L0SLobos
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2013
- Posts
- 454
- Likes
- 34
I'm with you. For $28 a bottle, a smaller bottle than the Noodler's, I can't justify it. At least not now with my student-sized budget.
Diamine Oxblood is such a great color. I'm definitely going to pick up a bottle when I get a second pen for colored inks.
Tangent. The feed on my Sheaffer 100 just clogged really badly. It was starting and stopped randomly and had a ton of feedback. Took the converter off, took a bulb syringe and shot water through the section but it didn't solve the problem. I yanked off the feed and nib, and held the nib up to the light. Little to my surprise, I couldn't see through the space between the tines at all. I poked around, squirted some water and air at the thing. After much time, I finally got the paper fragments out. I put it all back together and now it writes normally again. It was starting and stopping like crazy. Does this normally happen? I sure hope not, because it took me half an hour to fix it.
I don't know where you live (okay, it says on your profile but you get what I mean) but iroshizuku ink doesn't cost $28 USD a bottle. Here in Vancouver the shops that carry bottled inks sell diamines or j herbin's for around $12 CAD and up. Add taxes and that's at least $13+ per bottle. Considering that I can get iro inks for $19 USD/bottle on ebay (price includes free shipping) or from engeika for USD $13.50/ bottle + shipping if order is over $100, it's a no-brainer that I only use iro. Buying from japanese sellers I have never had to pay customs duties because they use EMS instead of say Fedex or *gasp the horror* UPS. Once its all said and done its actually more economical for me to just use iro inks exclusively unless I want to go with a brand I don't trust such as noodlers.
TL;DR: buying 'good' inks locally= $0.45 CAD/mL; buying a set of 8 iro's from engeika and after the USD to CAD conversion= $0.32 CAD/mL.