The lines are made of micro-dots which is a nice detail.Īlso available are a blank notebook, and a Currently Inked Log book for the same price.įrench company Clairefontaine make a variety of notebooks and jotters, supplying a lot of French schoolchildren with their classroom needs. The lines are narrow at 6mm, which I like. For my money, I’d rather get a Tomoe River notebook for £4.67, though I appreciate the environmentally-sustainable way the Inky Fingers notebooks are made. This is a nice notebook, but at £6 each, they’re pricey. The paper is white with very subtle specks, and the notebook is staple-bound.

It feels a little like recycled paper, having more texture than the other papers reviewed here, but doesn’t have the drawbacks of feathering and bleeding usually associated with recycled paper. It consists of 44 sheets of environmentally-friendly and sustainable wheat straw paper. This is the same size as the California notebooks, but has a coated cover which is a little stronger. Tomoe River paper is a pleasure to write on. The latter will bother some people but I don’t mind it. The test results for this notebook are not at all surprising: no bleed through except for a small amount with the Mono Twin no feathering some ghosting due to how thin the paper is. Three of the California notebooks retail at £14. I used a Hobonichi diary last year which was made from Tomoe River paper and have been a big fan ever since. This is ivory-coloured and very thin, but can take just about anything a fountain pen can throw at it. This appears almost identical to the previous, except it contains glorious Japanese Tomoe River paper. California back Pocket detail California back Pocket verso Another California Back Pocket: Tomoe River Paper The Waterman result aside, this is a nice little notebook.

This was by far the worst result for the Waterman, which is surprising when everything else fared so well. The bleed through on this was even worse than that of the Mono Twin. The paper feels lovely, and handled everything except the very wet vintage nib, which, as you can see, feathered terribly and bled through the page. The paper is 105gsm HP paper which is incredibly smooth. They’re available in lined, blank (as here), dot grid, graph, or a mixture of plain, lined, and dot grid, and are 3 for £10.50. These notebooks are slightly smaller than A5 at 88mm x 133mm and have 48 sheets, and a sewn (pamphlet stitch) binding. The California Back Pocket Journal California Back Pocket Journal (right) California Back Pocket pen test The tiny pocket would get chewed up in my bag. I’d be interested in an A5 notebook from this manufacturer if it had the same thick, off-white paper. I’d definitely put Silvine notebooks on my To Buy List, but not this small. The Mono Twin did bleed through a little but there was no ghosting apart from that. None of the pens tested feathered at all, which was impressive. This unassuming wee notebook was one of the best at standing up to the rigours of the pen test. The paper is plain, off-white, and the notebook has a sewn binding. This teeny-tiny notebook is on 110mm x 72mm and 40 pages in size, but is nonetheless an impressive piece of writing kit. The vintage Waterman is a VERY wet writer, so this really tested how well the notebooks could deal with a lot of ink. You would be hard pushed to find through which the Mono Twin wouldn’t bleed- what I was checking here was how well the notebooks stood up to potential feathering with this pen, so judge the results on that rather than bleed. The Tombow Mono Twin is a permanent, solvent-based ink, which I expected to go through the paper.

Vintage Waterman fountain pen, flexible italic nib, with Diamine Asa Blue ink.

Pelikan P405 fountain pen, gold EF nib, with Diamine Imperial Purple ink.

Faber-Castell Basic fountain pen, EF nib, with Diamine Grape ink.

Lamy Safari fountain pen, M nib with Pelikan Edelstein Amethyst ink.

Here are the pens I used:įrom bottom to top (the order used in the tests): The selection of mostly) purple pens used to put these notebooks through their paces I selected a variety of purple inks for no particular reason except I like purple. Pocket Notebooks box (including a little ‘sweetener’) Notebooks!Īll of these notebooks should be able to handle fountain pens, so I decided to put the manufacturers’ claims to the test with a variety of pens and inks.

I received a really nicely presented box containing 6 approx. The lovely Stu over at Pocket Notebooks sent some United Inkdom members a bumper pack of small notebooks to review.

Mini notebooks with pens