Sailor Bottled Fountain Pen Ink (50mL) - Blue-Black

I find this to be such an unusual colour in the realm of blue-blacks. It has a standoffish, serene quality on the page. A very good performing ink. Not as flawless as Souboku, but close. It feathers slightly on some cheaper office papers and I have to wait at least several long minutes before using a highlighter... A Nano version would be amazing.

I bought this sample knowing ahead of time that I would not like the colour, as I prefer my blue-black to lean blue or red, but I wanted to try it out to see how it compared to other similarly coloured inks. I took it for a spin in my Sailor 1911S 21 kt H-M, which is a dry writer: if it can make it there, it can make it anywhere. Writing with it was pleasant; it coated the nib well, gave me no hard starts, and the nib didn’t dry out; no feathering, no bleedthough, no ghosting. I obtained some shading on TR 52 gsm and Graphilo papers. The ink presents a coppery-red sheen where the ink pools in heavily saturated areas.

I liked the ink better on white paper than on ivory or cream, because these last two brought out the green-grey undertone. I much prefer the colour of Aurora Blue-Black and Pilot Iroshizuku Shin-Kai. If you like green-grey leaning blue-blacks, like Diamine Blue-Black or Robert Oster Blue-Black, this ink shouldn’t disappoint as it performed flawlessly.

This serves its purpose and seems to flow nicely in even my "driest" pens. And if I may, I would like to counter - in a friendly manner - Sudesh's comment in that as a type of ink, "blue-blacks" are meant to shift from one to the other. To criticize a blue-black ink by saying "blue disappears" and you're left with black is akin to criticizing a cat for being occasionally aloof.

The blue hue disappears after it dries up. Bit more on black side

I keep coming back to this ink because of its colour.