Engineering Paper?

[Inkedinker]

Found this at the local Goodwill. The engineering bundle sells for like $12 for 100 sheets and my basic Amazon and google search hasn't turned up any of this style of notebook.

 

Anybody have any experience with these??

[Kublai Khan]

I've used Staedtler sheets before, and Tops, a cheaper brand. Not the notebook, but loose sheets. Was available at Office Depot / Max. But neither brand did well with any kind of fountain pen ink - Staedtler was by far the better of the two. Did most of my work using pencils and the occasional use of a gel pen. Just google 'Staedtler Engineering Pad'.

Edited October 28, 2016 by fpnnat0

[WayTooManyHobbies]

I don't have experience with either of those papers, but they are cheap enough to just try them.

 

The current Staedtler paper is very poor for fountain pens, and not much better for anything else. It has always been thin, which was a feature, but it is also quite absorbent.

 

The best engineering paper I've ever used is sold in pads by Edward Tufte (who is pretty interesting in his own right). It is expensive, but wonderful to use. You can find it at https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters, at the bottom of the page.

[LizEF]

I saw the one on the left on Amazon just yesterday...

[Inkedinker]

Appreciate the feed back. I'll mess around with a sheet and if they disappoint, I'm sure I can use these for something else. But yeah for the price I paid, they were too cheap to pass up.

[Drone]

When you use engineering paper you are supposed to write on the "back" side of the paper with the inked grid down. The grid shows through the semi-translucent paper and acts as a guide. A proper engineering pad is made this way and confuses many first-time users. Traditional engineering paper is tinted green with a green grid. Orange/tan tinted paper with an orange/tan grid is also common. As photo copiers became available, white engineering paper with a "copy-proof" baby blue grid appeared on the market.

 

Engineering paper typically has the grid printed to the edge of the paper, but versions exist with a printed border bearing tick-marks at the major grid divisions between which the user can write-in locater indices. The locater indices typically run 0,1,2,.. etc. left-to-right in the top and bottom borders, and a,b,c,... etc. running top-to-bottom in the left and right borders. Like proper laboratory notebooks, good engineering paper should be archive-quality acid-free (denoted by the industry-standard Infinity symbol) - and is not cheap.