"scribbles That Matter" A4 Graph Notebook

[Honeybadgers]

Purchase link here

One of the better A4 sized notebooks, honestly. It's still not -perfect-, but I can't say this isn't a solid notebook.

The two things I dislike : I think the heavy, padded faux leather is just too thick a binding for my taste. If you like a REALLY heavily bound notebook, this thing is sturdy. but I have limited space in my backpack and this is probably a good 3/8 inch thick of just binding. Can I live with it? absolutely. But it could be better, in my eyes.

And the paper is a -little- toothier than I like (it's fairly smooth, but I like satin smooth paper. It's definitely deliberate and most people will probably find this paper a nice balance of smoothness and feedback) and doesn't really show any sheen in fountain pen inks.

BUT, on to the good:

The binding, while thick, is VERY nicely constructed. One of the nicer made notebooks, especially at the price range. ($20 for 201 usable graph lined pages)

A proper graph notebook that has all the features you want in a school notebook! in A4! with plenty of pages! An ownership page, an index, a key for bullet/color journalers, NUMBERED pages that don't intrude on the graph paper real-estate, pages can't be torn out (some people may dislike this, but a lab notebook cannot have perforated pages) Two pages dedicated to pen testing, which I appreciate since I test every new notebook for whether or not it can handle a fountain pen.

I like the ivory color paper. I can't stand searing white pages like rhodia and clairefontaine insist on, and this is just cream colored enough to be soft and easy to read.

The graph lines are well balanced and easy to mark along.

Elastic closure and cloth page mark are great

Pen loop can hold a variety of pens, from a thin mechanical pencil to a medium-large fountain pen like a platinum 3776 (it can pass the cap, so even a MB 149 should fit via the barrel)

Packaging is VERY nice, it comes in a plastic box that ensures the notebook is intact.

Pages are thick enough that they can be used two sided easily with very wet fountain pens.

Very feather and bleed resistant paper - I only got the BAREST hint of bleed and feathering with a ludicrously wet, wet noodle flex nib that bites the paper pretty hard, using Yama-budo, which can be feather prone. A wet double broad nib with J. Herbin rouge hematite had no problem

Dry times on the paper are EXCELLENT, the flip side of having no sheen, this can be quickly written in and closed or pages flipped without fear of smudging.

Shading, while not spectacular, is absolutely there.

When held against a $25 apica premium notebook, while the apica paper is my ideal smoothness and it shows sheen modestly well, as well as a lot of pages and a thinner binding that is more to my taste, it has appalling dry times and the coating on the apica paper just randomly bleeds/feathers HARD, which bothers me a lot. I already started my calculus notes in that notebook and I am seriously tempted to switch notebooks mid-quarter.

My only two requests of this notebook (since the paper is perfectly adequate for anyone that doesn't REQUIRE silky smooth pages or inks being able to pool and sheen) are a bigger variety in colors - turquoise and yellow is a horrid combo, and a lighter duty hard binding that is a simple PVC coated cardboard like the peter pauper press journal (which would be perfect if it had a little more ink-resistant paper and came in an A4 size)

While there's no such thing as a perfect notebook (yet that I've discovered) this is as close as I've gotten as a fountain pen user. This may be a little pricey, but the price-per-page is actually quite reasonable, even when held against rhodia or clairefontaine

I found the pen test page to show through more than the graph paper. So I included examples of both. The coarse (big double broad nib) 3776 with rouge hematite was primed prior to writing, so that is REALLY, REALLY WET. And the showthrough was miniscule. My flex nib was the only one that had showthrough that was noticeable whatsoever, and the tiny little bits of feathering that happen really are just the ink following a fiber of paper, which looks a lot nicer than big pooled feathers, something I haven't seen. It's no tomoe river, but the dry times are exceptional and it really does handle ink impressively well with a double broad dumping a notoriously bad-behaved ink on the page. And noodlers habanero isn't the best behaved ink either, and in a very wet zoom nib, it again handled itself admirably. Normally feathering bothers me a lot, but this just looks like it's supposed to happen, similar to fabriano paper, versus the failures in the vellum coating that happen with apica or rhodia.

Also - no lined, blank or dot grid options in this size. Graph only. The A5 can be had with dots.

3 pages devoted to index. This is a seriously impressive notebook for lab work.

21 numbered graph pages. I appreciate that they're tiny and at the bottom, which leaves maximum real-estate on the page.

Pen loop can safely hold a homo sapiens maxi. By the cap.

Like I said, I noticed more showthrough on the test page than the graph pages themselves. I think the feathering is not bad and consistent enough that it feels like a quality of the paper and not a problem, like the spotty vellum coating that seems to plague everything but tomoe river.

no sheen, even with yama-dori. Maybe something crazy like organics studio might sheen, but the only sheen I saw on this paper was when the 1670 was pooled up hard, I could see a little bit of the green sheen. This is with a fairly wet 14k wing sung 698 with a soft gold nib.

The little touches of feathering, but there is still some solid shading to be had.

Only noteworthy showthrough is the zoom nib laying down a wet line of noodlers habanero and the flex nib laying down insane amounts of yama budo.

This is the primed 3776 coarse nib, laying down pools of rouge hematite. It handled it really well.

You can see a little bit of sheen from that hematite and the feathering from my flex nib - again, I am pushing this paper to the absolute limits of what anyone could possibly try. it laughed at that wet, fine wing sung 601 with pilot blue black, didn't care about it one bit.

Now here, all you see is some ghosting from the flex nib. And you can see just how wet the lines I was laying down were. This is good double-sided paper.

[Newjelan]

Thanks for the review and the great pics.

[bogiesan]

Thank you for the work you have done for us.

 

Your link took me on a journey through amazon’s expanded notebook offers. Brands, like yours, that I’d never heard of, formats and colors and features that look like fun. So many options. So little time. So few bottles of ink.

 

Fortunately, I recently acquired 20 pocket molies at a stupidly low price so I’m not buying any notebooks for about 5 years.