Lamy Red ink review

I haven't posted in a long time, and going forward it is highly likely that I will post very sporadically. While I still enjoy using inks and fountain pens, and I still have a large number of ink samples to review, life has guided me in a different direction and I find myself with very little time to involve myself with my hobbies.

All is not lost though because today I'm reviewing an ink that I've been using on a daily basis ever since my last ink review. Lamy Red, the ink in question, has lasted all this time in my Pilot Varsity that I use at work. In truth, I use red ink rarely so it usually lasts a long time. In this case, the nature of this ink also helped with longevity. Let's explore why.

Bottle
Lamy inks hail from Germany and they come in 50ml (1.7oz) bottles for $8.50, or $0.17 per milliliter.

Color and saturation
Lamy Red is not very saturated in writing, despite what you see from the samples. Swabbing with the q-tip produces more saturation, obviously. The color tends a bit towards orange-pink. You can see how it compares to Noodler's Nikita, which, to my opinion, is a truer red.

Shading
Lamy Red doesn't have any shading to speak of.

Feathering
The absence of feathering is always a good thing.

Bleedthrough
No bleedthrough either.

Flow and lubrication
Here's where Lamy Red starts to falter. This is one of the drier inks I've tried in recent memory. The lack of saturation and shading when using a fountain pen could be partly due to its dryness and reluctance to flow. While cheap paper will induce it to flow somewhat by acting as a sponge, better paper such as the Rhodia 80g I used for one of the samples offers a very poor surface. I did not enjoy writing that segment on Rhodia. Luckily I use cheap paper at work.

Drying time
Dry ink usually means quick dry. No exception here, though I would have traded some drying time for better flow.

Smearing when dry
None.

Water resistance
This ink isn't rated waterproof and it shows. A mere 15 seconds under flowing water made most of the text illegible.

Conclusion
To be honest I didn't have great expectations about Lamy Red. I guess I wasn't disappointed, in that sense. While I'm sure this ink has its fans (who perhaps like the color), personally I cannot recommend it. There's nothing particularly appealing about the color to me, while the dryness kills it completely. Verdict: there are much better red inks out there.

Following are the two samples on photocopy and Rhodia 80g paper, respectively.

3rd Goulet Pens haul

The past week has been the "week of the Noodler's flex pen" it seems. Goulet Pens, in particular, was assaulted by orders for the latest batch of Noodler's flex fountain pens and I was one of the lucky ones who managed to get their hands on a Noodler's flex in Lapis Inferno (aka blue with white swirls).

The title of this post is a bit dishonest because I've combined two orders into one post but that's only because the first order only contained ink samples plus a few notebooks (and this is not a blog for notebooks and paper), while the second order had another batch of ink samples, plus the 3 pens.

Here's what this order contained:

Pens:

• Noodler's Flex in Lapis Inferno
• Pilot Parallel 3.8mm
• Pilot Parallel 6.0mm

Ink samples:

• Diamine China Blue
• Diamine Coral
• Diamine Prussian Blue
• J. Herbin Bleu Azur
• J. Herbin Diabolo Menthe
• J. Herbin Vert Pre
• Lamy Red
• Noodler's Baystate Blue
• Noodler's Bernanke Blue
• Noodler's Fox Red
• Noodler's Georgia Peach HL
• Noodler's GI Green
• Noodler's Kung Te-Cheng
• Noodler's Mandalay Maroon
• Noodler's Manjiro Nakahama Whaleman's Sepia
• Noodler's Polar Green
• Noodler's Shah's Rose
• Noodler's Dragon's Napalm
• Noodler's Firefly Yellow HL
• Noodler's Hunter Green
• Noodler's Year of the Golden Pig HL
• Private Reserve Daphne Blue
• Private Reserve Electric DC Blue
• Private Reserve Invincible Aqua Blue
• Private Reserve Invincible Black
• Sailor Jentle Apricot
• Sailor Jentle Grenade

Just a quick word about the Noodler's flex pen. I like the color and I'm glad I picked it instead of another. It also happened that the blue pens were the second most popular after the clear ones. I believe I have loaded the pen with the wrong ink because I used a very light gray which may not be the best option for a flex nib. Though I wasn't expecting much from this pen, at this point I'm not particularly impressed with its flexible nib. I'll have to play some more with it before I can review it though.

From the looks of it, I'll have enough ink samples to review for the next year. Can't wait to use them all!