheaffer ink that came in the "Spring Cleaning" ink drop in March. The theme was "the best of the worst," and it included a selection of the worst selling inks that Goulet Pens has. It also came with a vial of their JB's Pen Flush to get these lame inks out of our pens.
In case you're curious, here's what came in that shipment:
Diamine Washable Blue - I have this in a pen now, and it's not bad but it is a blah-blue.
Noodler's Summer Tanager - I hated this ink. The link is to one of my first ever reviews.
Private Reserve Foam Green - Haven't tried it yet.
Platinum (Mix-Free) Cyclamen Pink - I haven't tried this one yet, but I may have put it in my wife's pen once.
Sheaffer Skrip Brown - Keep readin'.
I really like brown inks. They can be dark enough for official uses, but they're different enough to be interesting. I'm currently writing with Beaver, and I like that one a lot. Skrip Brown is a terrible ink, though. It's the only Sheaffer that I've ever used, and I really hope that they aren't all like this one. They can't be...right?
Pros: This brown is really a good color. It shades like crazy from a light brown to a deep saturated brown with just a little bit of a gold hue. I love the color, and on the thick but uncoated paper that I used for the review it demonstrated a high surface tension that took a while (forever) to dry, but it didn't feather out or spread. It eventually dried into the color that you see in the review with deep browns where the ink pooled and very light browns at the top of several letters.
Cons: Everything else. It probably spreads more than any other ink that I've used. It soaks through any papers that aren't really thick and it spreads and feathers until the handwriting is unrecognizable. The water swab there is one pass from a wet Q-tip after the ink had set for at least a day. It might have been a couple of days. Needless to say, it's not water-resistant in the least.
Thoughts: You might get away with using this ink on a really good paper. I didn't have a Rhodia pad at the time, but it might look nice there. If you have a pen that you only use on good paper, then this might be a winner for you. I write on all sorts of things, and my students and office don't exactly use high-quality papers, so this ink is a total loss for me.
Has anyone ever used this one successfully?
In case you're curious, here's what came in that shipment:
Diamine Washable Blue - I have this in a pen now, and it's not bad but it is a blah-blue.
Noodler's Summer Tanager - I hated this ink. The link is to one of my first ever reviews.
Private Reserve Foam Green - Haven't tried it yet.
Platinum (Mix-Free) Cyclamen Pink - I haven't tried this one yet, but I may have put it in my wife's pen once.
Sheaffer Skrip Brown - Keep readin'.
I really like brown inks. They can be dark enough for official uses, but they're different enough to be interesting. I'm currently writing with Beaver, and I like that one a lot. Skrip Brown is a terrible ink, though. It's the only Sheaffer that I've ever used, and I really hope that they aren't all like this one. They can't be...right?
Pros: This brown is really a good color. It shades like crazy from a light brown to a deep saturated brown with just a little bit of a gold hue. I love the color, and on the thick but uncoated paper that I used for the review it demonstrated a high surface tension that took a while (forever) to dry, but it didn't feather out or spread. It eventually dried into the color that you see in the review with deep browns where the ink pooled and very light browns at the top of several letters.
Cons: Everything else. It probably spreads more than any other ink that I've used. It soaks through any papers that aren't really thick and it spreads and feathers until the handwriting is unrecognizable. The water swab there is one pass from a wet Q-tip after the ink had set for at least a day. It might have been a couple of days. Needless to say, it's not water-resistant in the least.
Thoughts: You might get away with using this ink on a really good paper. I didn't have a Rhodia pad at the time, but it might look nice there. If you have a pen that you only use on good paper, then this might be a winner for you. I write on all sorts of things, and my students and office don't exactly use high-quality papers, so this ink is a total loss for me.
Has anyone ever used this one successfully?
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Wow. This really does sound like a terrible ink. I find the Slovenian (modern) Skrip Black to be a really solid black ink, and I think there are a few others like maybe the red that have their fans. I'll definitely avoid this one.
Thanks for the comment! I'm sure that there are some Sheaffer inks out there that must be at least okay, but this isn't one of them, in my experience.
I know this is a really old post, but I just wanted to say that I've actually had good experiences with all Sheaffer inks, including Sheaffer Brown. They tend to be as well behaved as the Waterman inks (and then there are the vintage sheaffer inks)
I'm half-tempted to give it another shot. I've used other Sheaffer inks, now, and they've all been fine. I'm willing to consider that it might have been the Ahab I was using it in that gave me such a bad impression of the ink. I've wanted to go back and re-do several of these early reviews, anyway.
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