Performance On Regular Paper

[DaveyWonder]

I work for “the government” and consequently am forced to write on cheap copy paper a lot. I agree with Sexton that Lamy inks feather a lot on copy paper. My daily carry is a British Parker 51 with a fine nib. I experimented with a lot of inks and found that Montblanc ink is great on cheap paper because it is somewhat “dry.” Nonfeathering and still flows very nicely. However it is not friendly to many of my pens. Iroshizuku does well, but “spreads” instead of feathering. As always, YMMV.

[dcwaites]

Price and Quality of office paper have no bearing on the paper's FP friendliness.

 

A few years ago my employer bought a number of high end Fuji Xerox printers. Each printer was left with a couple of packs of paper, different in each case. I was able to sample a number of different papers that would cost from $5/ream up to over $20, with different brightnesses and smoothness. The absolute BEST paper was one of the $5 packs, which I then bought a couple of reams for myself at home. Sadly, it is no longer made.

The smoother, brighter, more expensive papers all either spread, or feathered, or bled with fountain pen inks, or all three at once for one of them. It was great with laser toner, but with ink it just acted like toilet paper.

 

Unfortunately, because each market has different office papers available, it is difficult to say "Buy XX brand paper", because you can be sure it is only available in your country, and might not be available next year anyway.

 

For me, I have determined that a really dryish fine-nibbed pen, with Sheaffer Skrip, Pelikan 4001 or Noodler's Black (sadly not any other Noodler's) ink will work on all but the worst of papers. On those, I use my XF Parker 51 with Sailor Kiwaguro Nano-Carbon ink.

[senzen]

Price and Quality of office paper have no bearing on the paper's FP friendliness.

 

 

My interpretations is that the best and most expensive general use paper is not necessarily the best for fountain pens, so you can't take the usual shortcut, spend more and expect it to work; there are unexpectedly decent cheap options, but local availability might not work for everyone, since it's a heavy item to transport, as you point out.

 

My original intention was to clarify this for those starting with fountain pens and might find it frustrating; if someone wants to try it out without much financial risk, the Metropolitan and readily available HP 32 lbs seems like a safe starting point, but it's not the only option.

[dcwaites]

 

My interpretations is that the best and most expensive general use paper is not necessarily the best for fountain pens, so you can't take the usual shortcut, spend more and expect it to work; there are unexpectedly decent cheap options, but local availability might not work for everyone, since it's a heavy item to transport, as you point out.

 

My original intention was to clarify this for those starting with fountain pens and might find it frustrating; if someone wants to try it out without much financial risk, the Metropolitan and readily available HP 32 lbs seems like a safe starting point, but it's not the only option.

 

Yes, the only way to find out if any particular paper is FP friendly is to actually try it. For free if possible.

 

The problem with recommending any particular paper is that it may only be available in your location. HP 32lb paper is only available in the US.

Its equivalent in Australia would be Reflex Ultra.

What we need is a table of country and best general purpose office paper that is cheap and behaves well with FPs.

[ReadyFireAim]

I was messing around with a bunch of parts and managed another pen that can write on newspaper.

 

Creaper with a FPR EF nib (non-flex) & the original Creaper ebonite feed.

Surprise - Surprise!

 

Dang thing works great & won't upset me much when it gets stolen.

Edited February 9, 2018 by Nail-Bender

[minddance]

I am not sure if your 'regular' paper is absorbent or not, because mine isn't, and it is, for me, normally, 70-80gsm white copier paper. I find many pens and inks these days tend to err on the safer and conservative side, i.e. dry to very dry out of the box. And this is the reason that brought me to this forum, to open the tines, to add Kodak Photoflo etc, everything in the direction of a reasonably wet/normal writing experience.

 

My regular papers and not smooth, normally grainy, and this i feel, greatly reduces the contact between nib and the paper. My lines genrally turn out finer amd dryer as a result, and inks fainter than I like.

 

What did not work for me might be exactly what might float your boat, Kaweco sport, Pilot Steel nibs, Platinum 3776, TWSBIs, Sailors.

 

Also, paired with Pilot and Iroshizuku inks, they would not feather or bleedthrough. Diamine Florida Blue, China Blue, Indigo, Grey, Umber, behave very well indeed. Rohrer and Klingner Scabiosa and Sepia, Waterman Serenity Blue are real dry inks for me, and if you paired them in above mentioned pens, they might perform well on regular papers. They made me very unhappy on Rhodia and my copier papers, not because they bleedthrough or feather, but quite the contrary, they don't even write!

[RoyalBlueNotebooks]

Isn't smoothness of not-smooth paper dependent more on the ink rather than the nib?

 

Anyway, for Italian fountain pen users reading this:

 

Blasetti, Pigna and Navigator copy paper: the only inks that don't bleedthrough and feather badly so far are Pelikan 4001 Blau-Schwarz and Pelikan 4001 Brillant-Rot. The other Pelikan 4001 inks I own show bleedthrough. All the Diamine inks I own show bleedthrough and feathering. Of course, the finer you go with the nib the less chance you have of feathering and bleedthrough and the less smooth your writing feel will be.

 

All in all, go to the supermarket, touch the paper of the notebook you want to buy if it's not a reknown brand, the more lucid and coated the paper, the more resistant to bleedthrough. Just a general rule of thumb, not a dogma. There will be exceptions.