Noodler's "Dark Matter" & Lamy Safari

I know I reviewed Noodler's "Dark Matter" with both a Cross ATX and Lanbitou 866 fountain pen earlier on this blog, but I've since found another combination that works exceptionally well.

Lamy makes a mostly-plastic fountain pen called the Safari, and while it isn't the most classical looking thing, the fit, form and function are top notch. I purchased my fine nib Safari, plus converter, on Amazon.com over the holidays thanks to a sale offer that found its way to my email. The price was right, and my bottle of Dark Matter was still pretty full, so what the heck?

My first impression upon arrival was that the pen was really light. So light, in fact, that I don't like writing with it unless it's posted - otherwise the balance is way off. My next impression was that the converter reservoir was very generous in capacity. It holds a lot of ink, much more so than my Cross. That's a Good Thing when I'm writing 20+ page engineering reports longhand, so Lamy gets bonus points from me right there. Having a couple clear windows in the barrel to view the ink levels doesn't hurt, either.

The fine steel nib has a dark oxide finish that complements the charcoal color of the barrel and cap. There aren't a lot of frills or flourishes on this pen, and the most "artsy" part of the Safari is probably the wire pocket clip. That's not a real problem for a daily-use pen, and the ergonomics of the Safari design more than make up for any lacking aesthetics. The triangular barrel section that interfaces with the writer's fingers and thumb are perfectly shaped, and the nib fairly glides over the paper with nary a thought. The scratchiness of the Lanbitou 866 and occasional edge grab of the Cross ATX are long things of the past with the Lamy Safari pen.

I have noticed that Noodler's "Dark Matter" is very flowy in this pen, while still being smooth and very dark in color. Not quite gushing ink, mind you, but one has to wait just a few seconds to allow the ink to dry before stacking other documents on the just-written page, but it's actually quicker to dry than our company-provided UniBall Gel pens. The latter smear quite horribly in comparison to the Safari/Dark Matter combination.

I'm inclined to believe the light weight and ergonomics of the Safari combine to make this an enjoyable pen, reducing fatigue when writing for extended periods. From my own, somewhat limited experience with fountain pens, this makes for a great value when one's writing so much that refillable fountain pens eclipse the practice of buying ballpoint refills. Kudos to Lamy for their Safari pen, and kudos to Noodler's for their Dark Matter ink!

Noodler's "Dark Matter" Review

Unless one's been hiding beneath a rock for the last decade or so, there's been a very popular brand of fountain pen ink called "Noodler's" - named for those crazy folks who think they can reach underwater into a riverbank hole and pull out a catfish vs. losing fingers to snapping turtles. Hell of a sport, that!

I've been playing with fountain pens since grade school, and started out with cartridge-loaded Sheaffers, then graduated to the Parker 51 series, etc. I pretty much forgot about fountain pens over the intervening couple of decades until just recently, when I found myself writing multi-page (last one was 15!) reports longhand and just burning through pen refills like there was no tomorrow.

My old Sheaffers and Parkers had long since disappeared, so on a whim, I ordered a Cross ATX medium-nib pen through AAFES, and a quantity of black cartridges. That was all well and good until I realized that Cross ink tended to feather pretty badly, and those cartridges are a bit of a pain to swap out several times a week. So I ordered a Cross converter, and went shopping for ink. As I ordered the Cross converter, my eye caught a svelte little Chinese number called a "Lanbitou 866", with a hooded nib and very slim lines. What the heck, it was a whopping $4.00, I may as well give it a shot!

I knew that refilling fountain pens via piston converters offered a couple advantages, namely quick refills and a cleaning action as the ink is drawn into the pen from the nib end. While I run the risk of getting ink everywhere when refilling from an ink bottle, it's a calculated risk that I feel is manageable.

Reading all the reviews of Noodler's Ink online, I came to the conclusion that I couldn't go wrong with any of their offerings. About the only prerequisites I had for the ink I needed was that it had to be black (medical/legal requirement), and my own personal desire was that it flow nicely without feathering too much on paper. My Cross ATX did feel "scratchy" when using Cross cartridges, so if I ended up with an ink that had lubrication properties, that would be a bonus, too.

Enter Noodler's "Dark Matter". The story as printed inside the box was that a partial bottle of WWII Los Alamos Government ink showed up at Noodler's, with a request from the owner that Noodler's duplicate it as best they could. This they did, and the subsequent offering shows J. Robert Oppenheimer himself on the label, and "Nuke" on the box end to identify this particular formulation. Having retired myself from an agency closely related to Oppenheimer's project, I just couldn't say no.

I filled both the Cross and Lanbitou, and tried the ink on both copy paper and newspaper. The results are actually pretty darned good. The Cross flowed very easily, and did indeed smooth up the feel of the nib across the paper. It feathered a bit on newspaper, but nowhere near as bad as the Cross cartridges did. The Lanbitou was crisp, and while it didn't gush ink like the Cross, it was still very easy to make nice flowing text. The ink dried relatively quickly, so I would imagine it isn't what Noodler's calls "Bulletproof".

From both pens the color was dark, I guess you could call it pitch black. While I'm sure there are darker formulations from Noodler's, I have no qualms writing through this particular bottle of "Dark Matter" in the performance of my duties and while writing everyday missives.

On the left is the copy/printer paper, on the right is newspaper. For those who like Noodler's offerings, I can very easily understand why!