Ink Review: Sailor Jentle Apricot

Over the past two weeks I've had two pens inked up with Sailor Jentle Inks.  My Lamy 2000 (EF Nib) has been loaded up with Epinard, and my Sheaffer Legacy Heritage (one of my personal favorite pens) has been loaded up with Apricot. 

A great combination for annotating documents:  Sheaffer Legacy Heritage with Mike Masuyama-tuned EF Nib, loaded with Sailor Jentle Apricot Ink.

Orange ink is new to me.  I definitely have a think for reds in all shades, particularly darker wine-colored reds like Montblanc Hitchcock (my favorite red ink of all time), Visconti Burgundy, and Franklin-Christoph Syrah Syrah.  I decided to try orange fountain pen ink after discovering the Pilot Hi-Tec-C gel pens, which have outstanding shades of both orange and apricot, and realizing that I like to be able to distinguish between different types/categories of annotations, especially when I'm editing a lengthy document such as a 100+ page legal brief.  But I digress....

This scan makes the ink color appear slightly more red than it is in real life.  The pictures I've taken and posted below in the gallery or truer reproductions of the actual color. 

Apricot is extremely well behaved and low-maintenance for such a bold-colored ink.  It doesn't feather much, even on the cheapest paper, and bleedthrough is minimal.  So far, I've not had any difficulty cleaning the ink out of any of my pens.  One thing that distinguishes this ink from other popular orange inks such as Noodler's Apache Sunset, and even Iroshizuku Yu-Yake, is the relative lack of shading.  Some shading is there, especially in a wetter nib, but if its highly visible shading you're looking for, Apache Sunset wins that battle hands down. 

Ink Review: Sailor Epinard

This is a review for one of my "professional inks," that I regularly use at the office, in court, or anywhere else that I don't want to turn heads.  Not that this ink won't turn the head of anyone who's paying attention--it's a great color.  I apparently just missed out on the Montblanc British Racing Green ink by entering this hobby in 2010, just as that ink was discontinued.  People often suggest that Epinard is a comparable ink and fair substitute, along with Diamine Green Black, Diamine Evergreen, and Noodler's Zhivago.  Having never tried the original, I can't give an opinion.  What I can say is that this ink more than stands on its own. 

For the non-Francophones, "Epinard" is the French word for spinach.  It's a fair descriptor.  Although there's a good bit of black in the green, you're still writing with green ink.  This ink is loaded into my Lamy 2000 with an EF Nib.  A very professional ink in a professional pen.

What makes this ink great for work is the fact that like many Sailor inks, it's incredibly well-behaved on cheap copy paper.  If your employer, like mine, buys whatever it can get the most of for the least amount of money, and you absolutely must use a fountain pen at work, Sailor Jentle Ink is a pretty safe bet.  I have bottles of Epinard, Apricot, Grenade, and the ultimate cheap-paper ink, the pigmented nano-black.  All are excellent.  

Rumor is that Sailor is releasing a new range of ink this summer.  One of the colors among them is an even darker green-black, which is on my list.  Stay tuned.  And if anyone wants to send me a sample/full bottle of the British Racing Green, feel free to reach out . . . . :) 

Ink Review: Franklin-Christoph Syrah Syrah

This is the second of two reviews of Franklin-Christoph's bottled ink that I picked up at last month's Atlanta pen show.  This one is their red color, "Syrah Syrah," which as you might expect is a burgundy wine-colored ink.  Like the Olde Emerald, it offers shading galore, especially in a stub nib like this 1.1mm Masuyama on my Sheaffer Legacy Heritage.

Excellent shading, but if I had one gripe, it's that the ink is fairly watery and sometimes railroads on slicker paper.  This is the same Exacompta Index card stock that I use for all my reviews.  This is a smallish price to pay, however, for a red ink that's as easy to clean out of a pen as this one.

This ink has good flow, especially for a red.  In my experience, red inks sometimes get crusty around the nib and are hard starters.  I've not had that issue here.  There's no bleed through or feathering on good paper like my Exacompta card stock.  On a Doane legal pad, there was some bleed-through, as you'd expect from a stub nib and an ink this wet, but hardly any feathering so my pen was still usable.  I've not used it in a fine or extra fine yet, which are my day-to-day users, so I may post an update as it makes its way through the rotation.  

Ink Review: Noodler's Air Corps Blue-Black

This ink was a surprise.  I've not been a huge fan of Noodler's ink.  I've found that with certain exceptions, Noodler's never dries, transfers ("ghosts") onto previous pages when you try to write on both sides of a notebook page, and stains pens.  Reading some of the pen forums, people have resorted to diluting the ink with distilled water in order to eliminate some of these undesirable characteristics, but that's always seemed like too much trouble for me.  I'm all for fiddling around with this hobby, but as far as ink goes, I've always expected it to "write right out of the bottle." I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this ink was, to me, one of the Noodler's exceptions. 

I compared this to three other inks I had loaded up:  Montblanc's Irish Green, Sailor's Epinard, and Noodler's Ellis Island Blue-Black, all of which I like, and the latter of which I really want to love, if not for the fact that it seemingly ne…

I compared this to three other inks I had loaded up:  Montblanc's Irish Green, Sailor's Epinard, and Noodler's Ellis Island Blue-Black, all of which I like, and the latter of which I really want to love, if not for the fact that it seemingly never dries (in a fine nib, no less).  Grrrr...

The pen I used for this review as a Nakaya Portable Writer (with clip) in Solid Black.  The nib's a medium, which translates into a Western fine, maybe an extra-fine depending on the brand.  This ink worked well in the pen.  No hard starts, and no staining the converter.  The paper is an Exacompta index card.  

I will say that this ink is more of a dark teal as opposed to a true blue-black, leaning heavily towards the blue-green end of the spectrum.  If I had to compare it to anything, I might choose Pharmacist's Turkish Night.  (I know, I know, I never finished the Pharmacist series of reviews that I started a year or so ago.  Those are in the queue.)   

Ink Review: Franklin-Christoph Olde Emerald

This ink is another that I have been wanting to pick up for a long time, but just now bit the bullet and got around to doing so.  Franklin-Christoph introduced their line of inks last year, and they've received rave reviews so far.  I can see why:  they're classy dark shades of blue, purple, green, and red, and from what I've seen so far they are incredibly low maintenance and safe.  At one of the pen shows last year I took note that Mike Masuyama was using the Dark Denim to test the pens he was working on, and he was telling everyone sitting at his table that he is very careful what inks he puts in his customers' pens.  Anyhow, I picked up two bottles at the Atlanta Pen Show:  Olde Emerald (Green) and Syrah, Syrah (Red/Burgundy).  I have not inked up a pen with the Syrah, Syrah, but here is my take on the Green, and it's a good one. 

This review was written with a Stipula Etruria Alter Ego with a 1.1 mm Stub on an Exacompta Index Card.  The Stub is pretty wet, and the Index Card not exactly absorbent, so the dry time on this ink is slower than it would be on typical daily use paper.  

This is a fairly wet ink, but it dries quickly.  The dry time reflected on my written review is somewhat misleading.  I've found that this ink dries within 5-10 seconds on most papers, and it was dry at 15 seconds on this Exacompta index card.  As you can see from the photos, the ink shades beautifully.  The color has been described as "the color of money," which from what I've seen, is pretty accurate.  I've found myself using this ink on a daily basis!