Please Help Me Choose An Ink

[essayfaire]

Hello all,

 

I was lucky enough(and with generous enough relatives) to be able to procure a new Sailor Fairy Tales Vega pen for my birthday! I decided to try the medium fine nib as I have a Sailor F already and wanted a bit of variety. I was wondering what inks paired well with the Sailor MF nibs, and am open to color suggestions as well.

 

Apologies as to the direction of the photo; technical limitations.

 

Thanks for your input. I am writing a lot at this time so I can justify a new bottle of ink if necessary.

[sandy101]

Sailor has a lovely range on inks. Their Souten impressed me.

[bayindirh]

There are some inks I've tried and liked recently:

• Pelikan Edelstein Tanzanite: Nice neutral blue black with very balanced flow. It's called soft ink for a reason.
• Noodler's Ottoman Azure: A nice deep but vibrant blue with some lovely shading. Is not bulletproof or anything, so it's relatively safe.
• J. Herbin Bleu des Profondeurs: A saturated deep blue with no shading. It's a bit too wet so your pen might write broad-ish with it.
• Diamine Oxblood: A dark wine/red suitable for long passages. Saturated but shading. It's nice.
• Lamy Black: Your run of the mill black with some water resistance and shading. It's greyish but not boring. Works well on a lot of papers.
• Noodler's Bulletproof Black: If you want to preserve your writing ever, try this one. Works well on a lot of papers.
• Noodler's Blue Black: It's blue added version of bulletproof black. Blue portion is not waterproof but black part is. Please shake gently before use.

Note: If you prefer to buy Noodler's ink, please open slowly on a flat, non slippery surface. It's filled to the brim, literally.

Edited June 13, 2020 by bayindirh

[Uncial]

Ten of thousands

[AmandaW]

If that were my pen I would put a Sailor ink in it. Probably Yama-dori, analogous colour, but sedately darker.

Edited June 13, 2020 by AmandaW

[A Smug Dill]

Suggestions: Sailor souboku pigment ink. Kobe INK Story #38 Kitanozaka Night Blue. Pilot Iroshizuku shin-kai. Platinum Blue-Black iron-gall ink.

 

Actually, I can't think of any ink that wouldn't pair well with a Sailor gold MF nib, especially one without ruthenium-plating; and the caps on Sailor Professional Gear Slim pens are so very good, the likelihood of undue level of ink evaporation is very low, so not only would I not worry about the pen drying out while capped, I wouldn't be too concerned about nib crud forming, etc. should one decide to use a saturated red-orange ink.

[Thymen]

In the past two years I purchased several brands, types and colours of ink, but the ones that see most use in all my pens, including the Sailors, are the blues and blue-blacks. All other colours I will likely only use rarely. I bought them out of curiosity, but once I tried them I lost interest. Unless used for special purposes (mark-up, birthday cards etc), I find no practical use for them. Page after page filled with red or green is a bit too much for me.

 

May I suggest a simple, standard blue, like Waterman Serenity Blue? Or, in case you prefer a darker blue, Pilot Blue-Black? These inks are not expensive, easy to get, easy on the eyes and easy to clean. Simple, good every-day inks.

 

I have two Sailor Realo pens, and I prefer a smoother writing experience. Since Sailor nibs are a little feedbacky by design, I prefer to pair them with somewhat more lubricating inks. The inks I suggested fit the bill, imo.

Edited June 14, 2020 by Thymen

[RudraDev]

Sailor Jentle Souten is one of my favourite blues. It is getting rather hard to find these days, but I'd definitely recommend that you check it out.

[A Smug Dill]

Sailor Jentle Souten is one of my favourite blues. It is getting rather hard to find these days,

 

 

Souten is now part of Sailor's Shikiori line, which is sold "everywhere" in 20ml bottles and not hard to find at all.

[stephanos]

Like AmandaW, I would put a dark Sailor ink in the pen. If you don't have a Sailor ink on hand, then any dark ink that you have already available (I would get writing and not order a new ink to go with the pen).

[A Smug Dill]

If you don't have a Sailor ink on hand, then any dark ink that you have already available (I would get writing and not order a new ink to go with the pen).

 

I'm sure the Sailor ink cartridges that come with the pen's retail package will work as well as any.

[Fuzzy_Bear]

I like Dromgooles Texas Bluebonnet

[jchch1950]

What colour is your favourite ink? Keep using it and enjoy the feeling of the new pen.

