Noodler's: Manjiro Nakahama Whaleman’s Sepia

[Inka]

According to Webster's Dictionary;

 

se[pi[a 7sc4pc !8

n.

[[ModL, name of a genus of cuttlefishes < L, the cuttlefish < Gr sepia < sepein, to cause to rot (from the inky fluid emitted), akin to sapros, rotten]]

1 a dark-brown pigment prepared from the inky fluid secreted by cuttlefish

2 a dark reddish-brown color

3 a drawing or photographic print in this color

 

adj.

1 of sepia

2 dark reddish-brown

 

Found on Wikipedia [Hyperlinked]...

 

Manjiro Nakahama

 

Nakahama Manjirō (中濱 万次郎 Nakahama Manjirō) (1827 - 1898), also known as John Manjiro

 

 

Now for the hand-written & scanned review...

 

 

http://i633.photobucket.com/albums/uu56/InkaFX/Noodlers-Whalemans-Sepia-Re.jpg

 

Still not sure what to make of this ink, certainly looks better from a broader/wetter nib, rather dry from a Japanese Medium or a western Fine.

As mentioned, my final thoughts are to be continued, needing more time to use this ink to come to a conclusion.

 

My usual wash-test, time to dry was about 1 hour before hitting it with HOT running water until the paper became saturated/soaked through...

 

http://i633.photobucket.com/albums/uu56/InkaFX/WhalemanSepiawashtest.jpg

[Michael R.]

Very interesting ink I'd love to try one day.

 

Thank you for the review.

 

Michael

[bluemagister]

I got this ink and found that it tends to have a very solvent smell and evaporates or flows back into the converter pretty quickly. I often have to prime the nib on any pen with this in it after a day or two of not using it. I like the color and the neon orange (it glows under blacklight) base ink color is bulletproof. All in all, a pretty good ink and works best in M nibbed pens that can support its flow.

 

Nice review!

[Inka]

I got this ink and found that it tends to have a very solvent smell and evaporates or flows back into the converter pretty quickly. I often have to prime the nib on any pen with this in it after a day or two of not using it. I like the color and the neon orange (it glows under blacklight) base ink color is bulletproof. All in all, a pretty good ink and works best in M nibbed pens that can support its flow.

 

Nice review!

Thank you, for the compliment AND for the great feedback!

I'm going to bed now, after 0100 already and way past time, but I'll be sure to check out the smell when I get up and look for evaporation properties as I use it.

It glows under UV/black light??? That's something else I didn't know, one of the features of Hunter Green Eternal I really do love is how it changes from bright florescent green to a yellow/orange when exposed to black lighting. SWEET; can't wait to try that out!

I have nibs in all sizes, so I may try it out in a pen with a 1.5mm smooth Cursive Italic and see how that turns out, the Medium Pelikan nib I'd tried really does make is shade better and has a much richer contrast than does the Medium VP nib from Japan.

I tried it out in my Gold Fibre journal that has ivory paper and on ivory it looks much better than against white, gonna try it out on some Premium 25% cotton paper I have in Ivory and see how that looks later.

Much obliged, seems this ink has properties I was unaware of making it even more appealing.

It also seems that the old maritime journals that had mostly off-white or ivory paper may be why these old Sepia or 'cuttlefish'/'squid'/'octopus' inks have always looked better to me when I see them used in the old ships' logs.

Thanks for the info!

[Ed Ronax]

Great review, thanks.

[PJohnP]

Great review, sir.

 

This is an odd ink, but can be sometimes compelling with its very unique odour and subtly distinctive colour.

 

I can say that it's still "dry" with a fairly broad cursive italic nib. The relative lack of lubrication is very much a characteristic of the ink, not at all nib based.

 

 

 

John P.

[PenTieRun]

"Dry" is an understatement for this stuff. Sand from the desert in Arizona flows more smoothly through your nib than this stuff. Color is intriguing and I'd love to use it, but I don't want to buy a BBBBBBB nib in order to do so. My bottle sits on the ink shelf and stares at me.

[Inka]

I did some more W~Sepia testing yesterday, another bit of writing with different pen & nib along with another wash-test.

A Lamy Vista I have with 1.5mm CI nib had a bit of Quink Green left over from Christmas, poured the green back into the sample bottle and flushed the pen clean.

Once cleaned & dried, I refilled the Vista with the Whalemans' Sepia and did some more test writing on a sheet of RHODIA Bloc paper, along with wash-test sample on a piece of Hammermill Copy Plus again.

From the Lamy with the 1.5mm nib it writes like a charm, still a bit dry but even as wide and wet as this nib is I had little to no feathering nor bleed-through at all, a definite plus!

Here are those results, first the write test and then the new wash test and this time I let the ink dry overnight before washing and only used COLD water flush & soak instead of the HOT water testing I usually do, added pure ammonia to the test as well...

 

http://i633.photobucket.com/albums/uu56/InkaFX/SepiaWriteTestWith15mmCI.jpg

 

http://i633.photobucket.com/albums/uu56/InkaFX/SepiaWashTestPart2.jpg

 

I also did some UV/ black light testing on the before and after sheets, one before washing and one after, was [really] amazed by the results [and color changes seen].

Whalemans' Sepia from such a wide CI nib looks truly Sepia color [more of a red/brow/black] under black light, and when washed it changes color drastically to make it obvious to whatever chemical wash was used in the attempts.

I've not yet take pictures of that test, since I can [not] just scan UV lighted results and must use a camera & tripod, maybe tomorrow I'll give it a shot in a dark room and post the results here, truly interesting!

