Sailor Pens with Nano Carbon Ink (Cartridges)

Sailor Nano Black cartridges (via Engeika)

A deep, rich black is as beautiful as any colour, so when folks talked about the qualities of the Sailor Nano Carbon ink, I ordered some cartridges from engeika (ebay seller). The cartridges were less expensive to ship from Japan than a bottle, or to purchase from a competitive Stateside vendor and seemed like a simple way to test the ink.

I also gave some serious thought to the advantages of cartridges vs. a converter in my four Sailors, two high-end, two calligraphers. Two of five converters have broken, one immediately. Either I am installing them poorly or I am not using them correctly, but I find these to be more of a challenge than the dozens of other converters I use.

Well, less than a fortnight later, the cartridges arrived and I installed one immediately into my Sailor M1911, and put a second into my longer calligrapher as a back-up. This particular calligrapher is designed to hold two cartridges, handy when away from home or office.

With the naked eye, the ink looks as dark as Aurora, or the Noodler's Heart of Darkness. It is seemingly much darker than the J. Herbin Perle Noire, and without long term use too early to declare whether it is better, worse or equal to the other blacks I use.

But not incidental, I find Sailor's ink to lay a good clean, consistent line with a pleasurable and smooth stroke. The other Sailor ink I have other than Gentle Black cartridges is Blue-Black, already among my favourites.

It is much too dismal to take photographs as it is raining (again) but sometime next week if the sun comes out I'll post a comparison of the five (5) blacks I have on hand.