Loose Leaf Notebook Filler Paper Bleed-Through Battle

[bob_hayden]

Here is the promised report on filler paper for loose leaf binders/notebooks. Such paper is approximately the size of standard printer paper or business letter paper. As usual I looked at cheap papers available in the US of A. You can find some information on most of the pens and inks I used with my tests on writing tablets.

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/315347-writing-tablet-bleed-through-battle/

Because the page size was larger, I was able to add a few pens and inks to the tests. These were strongly biased toward what I had inked at the moment. This in turn was strongly influenced by recent tests on cheap ink cartridges.

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/314342-cheap-ink-cartridges/

The Inks

The real Herbin Vert Pre and Diamine Kelly Green were added due to the confusion over which light green ink I used in my tests of writing tablets.

Hero Blue-Black in cartridges for the Hero 359 pen which has a nipple more like Parker/Lamy than standard international. These are in the common form factor for Chinese ink cartridges which is in between the lengths of standard short and long international cartridges. I will henceforth call this "substandard international medium". Included as this is one of very few cartridges that officially fit the Hero 359 pen, though I have routinely been using Parker and Lamy cartridges in those pens.

Jinhao Blue in which some have expressed interest here at FPN. It tends to be light when you put it in the pen and then grow darker with time. Here it seems to be at about its peak of intensity.

Thornton Blue because I was disappointed by how much the Slovenian Sheaffer Blue ink bled in earlier tests. This seemed better.

KaWeCo Black, Manuscript Grey and Pink, and Schneider Green and Violet were just leftovers from the cheap ink cartridge tests and seemed as a group to show less bleeding than fancier inks.

The Pens

The pens represented a moderate range of widths and wetnesses, with the Parker Reflexes very wet medium nibs, and the Wing Sung 333s quite fine and not so wet.

References

Here are links to some other tests on this sort of paper.


https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/201588-penway-filler-paper-at-walgreens/

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/200075-fp-filler-paper-colloquially-looseleaf-paper/

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/227407-staples-brand-filler-paper-check-it-out/page-1/

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/238294-best-affordable-and-available-filler-paper/

[bob_hayden]

Dollar General

 

This is a store brand or generic paper made in Indonesia. It gave slight bleed through with Always Greener and the page title but no other ink and cost $1 for 125 sheets.

 

 

 

 

[bob_hayden]

Mead

 

People have reported good luck with Mead paper in the past so I included a sample I found at home. I have no idea when I bought it but it carries a 1987 copyright date. How much has paper quality declined over the years? As it turns out, this is not as good as the Dollar General paper above.

[bob_hayden]

Norcom (WalMart)

 

The cheapest paper is not only the best, it is made in the US of A! That certainly overturns conventional wisdom, but that often happens when you gather factual data;-)

[bob_hayden]

"Distributed by Midwood Brands"

 

I am guessing this came from Family Dollar but it doesn't matter as only Manuscript Pink failed to bleed through at least to some extent.

 

 

[bob_hayden]

Pacon (Dollar Tree)

 

Not quite as bad as the paper immediately above but LOTS of bleed through.

 

 

[bob_hayden]

Penway (Walgreen's)

 

Earlier posts suggested good results with another Penway paper and indicated that this product from Malaysia was pretty good as well. It's about middle of the pack for the papers tested here, and costs about twice as much as most of the rest. IF you like it, you should stock up now as Penway is a discontinued brand at Walgreen's. The new brand is Wexford, and all of that I could find was made in the USA.

[bob_hayden]

Staples (from Egypt)

 

Staples has a reputation for sourcing the same produce from multiple suppliers and so you may find this paper in a bin with papers with the same stock number but a different country of origin. It's worth checking as this paper had above average performance, though there are better papers at lower prices. The WalMart paper for example is about one-third the price. However, Staples is notorious for selling this at very low prices in the late summer as part of back to school sales, so it might be worth stocking up on then. Just avoid yellow-green ink!

[bob_hayden]

Top Flight

 

Top Flight is an old brand. I bought it at a Boston area supermarket chain but you can probably find it elsewhere much like Dial soap. It's pretty good and pretty cheap and Made in USA.

 

 

[bob_hayden]

Conclusions

 

Great news! Half the papers tested would allow writing on both sides of the paper with most inks. Feathering was very minor with the top four papers, with Top Flight giving especially little feathering compared to how much bleed through it gave. The best paper is the cheapest paper and is sold by a national chain so it would have to be the top pick. The Dollar General paper is a close second. It is sold by a nearly national chain, one that often serves towns too small to support a WalMart. The ancient Mead paper came in third but is so old there is little reason to assume the current paper carrying that brand would perform as well. Where I live the brand has all but disappeared. Top Flight is an old brand but I have no idea how widely it is distributed today. But you should be able to find at least one of the top four somewhere nearby if you are in the US of A. Do be aware that often such products are supplied by the lowest bidder so what you find in a store may differ from what I tested. The scans of what the package looked like may help there, and also help you find the product quickly. Country of origin is also a key to identifying whether you (might) have the same product.

[ac12]

Try the Staples made in BRAZIL paper.

I bought both (Egypt and Brazil) and returned the made in Egypt paper as being unusable with my fountain pens.

[bob_hayden]

So I've heard, so I went to Staples with the intention of buying the paper from Brazil. Alas, my local store did not have that.

[ac12]

Sometimes you find Egypt or Vietnam but no Brazil.

