Sailor Fountain Pen, Pigment Bottle Ink, 50ml, Blue Ink 13-2002-242

Great quality very black ink. Dries at best rate with Sailor pens but works across brands of pen well. I find it feathers less than the Blue Black of same brand. Easy to clean or wipe up when wet; does not stain barrel of pen. Good value, no smell, decent volume and solid build of bottle. Will always reorder this as my standard fountain black.

Great ink! Works well with alcohol markers, doesn't smudge after it dries, and it dries quickly. Highly recommend having a bottle around, it works better for me than the Noodler's Bulletproof Black that I was using previously. The Noodler's would smudge even after a few days on my paper whereas the Sailor Kiwaguro ink dries within seconds. There is a faint smell that emanates from the bottle and even fainter from the pen itself when using this ink, but it's not a bad smell in my opinion. Someone in the reviews mentioned it has a "medical" smell. While it's a vague description, I find it accurate.

I hesitated for quite a while before buying this - debating between this (13-2002-242, Seiboku) and the Souboku ink. While I don't have the latter now, deciding after reading many reviews and articles, to try Seiboku (this ink) I'm so very glad that I did! I LOVE the color. Often described as a blue-black, it decidedly leans to the blue, with a little green (teal, some say) but it's just "luxurious!" YMMV, but if you're debating, maybe seeing if you can find a sample to try it. One of these days I want to try a sample of its cousin Souboku, but I just love this one so much I'm not honestly sure of the need for anything else. My other favorite is Platinum Carbon Black (another pigment ink). I call them "security" inks because the pigments (nano particles) truly binds to the paper so that it's almost impossible to remove it (search "pigment vs. dye ink"). They are "permanent" without being long-term deleterious to the paper, as iron gall (at least the "old fashioned" iron galls) could be (at least over the decades and honestly no one will be reading anything I wrote decades from now!). And I find that this flows so much more nicely than the iron gall inks (e.g. R&K) that I have - they're really nice, but aren't as enduring - I've tested them as described below and they are NOT "permanent" in certain solvents as the pigment inks are). If you look up "check washing" you'll see what I'm talking about. There are articles and videos demonstrating it. I took samples of Carbon Black and Seiboku on standard (nothing fancy at all) writing paper, let them dry a day, and soaked them in: 1. Water, 2. Isopropyl alcohol (91%), 3. hydrogen peroxide, 4. acetone - the apparently "classic" ink washer - nail polish remover and 5. household BLEACH. Let them all sit for 3 days soaking. At the end, Carbon and Seiboku were TOTALLY legible in EVERY ONE of these liquids. Indeed, the bleach actually DESTROYED THE PAPER (it fell apart as I removed it from the container, but the INK REMAINED!). I also tested ballpoint inks, iron gall and dye inks in this experiment, some of them literally disappeared with soaking, but not these two! So anything you want to STAY on paper likely WILL with either of these two (Uni-ball pigment gel ink performed the same in my tests, that's my daily non-fountain ink). I only use these for writing, not drawing, so can't comment on that use; some seem to say that water bleeds them, but I can only suspect that it's if applied immediately after laying down the Seiboku. Once it dries, in my experiment there was no bleeding or ink loss whatsoever (but remember, I allowed the inks to dry for about a day before exposing them to those solvents). Some note that the ink dries and gums up the pen or is hard to clean. I've been using mine almost exclusively in Platinum pens (e.g Prefounte, Plasir; what can I say, I'm practical and go for nice, but inexpensive, pens!) and they have a proprietary cap that seals the nib tightly. All I can say is that I've had a converter filled for more than 2 months and the ink flows immediately and nicely with those pens/nibs! I haven't had any issues cleaning. I can't say the same when I've used other of my pens (for example Lamy Safari) - some without the nib seal have required a little work to restart if there's been a couple days since last use. All in all, one of my favorites! Best wishes!

I like to use my fountain pen and although there are an incredible number of ink manufacturers and colors (go to mountainofink.com to see hundreds with visual test results) to choose from, finding inks that won't smear into a mess if they get a little wet even though the ink has dried is very limited. While I had hoped for a little more blue color, still I am very happy with it and also because it stays put once it dries. Nice ink bottle too. I find that it writes very easily and fast without any clogging. A high quality ink at a good price.

I’ve been hunting for an ink that writes well with a pilot décimo! This was it.It’s smudge resistant, dries fast, affordable, and is a solid black.Well worth it although it does have a pungent smell.

I am using this ink in Pilot Prera and haven’t washed my Prera for months… maybe 3 months? or more than 3 months? I don’t remember when I opened the ink bottle. :P But Prera is working well. After washing, I tried to see how the feeder looks like.(My Prera is Iro-Ai.) As long as I can see, the unit looks clean. (Because I washed it many times, using a syringe.) The inside wall of the neck has blue stain(pigments?), though. Therefore, I won’t use this ink in demonstrator fountain pens. But I don’t hesitate to put this ink into other pens, except vintage ones. It’s water resistant and does not bleed through paper. It’s good for me to choose this ink for daily use. Absolutely I will wash the pen more frequently.

UPDATE: NOT waterproof, water resistant. If you want to use this for art and go back over it, this ink it will blur and smear. (last picture: I let ink dry overnight and added a drop of water). I'm not knocking a star off, though, because it's only advertised as water resistant; I'd seen some ink reviews that said waterproof.The first picture is on Tomoe River to show the ink at its absolute best (within the confines of my abilities, anyway), then in the second it shows that the ink is nearly as good on Southworth parchment. I used a gillott 303 nib on a dip pen. Beautiful, well-behaved ink, and it's waterproof, so it's excellent for addressing envelopes.

Other than Chou Kouro this is as good as it gets!