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Productive Luddite Notebooks - Any Reviews?


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Hey all you brilliant paper fanatics out there...

Has anyone tried the notebooks by the Productive Luddite that are listed on amazon?

 

I would like to know more about them before I drop money on them.

You all seem to be the best place in the world for info on paper, inks, pens, and the like...

 

Any help would be appreciated.

Paper quality - I do love my fountain pens, but I also use gel pens and different hardnesses of pencil leads
so bleed through information would be great to have

Paper weight estimate - not that I am that picky, but...

Line width - for the paper with lines, I admit I do tend towards 6.5 to 6 mm line widths

Grid or Dot width for the notebooks with those features, these have their place

Binding type - perfect, thread, etc

 

They look interesting, and I like the set-up for some of them, particularly the index and tagging concept.

 

Thanks

Kiryan

Edited by Kiryan
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Not familiar with these, so I took a quick look on Amazon. I like the fact that they have a lot of pages. But for me the size doesn't work quite right for journals -- the regular ones (the 800 page jobs) are bigger that I want and the "little" ones (the 500 page ones) are a bit too small (I prefer 5"x7" or 6"x8 for my morning pages journals). There doesn't seem to be -- although admittedly I only skimmed the selection) anything in-between that doesn't also have stuff that I don't want/need.

Oh wait: they have "midsize" ones (but only 100 pages).

I also found their website: productiveluddite.com and they look as if they have some amusing stuff. Just not what I want for a daily journal.... :(

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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Thank you for taking a look...

Hopefully someone who has had hands on these is out there.

 

I agree about size. 500 pages does seem extreme.

I have been using Leuchtturm 1917 A5

Recently playyed with a couple of Nakabayashi A4 - and I liked the paper and the 6mm lines, as well as the pseudo-french ruling.

I found the Japanese A4 to not quite suit my needs.

 

So I have been investigating B5 paper lately. These looked to be in that range. I am trying out the slightly wider page format over the A5 format. I have Apica B5 in the 30 page range, so the 100 or 500 page range would serve a different purpose in my world.

I am a research scientist, so I am constantly making notes to myself, working through ideas for projects, classes, etc.

 

I also have a couple of Picadilly cahir in the B5 size. Line width is good, but I like the smoother paper of the Apica better than the slightly toothier Picadilly.

 

I admit I am still a bit on the wall. I have used the A5 size for nearly 25 years, at least, and like the compact size but not the narrow page. Now that journals can be had with dots, I know I have the option of turning them 90 degrees to get the wider page but, then, it is a bit too wide.

 

Its like the perfect satchel... the perfect journal does not exist, but part of the fun is looking and trying out other things....

 

So any thoughts on these humourous notebooks from Productive Luddite would be appreciated. The price seems right.

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Thank you for taking a look...

Hopefully someone who has had hands on these is out there.

 

I agree about size. 500 pages does seem extreme.

Oh, I would LOVE to have a journal that had 500 pages -- I'd have to buy fewer of them (when you write 3 pages a day, it's hard to not go through several per year; . No, it what the 4 x 6 part that I was being grumpy about. If they'd had a 5 x 7 or 6 x 8 with that many pages (and be moderately FP friendly) it would be awesome (and even more so at 800 pages, which would be ~2/3 of a year of entries).

Although I used to use ones with handmade paper from Nepal that were pretty but the feathering and spread was bad (back then I was using Parker cartridge pens with Quink Permanent Blue).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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Ruth, you sound like you'd be the perfect candidate for the Seven Seas journals, what with being 480 *page* (240 sheets) of Tomoe River....

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Ruth, you sound like you'd be the perfect candidate for the Seven Seas journals, what with being 480 *page* (240 sheets) of Tomoe River....

I looked them up online. They seem to be out of stock at the moment. They also seem to be a little more expensive than I want to pay for a journal. OTOH, it IS Tomoe River paper. :thumbup:

I have a couple of notepads made up by a guy in my local pen club and the paper is really nice -- but I'm not sure but what there was a fair amount of show through, simply because the paper is so much thinner than something like Rhodia.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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I looked them up online. They seem to be out of stock at the moment. They also seem to be a little more expensive than I want to pay for a journal. OTOH, it IS Tomoe River paper. :thumbup:

I have a couple of notepads made up by a guy in my local pen club and the paper is really nice -- but I'm not sure but what there was a fair amount of show through, simply because the paper is so much thinner than something like Rhodia.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

So, you were able to find out that the Productive Luddite notebooks use Tomoe River Paper?

 

Could you send the link?

 

Kiryan

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Tomoe River? I do not think so.

 

I have several of their storyboard and screenplay notebooks. The paper is nothing special, it's just paper, not very good, not terrible. We use super fine water-based felt tips but far prefer regular ol' pencils to do our sketches in the storyboard panels. Fountain pens or solvent-based felt tips bleed and feather and are not much fun; the paper tends to draw ink quickly from the nibs. However, I do not know if Luddite use different paper stocks for their many products. I rather doubt it but have no personal experience.

 

You can also search youtube for a couple of Luddite notebook clips. This lady may make you nuts but you asked:

I ride a recumbent, I play go, I use Macintosh so of course I use a fountain pen.

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from the Luddite website (ne mention of paper source at all, if it was Tomoe River, they'd be shouting it, I think, unless they're weirdly xenophobic):

Every Productive Luddite notebook sold in the US is made PROUDLY in the US. Many notebooks (ahem, Moleskine) are made in China. We think that sucks. Off-shoring dramatically increases the environmental cost of a notebook. The off-shore notebooks may be cheap, but the planet-cost is high. Be manufacturing locally, we support workers here in the US. By manufacturing locally, we eliminate all of the off-shore cross-ocean shipping costs. By manufacturing locally, we produce our books in accordance with some of the world's best worker safety and environmental legistlation, which cannot be said for off-shore notebook and journal manufacturers.

