Pilot G-Tec-C Navy And Turquoise Review

The Pilot Hi-Tec-C is a pen that changed how many people think about pens. Artists and designers love the micro-tip sizes - all the way down to .25 mm - plus the needle tip which allows for good sight lines and ruler usage. It also changed the Kickstarter pen market, becoming the go-to refill when pens on Kickstarter first became a thing.

As famous as this pen is, it isn’t a good pen for many people. Over the years, the best word I have found to describe it is finicky. If you are willing to put up with some dry starts until the pen gets flowing, you will find one of the best pens on the market, especially for small writing or detailed artwork. If the output is not worth the initial frustration - and it does get very frustrating at times - you will swear this pen off for a lifetime, like many rightfully have.

The 0.3 mm black Pilot Hi-Tec-C is a personal favorite of mine, and the one I get the best and most consistent performance from. I love what my writing looks like with it, and it is a great sketching pen too. I always have one with me in either the basic grip barrel or in my Pen Type-B barrel.

Recently, Pilot has expanded their G-Tec-C lineup, which is the name of this line of pens outside of Japan, to offer more than the black, blue, red, green, and purple that formerly made up the G-Tec-C group. Navy and Turquoise are the two I chose to review because these ink colors have not been offered by this name in the original Hi-Tec-C lineup as best as I can remember.

I am very familiar with Pilot Hi-Tec-C Blue Black and Clear Blue, which I was guessing these two new colors would match, but they are different shades. Navy is much lighter than the Blue Black refill I have, while Turquoise is close to Clear Blue but ever so slightly darker.

The Navy 0.4 mm model wrote wonderfully throughout the entire review, through all of the stops and starts. The Turquoise model not so much. You can see how light the ink is at the start of some of the Turquoise lines, which is typical bad G-Tec-C performance. This is why I almost never recommend this pen without a pile of caveats.

That doesn’t stop me though. I’m stubborn, and the output gives me a line that no other gel ink pen can match. Maybe you will like it too, and hopefully these new G-Tec-C colors are around to stay for a while.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Posted on July 11, 2016 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Pilot, G-Tec-C, Pen Reviews.

Sailor Jentle Uca Arcuata Fiddler Crab Green Ink: A Review

(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)

I must admit, this has to be one of the most unusual ink colors I've reviewed. When I opened the bottle, my first thought was that the color looked like something from a festering pond.

I had no idea what it was supposed to be, and the name on the ink bottle, Uca Arcuata, didn't exactly reveal anything. So, I did some Googling and discovered that this ink is part of a bespoke collection made for the Kingdom Note Store based on various crustaceans. These inks include Zarigani blue, coconut crab brown, giant spider crab red, tiger prawn brown and Uca Arcuata (Fiddler Crab Green) which is currently sold out.

I've never seen an actual Fiddler Crab, but the ink color certainly looks like the color from the Fiddler Crab illustration on the box.

Still, I wouldn't call this color "green" at all. Maybe the color varies a bit from bottle to bottle since it's a specially formulated ink, but to me the color is yellow-brown, not green. Of course, Sailor can name their inks whatever they want, so if they want this to be green, who am I to argue?

Like all Sailor inks, this one has a distinctive odor to it due to the preservative phenol. It's not an unpleasant odor, just noticeable. And it keeps the ink from getting moldy, although I'm not sure mold would affect this color much.

The bottle comes with a built-in ink miser. Just turn the bottle upside down (cap on, of course) so the ink collects in the inner ink well, then turn it over and fill your pen. I usually remove the ink miser because I feel like it gets in the way of filling bigger pens. But, when ink runs low, it can be helpful.

The ink flows well and is even a bit wet. It exhibits nice shading qualities, but as far as I can tell, it has no sheen. It is also not waterproof.

The central question is, why would anyone use this color for writing? I can see it as a color for sketching, but for writing? I'm not sure. It's not a color that appeals to me, at least not yet. Maybe, in the fall when I want a color that matches the fallen leaves in Abilene (a drab yellow). . . .

Still, Uca Arcuata is quite similar to an ink I do love: Iroshizuku Ina-Ho. When placed next to one another, Ina-Ho actually seems to have more green than Uca Arcuata. But on its own, Ina-Ho comes across like a gold ink, whereas Uca Arcuata seems more brown.

I suspect both these colors are acquired tastes, sort of like Brussels Sprouts. I do enjoy breaking out of my blue ink rut, so I suspect that I will use Uca Arcuata from time to time. It might look especially nice on Tomoe River paper. I'm teaching a Harry Potter class this fall at my university, so Uca Arcuata might be just the thing to write acceptance letters to my aspiring wizards. Though, clearly, I need to work on my wax seals.

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