In Paper Heaven 完全

[SamCapote]

Karen, I would not have thought it possible to get this thin of paper through a desktop printer. Do you have a more deluxe HP that can handle these sheets without jamming, and only pulling a single sheet? I have yet to reach for what I think is a single sheet, and it always turns out to be 2 or 3 sheets once I separate more carefully.

 

That is the weirdest thing that your paper was not the standard A4 size.

[jsolares]

Karen, I would not have thought it possible to get this thin of paper through a desktop printer. Do you have a more deluxe HP that can handle these sheets without jamming, and only pulling a single sheet? I have yet to reach for what I think is a single sheet, and it always turns out to be 2 or 3 sheets once I separate more carefully.

 

That is the weirdest thing that your paper was not the standard A4 size.

 

A top feeder would make it easier, not sure if HP makes any though, canon does make a lot of them.

Although i remember printing on tracing paper but not sure how thin it was or how thinner this one is.

 

Also have you made sure they aren't stuck together before putting them on the printer? with "old" photocopiers and laser printers i remember "aerating" a ream of paper so it wouldn't eat two at a time, specially when taking them out of the box.

[Karen Traviss]

Karen, I would not have thought it possible to get this thin of paper through a desktop printer. Do you have a more deluxe HP that can handle these sheets without jamming, and only pulling a single sheet? I have yet to reach for what I think is a single sheet, and it always turns out to be 2 or 3 sheets once I separate more carefully.

 

That is the weirdest thing that your paper was not the standard A4 size.

 

Oh, it can handle 50 gsm just fine. If I trim the paper to A4 manually, it prints perfectly -- no jamming, no dragging through multiple sheets, no slipping or smearing. But that's one or two sheets at a time. (And I regularly print two-sided on 50 gsm bank or layout paper on the same printer. twenty or thirty sheets at a time -- no problem. It's an amazingly good printer.) If you want to do a big run of sheets -- in my case, printing up storyboard sheets or dot grids -- then the alignment has to be spot on, and manual trimming doesn't achieve that. With such thin paper, the show-through means you need the lines or dots absolutely aligned on both sides (creating the template was the hard bit) and every edge has to be cut exactly square, or the lines/ dots get skewed.

 

But this isn't a case of the printer struggling with the actual paper. It doesn't even try to feed it in. When I hit print, I get an error message that the feed tray isn't set up for that paper size. The paper isn't drawn into the roller at all -- the printer must have some sensor that tells it not to even bother, possibly because there isn't enough of a margin of error. The untrimmed width is pretty well the full width of the feed opening. My WP software allows for custom size print set-up and even some Japanese standard sizes, but there's something about the way the feed tray operates that stops it. The simplest thing is getting the stationer to trim it by machine for me. Well, it's simpler than wrestling with the HP software, which might not even prove possible in the end. There seems to be no option for the feed tray settings. It would probably work fine on an A3 printer, but I can't justify an extra printer just to get around one problem.

 

I think someone else noted that the paper isn't standard A4 -- it's about 31x 22 cm.

[Karen Traviss]

 

A top feeder would make it easier, not sure if HP makes any though, canon does make a lot of them.

Although i remember printing on tracing paper but not sure how thin it was or how thinner this one is.

 

Also have you made sure they aren't stuck together before putting them on the printer? with "old" photocopiers and laser printers i remember "aerating" a ream of paper so it wouldn't eat two at a time, specially when taking them out of the box.

 

It's none of those issues. No problem with the printer with 50 gsm paper, which I use all the time. It's a vertical feed, too. It's about the tray settings, which I can't alter. But I want the pages as standard A4 anyway, because all my systems (both hard copy and software) are built around that.

[SamCapote]

Karen, I would not have thought it possible to get this thin of paper through a desktop printer. Do you have a more deluxe HP that can handle these sheets without jamming, and only pulling a single sheet? I have yet to reach for what I think is a single sheet, and it always turns out to be 2 or 3 sheets once I separate more carefully.

 

That is the weirdest thing that your paper was not the standard A4 size.

 

Oh, it can handle 50 gsm just fine. If I trim the paper to A4 manually, it prints perfectly -- no jamming, no dragging through multiple sheets, no slipping or smearing. But that's one or two sheets at a time. (And I regularly print two-sided on 50 gsm bank or layout paper on the same printer. twenty or thirty sheets at a time -- no problem. It's an amazingly good printer.) If you want to do a big run of sheets -- in my case, printing up storyboard sheets or dot grids -- then the alignment has to be spot on, and manual trimming doesn't achieve that. With such thin paper, the show-through means you need the lines or dots absolutely aligned on both sides (creating the template was the hard bit) and every edge has to be cut exactly square, or the lines/ dots get skewed.

