Noodler's Ink Refills V-Mail North African Violet Bottled Ink - ND-19054

I was surprised by this ink. I've used a number of different Noodler's inks in the past, and found's North African violet to be the first one where I wasn't impressed with its saturation. Using a number of different pens and nibs, including a Goulet F, Lamy medium and fine, the saturation was closer to lavender then the deep amethyst violet I'd hoped and seen described. Leaving the cap off for several days and allowing some water to evaporate deepened up the saturation to match the color swatch and descriptions I've heard from others. On the page, this ink is rather well behaved. I haven't noticed any ghosting, bleed through, or bothersome smudging. It flows quite well from all of the pens I have used.The reason why I am giving this a two star review is that the ink is perfectly pleasant to use, but is practically a disappearing ink. It has high permanence on skin, and doesn't seem to wash away from paper easily. Exposed to sunlight filtering through a tinted window for a few hours for even a day or two causes its saturation to fade. After noticing this property, I started to test on a note card, and found that the ink fades to nothing within about a month. I'm unsure of how long it lasts in direct sunlight, but I would expect it would be even more ephemeral.Attached is a picture of the ink's performance over approximately 2 months, from 30 September to 27 November (fresh ink, no exposure), while set in a window sill behind tinted glass. It received around three hours of light a day.

A really rich purple color, flows well. The subtle variation in shading across a stroke looks beautiful and adds some extra texture to your handwriting. Quite permanent- one problem is that this does NOT wash off easily with water unless it's a hard surface and you get it cleaned up moments after a drip or spill, so be careful not to get this on anything you don't want to get inky. Seriously the ink stains my hand for a couple of days of frequent hand washing and rubbing alcohol rinses. Scary stuff :D

There are several issues with this ink.Firstly, it smells terrible. The ink has an unpleasant and sweet chemical oder to it. It should be mentioned that I have never used any ink that had any noteworthy oder, so this this purple ink is immediately undesirable to worth with.Along with this, it will stain anything immediately. Permanently. For example, when I installed the ink into my pen while in a sink (which I do for an easy clean up), the spill I made stained the ceramic. The ink was unaffected when I immediately turned on the faucet to wash away the spill. Even after trying several washes with acetone, alcohol, and other cleaning products, the ink still remained.After all of these issues, the color is not very strong when writing. Every time I have tried to use this ink, the color has been closer to lilac than violet. Admittedly, the lilac color may arise due to some water being present in my fountain pens from washing them out, but for the price I am confident in saying that there are cheaper inks that are much better overall.

Usually not a fan of purple / violet inks but this one is so vivid even on non-fountain pen friendly paper that I am pleased that I bought it. Like all Noodlers inks, it is super saturated so proper pen hygiene should be followed. That said, it seems to be a nice wet ink, flows well in my Lamy EF nib pen. But it's not "bullet proof" as some of the modern inks are. I haven't tested water proofness but for writing personal correspondence it works really well. Typical of fountain pen ink on typical paper there is some feathering of the ink but does well on fountain pen friendly paper. It's also cool that it's a recreation of an actual ink used during World War 2. I recommend.

The ink did help me get a wet writing pen to write a bit drier. It is a good color but does stain the converter. I will not put it in one of my transparent pens as the staining would be obvious.

Ridiculously permanent ink that will stain anything it comes in contact with. Is a beautiful violet that leans on the blue side of violet. Absolutely no bleed through on very cheap notebook paper, but runs a little dry in my Pilot Metropolitan. 4 stars for its difficulty in washing, it's dryness, and the fact it doesn't mix well with other inks.

This is the my go to purple ink for use in my fountain pen. It is part of the V-mail series. It flows smoothly in my Parker IM with no skipping and little bleed through. They claim it's waterproof, but I haven't tested that. It is 100% made in the USA! Even the bottles are from US sources.

Beautiful is really an understatement. And the photos don't do this ink justice. It's much more vibrant in person.The bottle art, as always with Noodlers, is spectacular. Very cool for any othe history buffs like me.I find that this ink is on the lighter side of purple, with almost a violet-blue sorta thing going on. Really pleasing to the eyes.Overall, I say grab I bottle before it's gone!