paper comparisons

[wejohns]

Greetings!

 

A friend sent me a letter demonstrating various flexible nibs in fountain pens. I was delighted to see what he had and was equally impressed with the paper he used. It demonstrated absolutely no feathering and the colors were vibrant. It was a very smooth, almost glossy quadrille--I'll have to write and find out what it was. This got me thinking about paper, what is the best for daily writing and penmanship practice? I quick review of one web site suggested Hammermill Premium laser printer paper, another suggested Kodak Brite white. I live in a small town in the middle of nowhere and wanted to find a good paper I could find locally that wasn't too expensive. I wandered off to Staples and Office Depot, collected a mess of papers and did some testing. I started off using 5 different fountain pens with 3 inks, a Sheaffers rblack, a Waterman black and a Waterman blue. I ended up using several pens including a Hero 100 with a firm, very fine and smooth writing nib and a Montblanc medium that throws a lot of ink.

 

I tried to evaluate feathering of ink line and intensity of color. All testing is subjective, but to look at feathering, I did use a pretty strong magnifying lens. Ranking as follows: color intensity 5 high 1 low and is a subjective evaluation of the depth of the black and the richness of the blue, feathering 0 to 5 with 0 being no feathering at all and 5 newspaper. Results:

 

 

paper..........................................feathering.................color intensity

 

Office Max copy paper 20#.......................3......................................3

Office Max Brite white Premium copy.........2+....................................3

Mead Neatbook Quadrille..........................3......................................2

Crane Kid finish 100% cotton....................1......................................3

Docket Gold premium writing pad..............1......................................4

OD 65# parchment CC..............................1......................................4

OD 65# bright white CC............................1......................................4

OD 80# gloss text CC...............................0......................................5

OD Mat presentation CC............................1......................................5

Kodak Brite White 24#..............................1......................................4

OD Color Laser printer paper.....................2......................................4

Hammermill Premium laser.........................4......................................3

 

 

 

*OD = Office Depot. CC = copy center. I picked a mess of papers from their copy center selection. These are not available in the standard reams. I paid $0.05/sheet.

 

Note that the Cranes Kid finish paper did not produce a "feather" with the ink, but because the paper has a fairly deep texture the pen sorts glided over the tops of the texture and at times did not fill in the low spots producing a line edge that was not smooth.

 

The Docket Gold premium is available as a legal sized pad.

 

Please remember, these are subjective. The quality of the ink and the flow of the nib will influence these results, but they are my best guess. Also, these tests are on a single sheet of paper, variation between production runs will possibly produce different results.

 

What I learned. The color intensity is surprising for the various inks/papers. The glossy paper from Office Depot was awesome stuff. The blacks were unambiguous, in-your-face black and the blue rich and deep and absolutely no feathering. I was impressed with how the various nibs worked with each paper. The firm fine nib of the Hero100 pen I used struggled on the rougher papers and glided effortlessly over the smooth papers. The best buy is the Kodak Brite White at $5.39 a ream at Staples. I am sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that different inks and nibs will produce different results. I saw differences between the Waterman black and Waterman Florida blue.

 

AS ALWAYS YMMV. Someone with copious time on their hands might try to reproduce this effort, expand the data base and hopefully we can compare results.

 

Cheers,

 

Bill J

[jbb]

Thanks for a great report. I have been finding that paper/pen compatibility is a huge, sometimes overlooked, factor in how nicely a pen writes. Some of the high cotton content papers are perfect for getting a shaded effect with a dip pen or ultra flexy fp but just awful for a smooth writing fountain pen.

[nimrod]

Thanks for posting this!