Sunday, January 9, 2011

Noodler's Red-Black

I discovered this ink while perusing the Swab Shop at gouletpens.com and I found it to be one of the most interesting colors that I could remember ever seeing. Reviews of the ink weren't really prevalent, so I got it at somewhat of a risk.  I have not been happier with an ink color and it is without a doubt my favorite ink.  It truly is a half and half combination of red and black inks that has some of the best shading that I've ever encountered.  The ink writes fairly wet and tends to behave on cheap paper just like a good ink should.  On Moleskine paper, the ink behaves very well, with no feathering, but average bleed through to the back of the page.


This ink has an incredible amount of depth when using an italic nib.  The colors of this ink look even more incredible on Moleskine paper, since it is ivory colored.2 This ink is extremely comparable to Waterman's Havana. At first glance on paper, the ink looks brown, but upon further inspection proves to have a stunningly deep mix of colors.  It could be compared to Private Reserve's Black Cherry, but that ink has very little shading, despite that it looks much more like a dark red. Noodler's Red-Black is definitely not a dark red, but exactly as its name states, a 50/50 mix of red and black.  This is my favorite ink for writing letters and for note taking as well.  This is not a color that I ever expect to be able to find in any rollerball pen and is so unique that every word I write seems just as unique and deep.

Walking into class on a snowy day, I accidentally dropped a vocabulary sheet on the ground and minutes later found it under my wet shoe. The red ink was running down the page and away from the letters I had written, but the black appeared to stay in place. I believe that the black in this ink is bulletproof and the red is not, as is common in many of the colored Noodler's inks that are bulletproof.

At times, this ink can look like almost like a blood red. Not, that I'm a morbid person, but I think it's one of the coolest colors I have encountered.  Fans of poorly written vampire novels (Twilight Series) rejoice!  Now you too can write vampire love letters in "blood", as vampires did before texting.

Eternally Inked,

The Classicist

2 comments:

  1. So far I have been really impressed with the 2 Noodler's inks I have tried. This like a good one.

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  2. Thanks so much for the mention! This is an ink that I really like in an italic, too. In a fine nib it looks just sort of a reddish brown color, but in an italic you see a lot of shading and varying color in the ink, more like what you would think a 'red-black' should look like. Very cool, unique ink.

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