Black N' Red Notebooks

[kenmc]

I love these things! I have a 6 X 8 spiral that I use for stationary. It's very easy to detach the pages, the lines are light, and the paper is great! Since I'm a lefty, the spiral makes it easy for me to write on back as well as front.

[teeniebeenie6]

I've been looking at the Black N'Red notebooks, they are visually appealing to me. The Staples I checked out only carries ones with perforated pages, are there any Black N'Red notebooks made without perforated pages?

[Blooze]

A BnR bound notebook is the only notebook I have so far. It's been very hit or miss on mine. All the pages seem to be quite smooth, so I've never had a problem there. Some inks on the other hand, never dry. I have one page where I wrote with Noodler's #41 brown in a Noodler flex pen, 1/2 the page without flex and the 2nd half flexing, that has never dried. I wrote that page probably 3+ weeks ago. I didn't have any blotter paper, but put a cheap sheet of notebook paper in that spot overnight, left the BnR open to that page for 3 days even. It will still smear if you touch it.

 

I also used PR sherwood green, which I LOVED the color of, in a pen with a medium nib and it took 2-3 days with the notebook open to dry completely.

 

I tried diluting both of those inks, which helped slightly, but then the colors just didn't look good to me.

 

I've had good luck with Waterman Florida blue, Pilot Kon-Peki, Diamine emerald, Noodler's Marine Green (takes a few minutes to dry), Noodler's Tiananmen, and Noodler's 5 O' Clock Shadow. So far those are the only inks I've used in the BnR, mostly with M and B nibs.

 

So it seems like anything saturated will take some time to dry, IME.

[Chrontius]

I use a five-by-eight as a lab notebook with Noodler's Legal Lapis out of a dryish Hero 001, and it's working like a charm now that the pen is working reliably. Also regularly use Montblanc Midnight Blue (iron gall) and Sheaffer Turquoise as a highlight color, all with great results. The notebook's only a couple months old from Orifice Depot, too. My only complaint was paying $8 for it when it turned out that the Rhodia notebook I bought for the task was in fact not delayed in the shipping process, so I didn't actually need the BnR hardback.

 

That said, the BnR with a fountain pen is awfully classy compared to the rest of my classmates' scrawlings, and much more legible, too. :roflmho:

[KrazyIvan]

I bought my first Black n' Red notebook today. I had seen the wire bound versions that my local Wal-mart aka Wally World carries but I never got one. The wire bound version just turns me off. I had to go to Kinko's today to have some large prints made and that's when I saw the roughly 8.5"x5.5" hard bound version. I ran my fingers across the pages and it felt pretty smooth and the thickness seemed like what I prefer. I bought it. I have not tried a full fountain pen test of the paper but it has passed my initial test. No bleed or feathering! Nice. I am going to have to find more of these.

[Soundsider]

I work in an office heavily influenced by European engineers, and note taking in the casebound A5 size is apparently a rite of passage during college. As such, I've picked up the habit and it has allowed me to have fun varying my pens and inks, adding a bit of interest to the work day. I try to switch pens between meetings, making it easy to separate entries. The paper is very smooth with a high hardwood furnish (short, uniform fibers when torn). There is just enough clay and filler to allow the nib to glide, with sufficient tooth to maintain good feedback for control. (Too much clay makes a sheet slick, like writing on glass.) I've used wet inks with both flex and broad italic nibs, and have had no problem with feathering or bleed-through. I can agree with the comments on drying time...have had some smudging and Rohrshach pickup (ink printing mirror image to the opposite page when I close the notebook) but have learned to manage this when using slow-drying inks like my favorite Noodler's red-black in a juicy nib. Little problem with curl or rippling, a big plus in humid southern summers.

 

I haven't gone through enough of these notebooks to comment on consistency, but so far have been very favorably impressed as a daily writer.

[dannyA]

I was not a notebook lover before I seen doodle diaries. I had bought this Flowing Hair - Pink Diary for my wife on hand writing day. She liked the diary a lot.

 

[titrisol]

I was given one of this at work.... WOW!

Waterman Ink, Monteverde Ink, and Pelikan Ink just flow nicely and effortlesly

No bleed thourgh and no feedbcak even on al old Waterman pen which is a bit quirky

[chromantic]

I came here to sing the praises of Black n' Red paper, only to find this resurrected old thread right here on the first page of this forum.

 

I've always kept a cheap little spiral memo pad/book on my computer desk (where I spend 95% of my non-sleeping time) for notes and stuff, so when I got into FPs and inks this year, I naturally used it to try out the new inks I bought. I wondered why the inks often didn't look very like the scans in the reviews here on FPN. I soon realized the cheap paper probably had a lot to do with that so I switched to a little Strathmore Sketch pad (intended for dry media) for my ink testing because the paper is heavier, with a harder surface, and very white. The color fidelity is much improved, though I must say some show-through is still a problem with many inks.

 

About six weeks ago, I stumbled across a Black n' Red 8 1/2 x 6 spiral Poly at Walmart; the name kind of rang a bell so I bought it but it's just been sitting here until today, when I decided to try it out.

 

Wow, what a difference nice, good-quality paper makes! Color fidelity is even better than the Strathmore - I'm finally seeing the dark red/orange of KWZI Grapefruit that I bought it for (if I write slowly with the fine nib; if I write fast, it's still just orange), for example. And the shading that you see in wet ink as it lays down but ends up disappearing as the ink gets absorbed on cheap paper, that shading pretty much stays on this stuff (for inks that do shading), with Bleu Pervenche showing the most obvious improvement in that regard. (I'll be curious to see if the sheen appears on the Bookbinder's Red-Belly Black I just ordered; I would think it likely.) Drying time is certainly longer; I did have some problems with smearing when I wasn't paying attention.

 

Best of all, though, I see no show-through at all - none, nada - even on problem inks like Pervence or Levenger Claret. Yay! I've gone ahead and ordered a couple of the 4 1/2 x 6 spirals to keep on the desk to use as my new test logs.

 

Haven't really given much thought to paper before now because I really only write in my little memo books at home or on cheap copier paper at work and that probably won't change but at least now I can see what the inks are actually supposed to look like.

[rderieux]

I have tried and tried, but I have only found one Noodlers ink that has a decent dry time on BlacknRed notebooks (Bad Green Gator on a medium Pilot Metro nib.I thought that Borealis Black was working, then noticed that it would smear also.

 

I have switched to Chesterfield/Diamine ink and dry time issues are fixed.l