Throwback Thursday: Quick Look at Franklin-Christoph Pocket 40 Blue-Violet and Ice + Pilot Iroshizuku Asa Gao
For this weeks’ Throwback Thursday, we take a look at another pen and ink combination from my July line-up.
Handwritten Review
Pen: Franklin-Christoph Pocket 40 Blue-Violet and Ice 1.1
Ink: Pilot Iroshizuku Asa Gao
Paper: Rhodia No. 16 Grid
The little pen is just great.
Asa-Gao performs well with the 1.1 stub. Excellent. Flow is pretty good. Writes smotthly but is not overly wet.
Some Shading. The sheen is not noticeable on Rhodia but is quite nice on Tomoe River paper.
This colour is growing on me. It's a good neutral blue. Just a touch darker.
Ahhh. I can see now that the ink has aged over the month it's been in the pen. No surprise that it could have evaporated some water. I kind of like this darker blue. It looks good. But less shading it seems. Kinda cool that it's drying to a rich royal blue. Cool.
So, as usual, well-behaved on Rhodia. No feathering, bleeding.
Closing Comments
In the handwritten post I mentioned the sheen from Asa-Gao. It's a reddish edging that shows up on certain papers such as Tomoe River. I've added a couple of pictures to hopefully show the sheen. Some people don't like their inks to sheen but I LOVE it.
I really find it fascinating that the ink in the pen darkened so much over a month. I've never noticed it so evidently before. I actually changed my approach to these quick ink reviews. In the past, I tended to write them all in one go as an initial impressions. But over the summer, I decided to write up the top portion above the flourishes at the beginning of the month right after inking. I wanted to wait out to the end of the month to write the reviews after I had some more time with the pen and ink combination.
Maybe this effect is always there, but I never noticed it. I think it lends some charm to using fountain pens and inks. Still, I may have to rethink this idea to split up these types of reviews.
Questions: Have you noticed any inks that darken a lot over a few weeks? Should I go back to writing the handwritten reviews in one sitting to continue on with the 2-step approach?
Let me know in the comments!
Pen friends in the US are celebrating Thanksgiving this week and the countdown to Black Friday begins! It got me thinking that a holiday gift guide would be helpful. This guide is primarily intended for the non-pen person looking for a gift for the fountain pen aficionado, whether newbie or seasoned, in his or her life.