Robert Oster Pink Squirrel: Ink Review
Robert Oster Pink Squirrel is a part of the Robert Oster Signature Inks Line and is handmade in Australia. This pink/purple/plum color is muted but has some great shading properties and goes down smoothly. This is also an unusual color with a quick dry time. Read more for our full review!
Ink Review
Supplies Used:
- LAMY AL-star with medium steel nib
- Rhodia No. 16 dot pad, 80g white paper
- Tomoé River 52 gsm white paper
- Leuchtturm1917 80g notebook
Smear Test (Dry Time):
- 10 seconds – By 11 seconds, you could tell the ink had dried very quickly. When there is a lot of ink on the page, it could take a few extra seconds, but with any traditional nib on a fountain pen, you should see this dry pretty quickly.
Drip Test (Water Resistance):
- Low – It's not water-resistant. Not even a little bit! On the writing sample, you can see where the ink was due to the super light lines showing where it initially was, but it's obviously missing wherever water hit the page.
Saturation:
- High – You can see the difference between each of the swabs. This ink can also show a tad more shading and some obvious darkening on the third swab.
Ease of Cleaning:
- High – This ink cleaned out of a pen very quickly, but did take a little longer to clean off my fingers. So, be careful, but don't worry about taking too long to clean your pen!
Shading:
- High – It gives this attractive color a bit of character but isn't anything too crazy. We recommend using a larger nib size, like Medium or Stub nib, to highlight this inks shading properties.
Flow:
- Medium – With a medium nib, it was pretty good and flowed well, but with a much smaller nib size, such as Extra Fine, it might feel a little more dry writing. However, it was good on the page across a variety of nib sizes.
Packaging and Aesthetics:
- Like all Robert Oster Inks, this ink comes in recyclable PET bottles manufactured in Australia's first carbon-neutral plastics plant. The opening is wide enough to fill your pen.
Summary:
This pink/plum/purple ink is a lot more interesting than initially meets the eye. The shading properties are really good, and I can see that a lot of ink on the page could lead to pooling, shading, and perhaps even a tiny hint of sheen to some of the edges. In general, inks from Robert Oster are very well-behaved, and this ink is no different. I recommend picking up some and seeing what you think, because I was pleasantly surprised, and can see this being my “not-too-pink” pink ink.
This color is available in 50ml bottles as well as our 2ml ink sample.
