FP-Friendly Paper: Top-Bound, Ruled Tablets? (Non-Rhodia, Non-Clairefontaine)

[GNL]

Hello FPNers, 

 

I’m searching for a writing tablet that’s bound at the top (by whatever method) and features fountain-pen friendly paper that’s ruled, (7mm or larger).  Not a fan of Rhodia or Clairefontaine; huge fan of Romeo.  Suggestions?  

 

Thanks,

GNL

[arcfide]

I haven't seen such a thing in ruled format, but TR does make writing pads that are unruled. 

[amberleadavis]

[amberleadavis]

So, I have done great with Docket Diamond and Docket Gold both are made by Tops and the Mead Cambridge Writing Pads.  See above.

[A Smug Dill]

A tablet, as in a notepad primarily intended for writing on the recto side of each page only, and with a stiff backing sheet (of cardboard or other material) so that one could write on its pages laid almost perfectly flat, without having to put it on top of a desk, table, or some other piece of furniture or fixture to be supported?

 

Maruman report pads come in different sizes, including A4 and B5; and types A and U are ruled.

 

[Preserved_Killick]

I really like this Life paper:

 

https://vanness1938.com/collections/life-stationery/products/life-stationery-noble-report-a4-top-bound-notepad?variant=46363442054

[amberleadavis]

  On 3/21/2022 at 6:03 PM, Preserved_Killick said:

I really like this Life paper:

 

https://vanness1938.com/collections/life-stationery/products/life-stationery-noble-report-a4-top-bound-notepad?variant=46363442054

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It is fabulous paper.

[Enkida]

Thirded, Life Noble is some of my favorite fountain pen paper.  I have that notepad and a couple of books of theirs.  Off-white paper, but it really does manage to show the color of your inks beautifully.

[DvdRiet]

How does the Noble Report paper compare to the Bank Paper and the Writing Paper? (Some of my pens don't write all that well on the Writing Paper, seems like it is too slippery.)

[GNL]

  On 3/21/2022 at 6:03 PM, Preserved_Killick said:

I really like this Life paper:

 

https://vanness1938.com/collections/life-stationery/products/life-stationery-noble-report-a4-top-bound-notepad?variant=46363442054

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Just bought a couple in my favorite A5 size.  Thanks for the recommend!

[Enkida]

  On 3/21/2022 at 9:35 PM, DvdRiet said:

How does the Noble Report paper compare to the Bank Paper and the Writing Paper? (Some of my pens don't write all that well on the Writing Paper, seems like it is too slippery.)

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I haven't tried the other two, although I have access to the Bank Paper, but on the personal recommendation of my shop-keeping acquaintance who sells both and has a passion for paper, I've always steered away from it in favor of the Noble, which apparently is made differently.  I have no further details than that and didn't feel the need to ask for them at the time!

[DvdRiet]

  On 3/22/2022 at 11:06 AM, Enkida said:

I haven't tried the other two, although I have access to the Bank Paper, but on the personal recommendation of my shop-keeping acquaintance who sells both and has a passion for paper, I've always steered away from it in favor of the Noble, which apparently is made differently.  I have no further details than that and didn't feel the need to ask for them at the time!

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Interesting to know, regarding your shop-keeper's recommendation. I was just comparing my Bank and Writing paper yesterday after reading this post and it seems that the Bank Paper is smooth on one side (coated, I assume) and a bit rougher on the other. The Writing Paper is very smooth on both sides. I think that my preference for smooth nibs with only the tiniest hint of feedback make it a bit harder to write on the smooth papers if the nib is larger than F (I have a lot of M and B nibs) and the ink is not very much on the wet side. I have the same sort of issue with the Clairefontaine Triomphe paper, which is what leads me to believe that it has to do with the smoothest nibs on too-smooth paper.

[Mercian]

If you can get them in SoCal:

https://www.my-oxford.com/gb-en/oxford-international/oxford-international-notepad/oxford-international-notepad
 

They contain ‘Oxford Optik’ paper, which is fountain-pen-proof.

