Ink Review #65

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

Overview

The color/properties:

Wearingeul Tinker Bell is a Shimmering ink. The base color is a pale grey-green with moderate shading. There’s not a lot of tonal variation, but there’s a crisp cut between light and dark shades where the ink pools. The particulates are golden yellow, but they don’t contrast the base color well: I found the shimmer very difficult to see while writing to the point that it looked like it wasn’t a shimmering ink at all without closer inspection. After drying for an extended duration, the shimmer is still subtle but becomes far more visible, and when you look at the page from different angles, the shimmer shines brightly. The color is pale, but I don’t find it too difficult to see on most papers. It may be hard to read if a darker ink is used on a following page, but even on graph paper, I didn’t have any issues with legibility.

Rhodia

Leuchtturm1917

Performance on paper:

Tinker Bell should be well-behaved on most fountain pen-friendly papers. There was minimal spot-bleeding on the Kokuyo sheet, and no observable bleeding or feathering on the other test pages. The dry times were a touch above average: the large nibs mostly dried within 15 seconds, but in turn the finer nibs took slightly longer to dry than usual. The water resistance was surprisingly good! There’s light color loss after water exposure, but there’s a heavy grey shadow left behind of anything written on the paper that’s crisp and easily legible.

Midori MD

Maruman

Tomoe River

Kokuyo

Performance in the pen:

Tinker Bell’s performance is okay. It has a dry flow, and initially, the ink seems well-lubricated and comfortable to write with. However, I found that the flow quickly slowed down during writing, and during extended periods I had to pause regularly to allow the flow to catch up again. To test the flow further, I tried this ink with a semi-flex nib, and unfortunately, it’s not wet enough to maintain capillary action when flexed, causing railroading immediately (this can be easily seen in the water resistance test). With that said, I didn’t run into any clogs or hard starts during regular writing, and the shimmer distribution was consistent and even, with minimal need for agitation of the pen.

Cleaning the pen doesn’t require more than a quick flush and soak to wash away the color completely, but there were still some light particulates stuck to the inside of the barrel and the crown of the piston. No amount of soaking will get that out without some scrubbing, and while it’s easy to get out, my pen needed to be disassembled for cleaning.

• Performance in a pen: 7/10

• Performance on paper: 9.5/10

• Color saturation: 3/10

• Sheening: 0/10

• Shading: 5/10

• Dry time: 8/10

• Water resistance: 4/10

• Ease of cleaning: 5/10

• Shimmer: Yes

My personal thoughts...

Tinker Bell surprised me. After my experience with Wendy Darling from the same set, I had fears that this ink would be similarly pale and unusable. Thankfully, there was nothing to fear and my experiences with Tinker Bell were considerably better. I think it’s another great translation of a character into a color by Wearingeul. The pale color might be a slight departure from the vibrant green that many are familiar with, but like many inks in the set, I think it fosters a sense of reality. Of course, the writing experience wasn’t perfect by any means, but this was never a conventional ink in the first place, so what does it really matter? I certainly wouldn’t recommend this as an everyday ink, but it doesn’t have to be an everyday ink to be fun.

Other inks in this set:

More images/info:

Tools and materials used in the writing samples:

• A TWSBI Diamond 580 with 5 nib units including an EF, F, M, B, and 1.1mm stub, All nibs are tuned to perform at the same 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