 

But this isn't a case of the printer struggling with the actual paper. It doesn't even try to feed it in. When I hit print, I get an error message that the feed tray isn't set up for that paper size. The paper isn't drawn into the roller at all -- the printer must have some sensor that tells it not to even bother, possibly because there isn't enough of a margin of error. The untrimmed width is pretty well the full width of the feed opening. My WP software allows for custom size print set-up and even some Japanese standard sizes, but there's something about the way the feed tray operates that stops it. The simplest thing is getting the stationer to trim it by machine for me. Well, it's simpler than wrestling with the HP software, which might not even prove possible in the end. There seems to be no option for the feed tray settings. It would probably work fine on an A3 printer, but I can't justify an extra printer just to get around one problem.

 

I think someone else noted that the paper isn't standard A4 -- it's about 31x 22 cm.

 

That's what is strange, as I posted in OP, my 4000 sheets arrived at the exact A4 specification of 21cm x 29.7cm. It doesn't make sense why they would vary the size like that and advertise it as A4. They are a big paper company in Japan.

 

Which HP printer model do you use for this? I have a variety of printers, but just didn't think of trying to print on this paper.

[Karen Traviss]

That's what is strange, as I posted in OP, my 4000 sheets arrived at the exact A4 specification of 21cm x 29.7cm. It doesn't make sense why they would vary the size like that and advertise it as A4. They are a big paper company in Japan.

 

Which HP printer model do you use for this? I have a variety of printers, but just didn't think of trying to print on this paper.

 

Between posts, I had an idea. I lied to the printer. It's not kind, but it worked. I set it to US legal size rather than the exact custom dimensions, and it worked perfectly. I still need the paper cut to A4 because the Midori refill height is identical to A4 width, but this does mean that I can print off a batch of formatted paper before I trim it, which solves the problem. It looks like it was a software thing, that the HP utility doesn't like what the WP app is telling it.

 

They actually give the size on the Rakuten page in the drop-down options menu -- "A4 novi(219x310mm)" -- and that's not A4. So I knew it was going to be oversize. If you're used to American legal size, though, that might not strike you immediately. I tend to forget how different the sizes are until I get hard copy from a publisher and try to file it with A4 sheets.

 

The printer is a HP Deskjet 3050A. Nothing fancy. I got it because it was wireless and was proven to play nicely with the devices I had. I've only ever bought four printers in my life and they were all HPs -- they become obsolete before they wear out. Although I did manage to break one once and decided to replace it with an upgrade rather than glue the bits back together. Otherwise I'm pretty sure it would still be going strong now.

[marcomillions]

Oh, good catch, Karen with the "A4(novi)." I remember seeing that but paying it no mind. "A4 is A4, an international standard," I said to myself, and that was that. But it explains two anomalies I'd noticed.

 

(1) I have a cheap HP printer too, and I ran off a small trial run of some half-sheet stationery on the white Tomoe River. I formatted the run as 2-up on an A4 sheet, ready to cut the sheets later. I wondered fleetingly whether the printer would have trouble picking up the sheets since they were so thin. But nope. They got picked up just fine. (Now I realized they shouldn't have been. You'll see.) The problem came when I cut them down to A5 and found . . . I had two sheets of different widths! Say what?? Well, it's no problem evening up the widths of the cut sheets. But then I look at the two sheets and see that, while the letterhead is where it's supposed to be on the left-hand sheet, it's way off-center on the right. OK. No big problem to tweak the original design, but what's going on? Your discovery that these sheets are 310 mm long instead of 297 will explain that.

 

(2) Anomaly number two is Why did my printer pick the sheets up without problem? That was two pieces of dumb luck, which are also explained by your noticing the "novi." Since I was doing only a small number of sheets, without thinking, I laid them in on top of some US Letter sized paper already in the paper feed slot. Because they weren't being held in the paper guides, and so were held much more loosely, the printer had no problem picking them up a sheet at a time. (Piece of dumb luck 1.) But if they weren't in the paper guides, how come they didn't flop around and skew going through the printer (piece of dumb luck 2), and how come I didn't notice they weren't in the paper guides? Because they were ALMOST in the paper guides, being 219 mm wide instead of 210 mm. Well, back to my templates to clean them up, now that someone has pointed out to me the actual dimensions of the paper. (Duh.)