Some people dislike the marks that are printed on the corners of the pages, which are there to facilitate scanning by the ‘Scribzee’ app.

You may not like the paper, because it is a bright white smooth-coated paper that performs in a manner that is similar to Rhodia/Clairefontaine.

 

I think of Oxford Optik as ‘the British Clairefontaine’.
I slightly prefer Oxford Optik paper to the white paper in a top-bound Rhodia No.18 bloc pad.
The sheets on that Rhodia pad are slightly smaller than A4 after one tears them off the pad, which I personally find to be irritating.

The sheets on the Oxford International Notepad are A4 sized after one has torn them from the pad.

Of course, for anyone who lives/works in a country whose standard paper size is ‘Letter’, and not ISO A4, this is probably moot, eh? 😁

[A Smug Dill]

  On 3/22/2022 at 10:38 PM, Mercian said:

I slightly prefer Oxford Optik paper to the white paper in a top-bound Rhodia No.18 bloc pad.
The sheets on that Rhodia pad are slightly smaller than A4 after one tears them off the pad, which I personally find to be irritating.

The sheets on the Oxford International Notepad are A4 sized after one has torn them from the pad.

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If an A4-sized detachable part is what you want, then why are you buying (and annoying yourself with) Rhodia No.18 notepads instead of more suitable products in the same range? This chart is on the back of every Rhodia No.18 notepad, so you must have seen it before:

 

 

The difference in retail / list prices of No.18 and No.19 pads of the same type is almost negligible.

[arcfide]

  On 3/22/2022 at 10:38 PM, Mercian said:

Of course, for anyone who lives/works in a country whose standard paper size is ‘Letter’, and not ISO A4, this is probably moot, eh? 😁

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I was going to say, not moot, but the Rhodia A4 shrinkage after tearing the page is a positive point for us Letter-sized folks. 

[effrafax]

  On 3/22/2022 at 10:38 PM, Mercian said:

 

 

I think of Oxford Optik as ‘the British Clairefontaine’.
😁

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Hate to burst your bubble, especially as an ex-pat living in Australia, but Oxford Optik, despite it's name, is not British.  It is made in France.

 

You can see this just under the bar code:

 

 

If you go to the web site shown (my-oxford.com) and click the Brand tab, it tells you where in France it comes from.

 

[Mercian]

  On 3/23/2022 at 10:13 AM, effrafax said:

Hate to burst your bubble, especially as an ex-pat living in Australia, but Oxford Optik, despite it's name, is not British.  It is made in France.

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Oh, I already knew that the paper is Not Made Here - the pads in my possession bear the legend ‘Made in the EU’.

But the ‘brand’ is nominally-British, in that it is the property of a company that started out as a publishing house that was established by a family from near Oxford.

They sold the publishing house a couple of generations ago, so it could be owned by anybody now; shell companies registered to other shell companies in ‘tax havens’, with for all I know the eventual ‘beneficial owners’ actually being from Mars.

 

I wouldn’t be surprised if I were to find out that Oxford Optik paper is actually produced in mills owned by Exacompta 😁

[Mercian]

  On 3/23/2022 at 1:43 AM, arcfide said:

 

I was going to say, not moot, but the Rhodia A4 shrinkage after tearing the page is a positive point for us Letter-sized folks. 

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I just measured a leaf from my Rhodia No.18 pad after tearing it out.

Once off the pad it is 210mm x 278mm.

Wikipedia tells me (so it must be true) that US ‘Letter’ paper is 216mm x 279mm, so this stuff is fairly close, being only 6mm less-wide.

 

Its line-ruling is 7mm.

 

One thing apart from its size that might be off-putting is the width of the ruled margin on the left edge of the page.

It is 41mm (or 1 & 5/8 inches).

I don’t know what the ‘norm’ is in the US, but on 7mm-8mm-ruled lined paper here in Merrie England I am habituated to having a ruled margin on the left that is only 25mm-27mm wide (roughly one inch).

