Jim P.

Father, geek, serial hobbyist.

Swatching these Parker inks was tricky! They were in mini cartridges, so I had to pierce the cart, transfer the ink to an inkwell, and then use dip pens on the small amount of ink, which took lots of dips. It mostly worked, but I didn’t dare swab them because that would have soaked up half the ink.

Pink is rather fluorescent as suspected, and Purple is a little, too. They had a surprising amount of sheen in the large swatches.

Photo of swatch cards and chromatography strips for four inks under natural light. Each ink is swatched on three types of cards: Iroful, Col-o-ring, and Midori MD. The colors are fairly even across all paper types, and chromatography doesn't reveal anything surprising, just the base hues. From top to bottom the inks are: - Parker Quink Turquoise: Vibrant bright turquoise ink with some red sheen in large swatches. - Parker Quink Red: Bright red ink with a tiny smidge of greenish-gold sheen in large swatches. - Parker Quink Purple: Very grape-like purple ink with lots of green sheen in large swatches. - Parker Quink Pink: Bright pink/fuchsia ink with a little gold sheen in large swatches.
Photo of swatch cards and chromatography strips for four inks under ultraviolet light. Same setup as the previous image. The image has a slight blue cast. Iroful cards are glowing slightly blue, col-o-ring cards are glowing brightly blue, Midori cards have only a slight change in color. From top to bottom the inks are: - Parker Quink Turquoise: No noticeable change from natural light - Parker Quink Red: No major change from natural light on Midori or Iroful. Col-o-ring now appears purple, likely due to glow of the paper. - Parker Quink Purple: Iroful has no major changes, Col-o-ring appears blue, on Midori the swatch has some glow behind it, making it more fuchsia in places. - Parker Quink Pink: Midori is glowing bright pink, Iroful is also glowing pink but not as brightly, col-o-ring looks blue(?)
Close-up of Midori swatch cards for the Purple and Pink inks in natural and UV light better demonstrating their differences. - Parker Quink Purple: Changes from purple to glowing dark fuchsia - Parker Quink Pink: Changes from fuchsia to brightly glowing pink.
Close up photo of the ink swatches showing sheen: - Turquoise ink with bright red sheen - Red ink with greenish-gold sheen - Purple ink with green sheen - Pink ink with gold sheen

After swatching I transferred the ink to some reusable cartridges I have with rubber stoppers. Those will fit in most of the Majohn or Jinhao pens I have handy, likely more, so they aren't limited to just the Parkers.

I thought it was funny that they all turned blue under UV on col-o-ring, but those cards glow so brightly from UV on their own the ink may have just been drowned out.

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