Sailor Jentle Souten Ink is one of the original 8 Jentle ink colors making up the original 4 season line released in the United States a year or so ago. Although a completely new line of 8 Sailor Four Season Jentle Inks have been released in the US in 2016, Souten continues to be a top seller. Sailor Souten ink is a beautiful blue color, which is also referred to as “Azure Sky”. Sailor Souten ink is similar in color to Pilot Iroshizuku Kon-Peki. Sailor Jentle inks are water based dye ink, which are easy on your fountain pen and loved across the world and Pen Chalet carries all 16 Sailor Jentle Four Season ink colors.

Sailor Jentle Souten Ink

We noticed the following characteristics using Sailor Jentle Souten ink which you may find helpful:

Testing Factors

We used a J. Herbin glass dip pen on Rhodia Block paper while reviewing this ink. The J. Herbin Glass dip pen is equivalent to an extra fine fountain pen nib.

Bottle Size

All Sailor Jentle inks come in a large round glass 50 ml bottle. The opening is very wide and has an internal reservoir, which can be used by turning the bottle upside down (with the lid on), catching some ink in the reservoir which then can be used to fill your fountain pen. One down side to the Sailor Four Seasons Jentle ink is that all of the wording is in Japanese characters, although a small color dot is on each bottle helps identify which ink is inside.

Cost

Sailor Jentle Souten ink, as well as all the Sailor Four Season ink 50 ml ink bottles retail for $18.00, which is considered a mid ranged priced ink, but not overly expensive for the large 50 ml. bottle.

Dry Time

While using the J Herbin dip pen, produced a reasonable dry time of 7-10 seconds. However, using a larger nib, you will experience a longer dry time.

Bleed Through

We noticed a very small amount of bleeding but only on the wettest lines after using the cotton swab and with the dip pen, just after being dipped. Normal writing will not produce any bleeding on the Rhodia paper used.

Feathering

Sailor Souten ink produced clean crisp lines on the Rhodia paper without any feathering.

Water Test

Sailor Souten ink is not waterproof. During the water test, where we ran a soaking wet cotton swab over ink sample that we let dry for approximately 3 minutes produced lots of smearing and some feathering.

Shading

Sailor Souten ink does have some shading, but not nearly as much as some of the other Sailor Jentle Four Season inks, such as Oku-Yama, which has significant shading characteristic.

Conclusion about the Sailor Jentle Souten Ink

We love Sailor Jentle inks, and Souten is one of our favorites. It’s a beautiful blue on the darker size, although not blue-black, which can be used as an every day blue ink. Sailor Jentle Souten Ink as well as many of the other 15 Sailor Four Season inks are top sellers at Pen Chalet. The price is mid ranged, but reasonable due to the large size of the bottle, the 50 ml. bottle is functional and the blue ink color is superb with a reasonable dry time.