Birmingham Pen October 2018 Ink Subscription

Today we are looking at October's Pen Parcel, aka the Birmingham Pen ink subscription. Every month five new, 5ml samples hit my mailbox. Sometimes the inks become available as singles on the Birmingham website about a month after the subscription, sometimes they are just test colors.

This month’s inks are all purples, varying in tone.

Swabs:

Left to right, Coal Tar, Petroleum Coke, Corona, Steamboat, and Merlot.

Writing samples:

Let's take a look at how the ink behaves on fountain pen friendly papers: Rhodia, Tomoe River, and Leuchtturm.

Water resistance: Low

Feathering: Low-there was just a bit of feathering on Rhodia and Leuchtturm, mainly in the flex nib.

Show through: Medium

Bleeding: None

Other properties: low shading, no sheen, and no shimmer.

On Staples 24 lb copy paper there was lots of feathering in every nib size as well as a little bit of bleeding, so I would not recommend these inks for cheap paper.

Dry time:

ranges from 50 to 80 seconds.

Comparison Swabs:

Since all five inks this month are purple, I decided to show them all with some other close purple inks. Click here to see the Birmingham inks together.

I used an ivory Hippo Noto notebook (Tomoe River 68gsm). Top to bottom, I used: Pelikan M800 Stresemann, medium nib, Pelikan M805 Ocean Swirl, broad nib, Pelikan M800 Renaissance Brown, medium nib, Pelikan M600 Turquoise, broad nib, and a Pelikan M400 White Tortoise, medium nib. All of the inks had an average flow.

Overall, it’s interesting to see five purple inks together. They are all pretty well behaved, but the dry time is a bit long.

Disclaimer: I purchased this ink myself, and all photos and opinions are my own. This page does not contain affiliate links, and is not sponsored in any way.