Birmingham - Tesla Coil
Birmingham Tesla Coil - Ink Drop
Today’s ink is a heavy sheening ink called Tesla Coil from Birmingham Pen Company. It’s part of their Rich Formula series of sheening inks. The inks are beautifully bottled, labeled, and packaged by hand in-house, and come in 30ml, 60ml, and an enormous 120ml bottles. I love the attention to detail that they put into their products, and option to buy a lot or just enough. I think this ink goes very well with its electrifying name!
Birmingham Tesla Coil is a serious sheening ink!
Visually, Tesla Coil is a beautiful deep China blue, very rich, and very saturated. It’s a heavy sheener on premiums, but on office copy the sheening is restrained, and the deep blue really showcases well. On premiums, there’s some shading, which adds variation and movement. The sheen really blossoms on premiums, both coated and uncoated. It’s a gorgeous, luxurious, electric cinnamon pink that explodes on top of the base blue. The contrast is striking and consistent.
Birmingham Tesla Coil dries quickly at times
As a writing ink, Tesla Coil performs surprisingly well for such a heavy sheener. The ink itself is beautiful on the page, very smooth, and very sure. Strokes were perfectly sharp and clean on all six test papers. Shading was consistent across premium papers, and it added just enough variation and pops of a lighter mid-blue. However, there was very little shading on office copy. Drying was fairly quick compared to many heavy sheening inks. Birmingham warns that drying time may be significant, but again, I didn’t experience any issues there. Coated premiums dried in 20 seconds, uncoated premiums in 15 seconds, and office copy in 5 seconds. This is a nice writing ink, without some of the issues many sheening inks suffer.
Birmingham Tesla Coil’s bottle and label
If you like sheening inks, you’ll definitely enjoy Birmingham’s Tesla Coil. It’s a powerful sheener with a beautifully vibrant pinkish sheen, and it really writes well. Although the sheening is strong, it’s the lovely, confident blue that really won me over.
Please note: This ink was sent to me by Birmingham Pen Company, but that did not influence my review. As always, I present my honest opinions both good and bad.