thINKthursday
KOBE #16 – Nada Brown
Contrary to the name, KOBE Nada Brown is unabashedly umber!
thINKthursday – KOBE # 16 Nada Brown
KOBE #16, Nada Brown is a deep medium brown reminiscent of dark chocolate. This ink still comes in the old-style 50ml, round Sailor ink bottle, which is rapidly becoming hard to find! KOBE inks do not include the goblet-shaped ink reservoir system that was originally included in Sailor inks of the same bottle.
When somebody says dark brown, KOBE #16 is exactly the color that comes to mind. Neither reddish nor greenish nor goldish, Nada brown shades from a hazelnut to a true medium brown before going into the deep black-browns of dark chocolate or coffee. The ink offers enough shading to be interesting, but not so much that it’s difficult to read large blocks of text written with a fine nib. It looks like heavy pools of ink on a very sheeny paper like Tomoe River might produce a green sheen, but nothing that would show up during normal writing.
KOBE Nada Brown, like all inks produced by Sailor, was extremely well-behaved. It had good flow and very good dry times at 15-25 seconds! The ink definitely smudged during our water test, but the words were still clearly legible and, in spite of that moderate level of water resistance, it was still very easy to clean!
KOBE #16 is a well-rounded brown that looks like delicious chocolate and writes just as smoothly! I appreciate that the subtle shading you get using this ink in a broad nib doesn’t decrease its legibility coming out of a fine nib. Furthermore, that little bit of water resistance could be a total lifesaver one day! A great bottle at a great price, KOBE #16 is “Nada” Brown that you can afford to skip!
As with any ink review, the pen, paper, and person doing the writing will influence the way the ink looks. If you’re not sure about a color, try a sample to see if it’s the one for you, or see how it measures up against your favorites using our ink tool.
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