I have been test driving my new pen purchases - Visconti Opera Club and Omas Milord. Each has a super smooth fine nib. I almost seem to find the Rhodia paper too smooth in spots and not allowing a good flow of ink onto the paper. Especially as I work down the page and I hit areas where oils from my hand must be coating the surface. These pens really seem to like linen or cotten papers with a bit of texture.

Hi Opus. I find that, too. The only pen that consistantly has a love/love relationship with Rhodia is my Aurora Mare. I am so in love with the feedback possible with that combo. My CdA skips sometimes and the Van Gogh is sluggish on it. The 149 seems really happy with Rhodia, but on the whole, my smoother nibs prefer other stuff. They dislike Clairefontaine more than Rhodia, though. Sigh.

Kath

95% of my pens work well on Rhodia and Clairefontaine. I think there is no reason why a fountain pen shouldn't work on these two great papers.
Rhodia has some subtle roughness to which my fountain pens catch on every time. Clairefontaine is slicker.
In my opinion, if a pen writes well on Rhodia and Clairefontaine, it'll write well on all sorts of papers. They are the benchmark test.
I have many custom-ground nibs. And they are always dead-on reliable on these papers. Factory nibs often need some extra tuning as they don't come as sensitive and tactile as the custom nibs do.

Dupont - you have a point. I mean, my 14k nib in a Pelikan 200 writes wonderfully anywhere at any time. I would expect that from high-end pens as well.

I did just get my Omas back from John Mottishaw today, in fact. Now that I had it adjusted for a wetter flow, it appears to lay down a great line on the Rhodia pad. I just want everything to be perfect the first time . . . especially when I am paying dearly.

Glad that the good nibs work on Rhodia!
Make the paper your touchstone as it really is one of the very best ones. I haven't found a paper that is better than this French stuff.

I use more textured paper as the benchmark for nib smoothness, not slick papers.
If my pen writes smoothly on heavily textured paper, it will write smoothly on slick papers like Clairefontaine, but not always vice versa.
I find that slick papers tend to hide nib inconsistencies, and more heavily textured papers expose them. Take a misaligned nib, and it will write more smoothly on slicker paper whereas the nib will more easily catch and scratch on more textured papers.

Ah, but the opposite occurs with a nib experiencing a "baby bottom" issue - the papers with surface texture help to alleviate this issue, while the slick papers just highlight it.

"Baby bottom" is where the inside edges of the tines have been rounded, making a smooth catch-free nib, but sometimes not enough ink can pass over the smooth areas and onto the page - this is why coarser papers help, as they can make better contact with the problem nib areas and wick the ink out.

Good point Phalo, if the baby bottom issue is slight, textured paper will work better than slick paper,
although the baby bottoms I've had skipped or had hard starting problems with both kinds of paper.
On the other hand, a pen with a poorly ground nib or misaligned nib will write much differently on slick versus textured paper.
Pen shops usually only provide the slicker paper that can hide many nib problems, so I always bring my favorite textured paper to pen shops for testing.
Regards,
J

That might be. But if a nib catches on heavily textured paper, that does not mean at all that it will catch on slick paper. Such nibs, I have found, often annoyingly skip on smoother papers.

I mostly use fine to extra fine nibs. So heavily textured paper is not apt to prove the quality of such nibs. My delicate Sailor nib (a marvel of consistency and smoothness) will be scratchy and nasty on textured papers. And so will my lovely Binder flex XXF nib. The quality of such nibs just cannot be demonstrated on textured papers.

That's exactly my point.
A nib can write well on slick paper, but write poorly on heavily textured paper.
I too use fine and XF nibs, and as I use heavily textured papers almost exclusively,
I make sure my fine an XF nibs write as well on heavily textured papers as my broader nibs.
Otherwise I hand the pen back to the pen seller and ask for another one to try.

I write almost exclusively on Rhodia and Clairefontaine. The problem is not with the paper, but with modern nibs: I think the emphasis on smoothness has led manufacturers (specifically, Bock) to crank out nibs that more often than not have baby bottom issues. The problem I used to have systematically is that the nib wouldn't catch on the first stroke with Rhodia and Clairefontaine. This happened with my Bock from OMAS, Stipula, Tibaldi, Pelikan, etc. I've since learned to address the baby bottom issue myself and have fewer problems now. Best,
David

I don't think the issue is with either the pen or the paper, but more likely the ink! Every pen I have (and there are many) writes well on Rhodia and Claire Fontaine paper and many other smooth, slick papers. I love the feel of the paper under the bed of ink each pen lays down. . . Anyway, I have only had problems with inks from Oman, J. Hebrin, and older Quink inks. I have given them up and use mostly Noodler's, Pelikan 4001's, Private Reserve (which bleeds badly on cotton rag papers) Diamine and my all time favorite when not using a 'color' in every pen - Platinum Carbon Black.

Try switching you ink in those problems pens and see if that helps!