Push/Pull Sword Fern & Wet Branch
Push/Pull is a stationery and art supply store in Seattle, and their house-made inks have begun to show up in other stores. I picked up these two little bottles in my local stationery store. There were several, but the green of Sword Fern and the shimmery taupe of Wet Branch were the ones that really called to me.
The first thing I noticed on opening the bottles was a really strong herbal smell. I’ve heard that it might be clove oil, and I can only guess that it’s there to act as an anti-fungal agent, but I can’t know for sure. It’s not exactly unpleasant, but it is strong.
As for the performance…it’s not good.
These inks both feather and spread and bleed on pretty much every paper I tried. It was really disappointing. The Wet Branch ink has shimmer in it, but you can almost never detect it in your writing, either.
All in all, I just wanted this ink out of my pens. I’ve heard from others that they have gotten Push/Pull inks in the past that were good, but these aren’t ready for prime time. At least they were only $6 each.
This is Nebula Casual Note, and it’s generally excellent for fountain pen inks, but it hated these.
The chromatography is interesting, and I like the color, but just look at all of that feathering and spreading. Atrocious.
This brown color is okay. The shimmer isn’t evident, but the spreading and feathering are.
Now, the back of the page. Sword Fern bled through the Nebula paper in the swatch area, and also a bit in some of the writing. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen that happen.
Water Tests
Not bad. The Sword Fern was more resistant than the Wet Branch, but either would be recoverable.
Oddly, these inks were kind of okay on the 20lb copy paper. I really thought that they’d be a total mess here, but they’re not all that bad. Not great, but not that bad. (Click the images to embiggen them.)
I tried them on Iroful paper next, a 75gsm paper that is renowned for being excellent with fountain pen inks. These samples are written with a medium nib, and they’re often unreadable due to how much the ink feathered.
Color Comparisons!
I found several inks that are in the same color areas as these two, and I’d suggest going for those instead. You’ll see below how Sword Fern managed to bleed through a Col-o-Dex card. That’s just impressive.
So…yeah. I’d avoid these.
