In my continuing quest for the ultimate journal, I found this web site:

http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.ACCT107430/sc.25/.f

for a company called The Book Factory. Just exploring their web site they seem to have just about everything one might need and at reasonable prices. I have no idea of the quality of the paper or binding.

Has anyone ever used any of these products? Might you offer some idea of the quality of the paper?

Cheers,

Bill J

I'll reply to my own post. I contacted The Book Factory and asked how fountain pen friendly the paper was and if I could receive a sample of the paper. The response was, and I quote:

In our standard books we us 60lb paper and that is not fountain pen
friendly. We can however make you custom books using 80lb paper which is
fountain pen friendly. Our minimum for custom orders is 10 books. ... Please let me know if you are
interested in a custom order.

So maybe I'll pass.

Cheers,

Bill

Maybe with a paper sample you could raise 9 others here to order?

OK, just for giggles. I personally want a fairly large journal, 8x10 or better, ruled and at least 200 pages or more.

Does that do anything for anyone else?

Bill

So once again I'll quote my own post. I received a reply from The Book Factory as follows:

The cost of 10 books with 216 pages 8x10 would cost about $38.95 per book.

We can do hard covers or wire-o's

At a minimum of $40 with shipping, once again I think I'll pass.

Cheers,

Bill

I wonder how much it will cost if we went to a printshop here in the US, and have them bind up a bunch of blank books for us. We could try out soem paper samples, and then choose one that was FP friendly, with a variety of inks.
I bet we coul d work it out if we did a group order, with each person ordering a certain minimum number of blank books.
Something worth thinking about.

I have several of the lab books from thebookfactory.com. My favorite feature is the pre-numbering (lab and notebooks from my work used to have this....). The paper is bright white but a little rougher than Clairefontaine. It takes a lot of fountain pen inks better than say, Moleskines, but still not as robust to FPs as Clairefountaine or Rhodia, about on a par with Black and Red, maybe a bit less so. Specifically, it holds up to fine and EF nibs with many inks, as you get more saturated (e.g. Noodler's dark blue inks) I started to get bleed through. With medium nibs and Noodler's inks, I did get mild bleed through - if you're tolerant of some bleed through it might not bother you -- it was slight. When I use my EF nib pens (Parker 51, Chinese Hero look-alikes) with Pelikan Blue-black, it works beautifully with the paper.