Birmingham Pens Rich Inks

Birmingham Pens recently took all of their ink production in-house and they kindly sent me some inks to try out! Let’s take a look at three inks from the Rich series. Thanks to Birmingham Pens for sending these inks over for review!

Swabs:

Left to right: Voltaic Arc, Tesla Coil and Angelfish.

Writing samples:

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

Dry Time: 60-100 seconds

Water Resistance: low-medium

Feathering: Low

Show through: Medium

Bleeding: Low

Other properties: low-medium shading, monster sheen and no shimmer.

On Staples 24 lb copy paper there was lots of feathering in every nib size as well as bleeding.

Comparison Swabs:

Tesla Coil is similar to Diamine Maureen. Angelfish is close to Diamine Jalur Gemilang.

Voltaic Arc is close to Van Dieman’s Twilight Zone.

Longer Writing:

I used a Taroko Odyssey notebook, all three inks had a dry and sticky flow.

Overall, all three had a sticky dry flow which isn’t my favorite, but very common with monster sheeners. Tesla Coil had some skips and Angelfish was drier than the other two. All three can be smeared after drying for hours. I like all three of these better than Organics Studio Nitrogen. I’m not a big fan of monster sheeners simply because they take a long time to dry and can be smeared, even days after drying, but if you love big sheeners this is a good option to try.

Disclaimer: These products were provided by Birmingham Pens for the purpose of this review. All photos and opinions are my own. This page does not contain affiliate links, and this post is not sponsored.