[Mercian]

  On 3/23/2022 at 1:24 AM, A Smug Dill said:

If an A4-sized detachable part is what you want, then why are you buying (and annoying yourself with) Rhodia No.18 notepads instead of more suitable products in the same range?

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I am not buying No.18 pads on an ongoing basis.

 

I bought one of them once, when I saw it in a store in the next small town over from the small town near which I live.

The town in which I saw it has a ‘Further Education’ (16-18 years old) college in it, and so its stores stock a far wider range of stationery than do the two stores in my ‘home’ town that stock stationery.

E.g. In my ‘home’ town, although one can buy ink in cartridges from a surprisingly-wide range of (European & US) manufacturers, if one wishes to buy bottled ink one can choose either Parker Quink ‘Washable Blue’ or Parker Quink ‘Black’. In the run-up to the Festival of Consumption that I call ‘Crassmass’, the larger of the two stores will sometimes even have a couple of bottles of Parker Quink ‘Blue/Black’ in stock.

In the small town with the FE college, one can occasionally find ‘exotic treats’ such as Waterman ‘Serenity Blue’ in bottles. Exciting!

 

Anyway, when I saw the Rhodia No.18 pad there, it was the only fp-friendly A4 pad in the store.
So I bought it, because I like to encourage physical stores that are local to me (or, rather, as ‘local’ to me as is possible) to stock fp-friendly stationery.

 

When I got it home and found that it was less-than-ideal for my purposes, I relegated it from my stock of ‘work’ stationery to my stock of ‘general use’ stationery. As such, I have not been using it at a pace that anyone would regard as ‘rapid’. IIRC I bought it in 2017 or so.

 

For ‘work’ pads I buy Reporters’ Notepads for use when out-&-about. These are 115mm x 200mm, which is large enough to be useful, but still small enough to be easily portable. Top-bound A4 pads would be a bit ‘cumbersome’.

 

I get my lined A4 ‘work’ pads in the next small town over in the other direction.

The High Street store there that sells stationery sells Oxford ‘Campus’ A4 Refill pads - the pads are side-bound/glued, so the sheets are still A4 sized when torn off, and they have pre-punched holes in their left edge to facilitate filing.

I don’t get through those at a huge rate either - how often does anyone put hand-written pages in to ‘work’ files nowadays anyway? - so I am willing to put-up with the printed marks to facilitate scanning in to the ‘Scribzee’ app if that is the price that I have to pay to enable me to buy fp-friendly paper in a physical store that is reasonably-local-to-me.

I could, clearly, order some of the other Rhodia A4 pads online. But I am not comfortable with the idea of buying A4 pads online for delivery to my home.
The additional cost of postage-&-packaging hikes their price (especially in the low volumes that are all that I need to order). Perhaps more-importantly, I also have a nagging doubt that any A4 pad would reach me in as-good condition as the ones that are stocked in physical stores after it had been entrusted to the tender embrace of the ‘Royal’ Mail’s  sorting machines & processes (😱).

[A Smug Dill]

  On 3/24/2022 at 12:17 AM, Mercian said:

I could, clearly, order some of the other Rhodia A4 pads online. But I am not comfortable with the idea of buying A4 pads online for delivery to my home.
The additional cost of postage-&-packaging hikes their price (especially in the low volumes that are all that I need to order). Perhaps more-importantly, I also have a nagging doubt that any A4 pad would reach me in as-good condition as the ones that are stocked in physical stores after it had been entrusted to the tender embrace of the ‘Royal’ Mail’s  sorting machines & processes (😱).

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Fair enough. I ordered two lots of 24 units each of the Rhodia No.18 ruled pads just over two years ago, at the effective price of A$3 (£1.70 today) each, inclusive of ‘free’ delivery and 10% tax. There were a number of reasons for that particular number of units per order; one of them being it was certain that the retailer had to put each order into a very sturdy box, which would be adequate defence against the rigours of handling by a disinterested postal service.

 

So far I've used… three sheets of the paper from those pads, I think; whereas I burn through Rhodia DotPad No.16 pads like crazy.