I like to keep swatches of all my inks in a binder. In the past I've used Rhodia 80gsm but paper never felt right; too flimsy and I was never good at cutting accurate and consistent rectangles. In the past there was Maruman Mnemosyne Word Cards (which I never used), this year (2017) there is the new Col-o-ring cards, Robert Oster has some swatch cards as well and I have also found some good card stock myself. I'll be comparing these 4 different card stocks with Rhodia 80gsm and Tomoe River (as baselines). They all often perform quite differently and bring different attributes to the table! This is a very image heavy comparison with over 135 images!

Ana Reinert from The Well Appointed Desk announced Col-o-ring in March this year and it has slowly arrived in many stores around the world. People were fond of Maruman Mnemosyne Word Cards but they were discontinued in late 2015 (special thanks to a friend in Canada for getting me some of these for this review!) and so the Col-o-ring cards were created to fill the hole in the market for swatch cards. Reviews for the Col-o-ring were consistently glowing but I was unconvinced but still very curious. I couldn't find many high-definition images of the card stock and some of the photos I did see made the edges of the written line seem quite rough and I couldn't tell whether that was feathering or just the rougher surface of the card. In September 2016 there was the Pelikan Hubs (the 2017 Pen Hub is coming up soon too) and in the pen hub Pelikan provided notebooks and postcards (as well as ink bottles and a pen sleeve). You would have thought that the notebook would have bested the postcard in terms of fountain pen friendliness but that wasn't the case at all. The notebook was actually pretty disappointing but the postcard had really spectacular card stock. I emailed Pelikan and they were gracious enough to do some digging and find the name of the card stock for me: "240 g/m² Chromocard Performa White/ RS uncoated" (many thanks to Pelikan!). I have found the card stock on papyrus.com (which doesn't have an English translation), but I haven't attempted to ship any to Australia (I imagine shipping is expensive and I also don't love the idea of buying bulk which I expect I'd have to). In attempting to find a local alternative I contacted Bookbinders Online here in Australia to ask whether they could source the Chromocard stock or find an alternative. They weren't able to get Chromocard but they were able to do their magic and find an alternative: "Sumo Hi Bulk (in 240 or 230 g/m²)". I ordered 1000 business card sized cards and I am using it as my main card stock now. I'm not sure whether Robert Oster's swatch.ink card stock is for general sale (I don't believe they are) but I have managed to get a hold of some so I'll be including this here too.

I've decided to test these inks on a variety of inks that have different characteristics and different brands. Noodler's Baystate Blue, Noodler's Hunter Green, Robert Oster Bondi Blue, Organics Studio Nitrogen Royal Blue, Sailor Kin-Mokusei, Montblanc Burgundy Red, Lamy Dark Lilac, Platinum Citrus Black, and J. Herbin Rouge Hematite.

Robert Oster Bondi Blue

I chose this ink because it has some sheen but also has nice shading and is a very good performer all 'round.