 

Thanks.

 

Marc

[Karen Traviss]

Oh, good catch, Karen with the "A4(novi)." I remember seeing that but paying it no mind. "A4 is A4, an international standard," I said to myself, and that was that. But it explains two anomalies I'd noticed.

 

 

And I've just found that the Deskjet has completely catholic tastes in paper sizes when you just run a sheet through via the onboard printing options (graph, lines etc) that you access from the touch panel. Going like a dream. Sorted!

[penhand]

Well after placing two orders and passing them all around, I'm still only left with one ream (and a request for another one in line). Anyway, I guess I'm about to place yet *another* order for cream. I can ship to US or Canada priority mail, either 1000 sheets (reams) or if you just want a "taste" you can get approx. 100 sheets (by weight). If you're interested in some, PM me for the details.

 

BTW, this second shipment is (like the first I received) 10mm oversized in each dimension from A4.

[raging.dragon]

After a bit of googling, I've determined that the standard A4 size is for trimmed paper sold as a final product. There are separate standards for untrimmed paper, intended to be trimmed after printing and/or binding. The dimensions quoted above put the Tomoe River paper about halfway between the RA4 and SRA4 untrimmed paper standards:

 

A4

Dimensions: 210 × 297 mm

Relative Area: 100%

RA4

Dimensions: 215 × 305 mm

Relative Area: 105%

SRA4

Dimensions: 320 x 225 mm

Relative Area: 115%

Novi A4

Dimensions: 219 x 310 mm

Relative Area: 108%

 

It's also interesting that, at 219mm wide the Tomoe River paper is just big enough to be trimmed to the following non-ISO sizes while conforming to the ISO lenght/width ratio of square root two.

US Letter (8.5 x 11)

: 216mm × 279mm

German Fanfold (8.5 × 12)

: 216 × 304 mm

Metric Demy Quatro

: 219 x 276 mm

 

References:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size

http://www.edsebooks.com/paper/papersize.html

http://www.papersizes.org/ra-sra-untrimmed.htm

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html

 

EDIT: added references and fixed formatting.

Edited August 4, 2012 by raging.dragon

[SamCapote]

I'm not sure why you guys and gals are ordering the "Novi" size when the correct A4 is listed as the top choice in this drop down menu. I took a screen print and added a red arrow next to the correct choice. When I gave my request to Tenso, I said clearly A4 210mm x 297mm as the size. You can also see the Rakuten warning that had me believe it would not feed properly in home Laser or Inkjet printers.

 

 

 

http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h75/pike444/Inks/Tamoe-A4.jpg

[dcpritch]

Sam, I got the novi size A4 and I actually quite like it. When cut in half it forms a larger than normal A5 sheet of paper that still fits into regular envelopes. And for my larger than normal writing it works well. Plus, we fountain pen types are all a little *different*, aren't we? So writing on pages that are slightly different fits well, I think.

[penhand]

Thanks to raging dragon for doing the math on this and Sam for asking why I've TWICE selected Novi in the drop down and wondered why the paper was oversized. Now that I know I have a choice, I think I'll pick Novi again since a) I can trim it to lots of standard sizes, b ) being in North America A4 doesn't do me much good unless I want to order DL envelopes from Europe, but #10 work fine and are easier to get over here c) I'm cheap and I get an extra 8% for free and d) it matches the paper I already have from my previous order.

Edited August 4, 2012 by penhand

[SamCapote]

No problem if you intentionally want the Novi size, or have decided it is OK once you have it.

 

I was more addressing the earlier complaints that people were unhappy, or it was Rakuten/Tenso's screw up with not getting the A4 size they thought they ordered. That drop down menu choice makes it clear that if you choose the Novi you will get the 219 x 310mm. You can make either size and either color work.

[marcomillions]

I'm not sure why you guys and gals are ordering the "Novi" size when the correct A4 is listed as the top choice in this drop down menu. <snip>

 

 

No problem if you intentionally want the Novi size, or have decided it is OK once you have it.

 

I was more addressing the earlier complaints that people were unhappy, or it was Rakuten/Tenso's screw up with not getting the A4 size they thought they ordered. That drop down menu choice makes it clear that if you choose the Novi you will get the 219 x 310mm. You can make either size and either color work.