 

Acting locally is important to us. That's why every notebook sold in Europe is made in Europe. Same deal. It's better for people and for the planet.

I ride a recumbent, I play go, I use Macintosh so of course I use a fountain pen.

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Found this easily on, what was it? Oh, yeah, google! Note the reveiwer says the paper stocks vary between products.

 

http://www.wellappointeddesk.com/2014/10/review-productive-luddite-notebooks-part-1/

 

There is some bleeding with fountain pens on the paper but rollerballs, ballpoints, pencils and gel pens all performed well. The paper is thick enough that with non-fountain pens, there was no show through on the reverse side of the page…I use a lot of fine and exra fine nibbed fountain pens so you can see that the ink does spread. As cool as the planning calendar is, this notebook definitely requires a specific set of writing tools for best results. I think I’ll pair it long-term with one of my multi-color gel pens like the Zebra Prefill or Uni Style-Fit so I have lots of color options and no need to worry about bleed, show through or squishy-looking writing. I might assign specific colors to specific sorts of tasks: blue for work, green for blog, red for home, etc…I tested most of the various paper styles. What I found quite exciting is that the paper was quite fountain pen friendly. I had no issues with bleeding, feathering or show through with any of the pens I tested. The paper did seem like it was slightly heavier than the white stock in the New Daily Planner so maybe that little extra weight made it epically more fountain pen friendly?

I ride a recumbent, I play go, I use Macintosh so of course I use a fountain pen.

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I looked them up online. They seem to be out of stock at the moment. They also seem to be a little more expensive than I want to pay for a journal. OTOH, it IS Tomoe River paper. :thumbup:

I have a couple of notepads made up by a guy in my local pen club and the paper is really nice -- but I'm not sure but what there was a fair amount of show through, simply because the paper is so much thinner than something like Rhodia.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

I was wondering, because when Ruth mentioned the Tomoe River paper in this thread I would have thought the cost would have been extremely high for the page count.

 

Hence the reason I asked for a verification.

 

I suspected that the paper might not be the quality that I want for fountain pen use.

 

Thank you all for your input into this query and the 'interesting?' video... lol

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  • 3 weeks later...

Yes, I would need three more lifetimes. Not to mention I am AADD, so I would actually become bored really early on. :lticaptd: As for this woman, she is kind of annoying, doing a review, while promising a review in the future. Annoying and she is talking a mile a minute, while saying she is not reviewing and just wanted us to know what she thinks about her unboxing. Don't think I will wait on baited breath for the actual review. Plugging Amazon.com also in the same breath. Riv Gauche!

Edited by fountainpenlady

Ea Alis Volat Propiis, per/Repletus Fontis Calamus!
She Flies by Her Own Wings, with filled Fountain Pen

 

Delta DolceVita, F-C Intrinsic 02, Pelikan M800 red/black striation, Bexley ATB Strawberry Swirl, Red Jinhao 159, Platinum 3776 Bourgogne. :wub:

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A clarification to my previous post. The comment about Tomoe River paper was in response to the comment about the Seven Seas journals -- NOT the Productive Luddite journals.

In the meantime, I just pulled the lever for some 300 page journals from Miquelrius. I had tried one of their journals when I picked it up at Bob Slate Stationers up in the Boston area over the Christmas holiday (thanks to whoever tipped me off to Bob Slate's). I liked the 200 page one well enough to get a number of the 300 page ones. I had to get ones with lined pages because they were out of the blank ones (and also got a couple of 6 subject spiral bound ones with graph paper for the husband because he likes those -- they used to carry mixed ones at B&N (some blank, some lined & some graph paper all in the same notebook, but those didn't seem to be listed on the Miquelrius-USA website.

As for the video link, seeing those big Productive Luddite journals makes me sort of overwhelmed. I would want one that wasn't full sized like that one (but would like one that was maybe 6" x 8" if it was that thick and had FP friendly paper. Also, agree that the woman in the video is sort of annoying (is she in her bathrobe?).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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Also, agree that the woman in the video is sort of annoying (is she in her bathrobe?).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

A beefy blue bathrobe. Part of it for me is the prelude to a review. She could have let us see her open the box, not tell us while not showing the box it came in. Yet, she keeps referring to it and the packaging. What was the point of reading an exerpt from the book they sent her? She is in effect giving a review, while promising a review. What more is there for her to say about it? She has shown it. She continues to say stuff about it; first impressions, but she is saying too much for someone who keeps teasing about giving an additonal, I guess more thorough or substantial review. Is she going to reiterrate and ruminate on each page of the journal? That is about all she can do at this point to waste more time in giving us another review of this item.

Unless she was doing a shampoo, facial, makeup before going out into the world, or hair video the robe was a bit too informal in my less than humble opinion. :lticaptd:

Edited by fountainpenlady

Ea Alis Volat Propiis, per/Repletus Fontis Calamus!
She Flies by Her Own Wings, with filled Fountain Pen

 

Delta DolceVita, F-C Intrinsic 02, Pelikan M800 red/black striation, Bexley ATB Strawberry Swirl, Red Jinhao 159, Platinum 3776 Bourgogne. :wub:

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  • 2 weeks later...

I did try warn you. :)

 

On

N YouTube you can be not only annoying

G, you Can be thoroughly nauseating.

I ride a recumbent, I play go, I use Macintosh so of course I use a fountain pen.

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