Ink Review #3

*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.

Overview

The color/properties:

Franklin-Christoph Honeycomb is a flat camel beige. It shades with a soft gradient, but the darker tones can easily overpower the lighter tones, resulting in more solidity to the color. In some instances, you may notice more aggressive golden-brown shading around the edges of the letters.

Something I did notice while doing the ink splat was a very plasticky smell coming from the ink. It’s not a very strong scent and it’s not something I noticed while the bottle was open or while writing, but it’s definitely there.

Rhodia

Leuchtturm1917

Performance on paper:

The performance of Honeycomb is mixed. During my tests I experienced slight feathering on most of the test papers, with varied amounts of bleed-through. The ink also noticeably increased the line width of all my nibs. Honeycomb exhibited lower dry times than I expected it to, often being dry within 10 seconds on finer nibs and usually no more than 20 on the larger ones. The water resistance was also surprising: The color itself washes away, but it does leave behind a more or less legible print of what was written.

Midori MD

Maruman

Tomoe River

Kokuyo

Performance in the pen:

Honeycomb is a very wet ink, but it’s not as lubricated as you would expect given its high flow. Despite that, it still provides a more than adequate writing experience, and I never experienced any hard starts or skips during my tests. The cleaning experience was easy, and the ink washed out of the nibs and test pen in a single flush without leaving any color or residue behind in the nibs or the test pen.

• Performance in a pen: 8/10

• Performance on paper: 6/10

• Color saturation: 5/10

• Sheening: 0/10

• Shading: 6/10

• Dry time: 7.5/10

• Water resistance: 4.5/10

• Ease of cleaning: 10/10

• Shimmer: None

My personal thoughts...

This was the first Franklin-Christoph ink that I bought — I picked it up immediately after discovering it at the Baltimore Pen Show. I love writing with this color, though it does have some shortcomings. At that same Baltimore show, I had the lovely folks at the Franklin-Christoph table adjust a Model 31 in fine for me and then filled it with this ink. It was writing so wet (it spot-bled straight through the Cosmo Air Light that I was using!) that I thought something was wrong with the newly adjusted pen. It didn't end there, either: I experienced the same results (possibly even worse) on other papers that I tried. Turns out it wasn't the pen at all — it was the ink. I've since used other Franklin-Christoph inks and, in my experience, they do not exhibit the same issues. It's a bit unfortunate, but it doesn't stop me from enjoying this ink and keeping it in rotation.

More images/info:

Tools and materials used in the writing samples:

• A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 7 nib units including a Needlepoint grind, EF, F, M, B, 1.1mm stub, and an Architect grind. All nibs are tuned to perform at the same medium wetness.

• A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad

• A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook

• A Midori MD A5 Notebook

• A 68gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook

• A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook

• A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook