@AnasaziWrites - the McCaffery's ivory is really beautiful on a dark olive paper and also a dark grey. That sumi you have is almost certainly just fine. Even if it dries up, you can just use it like a stick ink. Sumi is just pre-wetted carbon ink (like the sticks are made of), after all, and those stick inks can last for centuries.
@jeanwilson - I probably use Moon Palace for 90% of my broad edge work. I love that ink. And I'm with you on walnut ink. I love it for so many things. It's actually really high on my list of potential "desert island" inks, even though it doesn't have a very compelling reaction to bleach and you can't put it in a fountain pen. Regarding stick ink - have you ever used those colored stick inks? I've been kind of wondering about them. I learned how to paint with stick ink when I was very young, but my grandfather and father only let me use the black ink - they thought color was a distraction to learning proper form. You know - the Saint John's Bible used stick ink for all the lettering, because Donald Jackson thinks it's the best too!
@JanisTX - Thank you for your kind thoughts about my work! Your enthusiasm for Noodler's black is fantastic (and much like my enthusiasm for Parker Quink black). And what a great point about the wide-mouth jar. It actually reminded me to comment in kind about how much I like the wide mouth and squat shape of the Parker Quink bottle - much like Noodler's, but a little harder to tip over (see photo). Now, I have actually have had some trouble with a couple of inks in the Noodler's line NEVER drying! Golden Brown and Gruener Cactus are special offenders for their strange greasiness that smears even after several days of drying time.
I don't know what else to say about my stan for gloss black -- every once in a while I have drying problems with it, but usually it does fine. I did a heavy test strip with it in October, and it was quite immovably dry, even though I laid it on quite thick. I'm collaborating with a scientist colleague of mine to replicate the recent chemical fingerprinting research that revealed redacted material in Marie Antoinette's love letters (
https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1504997/royal-news-marie-antoinette-mystery-lover-letters-found). One of the inks we analyzed for distinctive trace elements was McCaffery's gloss black. Trust me - he would not put it through his lab's macro-XRF if it were at all smeary or tacky. It would be disastrous if it smeared on the sensor!
We did trace chemical analysis of several modern inks marketed as "iron gall" inks: Diamine registrar's ink, Old World iron gall ink, McCaffery gloss black, Rohrer & Klingner scabiosa, and Platinum sepia black. We got strong iron signals from the Diamine, Old World and McCaffery; very weak iron signals from Platinum and Rohrer & Klingner. But rather distinctive trace elements besides iron in each of them. We'll enter the second phase of research this spring, as we see if we can "read" a message in one ink after effacing it with a different black iron gall ink, based on differences in their chemical signatures.
In case anyone was wondering what an academic calligrapher like me does in addition to paleography. --yours, K