Troublemaker Abalone

Troublemaker are an ink manufacturer based in the Philippines. They originally distributed their inks directly from the Philippines but are now sold through local distributors. A lot of their inks have been sold out for a little while and I managed to pick up 3 that I’ve been waiting on when they were restocked locally.

I purchased Abalone, Milky Ocean and Foxglove for my first order. The inks come in plastic 50 mL bottles, which is pretty reasonably priced. I rarely leave inks out on my desk and usually aliquot them into smaller bottles (which I talked about here) so I don’t have any real preference for a fancy, beautiful bottle – its just an added bonus if it comes in on, but so long as its water tight, its fine by me.

The ink I was most eager to try first was Abalone – the tealy blue is right up my alley and I’m loving the multichromatic effects that are common these days. I love the concept of this colour – which is a mid teal blue with a pink tinge, but this full effect is extremely difficult to achieve in a real world writing scenario. I could only really see this full effect with the 1.1mm nib and only on Tomoe River Paper. I’m currently using it in a Franklin Christoph Pocket 45 and I can’t see any of the pink come through at all. Aside from the multichromatic colouring, the ink shows lovely shading, so if you can’t get the pink to come through, its still  lovely ink with beautiful shading.

The ink seems to be a bit temperamental in early days of testing. I had no problems with the behaviour of the ink in the TWSBI during testing, but in the Franklin Christoph Pocket 45 (Steel Broad) it seems to run dry really regularly. I’m having to dip the nib in every few lines. I don’t recall having that issue with other inks I’ve tried in this pen. I’ve yet to try it in other pens, I’m hoping its just not friend with the Franklin Christoph and works ok in other pens.

Overall, it’s a pretty ink, but its worth noting that the full beauty won’t be fully realised in normal writing situations.