Editing The Pen Addict 557/transcript (section)

== Platinum Super Black ink discussion ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. So, we have the Platinum Super Black ink. I don't know if that's the official name. We're going to talk about this in a second. So, Platinum, a little bit of context here. Platinum makes one of the most popular fountain pen inks in the world in Platinum Carbon Black. It is literally your S-tier black ink. It's your S-tier art ink. It's your S-tier fountain pen ink. It is so good. It is. It just, it gets almost all of the press for the type of ink it is for a pigmented black ink. Even Sailor has a nano black. The Platinum Carbon Black just, I think, just market share probably just trounces it. Like, I obviously don't know sales numbers. But just all you hear about recommendations is Platinum Carbon Black, Platinum Carbon Black. And those, that high praise is warranted, right? It is that good of an ink. It's a pigmented ink. It comes in bottles. It comes in cartridges. Platinum does, you know, brush pens and desk pens and all kinds of standard pens that this ink is used for. And it's just really, really popular, very highly recommended. So I got word at the Baltimore Pen Show that, hey, they're coming out with an even blacker Platinum Carbon Black. So I'm calling it the Platinum Blackest Black ink. Black plus plus. Yeah, black plus plus. We've talked about this with the Vantablack ideas and the Anish Kapoor versus Stuart Simple battles over the years. Because that's one of the things that I enjoy following. It's, those are whole stories. You can just go Google, Google Vantablack and you'll have, you know, a day's worth of articles to read. So Platinum's idea here is to make an even blacker ink than Platinum Carbon Black. So I want to read the translation just from the link we have in the show notes. Because this is all the information I have so far. So it says, Platinum Fountain Festival, 104 years of establishment, the darkest millennium ink, the birth of super black. Blackness is proved by numbers. The black ink you'll never see is finished.

'''Myke Hurley:''' All right. Remember, like, some of that sounds super suspect. But, like, this is a translation. All right. Yeah. Like, yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But they're, they're, like, going in on this ink. It's, like, this is the Vantablack of Fountain Pen inks is what they're going for here. Do you think?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like, I know that seems that way. But, like, if that's what you think they're doing?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I mean, it's not technically possible, which is what we're going to get to right now. So, number one, so I had my good friend CY drop in Twitch yesterday, who is very dialed into the Japanese market, as people who've listened to the show know and who follow CY and his various podcasts. He had some information for me. And he's going to send me some more details on the tech specs for this. It is even more extreme to the point where I'm questioning what we're actually getting here and if we can actually use this. So, number one, it's going to be $55. Their traditional bottles are 50 milliliters for carbon black. I don't know if it's going to be the same milliliter size. I would hope so for $55. That's insanely expensive. What has caught CY off guard is the usage directions for this in that they are very particular about how you use this ink, what you use it in, and how you clean it. As to go so far, they want you to use, like, not tap water to clean it with and things like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Bay State Blue 2.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The only thing I can get back to is, like, are they just putting India ink in a bottle, right, which you don't use in fountain pens because it will clog your pens. It's high maintenance. Like, it's not going to flow. It's not going to work.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That doesn't seem like a good idea.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, is this supposed to be a dip ink only? So, that's what I'm curious about. So, CY is going to send me some more information. So, I'll follow up on this. But, as cool as I was hoping this was going to be, it sounds like it's really not going to be for writing much with, like, a standard fountain pen. You know, maybe you dedicate, like, a Platinum Preppy to put, like, a really extreme ink in it. But this sounds not only like the color is going to be off the charts for, like, Black is Black ink, that it's going to be just a cleaning and performance mess. Like, it's going to be very high maintenance. So, we'll see. We'll see. I had more high hopes of, like, Platinum Carbon Black 2 that I can just get in cartridges and go to town and feel comfortable putting in any pen, right? Because Carbon Black is the reason why it's so popular is not just because of how it works, but it's actually easy to clean. And you can leave it in pen for a month and clean it out very well. That does not sound at all like what we're getting here. So, it'll be out in May. Yeah, I'll be definitely testing it out, but we might be into just, like, dip pens, glass pens, things like that only with this. So, we'll see. I'm interested to see what they do with it, and I'm interested to get more information of this. So, it should be interesting, and I'll be anxious to see how it performs.

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