 

P.S.:

I've still not yet stuck my nose to bottle, to gt a whiff of what others are saying about the smell.

My head has been congested fro days as it is, not sure I want to set off a sneezing or coughing fit if I find the odor reacts with seasonal allergies I'm already dealing with.

Maybe I'll give it a quick sniff tomorrow, as well as the black light photography, that is if I'm up to chancing taking a sniff. I'll post results of my findings/opinion should I dive my nose in and take a chance.

Edited March 5, 2010 by Inka

[bluemagister]

I find it nearly impossible to write with an italic tip. I like that handwriting sample!!

[blackangus]

This is my favorite ink, and I didn't know it glowed under blacklight. Cool.

[bluemagister]

I've recently found that this ink is GREATLY improved by dilution 50:50 with distilled water. It loosens up the flow and adds nicer shading.

[mcer]

I've recently found that this ink is GREATLY improved by dilution 50:50 with distilled water. It loosens up the flow and adds nicer shading.

 

 

I need to try this since out of the bottle it is not flowing at all (I tried it with two pens with good flow).

 

Rene'

Edited January 10, 2011 by mcer

[GeeTee]

I've recently found that this ink is GREATLY improved by dilution 50:50 with distilled water. It loosens up the flow and adds nicer shading.

 

 

I need to try this since out of the bottle it is not flowing at all (I tried it with two pens with good flow).

 

Rene'

 

 

+1 i love the colour but it dries out in the pen in about a day. I tried diluting it a little but that didn't help so will try the 50/50 dilution.

[BucolicBuffalo]

I finally remembered to bring an old Script bottle to work to experiment with added distilled water. Not 50/50. Just a small amount. But other pens may need more water added. Very pleased so far. Goes on a bit brownish and quickly dries to this nice darkish black-sort-of-color with a bit of a purply/brownish cast. Good shading effects. Flows well for my Visconti Millenium.

[Sassafras]

I had a hard time finding a pen I liked this ink in. I really LOVE the ink color and didn't want to dilute it at all, since, to me, it lightened it considerably and took away a lot of what I love about it.

 

I ended up really liking it in my TWSBI M nib and a Rotring Core B nib I recently got. It's ok in my Lamy Al-Star 1.1m italic nib also, but I found it a bit dry in the F nib.

I hated it in my Noodler's Flex Nib, and didn't care for it in Preppy Eyedropper conversions either, regardless of nib size.

 

All that being said, despite finding it to be a dry ink, I LOVE it and will put up with any amount of temperament from it as long as I have at least one pen it works in OK. YMMV of course.

[sbruno33]

Just received a bottle today. Flow is good with the supplied preppy, but, the line it lays down looks black. Next tried it in a Pilot 78G Broad, flow feels on the dry side and the color, to me looks like a 3B pencil. No hints of red nor brown. (All writing on Rhodia). Going to have to play around with it some more tomorrow.

[ThirdeYe]

Just received a bottle today. Flow is good with the supplied preppy, but, the line it lays down looks black. Next tried it in a Pilot 78G Broad, flow feels on the dry side and the color, to me looks like a 3B pencil. No hints of red nor brown. (All writing on Rhodia). Going to have to play around with it some more tomorrow.

 

Same thing happened to me with Noodler's Zhivago. Tried it first in a Pilot 78G Med... looked black to me. Also tried it in the Noodler's Flex Pen... still black looking to me. Tried it in a Sheaffer NoNonsense italic... looked much better! You could actually make out the green and it had nice shading. Give it a try in an italic perhaps, if you have one.

[calhoun tubbs]

Just received a bottle today. Flow is good with the supplied preppy, but, the line it lays down looks black. Next tried it in a Pilot 78G Broad, flow feels on the dry side and the color, to me looks like a 3B pencil. No hints of red nor brown. (All writing on Rhodia). Going to have to play around with it some more tomorrow.

 

I had a bottle of Whaleman's Sepia that I bought from JetPens a while ago and I found it odd that it was called sepia, yet it looked black. However, upon closer inspection of the bottle, I found that it had a lot of red on whichever side it had been sitting on i.e. what appeared to be pigment settling. So, I went ahead and agitated the bottle until it mixed in with the rest of the ink. What I found was that the ink became brown and when I filled a pen with it, it wrote in a sepia color. From all of the reviews I looked at on here, none looked the sepia, but a black or gray color with a red halo effect. I no longer have that bottle because the ink flowed a bit dry.

[sbruno33]

For an update; tried the preppy fine, tried a stub(78G), Tonight put it in a Schaeffer Balance broad italic, shook up the bottle a bit before loading; back to black. In a Twsbi M; HB Pencil. Have looked at the scans, was hoping... maybe i'll try diluting it. It does tame a faucet of a wet writer. Sigh.

[empyrean]

 

Same thing happened to me with Noodler's Zhivago. Tried it first in a Pilot 78G Med... looked black to me. Also tried it in the Noodler's Flex Pen... still black looking to me. Tried it in a Sheaffer NoNonsense italic... looked much better! You could actually make out the green and it had nice shading. Give it a try in an italic perhaps, if you have one.

I've been thinking about getting some Noodler's Zhivago. I was wondering if it was so named due to the scene in which Yuri is writing the name, Lara, on paper with a fountain pen. It is so black and wonderfully written, the Russian spelling of her name. Hopefully, the Noodler's Zhivago is the same color?