Tags
Over time you may hit the problem that an ink you love the colour of and have bought will not work with any of your pens. Either it floods through (wet), else it struggles to flow (dry). Such was the case for me with TAG’s Kyo-Noto Hisokou. Thing is not all pens are the same.
Over time you will see in reviews and potentially find out yourself that some pen brands are known for nibs that are consistent across their range for the way they put ink on to paper. Some, such as OMAS, ScriBo, and Visconti are known for their gold and palladium nibs being ‘wet’ and letting a lot of ink flow, others such as Franklin-Christoph1 are the opposite. There is nothing wrong with this and it is normally by design.
There is next nib size. Thin tipping such as fine and extra fine will result in less flow of ink, where as broad, double broad, and larger put a lot more ink down.
So why talk about nibs when the title and first paragraph are about inks. Well because there are times when inks you thought you would never be able to use suddenly match pens you might struggle with, as I was reminded just a month back.
Late 2017 the TAG2 store in Kyoto launched a couple of new inks, one of which was a grey/blue ink in their Kyo-Noto line. Hisoku. I liked the colour, it appealed to me, and being a fan of the brand with most their other inks at that time, I bought a bottle. It would not work with any of my pens. It was just too dry3. Roll on 2023 and I have started to use again my OMAS 360 Vintage. A wonderful pen to use, comfortable in the hand, soft and juicy nib, though one that puts a lot of ink down despite being an extra fine. On an office notepad I found the ink I was using was just taking too long to dry plus there was a little feathering. I has just refilled one of my Sailor KoP with another TAG ink, Kyo-Iro Soft Snow of Ohara, when I saw the bottle of Hisoku sitting there looking unloved. By coincidence my OMAS also needed refilling and it was at that point the penny dropped. The pen was cleaned out, filled with Hisoku and then tested. All worked well and I’m now on a second fill.
Moral of the story, if you have an ink you like which will not work with any of your present pens, keep it as you never know what you may have in the future.
- Franklin Christoph tune their nibs to be on the dryer side unless a buyer asks otherwise as it is easy to make a nib wetter whereas it can be quite difficult to reduce ink flow.
- The TAG store in Kyoto has a number of different ranges based on the inspirations behind the inks, the two for fountain pens are Kyo-Iro and Kyo-Noto. Additionally in some countries the inks are sold as Kyoto Inks.
- I am aware you can get ink dilution solutions and also can try a little water, some find these can work though not all the time.
dapprman 
Alternatively you can buy an ink wetting solution and add a drop to those inks that are usually dry. I do this routinely with all of the Tag inks. They then work nicely in all of my pens. 🙂
I LOVE Hisoku and bought a bottle when it was first released. It was way too dry for almost all of my pens. What fixed Hisoku for me was a tiny amount of dish soap in the whole bottle (dip just the tip of a toothpick into the soap and swirl in the bottle). That made it wet but not too wet. It was a gamble and it worked. Then, I learned about White Lightning available from Vanness and it’s a lot easier to dose and it works wonders. You can also purchase White Lightning as it’s Kodak PhotoFlo – but finding it in small quantities is not easy and you use so very little that I found it a waste of money.