As far as Staples is concerned it is the same filler paper, so they don't bother to track where it comes from.

So I end up going through the entire shelf to find the Brazil paper. And sometimes, there isn't any Brazil paper.

[Drone]

@Bob_Hayden,

 

Thanks for the paper comparisons. Very interesting.

 

I am currently living in Indonesia. Cheaper 70g/sqm (and even 60g/sqm) paper is ubiquitous here, and a lot of it is not 100% virgin. In my experience, those thinner-cheaper papers seem to perform more like most of the papers you tested, except for the Norcom (and maybe Top Flight) brands.

 

Here in Indonesia my work-horse paper is 500 page packs (reams) of virgin 80g/sm A4 by the company Paper One. This paper goes for around $2.60 USD per ream at retail including 10% sales tax (PPN). That's a tad more than a half-cent per sheet. The Paper One paper is smooth but not polished. Bleedthrough and feathering is fairly rare, even with wet writers. A better bulk paper available here is the 100g/sqm "Presentation" paper by Paperline, but it is harder to find. A ream of the heavier Paperline paper goes for around $3.50 including 10% PPN ($0.7/sheet). These papers are export-quality yet relatively inexpensive.

 

Indonesia is a big paper producer. Unfortunately much of the paper produced here is done in an unsustainable way, so the true cost of the paper is much higher than the sticker price. I don't believe those SFI and/or FSC logos printed on the ream wrappers are worth much (if anything) when it comes to sustainability.

 

For high quality paper here, Kokuyo brand from Japan is quite good in my experience, and pretty easy to find (we have Kinokuniya stationers from Japan here in Jakarta). But you have to be careful these days, Kokuyo has purchased some stationary manufacturers in China and India which produce inferior papers. Make sure your Kokuyo products are Made in Japan.

 

Regards, David

[bob_hayden]

Thank you, David, for providing that international perspective. I was keenly aware that my tests were very USA or even New England centric but there was not much I could do about that.

[bob_hayden]

Others in addition to ac12 above have recommended the Staples notebook paper made in Brazil. Going through some old boxes I found a package of unknown date. There is a clue in that the package contains 200 sheets rather than the current 120. Finding this rekindled my desire to test the current version but on another trip to Staples I found all the wide-ruled paper came from Egypt. (The college-ruled paper was from Brazil, but I don't have any use for that so I did not buy it.) That was doubly disappointing because the antique Brazilian paper turned out rather poorly -- worse than the current paper from Egypt. At least it was on sale;-)

 

 

[Candleinthewilderness]

I'll be trying dg brand in the morning I'd love to have a lined loose leaf. Thank you for your post.

[bob_hayden]

Updates

 

Sorry for the late note but ending today Staples has their loose leaf paper on sale for 50 cents a package. I would imagine it will be on sale again between now and Fall. Folks say to look for the stuff made in Brazil but I have not seen that in recent years and the oldest Staples Brazil paper was not so hot.

 

Today I was in a Dollar Tree and they had as a "featured product" filler paper at $1 for a package of 200 sheets -- cheaper than any papers tested above. This carries their "Jot" brand so I am hoping it will replace the awful paper they used to carry. Neither the packaging nor the paper inside bear any resemblance to the previous product. I do not feel up to inking twenty-something fountain pens for the exact test I did on those above but a quick test with unknown black ink in a very wet medium nib A&W pen gave only the faintest show through and no bleed through. Comparing to the above images it resembled the top two brands when I compare to inks normally used in a business setting. Encouraged by this, I tried the Diamine Kelly Green that gave so many of the other papers a hard time. This gave even less show through than the black ink! I used a plastic Jinhao 599 with what I think is nominally a medium nib. (It is the more or less generic Jinhao non-hooded nib.) I observed an odd interaction here between pen, ink, and paper. The pen wrote very dry and like a fine nib. I checked then on a random scrap of another brand of filler paper and got the expected very wet broad line with lots of feathering and bleed through. This paper feels very thin and smooth and slightly chalky. I am wondering if something in its composition resists Kelly Green, and whether that is a bug or a feature. It does make this ink much more usable.

 

The paper is made in the US of A. I notice it does not have anything in Spanish on the packaging as the old product did, but French is retained, and there is even added wording to cover sale in Canada.

 

From my limited testing this seems to be comparable to the best I have tested previously and even cheaper. Everything at Doller Tree costs $1 so I don't think the price is temporary but maybe they will revert to one of the more common smaller package sizes when the product becomes unfeatured.

[inkypete]

Great reviews, thank you. The choices in Australia vary considerably with very few meeting my standards for FP friendliness. I have had very good results with two of the least expensive options - Daiso and Muji. If you have either store nearby I recommend you give those brands a try.

[dcwaites]

Great reviews, thank you. The choices in Australia vary considerably with very few meeting my standards for FP friendliness. I have had very good results with two of the least expensive options - Daiso and Muji. If you have either store nearby I recommend you give those brands a try.

 

 

Same here. General impression with the Daiso products is that those actually made in Japan (Designed in Japan / Made in Japan) are better than those made elsewhere (Designed in Japan / Made in China | Indonesia | Brazil).

 

However I got a couple of packets of the Loose Leaf A4 Refills and am quite impressed with them, even though they are made in Indonesia. I haven't seen any bleeding/feathering/spreading with any of the inks I have tried so far.