 

Gee, Sam. Don't be so cross with us. We're not really that dumb. If you enter the Rakuten site by he link Flake found, you're greeted with the screen below, which not only doesn't give you a choice between A4 and "kinda-bigger-than-A4," it flat out tells you that A4 isn't available. It does tell you, I admit, that the "novi" dimensions will be 219 x 310.

 

And, as dragon points out, there are certain accidental benefits to the not-quite-A4. It's 3 mm wider than US Letter or Legal, so it fits just fine into your cheap printer's paper slot. And I kind of like the slightly-wider-than-A5 proportions when you cut the pieces in half.

 

But how wacky, dragon, that there exists an international standard but also two sanctioned violations of it. Well, the square root of 2 is an irrational number so maybe the standard is supposed to be a little irrational?

 

(Oh, by the way: the 2nd arrow and the red underlining at the bottom are to call attention to two pieces of machine translation that are opaque to me. If anyone knows what they're trying to tell us, I'd be grateful to know. Thanks. --Marc)

Edited August 4, 2012 by marcomillions

[SamCapote]

 

Gee, Sam. Don't be so cross with us. We're not really that dumb. If you enter the Rakuten site by he link Flake found, you're greeted with the screen below, which not only doesn't give you a choice between A4 and "kinda-bigger-than-A4," it flat out tells you that A4 isn't available. It does tell you, I admit, that the "novi" dimensions will be 219 x 310.

 

Marc, I'm not being cross with you. I'm sorry that you thought that from what I said. I actually do not think everyone realized that if they used the link from Flake, they were ordering a non-A4 size, or why it ended up being a different size. Not sure why you injected any of this confusion means you are dumb--I certainly don't think anyone is dumb. Your post in #127 was an example.

 

Oh, good catch, Karen with the "A4(novi)." I remember seeing that but paying it no mind. "A4 is A4, an international standard," I said to myself, and that was that. But it explains two anomalies I'd noticed. <snip>

 

If people use my link in post #26 here, and put it in Google Translate as I mentioned in post #31 you see the variety of sizes including A4. If people want to use other methods or links to order, that is their option, and they should understand the size limitations.

 

The gist of the poorly translated item at the bottom is saying that this is thinner paper than copy or notebook paper, and yet it has little bleedthrough of ink.

 

Anyway, sorry I brought this to anyone's attention and bothered to send you samples to compare colors.

 

I'm done in this thread.

[penhand]

(Oh, by the way: the 2nd arrow and the red underlining at the bottom are to call attention to two pieces of machine translation that are opaque to me. If anyone knows what they're trying to tell us, I'd be grateful to know. Thanks. --Marc)

I thought the "eye" was referring to the paper grain, important for bookbinders. However I couldn't find a google answer that matched my interpretation. Also, because the paper is so thin, it really doesn't have a noticeable "grain" to the paper.

Edited August 4, 2012 by penhand

[fuchsiaprincess]

Karen, I would not have thought it possible to get this thin of paper through a desktop printer. Do you have a more deluxe HP that can handle these sheets without jamming, and only pulling a single sheet? I have yet to reach for what I think is a single sheet, and it always turns out to be 2 or 3 sheets once I separate more carefully.

 

That is the weirdest thing that your paper was not the standard A4 size.

 

Sam, you took the words right out of my mouth I would have thought that the paper would be too thin to be used through a printer, leading to paper jams.

[penhand]

Karen, I would not have thought it possible to get this thin of paper through a desktop printer. Do you have a more deluxe HP that can handle these sheets without jamming, and only pulling a single sheet? I have yet to reach for what I think is a single sheet, and it always turns out to be 2 or 3 sheets once I separate more carefully.

 

That is the weirdest thing that your paper was not the standard A4 size.

 

Sam, you took the words right out of my mouth I would have thought that the paper would be too thin to be used through a printer, leading to paper jams.

I've only run one sheet through my HP Laserjet so far, but it went just fine, although it did crease slightly, might not have fed straight as I was pretty casual when I put it down on the manual feed tray.

[penhand]

Well after placing two orders and passing them all around, I'm still only left with one ream (and a request for another one in line). Anyway, I guess I'm about to place yet *another* order for cream. I can ship to US or Canada priority mail, either 1000 sheets (reams) or if you just want a "taste" you can get approx. 100 sheets (by weight). If you're interested in some, PM me for the details.

Just a quick followup as I've had some requests for international shipments as well and having just returned from the post office, I think I've figured out the mechanics and costs of shipping the paper outside the US and Canada. I'd recommend only 100-300 sheets as it can get pricey with the shipping. PM me if you want the details.