Nock Co. "Dusty Blue" DotDash Note Cards - Fountain Pen Test

My good friends Brad, Jeff, and the crew over at Nock Co recently released their second colorway of their DotDash Note Cards, Dusty Blue.  Being a "blue" man myself, I was very excited about these.  Not that the orange or "Amber" color doesn't pop, blue really is more of my comfort zone.

The guys were kind enough to send me over a pack of these to try as well as their case called the Fodderstack (which will have it's own review in the future) that holds a pen of choice as well as a little stack of their cards.  Brad eluded to a prototype on the Erasable Podcast this past week of a Fodderstack that holds a Field Notes sized book... such a tease that Dowdy...

With each product I ship I send a little hand written note and I've found myself reaching for these as my go-to recently, so the guys should expect orders from me...  They are small, stiff (80 lb paper), and generally do pretty awesome with all pens so I don't worry so much about what I'm grabbing to write on them with.

For the review I wanted to do a pretty strong comparison of a variety of fountain pen nibs, brands, and inks to see the outcome.  Also, to compare the new colorway to the previous.

I've been due to clean a few fountain pens, but having too many inked up actually made for a great selection to test with.

What I threw at it:

From the list there are a lot of F nibs, but being a good mix of Asia and Europe I felt it a good test group for diversity.

What I found is that with the really wet nibs, the Falcon M nib in particular did not do well and tended to feather terribly, but the smaller F or EF nibs did good overall.  Not sure if the paper is different, but I actually found the Amber colorway to have crisper lines.  Maybe my imagination?  

These obviously aren't Tomoe River or Rhodia glossy, but are note cards that are meant to be used.  They are in many cases, portable, which warrants a certain amount of ink absorption otherwise you'd have wet ink for minutes that you'd be stuffing back into a bag or Fodderstack which would not be good.  I think they chose a good mix of durable, yet fountain pen friendly paper for all around use.

Great stuff guys!  If you're interested in picking up a pack, visit nockco.com to view their wares.