Ink Review #105

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

Overview

The color:

KWZ Honey is a deep golden brown with heavy shading properties, with a crisp cut between light and dark tones. Heavily pooled areas may also show a dark edge around them, especially visible with larger nib sizes. I was surprised to see a heavy blue/grey in the chromatography, but I don’t notice it in practice (though perhaps this is what I’m seeing with the dark edges around the shading).

There’s a vanilla scent to this ink as well. I don’t find it particularly offensive, but it’s noticeable while writing.

Rhodia

Leuchtturm1917

Performance on paper:

KWZ Honey is gentle — there was minimal bleeding on the Kokuyo sheet, and only with the large nib sizes, and no visible feathering or bleeding on any of the other test papers.

The dry times are serviceable but not the best. In most cases, you’ll see dry times between 20-25 seconds with the large nib sizes, at worst 30 seconds, but they never extended past that. The fine nibs also show longer than typical dry times, with the fine nib taking as long as 15 seconds to dry on every test page.

Based on the aforementioned chromatography, I expected that blue/grey to give this ink some water resistance, but unfortunately it mostly washes away after water exposure. The faded remains aren’t all that legible, and the water resistance overall isn’t great.

Midori MD

Maruman

Tomoe River

Kokuyo

Performance in the pen:

KWZ Honey has a medium-wet flow and ample lubrication that was consistent across all of my test nibs. Maybe it’s just me, but there’s always been something about KWZ Honey that looks like it’s going to be “sticky” when it flows out of the pen, but it’s not. It’s smooth and flows well, and I didn’t run into a single hard start, stop, or skip during my tests. It works well.

As for cleaning, it’s also easy. A single flush and soak had this ink clear out of my test pen and nib units without any residue or color remaining (although, the scent does linger for a little while).

• Performance in a pen: 10/10

• Performance on paper: 9/10

• Color saturation: 7/10

• Sheening: 0/10

• Shading: 6/10

• Dry time: 6.5/10

• Water resistance: 1/10

• Ease of cleaning: 9/10

• Shimmer: None

My personal thoughts…

Oh, KWZ Honey. An instant classic. And it’s not hard to see why. To me, it’s a prime example of a perfect golden brown. Maybe it’s darker than one would expect when thinking of honey, but for me, it instantly reminds me of the dark honey sticks I would get at the local artisanal store when I was a child, and that makes me very happy. It’s not my first run-in with KWZ Honey either: I’ve used it on and off over the years, but it’s been a lot of fun coming back around to it. Maybe it’s too easy to move on from something when you’ve been hitting ink after ink every week, but it was still surprising just how much I liked it, so much so that I think I’ll keep it in another pen for a while. Just for fun.

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 52gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook

• A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook

• A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook