Today we are looking at this month's Pen Parcel, aka the Birmingham Pen ink subscription. Every month five new, 5ml samples hit my mailbox. This month I decided to talk about all five in one post instead of dividing it into five separate posts.

The samples come in 5ml glass bottles with little plastic stoppers and metal lids. A word of caution about the plastic stoppers-when you take them out, ink flies everywhere, so just be prepared for that.

Tarnished Nickel is a dark brownish-grey, Gibson Field is a dark green, Southern Portal is a dark red, Polar Bear is a medium blue, and Violet Starling is a dark purple.

Swabs:

In large swabs, the ink does take a very long time to dry.

Writing samples:

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

Dry time: ranges from 40-70 seconds, the fastest is Polar Bear and the longest is Tarnished Nickel.

Water resistance: Low

Feathering: None

Show through: Medium

Bleeding: low-mostly on Tomoe River paper.

Other properties: no shading, no sheen, and no shimmer. Polar Bear is the only one I noticed had low shading, the rest did not show any.

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

Comparison Swabs:

Ink swabs for comparison, left to right (top to bottom for mobile RSS): Organics Studio Arsenic Gray, Birmingham Tarnished Nickel, and Diamine Earl Grey. Click here to see the Birmingham inks together, and here to see the grey inks together.