Good Legal Pads That Are Fountain Pen Friendly

[amberleadavis]

5 hours ago, txoko said:

I see that "Legal size" is all over the place.  I am looking for fountain pen friendly 8 1/2" x 14" paper.  So far without success.  Does anyone know if such is available any more?  I have some very old stuff that is at least fountain pen reasonable, unlike the horrid legal pads that seem to predominate, but it is a few decades old and I will be using it up in the next several months as I am no longer going to use it parsimoniously as though it were greater than it is.  It is a size I like and would love to find a quality replacement.  Especially now that I have discovered the existence of fantastic papers, but in smaller sizes.

Thanks for any advice.

 

OH, in that case, look on places like Offer Up for someone closing out their old office.  The vintage paper is often FP friendly.

[txoko]

Thank you very much for that information.

BTW, I absolutely love your artwork!

[amberleadavis]

20 minutes ago, txoko said:

Thank you very much for that information.

BTW, I absolutely love your artwork!

 

 

OH thank you!  I'm not much of an artist, but I sure love to doodle with fountain pens, and if you buy a water brush, you can look very artistic!

[SamChevre]

On 9/21/2021 at 8:25 AM, SamChevre said:

I'm here to third the recommendation of Mintra legal pads.  I got a 6-pack of them as the cheap Staples notebooks supplied by my office were not FP-friendly at all (bleed-through, ink spreading even with dry pens, scratchy-feeling).

 

The Mintra pads are really nice.  No bleed-through or blurring, even with a fairly wet Nemosine stub and Pilot Iroshizuku kon-peki; a hint of shading with that pen/ink combo.  Wonderfully smooth, even with my EF and Pelikan Fount India.

 

I'm updating this to highlight: the really nice Mintra pads are the Mintra Premium.  The Mintra Basic are OK, but the premium are MUCH better paper--well worth the extra $0.50 a pad.  You can identify them by the binding strip: the Basic have a smooth strip, the Premium have a bumpy pattern vaguely like lizardskin.

[stuartk]

On 7/19/2022 at 4:14 PM, SamChevre said:

 

I'm updating this to highlight: the really nice Mintra pads are the Mintra Premium.  The Mintra Basic are OK, but the premium are MUCH better paper--well worth the extra $0.50 a pad.  You can identify them by the binding strip: the Basic have a smooth strip, the Premium have a bumpy pattern vaguely like lizardskin.

 

I agree. 🙂

 

I was using the Staples Sustainable Earth Sugarcane pads, mostly in white with the brown medium lines. I also had some of these in canary, but don't use those very often. They aren't actually "legal" pads I suppose, because I prefer the 8.5" x 11" size rather than 8.5" x 14".

 

I had a stock of the Staples pads, but I had come close to using them up, so I started looking for something to replace them. I tried a few different things, including ones from and Clairfontaine and also tried a notebook from Moleskine. I had tried some other pads from Amazon, but then I ran across the Mintra pads and tried some of those.

 

I do prefer the Premium Mintra pads over the Basic ones. My current favorite is the white with fine lines. I do also have some of the canary ones with fine lines too.

 

Unlike the Staples Sugarcane pads, I think the Mintra ones aren't quite as smooth to write on. However, they're much more resistant to ink bleeding through to other side or just showing on the other side. The Mintra paper is thicker and has a better feel to it when you tear off a sheet. The Staples Sugarcane paper feels kind of flimsy in comparison.

 

I do also have a number of Clairfontaine notebooks that I use for various things, but for regular notes and scribblings, especially for work, I like the Mintra pads. I've stocked-up on them and hope I can keep using them for a good long time.

 

 

[amberleadavis]

I've been using the Amazon basics pads at work. Surprisingly, they have been FP-friendly.

Here are some other pad papers.

 

 

[Penguincollector]

They’re a bit spendy at $10 per pad, but Papaya legal pads are beautiful, and handle FP inks like a champ. They might be a bit much for some folks, but I bought them at least 10 years ago and they are durable and the coated paper feels thick.  I took pictures of different inks and nib widths on it and the back of the page after writing.

Papaya Legal Pads

[Prof Drew]

Hi @boulderchips and @SamChevre, I just wanted to thank you both for recommending MIntra pads. I was looking for FP friendly pads that were affordable, and I've been very pleased with them since. I wasn't a FPN member some years ago, but remember searching for this very question and finding this forum. Thanks again for sharing this as it is not easy to find in the US.