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⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
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I own a Pilot Vanishing Point fountain pen, a fairly expensive pen but well worth the price for me. In two years I've only seen it clog once, after almost two straight months of no use--which if course was my own fault.
Fountain pens tend to write better on certain types of paper than others. Glossy paper can interrupt the smooth flow of ink from the pen's nib, and in extreme cases can cause the pen to either leak or clog. Coarse paper can transmit a scratchiness through a fountain pen that would otherwise be dampened by the rollerball in a ballpoint or gel pen. Other types of paper are prone to feathering (ink spreading along the surface of the paper) or bleeding (ink soaking through the paper and becoming visible on the other side).
I've tried a number of notebooks with my fountain pens over the last few years, and I've enjoyed some far more than others.
My first notebook was made by Field Notes. While these are quite tough and are well-suited for travel, my fountain pens feathered and bled all over the place with them. It made reading back what I wrote very difficult.
Moleskines worked a little better--not bleeding through as much--but the paper is very slightly glossy. This made the ink take longer to dry than I liked.
Around the same time, my wife and I stopped at a Korean gift shop, where I found a stack of notebooks by a Korean company called Tobe. The pen writes extremely well, but the paper is a little light, and the notebook is a little large for my tastes.
I next bought a Manufactus notebook, primarily to use in a tabletop RPG. The paper is nice and heavy, and it doesn't bleed or feather at all, but it is significantly glossier than my first two notebooks. Ink would take a minute or more to dry, and I had to be very careful not to shut the book in the meantime lest the ink smear everywhere.
The Manufactum notebook is quite large, and I like pocket-sized notebooks to take on my bicycle, so I next bought a Claire Fontaine notebook. I quite like the paper in it, but in trying to jam the notebook into a cover, I accidentally broke the binding. I've only use it a little as a result.
Meanwhile, my wife was interested in purchasing a Leuchtturm notebook for herself, so I joined in a bought a 1917. Out of all the notebooks I'd tried up to that point, the Leuchtturm 1917 was my favorite. The paper weight felt right, the pen glided smoothly, ink dried quickly, and the size was a good compromise between portability and writing real estate.
My other favorite notebook, and the one I currently use, was an unexpected find. My previous job kept supplies of office equipment in a common room, from which any employee was allowed to take. Among their stock of paper pads was a Steno Notes pad from Staples, an American office supply store. The spiral notepad only costs a few dollars, but the paper feels fantastically good with my pen.
I'm always interested in new notebooks to try. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear about them.
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[Last updated: 2022-12-30]