PAPER COMPARISON - RHODIA, KOKUYO, FABRIANO, WILLIAM HANNA, NEW TR, SANZEN

[DrDebG]

PAPER COMPARISON

“Ahhh!!! What am I going to do without having a steady supply of Tomoe River 52gsm paper?” Like many of you, I asked myself this question a couple of years ago when I heard the rumor that Tomoegawa was going to discontinue production of TR paper. Someone once said “all good things come to an end”, but not TR52! For many reasons, Tomoegawa decided to discontinue production. Oh, they tried making the same TR paper on another press (“New TR”), but it wasn’t the same. Then along came Sanzen who purchased the old TR press. And they started making Sanzen TR paper. (And all of this is hearsay.) In the meantime, I had tried so many others. Some made ink look wonderful but were not pleasant to write on, some were very pleasant to writing on, but feathered, bled, or just didn’t make the ink look like it should. I had to make a decision.

A kindly gentleman did a YouTube video on William Hanna notebooks and the paper that is in them. I was intrigued and did some further research. Our own, Biscuitlips did a wonderful review on the notebooks and gave a good review of the paper.  After some time of contemplation, I decided to order a notebook and some additional paper. I figured that if I didn’t like the paper, I could substitute something else in the notebook. Yes, I was initially pleasantly surprised by the paper. It seemed to handle fountain pen ink well – even in my large, wet nibs – and was very pleasant to write on. I took me a little while to get used to the much thicker paper – 115 gsm. But I soon adjusted and am enjoying it.

But, how does it compare with the other papers that I am using?

Finally, after a few weeks of being super busy with work, I took a few hours and did a “side by side” comparison of all the papers that I am currently using – all six of them. My comparison included 3 Japanese papers and 3 European papers:

“New” Tomoe River paper – 52 gsm in ivory
Sanzen Tomoe River paper – 52 gsm in off white
Kokuyo Campus notebook paper - ? gsm
Rhodia Dot pad – 80 gsm
Fabriano Ecoqua notepad paper – probably around 80 gsm
William Hanna notebook paper – 115 gsm

Since I only have one Seven Seas notebook left with old TR52 in it, which I am saving for other purposes, this was not included. Also, I did not include any kind of copy paper or common notebook papers (except Kokoyo Campus) since I don’t use them for writing. If I have to mark up a document, etc., I print the document on quality copy paper. I also didn’t include other good, fountain pen friendly papers like Cosmo Air Light/Snow, Mitsubishi Bank paper, Fritz Schimpf Feinpost, Clairefontaine Triomphe, Black & Red, Midori, etc. While I have tried all of these, I don’t use them regularly.

My method was simple. I swabbed and wrote on each one – one after the other – using the exact same inks, cotton swabs and pens. My photography was also simple, using a mirrorless camera in natural light with exactly the same settings. Postproduction included only cropping but no other adjustment.

I compared each paper against the other 5 papers and ranked them from best (1) to worst (6) for sheen, shading, smoothness, feathering, spread, showthrough and bleeding.

Sheen and Shading:

Swabs:



Using the same ink and the same pens, I then compared each of the papers for sheen and shading in writing, also feathering, spread, showthrough, bleeding and the smoothness of the paper.

 

RHODIA: 

 

 

KOKUYO: 

 

FABRIANO: 

 

 

WILLIAM HANNA: 

 

 

NEW TOMOE RIVER: 

 

 

SANZEN: 

 

Each of the papers were nicely smooth and pleasant to write on. The Fabriano  is the least smooth of the six papers, but is still very nice. The New TR paper has a bit more "tooth" than old TR52, and more tooth than Sanzen. And surprisingly the Kokuyo Campus paper was very smooth and pleasant to write on. But my personal favorite has turned out to be the William Hanna paper.

In terms of sheen, the New Tomoe River and the William Hanna papers showed the most sheen in the Sailor Yama Dori and the Troublemaker ink swatches. In terms of the writing sample, these two together with the Sanzen TR paper really showed the sheen of the Monteverde Horizon Blue ink. The Sanzen TR paper and New TR paper showed wonderful shading, as did the William Hanna paper. The Fabriano paper did show some shading, but not nearly as much as the other papers. As I have found with other inks, the New TR paper does allow many inks to feather. Feathering was more apparent on the New TR paper:


One of the issues some reviewers have noted with many papers is how the ink spreads. This is apparently because these are coated papers. I saw a similar issue with both the New TR paper and lesser so with the Sanzen paper. The William Hanna paper showed the least amount of spread, followed by the Kokuyo Campus paper. Here is a comparison of William Hanna paper on the left and Sanzen on the far right ("Delta SIG").

 

William Hanna:                                                                                                                                                                                   Sanzen:

Ghosting or showthrough is very apparent with the New TR and Sanzen papers, as expected, while slightly less apparent with the Kokuyo and less with Fabriano. It was not an issue for either the Rhodia or William Hanna papers. Bleedthrough, however, was an issue for heavy ink application with the Kokuyo and New TR paper. But even in some of the writing, ink bled through on Kokuyo and New TR papers.

Here is the summary of my rankings:

Overall, each of the six papers are excellent. They all showed the ink colors very well and consistently. So, ranking them was not an easy task. Perhaps the most pleasant surprise is that the Kokuyo Campus paper is the least expensive paper of the six and holds up well against them. I was also pleasantly surprised to see how well the William Hanna paper performs against the New TR and Sanzen papers. In my humble opinion, it is far superior to the "New TR" paper and is performs well against the Sanzen paper, even without taking into consideration showthrough.

I hope this was helpful for you. The process of evaluating these papers simultaneously with the same criteria has been helpful for me.

**Please note that this is my subjective, personal opinion based upon the results shown above and my personal experience of working with each of these papers on a daily basis. Your results may vary.

