Diamine Eau de Nil (Now with Video!)

This ink is one that I've had for a while, and I think I like it. It's a greenish blue that isn't really a turquoise. As I say in the write-up, it reminds me of a more-green version of Waterman's Mysterious Blue. You're not going to see that similarity in the color comparison at the bottom of the page, but that Mysterious Blue is in a really wet nib and it looks way darker than usual. Check out my other review, instead.

I don't have a water test video yet. It's Thanksgiving, and we've got a bunch of family in town, so I'm slacking off for a bit. I hope everyone has a good holiday (or a good week if you're not celebrating Thanksgiving).

Here's the video!
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Pilot Acroball

I found a 3-pack of these .7mm pens in a Target store a while ago, and I picked them up without ever having heard of them. They're a sort of hybrid ink that is supposed to have the darkness of a gel ink with the drying speed of a ballpoint. I think they deliver on that promise pretty well. 

 The "Pure White" label just refers to the color scheme, as far as I know. As you can see in the pictures above, the pen is white with a silver band at the top and a slightly rubbery silver grip.

 The lighting I used here is the same as the other two above. It's a "full spectrum" fluorescent light, but it does sometimes give me a yellowish tint. That's why my ink pictures are coming a little slowly. It's been overcast for quite a while here, and I haven't had much natural light to work with. What do y'all use for pictures?

The knock on this pen is stiff and springy. It's got a soft click that I quite like, and the knock doesn't rattle when you write with it. Good form, Pilot.










Here's the tear-down photo. This pen does come apart more than most other similar pens.

One thing about this pen is that the line is much more fine than I was expecting. I've compared it to a bunch of other pens that I had sitting around. Most of these are hybrid rollers of one type or another. 

 The tip size is pretty similar to the EnerGel pens (first and third of the left of the Acroball counting anticlockwise), but they're both .5mm tips.

The ".7mm" of the Acroball is nowhere near the .7mm of these other pens. It's actually a bit thinner than the .5mm pens, but I think that's a matter of the ink itself. The EnerGels and such have more a gel character than the Acroball, so they have a bit of spread, and that makes them seem wider than they would otherwise be. 

I'm a fan of this pen, but only when I want to write very small. It makes my hand look too spidery when I use my normal handwriting with this pen. If you've got a small handwriting style, then this is going to fit the bill for you. They can be found in lots of places, including Jetpens.com, in lots of colors and styles.

November 2013 Ink Drop "Christmas Dreams"

This month's ink drop (which I'm showing you a bit late) is Christmas themed so that we can all write our Christmas cards with these red and green inks. I've never been much of a Christmas-card-writer but, now that we have a house, I think we probably have to do that.

And here's a video. The lighting is a little different, and that Poppy color looks a bit different.