Diamine Inkvent 2023: Day 12 — Bah Humbug
Day 12!
Hello everyone! For day twelve of Diamine Inkvent, we have Bah Humbug.
The color/properties:
Bah Humbug is a chameleon ink: a shimmering ink with particulates that are supposed to change color depending on the lighting or viewing angle. Like the other chameleon inks, I didn’t see any variance in color with the shimmer in this one. The particulates remained a pinkish red to my eye no matter how I looked at it. The base color is a matching deep maroon. There’s a light amount of shading, but it’s a soft gradient with low tone variation and it wasn’t all that visible in writing, especially beneath the particulates. There’s a green sheen in both the ink splat and the droplets, and you might be able to get a slight sheen if you lay the ink down wet enough, but I don’t foresee that appearing in normal writing circumstances.
*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
Rhodia
Leuchtturm
How did it perform?
Bah Humbug mostly performed well. I didn’t experience any clogs, but I did run into a few hard starts with the broad nib. It had a medium-wet flow and felt adequately lubricated to make the writing experience smooth and comfortable. I didn’t notice any bleed-through or feathering on the test pages, and the particle distribution was generous and consistent across each of the nib sizes. After cleaning, I did notice the same reflective film that I found in a few of the previous inks in this year’s calendar. Unfortunately, it required the disassembly of the pen to be fully removed.
An example of the haze left behind in the pen
Ink splat
Ink droplets
My personal thoughts…
Bah Humbug preemptively gets the award for my favorite ink name in the 2023’s calendar — it doesn’t matter what anything else in this collection is called, this is my favorite. And it’s a great color, too! I’ll admit, I still have the same reservations about this ink leaving a film on the inside of the pen as before, but in this case, I’m not as undecided about whether or not I want to use it. Actually, I like this ink so much and I’m so looking forward to getting my hands on a full bottle to play with that I’m struggling to put my enthusiasm into words. What I can say is, there is nothing “Bah! Humbug!” about this ink except for the name.
Written in a Leuchtturm1917 notebook
More Images/Info:
Tools and materials used in the writing samples:
A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 3 nib units including a Fine, Medium, and Broad. All nibs are tuned to perform at the same wetness.
A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad
A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook
Scan of the writing sample