 

Here is a bit more of a side by side comparison: 

 

[dragondazd]

Wow, this is super helpful. Thank you

[dragondazd]

Double post

[mizgeorge]

Excellent information @DrDebG - thank you - that must have taken a lot of time.

 

I've now bought some of the William Hanna paper to try...

[DrDebG]

9 hours ago, dragondazd said:

Wow, this is super helpful. Thank you

You are very welcome.  There are some great papers out there that we can use with our fountain pens, but alot depends on what kind pens and inks you use.  For me, at this point in time, I am enjoying the William Hanna paper and notebooks. 

[Nick T]

Thank you @DrDebG This was a lot work. Thank you for sharing. I feel a little more secure that the Hobonichi Cousin I will be ordering soon will not disappoint… too much. 

[Inkvisible]

Thank you, @DrDebG, for this comparison.  On your recommendation, I’m going to try some Kokuyo. B5 is a good size for me.

[txoko]

Does William Hanna make anything larger than A5?  I checked their website and all I could find were A5 and A6, but maybe I couldn't navigate too well.  Too small for my taste.  I will compromise to B5 but much prefer A4, which seems to limit options.

[XYZZY]

@DrDebG these are excellent comparisons, thank you so much for the information and the time that you put into it.

[DrDebG]

3 hours ago, Nick T said:

Thank you @DrDebG This was a lot work. Thank you for sharing. I feel a little more secure that the Hobonichi Cousin I will be ordering soon will not disappoint… too much. 

 

I had been using the Hobinichi Cousin for the last couple of years.  It is my understanding that the 2023 Hobinichi is the last of the Tomoe River paper, and that it will include a few sheets of what they will be using thereafter. My problem with the Hobinichi is that there is a lot of duplication and I don't use parts of it.  They are expensive, so I would prefer to purchase what I will use.  

[DrDebG]

2 hours ago, Inkvisible said:

Thank you, @DrDebG, for this comparison.  On your recommendation, I’m going to try some Kokuyo. B5 is a good size for me.

 

You are very welcome.  I appreciate you taking time to read through it.  Kokuyo makes several varieties.  The one I used was the Kokuyo Campus with the dark blue cover in A5.  I am certain the B5 one is like the same.  

[DrDebG]

1 hour ago, txoko said:

Does William Hanna make anything larger than A5?  I checked their website and all I could find were A5 and A6, but maybe I couldn't navigate too well.  Too small for my taste.  I will compromise to B5 but much prefer A4, which seems to limit options.

 

No, William Hanna only makes A5 and A6 notebooks.  My preferred size is A5.  There are times when I have to use 8.5" x 11" paper (American), but I do prefer A5 size for most of what I do. 

[DrDebG]

1 hour ago, XYZZY said:

@DrDebG these are excellent comparisons, thank you so much for the information and the time that you put into it.

 

You are very welcome.  I have done other notebook comparisons in the past, but it has been well over a year since the last one I did.  

[XYZZY]

A couple of your comments about the TR-Sanzen paper piqued my curiosity.  It's so hard to find information about the Tomoe River paper.

 

I think that Sanzen did not buy the machines for making Tomoe River paper from Tomoegawa (the company).  I think they bought the "recipe" as well as rights to use the name.  My guess is that rights to the name are very specific or tricky:  my understanding is that "gawa" is Japanese for "river", thus the company name (Tomoegawa), if translated, would be "Tomoe River", the same as the product.  Of course we don't normally translate proper names.

 

Here is what I have found: 

 

If you navigate to Sanzen's home page at http://www.sanzenseishi.co.jp/publics/index/66/, using a browser that translates for you, you can navigate the left side menu:  start with "Product information", then "thin printing paper", then "Tomo River S".  Click that.  Then I set the browser back to display original instead of translated body of the page.  Copy/paste that into deepl.com, the last line translates as:

Quote

 

Tomoeriver S" is the official brand name of Tomoeriver pocketbooks made at the Kanazawa Mill of Miyoshi Paper Mfg.

 

 

 

One thing that I like about deepl.com is the alternate translations:  An alternate for "Miyoshi" is "Sanzen".  So I assume a better translation would be "...made at the Kanazawa Mill of Sanzen Paper Mfg."   If you click on the "Company Profile" item at the top of the left-hand menu you will find that Sanzen has been in Kanazawa since founding in 1948.

 

My conclusion is that Sanzen is making the "Tomoe River Sanzen" paper on their own existing paper machine, and not one of the machines from Tomoegawa.

[DrDebG]

40 minutes ago, XYZZY said:

 

 

My conclusion is that Sanzen is making the "Tomoe River Sanzen" paper on their own existing paper machine, and not one of the machines from Tomoegawa.

 

Very interesting!  Thank you for sharing this information.  I was merely repeating one story that I had heard.  I had heard several others as well. 

[Karmachanic]

On 8/26/2022 at 7:15 AM, DrDebG said:

One of the issues some reviewers have noted with many papers is how the ink spreads. This is apparently because these are coated papers.

 

Thank you for your beneficial heroic effort!

Writing paper is sized. Some papers have more sizing than others. Clairefontaine vs Original Crown Mill, for instance.  Magazine paper is coated.

[DrDebG]

10 hours ago, Karmachanic said:

 

Thank you for your beneficial heroic effort!

Writing paper is sized. Some papers have more sizing than others. Clairefontaine vs Original Crown Mill, for instance.  Magazine paper is coated.

 

Thank you for your kind comments and also for the clarification!  

[senzen]

Thank you, very useful.

[DrDebG]

2 hours ago, senzen said:

Thank you, very useful.

 

Thank you for your comment!

[DrDebG]

Correction to my Review.  William Hannah is the correct spelling.  My apologies to David and his family.