Reddit reviews Oasis supply Lustre Dust, Pharaoh's Gold (Old Gold), 2 Gram

Ok, so, I can't do anything just a little at a time, so for those of you with less time on your hands to read the damned novel of a post that this is, here's the TL;DR--most food grade mica powders seem to give the same effect in ink that stormy grey has. While it seems very unlikely to cause damage to a pen, it is a stone-cold bitch to fully clean out--use it in a pen that you can easily disassemble the feed/section.

On to the novel!

For the past few days I've been following in the footsteps of this post on FPN and testing out various food-grade mica luster powders in some of the inks I have on hand.

/u/ARbldr in his post yesterday was a lot more scientific with his mica source. I just bought some from Amazon. If I'd been more patient, I could have found it for about half the cost here. Those are the same food-grade mica dusts I found on Amazon, but with a much larger selection of colors, all in one place. They're quite non-specific as to the particle size of the mica, which can cause problems (more on that in a minute).

Anyway, I mixed up a few dashes of mica (using a Noodler's Flex Nib as measuring device. Pictured there is what I considered a "dash" of mica. Most of the following ink mixtures had about 1 dash/ml. Now, that doesn’t look like a lot, but for comparison, here’s a sample vial of about 3ml of Stormy Grey, and a sample vial of my mixture of 3ml of Noodler’s Dragon Napalm—both of them sat upright for 2 days, and then I flipped them upside down and took the picture. I think stormy's ratio is more like 1 dash/3ml. While Stormy can have a brief bit of iridescence in the vial, custom mixing looks pretty neat.

Anyway, here’s some samples—everything is written in a Lamy Vista (more on why that’s my testing pen of choice in a sec) with a 1.9mm stub on Rhodia. First picture is taken to showcase the sparkle, second to show the color when seen off-angle. Each pic has a writing sample, a test grid pattern, a drop from the syringe allowed to dry, and another drop smeared out with the nib.

Noodler’s Gruene Cactus (gold luster), American Turquoise Eel (silver luster), and Rachmaninoff (Sapphire luster): Sparkle, off-angle

Noodler’s American Turquoise, gold luster: sparkle, off-angle

Noodler’s dragon napalm, gold luster: sparkle, off-angle

Private reserve blue suede (new formula), sapphire luster: sparkle, off-angle

Noodler’s Baystate blue, silver luster: sparkle, off-angle

It also looks really cool in a pen with a clear section: American Turq + Silver, Dragon Napalm + gold

Now, not all luster dusts are created equal. For example, you may have noted Gruene Cactus with the Cranberry red luster dust didn’t sparkle at all in the writing, and barely sparkles in the droplet. I was trying to figure out what was different, and the only thing i could notice was that the cranberry was the least “cohesive” of the lusters. By cohesive, I mean that for each of the lusters, I’d tap them down on the table before opening them to pack the luster to the bottom. Despite being the same weight, the cranberry never packed down as much, and appeared to have more volume. Additionally, while the other lusters all immediately sank into the ink in the vial, the cranberry floated on top of the ink. I’m still not sure exactly why that is, though. I suspect it’s due to a combination of particle size and the colorant agents used, but I’d love to hear other theories.

Lastly: cleaning! Stormy Grey, with it’s lower mica content, seems to flush out easily and leave little to no residue in the pen. These custom mixtures, on the other hand, require a bit more vigilance. Here’s the section of my Safari after filling with 3 different gold-luster inks (including leaving one overnight) 1 2. This is after ~400ml of water pushed through the nib/feed; after every test ink, I’d push two full bulb syringes of tap water through the back of the pen. You can still see the mica left over that the water couldn’t get to. However, pulling the feed out of the pen and running it under water, it cleaned completely, leaving no trace of the mica in the feed.

This is why I think it’s best to confine these experiments to modern pens where you can easily disassemble them to really clean them. I’ve currently got Baystate Blue + silver loaded in the Safari; I’m going to leave it in the pen for a few days to see, but I anticipate no additional cleaning problems. The FPN post I linked to earlier actually left the ink in the pen uncapped for multiple days; even when the pen wouldn’t write anymore due to it being dried out, the mica still cleaned out without damaging the pen. So, usual disclosures aside (YMMV, IANAL, TIMTOWTDI, etc), I think these micas are pretty fountain pen friendly.

Anyway, I’d love to hear what you folks think—and if you have any ideas for future tests, let me know. I can tell you right now that I can’t wait to try a few ml of BungBox Sapphire with some of that silver—as soon as /u/thebrimic ’s package arrives…

Full album of pics: http://imgur.com/a/UmBxL

Edit: I forgot to mention! Some of the pics have a "a few hours later" or "after overnight" writing. As with stormy grey, I get the most sparkle from a freshly filled pen. After it sits a while, the mica seems to distribute less evenly, and ends up being much more noticeable in the ends of strokes (where ink often pools). In other words, if you're trying to do something like christmas cards and you want something like the Gruene Cactus + Gold sparkle levels, try to do it all in one sitting, or be prepared to refill before you write again.

This is what I purchased, and I used the whole jar. It's only 2 grams so it's little.

Oasis supply Lustre Dust, Pharaoh's Gold (Old Gold), 2 Gram https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F6ARC1E/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_J453AbQ34B9XQ

0.5 tsp in 1 gallon. Something similar to this.

ohhh, I didn't know that about white chocolate. Thank you!, I'll look for either powder coloring or gel paste.
Here is gold sheen its meant for an airbrush so i'm not sure if its more liquid or gel.

Also would something like Lustre be good enough as a powder