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Review: Pocket Stifflexible Notebook - Interesting Design
Stifflexible journals were created to replicate a binding system found in a book from the 1700's. It is designed, produced and finished entirely in Italy.
They can be purchased online at The Bromfield Penshop
Cover of small Stifflexible journal. It has an elastic closure, and the band sits nicely into one of the cover grooves, which keeps it from accidentally slipping off.
Reverse of Stifflexible journal.
Rounded cover make it easier to pull in and out of a bag without the book getting beat up.
Showing what the Stifflexible is known for. It's grooved cover. (More on it in a minute)
The back cover includes a small pocket for stashing small bits of paper, and the pocket cover can double as a page keeper.
Showing how the back flap can act as a page keeper.
Again showing how the back flap can act as a page keeper.
The book does lie flat.
This is where the funky cover comes into play. Because it can flex, you can flip through the pages with ease. I personally do not care for this feature. I prefer a hard cover and to me, this sort of defeats the purpose. Since the cover is cardboard, it seems that through repeated use of this feature, that the book might end up looking pretty beat up.
Though hard to tell in this picture, the Stifflexible is slightly smaller than a pocket Moleskine.
Here you can see that's the Stifflexible is slightly smaller than the Moleskine.
Stifflexible comes in a ton of options - including a Bob Marley version. I personally care more about paper quality than aesthetics.
The small pamphlet that comes with the journal promotes "Fountain Pen Friendly"
This was my first pen test in the Stifflexible, where I tried a combination of fountain pen inks and various markers.
The Lumocolor bleeds most noticeably, but all of the blue fountain pen inks are bleeding as well.
After deciding to re-ink several of my fountain pens with different inks, I re-did the test using only fountain pens and ink. Nib sizes vary. EF, F, M, and .05 & .07 cursive italic are represented. Inks include Noodlers, Diamine, Lamy, Private Reserve and J Herbin.
They didn't do very well.
This is a close up of the reverse side of the paper.
In review, I can't recommend this book for use with fountain pen inks other than Noodler's Bulletproof Black. It's an interesting design, but it just doesn't suit my needs.