NOODLER'SInk Refills Wardens Bad Belted Kingfisher Bottled Ink - ND-19062

This is my first ink from noodlers. Although I have heard a lot of rave reviews of Noodler's inks, actual reports of testing seems sparse on the warden's series. As soon as I received this ink, I was itching to test it. I inked up my Pilot Vanishing Point M nib and went to work. I first wrote out two sentances (i know my handwriting is sloppy). Ink flow was instantaneous and smooth, with no skipping and very quick drying. I am a lefty who ignores the nonsense about fountain pens only working for right handed people, but it is important my ink dry fast so my hand does not smear it. In the smear test i drew three vertical bold lines and drug my finger accross at 1 and 5 seconds. Absolutely no smear on the 1second dry time which is well above average! ! I then shaded and repeated at 5 s with equally great results. Finally i tested to see if would feather by drawing a slow line. Feathering was minimal on the card stock.The most important feature of this ink and possibly the least reported on is its permanent qualities. I immediately submerged the notecard with my writing sample in warm water. A minimal amount of bleed/fade was observed, hardly noticeable. I then poured 5 capfulls of chlorinated bleach directly onto the notecard and allowed to soak for 1 hr. As shown in the picture there was some fading, yet the words are still very visible. I tried various other solvants including shout, 409, oxyclean, vinigar, lemon juice, acetone with no effect. By the end i had almost completely washed away the ruling lines on the notecard but the noodlers remained strong.What drove it home was the control test, which was done using watarman's standard blue ink. This ink is not bulletproof. In water it faded about 50% and 2 capfulls of bleach faded the ink within seconds leaving absolutely no trace of ink. This really drove home that if you use a fountain pen to sign checks or anything else important, it is absoutely essential to get bulletproof ink! See the attached pictures!

I bought this ink because I visited their booth at the Commowealth Pen Show, but they didn’t allow testing of their inks or pens at the show (go figure) and I didn’t feel they did their job selling the product. So I purchased from amazon. This ink does not work well for pointed nib calligraphy. The ink bleeds terribly even in good 32# paper. I also purchased a black one if this brand and it performs well. It is not water fast at all. I also used it in a medium fountain pen (rotring and Lamy) and was also a poor performer.As you can see from the pictures, I compared 4 inks on the back of a good quality envelope that usually takes calligraphy inks quite well. The black Noodler’s ink is perfect, the Bad Belter Kingfisher was terrible. The Winsor and Newton had a little bit of feathering and the Pelican was ok. I waited 1 minute and then placed one drop of water. You can see the Kingfisher starts spreading right away while the black one kept its fastness. After 1 minute All but the black ink were ruined.I read great reviews of these inks and now I am confused if they are all different formulations and there’s not a lot of description on the box or the bottle.

This Bad Belted Kingfisher ink is beautiful and smooth to write with. I have only recently rediscovered fountain pens and I have been using this ink in a few inexpensive pens I bought on Amazon. The flow is a little different from the Noodler's Black that I have and shades a bit as I write. It does bleed through the cheep office notepad with one of my pens but not my slightly thinker Mead Cambridge notebook or my Moleskin journal. The shade of blue shown in the image is not quite like the actual color of the ink, which was rather disappointing - I thought it would be brighter in color, but I actually like the mellowness of this shade. Better images of the actual color can be found at sites like fountainpennetwork - it is a dark sapphire blue with a touch of gray. The ink is bulletproof in that even after washing the writing remains but is not waterproof. Dries quickly, within a second or two and does not smear or smudge.Update: My son and I had a discussion of whether or not there was any green or turquoise to the tint of the ink (I've modified the text above as a result). He sees it as a deep denim blue where I see I slight off to the blue. I did a test with 2 pens on a few slips of paper and have to agree with him. It is not turquoise, it is more like a dark sapphire - but looks gray compared to the bright Navy Blue of my roller ball pens. I'm posting a couple images.

I ordered two bottles of Bad Belted Kingfisher. One bottle arrived intact and as expected. The other bottle arrived with ink on the box and down the side of the bottle. I slowly and carefully opened this bottle with it sitting flat on a paper covered table. As I took the cap off, ink belched down the sides of the bottle.I went on line to see if this phenomenon was unusual. Extreme filling of ink bottles appears to be a point of pride for the company. It seems to be the company's approach to making sure the customer gets the most value for their money. I fail to see the value in wasted ink and a mess to clean up.I won't say I won't buy Noodlers Ink again, but I will say that the customer should be warned in advance that the bottles will be overfilled. I will also say that I would appreciate it if the bottles weren't overfilled to the point that the average person winds up with a mess when opening the bottle for the first time and when filling a pen from the bottle for the first time.