Noodler's | X-Feather Black Ink | 3oz Bottled Ink

The ink named after the thing it refuses to do.

There's a crossed-out feather on the label, and that's the entire product. X-Feather exists for people writing on paper that ruins ordinary ink — carbonless forms, legal pads, recycled office stock, the Moleskine that turns every downstroke into a little tree. It's thicker than a normal black and it sits on those fibers instead of creeping along them. On 20 lb copy paper you have to look closely to find feathering at all, and the reverse side of the page stays clean enough to use.

It's also bulletproof, which is Noodler's word and worth taking literally. The dye bonds to the cellulose in the paper, and once it's set it doesn't come off with water, bleach, alcohol, UV, or the other things a forger would try. This is the ink for the signature, the deed, the field notebook, the record you'd be in trouble for losing.

Here's the cost, and it's real: X-Feather is slow. On coated or premium paper it can take the better part of a minute to dry, which is a long time to hold your hand off a page. The saving grace is that it's fastest on the paper it was built for — cheap absorbent stock pulls it down in around fifteen seconds. Left-handed overwriters should go in knowing this. Everyone else should stop closing the notebook right after the last word.

It isn't a beautiful ink. It's a rich, flat, dependable black with almost no shading and nothing interesting happening at the edges of a stroke. That's the point. If you want an everyday ink with some character to it, our Daily Ink is the navy for that. This is the other thing entirely.

Dye-based, not a pigment or carbon ink, so it's safe in the Preppy and the Daybreak. 3 oz. Made in the USA.

• Built against feathering — designed for absorbent paper: forms, legal pads, recycled stock, and notebooks that spread ordinary ink
• Bulletproof and archival — bonds to cellulose and resists water, bleach, alcohol, solvents, and UV once dry
• Minimal bleed-through — the back of the sheet stays usable on cheap paper
• Slow to dry — up to a minute on coated paper, roughly fifteen seconds on the cheap stock it's meant for. Not the ink for left-handed overwriters
• Rich, flat black — high saturation, almost no shading. Dependable rather than interesting
• Dye-based, not pigmented — no carbon, so it's safe in the Platinum Preppy and the Daybreak Click
• 3 oz glass bottle — 89 ml, and the best price per millilitre on the shelf
• Made in the USA — Noodler's own fill, not a rebottling