[Honeybadgers]

If you don't have any, diamine registrars is very fun. goes down pale blue, very rapidly turns darker blue black, then goes very nearly black within a few days.

 

For a daily ink, pelikan 4001 black is my go to. I have it in a sailor F right now.

[essayfaire]

If that were my pen I would put a Sailor ink in it. Probably Yama-dori, analogous colour, but sedately darker.

I have PIlot Ku-jaku (thanks, Smug!) and Tsuki-yo, which are quite similar; I think I want to use something less aquamarine here as those others pair really well with my Pilot Capless.

 

Suggestions: Sailor souboku pigment ink. Kobe INK Story #38 Kitanozaka Night Blue. Pilot Iroshizuku shin-kai. Platinum Blue-Black iron-gall ink.

 

I always worry that iron-gall will make my pens harder to start; am I wrong to think so?

What colour is your favourite ink? Keep using it and enjoy the feeling of the new pen.

I have a weakness for very saturated warm browns, but I like using multiple colors as it makes my notes easier to read. Plus some inks are too wet or dry for some nibs, so the eternal quest is for what is my favourite ink to use in a given pen!

 

If you don't have any, diamine registrars is very fun. goes down pale blue, very rapidly turns darker blue black, then goes very nearly black within a few days.

 

For a daily ink, pelikan 4001 black is my go to. I have it in a sailor F right now.

I am investigating the registrars, I don't have any. I might be able to procure a sample. I exclusively write with Sailor Jentle black in my other Sailor, so I want to use something other than black in this one.

 

Thank you to everyone for your input so far! I will re-post here when I ink up. I may have to ponder a bit.

 

[ScarletWoodland]

I'm sure pretty much any ink would work wonderfully in there. For my two pence, if this was a pen I was going to be using a lot, I'd put Monteverde Horizon Blue, KWZ Azure #5, Sailor Yonaga or Diamine Oxford Blue in there. Something in a well behaved, wet-ish, rich blue with a bit of shading and/or sheen for interest.

[essayfaire]

I'm sure pretty much any ink would work wonderfully in there. For my two pence, if this was a pen I was going to be using a lot, I'd put Monteverde Horizon Blue, KWZ Azure #5, Sailor Yonaga or Diamine Oxford Blue in there. Something in a well behaved, wet-ish, rich blue with a bit of shading and/or sheen for interest.

Yonaga is one of the inks I'm considering. I'm trying to find a sample since I don't trust internet color swatches. Monteverde tends to be a bit wetter than I like.

[A Smug Dill]

I always worry that iron-gall will make my pens harder to start

 

Not in my experience. I have several (mostly piston-filler) pens continually inked with Pelikan 4001 Blue/Black, Platinum Classic Ink Khaki Black, Citrus Black and Cassis Black, KWZ Ink Aztec Gold IGL and IG Mandarin; and until recently, my Sailor Professional Gear Ocean was filled with KWZ Ink IG Turquoise. Even when (very slow!) ink evaporation finally reduced the volume of the remaining IG Turquoise in the converter down two drops' worth, after months of being capped and unused, the pen still started writing immediately.

Edited June 18, 2020 by A Smug Dill

[essayfaire]

my Sailor Professional Gear Ocean was filled with KWZ Ink IG Turquoise. Even when (very slow!) ink evaporation finally reduced the volume of the remaining IG Turquoise in the converter down two drops' worth, after months of being capped and unused, the pen still started writing immediately.

When you changed out the ink in the Pro Gear, was it harder to clean?

[A Smug Dill]

When you changed out the ink in the Pro Gear, was it harder to clean?

 

 

Harder than what specifically? Any ink left to condense inside pen components is going to be harder to clean than a fresh(er) fill. Given more than 120 of my pens are inked at any point in time these days, the inks in some pens will have condensed — or even completely dried out — and by the time I get around to cleaning and refilling them, they are "harder to clean", whether the ink is a dye-based Sailor, Pilot, De Atramentis or Rohrer & Klingner ink, a particle ink or an iron-gall ink. There's nothing about the acidic component in iron-gall inks that makes the colour hard to flush out completely from the nib and feed.

 

If I put an iron-gall ink in a pen in the morning, and by afternoon decided I didn't like the colour combination between pen and ink and decide to change inks, it would not be harder to clean than if I was using Herbin Rose Cyclamen or Noodler's Zhivago ink and wanted to flush the pen out.