I was fooling around with a compact fluorescent black-light and something interesting happened. As I placed various objects under the black-light to see what might be revealed, something was indeed revealed when I looked at my Moleskine paper. Under a black-light, the paper looks very similar to OSB (oriented strand board a.k.a. Sterling board in UK) . Therefore, It's no longer a mystery why ink behaves so strangely on it, sometimes. If you have a fluorescent black-light, use it in the dark to look at your Moleskine paper and see what you find. You may be surprised.


Here's a picture of OSB.

Excuse me, but what is OSB? So many of us love moleskines and would appreciate your explanation. Thanks.

Silver mentioned in his post that OSB is Oriented Strand Board. If you look at the picture, it's wood made up of pieceworks of other wood, so the wood grain is very inconsistent. The suggestion is that something similar could cause the inconsistent behavior in the Moleskine paper.

Silver, please correct me if I have it wrong.

I've looked at a Moleskine Volant (about 4 years old), a new Moleskine Cahier, a 2007 Moleskine Diary, and a 6-year-old pocket Moleskine, all under UV light. None of them look anything at all like OSB. In fact, they look exactly the same as ordinary printer paper and very fountain-pen-friendly Clairefontaine stationery.

I haven't been able to reproduce your results. Not saying you didn't see what you say you saw, but maybe your results aren't generalizable. From the variety of experiences people report with Moleskine paper, it seems there might be some variation in the paper.

This makes me think of when I occasionally write in my moleskine and it's like writing on a waxy surface. Has anyone else encountered this? I haven't seen it written yet in a post here, not to say it hasn't been reported of course.

Matt.

I have had the waxy thing happen - but I just thought I must have gotten some hand cream on the page at some point !

You are quite correct.

I don't know if my results are generalizable. I'm just reporting my own discovery. That is why I suggested that other Moleskine owners try the experiment for themselves. One's results may vary. I wish I could take and post a photo of how my Moleskine looks under blacklight; unfortunately, I lack the necessities to do so.

But...that's how paper is made you pulp some wood then use a screen to suck it up so you get variations all over the place.


Kurt

Okay, I'm under the impression that there's two different Moleskine papers. This began as a suspicion as I read polar reactions to Moleskine paper; bleedy, feathery, not nice at all paper, and perfect or near perfect paper. Now that we hear of two very different pictures of Moleskine under UV light, one that looks like OSB and one that looks like ordinary printer paper (which I'm not sure how it appears, though I guess it'd be horizontal and vertical threads), I'm all but sure. Bill and Silver (and anyone else that can), if you could provide pictures, that'd be awesome.

OK, I was really intrigued, so I pulled out the two moleskines I used for my love/hate moleskine scans and they do indeed look different under black light.

Mind you, I did not use the exact same materials as Silver, so I can't reproduce his protocol exactly, and my light source was actually my kid's Dr. Who sonic screwdriver, so the illuminated area was rather irregular, but really, they did look different, with the bleedy moleskine showing lines and striations. Maybe not quite like OSB, but certainly webby - to me, more like the polygons you see in dried cracked mud.

For what it's worth, those are my data points

I can't provide photos -- don't have the equipment required. But plain printer paper (and my Moleskines) looks very fine-grained and evenly distributed. No "threads." Think of the way beach sand looks. It's sort of like that.

The light I used is a "CSI"-style flashlight -- very powerful LED.

Probably more reliable results than the sonic screwdriver, then

That is the best thing I've read all week. Thank you.

The OP said he was using a black light, ultra violet, which is quite different from the LED lights the rest of you are using. I would imagine that would account for the different results. Black lights contain very little light in the visible spectrum, but mostly ultra violet.

Dan

Me too - and I can guarantee that no hand cream was involved....

But the sonic screwdriver *is* black light - the kind that reveals secret writing, like Noodler's Blue Ghost. That is the kind we're talking about, right?

UV is UV. The source doesn't matter. The UV LED in my flashlight emits very little visible light, but lots of UV. The difference is in the paper, not the light.

Could this be natural oils from the skin?

I do think that one side of the paper is smoother than the other. If you notice about Laser printer paper, they recommend you to use one side first before the other. That one side is the "better" side, and it's indicated by the way the arrow points when you look at the wide of the ream of paper. (Ever noticed that arrow?) All papers have one side that is better than the other, as far as I know.

Yes!!! I've had the waxy thing; it happens quite regularly!

Actually UV light sources can vary in what frequencies they cover. The dozen or so law enforcement and consumer models I have in the lab vary widely in capability and application. The bandwidths as well as the portions of the UV spectrum covered can vary.

Now I'll have to look a Moleskines with them, eh?

Bill

I have a UV flashlight. I bought it to look for scorpions. Probably a bad idea. Got splitting headache every time I turn it on. So be careful with UV lights.

My understanding of why Moleskine is "paper inconsistent" is because they

(1) Are not a paper mill, and

(2) When they order the paper form outside sources, fountain pen usability is not in the contract.

Hand Making Paper (an organization) has some terrific readable articles on paper here. While they don't make Moleskine's paper, they are among the largest paper making group outside of commercially made paper companies internationally.

Paper making is an art but paper is not necessarily consistent even when produced on a large scale.

Blasphemy!

Whoa! That's a clue! At work we require everyone, including visitors to the lab, to wear protective goggles whenever any UV light source is used. This is for the low-powered devices, too.

Otherwise, eye damage may result.

Bill

This sonic screwdriver linked with Dr. Who sounds like equipment that every household should have -- certainly every household with fountain pens! Brilliant stuff.

Screwdrivers and UV-stuff aside - I thoght the "paper inconsistency" thing with Moleskine was that paper quality differs from book to book, not from one part of a page to another? When I had a Moleskine that wouldn't take ink, it was throughout the whole book and the same with FP friendly paper. All discussions I read here about Molekine paper was about how you never know if a book would take ink, not if some of the pages would take ink.
What has that flakey consistency of paper to do with that? Or did I miss something in the Moleskine discussion?