Nathan Tardif is an interesting man. A very outspoken New Englander with strong Libertarian convictions, he runs his entire organization by (mostly) himself. Makes ink. Sells the ink. Packages the ink.
I think that’s pretty neat. I also think it’s pretty neat that he has an incredible ink variety. And that he sometimes does things like challenge researchers to erase his strongest archival ink and once they do, turns around and creates an ink so permanent it’ll outlast Chabelo and Keith Richards.
It was a Noodler’s ink that first showed me all the dimensions that ink could potentially have. I went to Dromgooles, Houston’s only fountain pen-centric store and only store in the state that employs an ink sommelier. I asked for some recommendations and he told me about Noodler’s Rome is Burning.
And then he showed me.
This ink has a decent shading, behaves well, is mostly waterproof, and when it gets wet the gold wash turns the ink purple.
Every bottle of Noodler’s comes with several quotes that are Tardif’s scratching his confirmation bias.
I didn’t pack my test strips correctly so I’m only testing it out on 3 papers, and the pen I used was a TWSBI Eco with an M nib.
What surprised me is that the notebook paper did the best on the back side water test but it has the most ghosting.The Tomoe River did well, had the best dry times. The Clairefontaine did well, too. Great dry times and it’s the one that best shows the gold-to-purple. I need to get my TWSBI to Dromgooles since I think it’s flowing more like a B than an M, but here we see that it even performs well on regular paper.
The other great thing about Noodler’s is that they’re some of the most affordable inks out there. You can get two Noodler’s for the price of a single Pilot Iroshizukiu or Sailor 50 states.
Hugo Esteban Rodríguez Castañeda is a writer and educator hailing from Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley. He is the author of “…And Other Stories” (2018, La Casita Grande Editores) as well as other short stories, poems, and essays that have appeared in places like The Airgonaut, The Acentos Review, Picaroon Poetry, Neon Mariposa, Mathematician Transmission and the Texas Poetry Calendar. He is a graduate from the University of Texas at El Paso's MFA program and hus fiction has been recommended as part of Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net slates and was longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50. He is currently a reader for RUBY Lit and occasionally freelances as a content editor for a publishing company. A fountain pen enthusiast, he lives in Northwest Houston and is most at home at coffeehouses, shopping malls, and mosh pits.
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