Inky T O D - Ink Review Series - In The Beginning - Which Papers Do You Use?

[Runnin_Ute]

A Smug Dill-

 

I use Tomoe River mostly for correspondence, but not exclusively. Whether I started writing that person through FPN, FPGeeks, or INCOWRIMO. Some incowrimo folks use fountain pens, some use a typewriter, some uses pencils or ballpoints. Nearly all get a letter on TR - especially overseas correspondence. That is one of the great things about TR. At 52 gsm it is lightweight and I can get more pages in under the weight limit than a 80gsm or 90 gsm paper. Sometimes I will doodle on it, copy poems etc. But I will pick the paper for the application. Say if I am reading a book and am taking notes as I read which sometimes includes copying passages, I would be more likely to use something like a wire bound red n black notebook than Tomoe River. Mostly because I don't have a notebook of TR. And I can use whatever pen I want and not worry about being able to use both sides of the page.

[musicman123]

A Smug Dill-

 

I use Tomoe River mostly for correspondence, but not exclusively. Whether I started writing that person through FPN, FPGeeks, or INCOWRIMO. Some incowrimo folks use fountain pens, some use a typewriter, some uses pencils or ballpoints. Nearly all get a letter on TR - especially overseas correspondence. That is one of the great things about TR. At 52 gsm it is lightweight and I can get more pages in under the weight limit than a 80gsm or 90 gsm paper. Sometimes I will doodle on it, copy poems etc. But I will pick the paper for the application. Say if I am reading a book and am taking notes as I read which sometimes includes copying passages, I would be more likely to use something like a wire bound red n black notebook than Tomoe River. Mostly because I don't have a notebook of TR. And I can use whatever pen I want and not worry about being able to use both sides of the page.

 

Definitely for correspondence, I would use TR paper. When writing letters or whatnot, I have the luxury of letting the ink take its time to dry. The results are always stunning!

 

But if I'm doing something quick or not purposefully intended for someone else's eye's, I'll use what's convenient.

[A Smug Dill]

@Runnin_Ute and @musicman123, thank you.

I use Tomoe River mostly for correspondence, but not exclusively. Whether I started writing that person through FPN, FPGeeks, or INCOWRIMO.

I guess I was more thinking along the lines of writing to your mum, your cousin, your high school chums who have since moved a long way away, and so on people who (hopefully) cares about the content of the correspondence, but needn't share your love of or have any appreciation for fine pens, inks, paper or penmanship. In other words, you use what you use when writing private letters because that is you, part of your personal style, aesthetic and/or standard, [/regardless of the recipient's tastes or habits/]; a noble of an era past would probably have a collection of his/her preferred stationery, and use it whenever he/she writes a letter, whether that is to the queen, a peer, a commoner, a lover, or family members. That's why I made mention of not related to FPN; perhaps I should have been more specific, and clarify that I meant, with correspondents and/or for an audience who aren't either selected for or assumed to have any appreciation for fine pens and paraphernalia. That you'd do it for yourself first and foremost when writing with a $1000 pen, $50/bottle ink, 50c/sheet stationery, et cetera.

Some incowrimo folks use fountain pens, some use a typewriter, some uses pencils or ballpoints.

Typewriter? Does that not defy the basic premise of INCOWRIMO (which I acknowledge does not exclusively attract or implicitly self-select fountain pen enthusiasts, or those who want to practise their penmanship)?

Nearly all get a letter on TR - especially overseas correspondence. That is one of the great things about TR. At 52 gsm it is lightweight and I can get more pages in under the weight limit than a 80gsm or 90 gsm paper.

I confess, when it comes to sending any letters at all, my guiding principles are:

• content is king;
• timely communication of the content is of essence; and
• cost-effectiveness is a virtue,

and email as a communication method satisfies all of those. Using a pen to write a letter by hand is, in my opinion, about meta-content; whether an ink shades or sheens is meta to that yet again, and testing how any ink behaves on one's preferred stationery (whether that is Tomoe River paper or not) is meta-meta-meta to such an application.

I'd prefer to distil (at least my own) reviews down to something all about the subject of the reviews, not specific use cases or applications (which unfortunately seems impossible to avoid), and especially not the individual reader's specific use cases if they don't happen to align perfectly with the reviewer's own. Thus, for my purposes, Tomoe River paper would 'chunked up' or generalised to either the category of correspondence stationery in which case TR would not be my personal choice or the category of non-absorbent papers that best elicit sheen from an ink in which case stone paper fits the bill.

"Oh, but Tomoe River paper neatly fits into both of those categories for select others, with whom I happen to identify, and therefore TR paper ought to be the preferred candidate on which ink testing is performed," I imagine some of you would say. That would not be the point of a user review of an ink by someone who doesn't use Tomoe River paper for personal correspondence, though, would it now? We all already know Tomoe River is highly resistant to feathering, and very prone to ghosting or show-through at 52gsm such that bleed-through isn't even a concern when few are going to write densely on both sides of a sheet of such.

I would be more likely to use something like a wire bound red n black notebook than Tomoe River.

Is "red n black" a specific brand (that I assume is common in North America, because I've never come across it in either Hong Kong or Australia in shops, to the best of my recollection), or just a category of notebooks that share a particular look?

My personal preferences in selecting different types of paper for testing would be:
* lowest-common-denominator A4 printer/photocopy paper: Reflex brand, which is readily available in any bricks-and-mortar stationery store and supermarket here
* better A4 printer/photocopy paper: whatever is available at 80gsm100gsm in Officeworks (a national chain of stationery stores in Australia that is not franchised) or the like, that is made in France, Germany or Austria
* journals, that I assume implies worth keeping around: Leuchtturm1917, Rhodia, Clairefontaine
* good notepad paper that is a pleasure on which to write: Rhodia/Clairefontaine, Maruman
* for testing degree of feathering: Booqpad refills, recycled Muji journals in my experience with what I have, every ink will feather on those, so it could make for a good platform on which to show comparisons
* for testing sheening potential: the most impractical but still marginally usable non-absorbent paper, which at this point would be stone paper.

Edited September 16, 2018 by A Smug Dill