Ready to get to know 3 Oysters Cool Gray Ink? We’re diving in for this week’s ink review and giveaway. Some of you have been looking forward to seeing more 3 Oysters inks, so this should be fun! From the 3 Oysters Delicious Series, this ink definitely doesn’t get enough attention in my humble opinion. Read the full review!

All About the Ink Maker: 3 Oysters

3 Oysters is a Korean based ink company. They currently offer three distinctive ink series:

• 3 Oysters Delicious Ink Series: Colors are inspired by Korean food and fashion
• 3 Oysters I.Color.U Ink Series: Colors are inspired by Seoul (the Korean capital)
• 3 Oysters Hun Min Jeon Eum (HMJE) Ink Series: Colors inspired by the orient and Korea

This week’s fountain pen ink is from the 3 Oysters Delicious Ink Series.

All About The Ink Series: 3 Oysters Delicious Ink Series

This week’s ink review features an ink from the 3 Oysters Delicious Ink Series. After the latest 4 ink colors added to the Delicious Ink Series, the Delicious inks are up to 14 different color options. The most recent additions are:

• Carmel Macchiato;
• Peacock Blue;
• Peacock Green; and
• Americano (we recently reviewed this one – check it out if you missed it!)

Pen Chalet is excited to offer a wide selection of 3 Oysters inks, particularly since only a few American retailers carry this fountain pen ink brand. Check out the current inventory of 3 Oysters fountain pen ink at PenChalet.com.

All About This Week’s Chosen Ink: Cool Gray Ink

3 Oysters Delicious Cool Gray is a pH neutral, water-based ink that is safe for most fountain pens. We added this ink to our fountain pen ink review schedule due to a special request, and we’re not sad about it. (Personally, I think this ink should get a little more attention than it does). Inspired by the color of an oyster and oyster shell, the Cool Gray ink is exactly what you would expect – a nice, soft tone, dark gray ink that shows up nicely on paper with some wonderful traits.

*** Ready for this week’s full ink review? Or not? We recommend reading the full review to get a good idea of what this week’s ink has to offer, but sometimes that’s just not in the cards, and you just want to enter to win the ink. We got you. Just skip to the end, and you’ll see a link to enter to win.

It’s Time: 3 Oysters Cool Gray Ink Review

This week we put another 3 Oysters fountain pen ink through our standard ink review tests. Get ready to hear all the details!

Ink Review Testing Factors (to keep things scientific):

This week we used a French-made J. Herbin spiral glass dip pen (with a tip comparable to a medium-fine fountain pen nib) on Rhodia dot pad paper. As always, we want to remind you that different papers or different nib sizes may produce different results!

What Sort of Ink Bottle Does 3 Oysters Use?

3 Oysters Delicious ink series comes in a unique mid-sized 38 ml. heavy weighted glass ink bottle. (We think this ink bottle displays quite nicely if that interests you). It’s a heavy weight bottle with a faceted corner designed specifically so you can lean the bottle on one edge (balancing on a corner of the bottle) when filling your pen. The design makes it possible to get those last few precious drops of ink. The 3 Oysters Delicious ink series fountain pen inks have a nice presentation with a professional label. Labeling on the inks is in both English and Korean with the ink color highlighted on the box.

How Much Do 3 Oysters Delicious Fountain Pen Inks Cost?

The 3 Oysters Delicious inks are reasonably priced, especially for ink from such a unique and exciting Korean-based company. Check for the latest discounted price at PenChalet.com.

How Did This Week’s Ink Fair in the 1-Dip Test?

We use the 1-dip test to see how far the ink can write on paper with “1 dip.” We conducted the 1-dip test using a J. Herbin spiral glass dip pen, Rhodia dot pad paper, and this week’s featured ink, 3 Oysters Cool Gray ink. We dipped the pen in ink once for each writing sample shown above (“S,” “X,” and scribble lines), and as you can see, it wrote across the page very easily on all three writing samples with ink to spare.

How Fast Does the 3 Oysters Cool Gray Ink Dry?

3 Oysters Cool Gray fountain pen ink had a dry time of about 6-7 seconds with medium saturation, which is quick enough to use as an everyday ink.

Does This Week’s Fountain Pen Ink Bleed Through?

We saw no bleeding during normal use of this week’s ink. And we saw only very slight bleeding during the heavy saturated cotton swab test.

Was There Any Feathering While Using 3 Oysters Cool Gray Ink?

We saw no feathering during normal use and just some very slight additional feathering during the water test.

How Does the Ink Stand Up to Water?

For the water test, we let an ink sample dry for about 3 minutes before running a wet cotton swab over the sample. This week’s ink isn’t waterproof, but…according to how it performed in our test, it’s almost waterproof. There was only super light color smear (almost imperceptible). The lines were still very legible; not much distortion or fading at all! Pretty impressive for a non-waterproof ink.

Does 3 Oysters Cool Gray Ink Have Good Shading Traits?

This week’s ink has some nice possible shading if using a nib that allows ink flow variation (like a stub or italic nib). We saw dark black/gray color all the way to a light, soft gray.

Final Conclusion on 3 Oysters Delicious Cool Gray Ink:

This week’s ink has a nice price point and we really enjoy the variety of blacks and grays you can get through shading. Made by a South Korean ink company, the Delicious ink series features a unique bottle designed to help you get the last little bit of ink in the bottle with the option to tilt the bottle at a great angle. The 38 ml. bottle is fairly heavy weight and we think it’s a great option if you keep your ink bottles on display. The Cool Gray fountain pen ink showed a very reasonable dry time and it’s safe for use with fountain pens. Due to the dry time and the conservative color, and fact that it shows up well on paper, we highly recommend it as an everyday ink color. We enjoyed working with another high performance ink from 3 Oysters – we hope you enjoyed reading the review. Happy writing from South Korea!

Enter to Win 3 Oysters Delicious Cool Gray Ink:

Enter to win the actual bottle of 3 Oysters Delicious Cool Gray ink that Pen Chalet used in this week’s ink review:

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