Bungbox - L'amont

BUNGU BOX is a fountain pen store located in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka (half way between Tokyo and Osaka).  As well as pens Bungubox has established a name for its inks better known as Bungbox inks.  The inks are made by Sailor so some are very similar to Sailor inks and some are very very different.  They are not the easiest inks to find but a number of US retailers stock a limited range of colours.  Unfortunately Bungbox have reduced the size of the ink bottles, 50 to 30ml and put up the price from about US$40 for 50ml to US$50 for 30ml.

I do have a few Bungbox inks I have purchased however this ink was a sample sent to me by a friend in Australia.  The ink is called L’amont which is lovely because the English translation makes no sense to me – an ink called ‘upstream’.  The English conjures up nothing for me, the French name is lovely as I don’t speak the language so I was in blissful ignorance as to the meaning and now I’m sort of sad I know what it means.  This is a lovely purple ink bordering on magenta.
 
It looks quite dark in the sample bottle I received however chromatography reveled a mix of lighter colours included turquoise.

Sample bottle

On col-o-ring it is a medium purple and you can just see a hint of the greeny-gold sheen others have found with this ink.

On Tomoe I was surprised I expected more especially when I think of other pictures I have seen of this ink.

I was disappointed so I went back and  dropped some ink on Tomoe – when you put a lot more ink on the paper than you would for writing the sheen is obvious.

The ink behaved impeccably on copy paper (as one would expect with a Sailor ink) with minimal feathering and no show through, it dried very rapidly.

On Midori the dry time was much longer, with a slight smear at 40 secs.   Again very well behaved but it looks more towards Magenta than purple.

On Tomoe the colour still veers more towards Magenta but the sheen is there.  Dry time is extremely slow, infact I think the slowest ink I have reviewed.

I really like this ink, the colour, its properties etc BUT the price is ridiculous and I am not going to rush out buy some for that reason alone.
Credible dupes are  Krishna – Winter, Monteverde – Rose Noir, Birmingham Pen Co – Southside market Boysenberry and others have included Pilot – Yama Budo but I find that pinker than this ink.

In summary -
Saturation – high 
Shading – no
Sheen – yes
Shimmer - no
Flow –good
Nib dry-out - alot
Nib creep - none
Start-up – Excellent 
Feathering – no
Drying – the better the quality of paper the slower the dry time, ridiculous on Tomoe
Cleaning - takes some work especially as the ink dried on the nib
Water resistance – not sold as waterproof and certainly isn’t – very easy and rapid washout from the paper.