New R by Rhodia tablet: my new favorite paper!

I just got my latest, greatest order in from Goulet Pens, and I couldn't be more excited. I have been eagerly anticipating the new R by Rhodia soft-touch notepads for longer than I even knew. More on that in a moment.

I warn you, this is going to be a long and photo-heavy review. But you already know that if your page is loading as slowly as mine is. I think it will be worth it, though.

First, you might want to acquaint yourself with the hype. Brian Goulet did a wonderful video on his Ink Nouveau blog that gives an excellent review of the new product, and a nice overview and comparison. I wish I had remembered to take a photo of this paper in comparison to other papers, but I didn't - I think he does that in the video. Anyway, worth watching.



So here is the awesome new paper. It is a gentle ivory/cream color. It does not detract from any ink color, but it's not SCREAMING BRIGHT WHITE like Clairefontaine Triomphe and most of the Clairefontaine notebooks, including my current ink journal. Nor is it screaming bright white like the other, original Rhodia pads.



Also unlike the other Rhodia pads, there is no margin, and the lines (this is also available in blank, but I started out with the lined version) are sort of a soft grey, not blue. Subtle. Nice touch. I like the ruling. It's a good width for me. (I just checked, for those of you that want precision: it's 7mm.)

But it's really about the paper, and how well it takes ink. This new pad is an "upgrade" to 90g paper from the previous 80g. It does feel slightly thicker to the touch. In his video, Brian said it was nearly as smooth as Clairefontaine Triomphe, and I would mostly agree with that, but it doesn't have the Triomphe's "glassy" quality... which, in most cases, is a plus. I wouldn't say there is drag on the paper, and there is definitely not "tooth"... it's just a lovely smooth surface.



Again, though, it's all about the ink. And this is where this paper really excels. For those who like their colors harmonious, I apologize, as I just grabbed pens with excitement in no particular order, other than thinking, "this is a juicy wet pen!" or something like that... really putting the paper to the test, as it were.



As you can see, no feathering. Slight smudging, due to wet inks and my smudgy over-writing hands (+ general impatience). Ink dries significantly faster on this paper than on Clairefontaine Triomphe: a significant plus! All of the inks played nicely, even one of my newest, least favorite inks: Noodler's Old Dutch Sepia; this is the only paper I've tried it on yet where it doesn't feather! (It's humid here in August. That happens. I hope it will be have better in the winter, when everything, including my pens and papers, is less damp.)

Inks and pens shown:
Noodler's Heart of Darkness / Pilot Varsity M
Diamine Registrar's Ink / Pilot Varsity M
Noodler's Eternal Hunter Green / Pilot V-Pen F
Montblanc Ink of Love / Pilot V-Pen M
Noodler's Old Dutch Sepia / Daiso Mini
Diamine Steel Blue / Waterman Taperite
Montblanc Ink of Joy / Parker Flighter 180
Iroshizuku Shin-Ryoku / Sheaffer school pen F
J. Herbin 1670 Rouge Hematite / Noodler's flex pen
Diamine Violet / Dollar Demonstrator
Diamine Dark Green / Noodler's Nib Creaper (firm/non-flex)
Diamine Delamere Green / Waterman Graduate M
Noodler's Kung Te-Cheng / Platinum Preppy F
Diamine Oxblood / Parker Vector M
Noodler's Black Swan in Australian Roses / Esterbrook 9788
Noodler's Blue Ghost / Platinum Preppy M



Slight tangent - if you thought the last line of ink was Noodler's Black Swan in Australian Roses, you thought wrong! Included in my order from Goulet Pens was the awesome Noodler's Blue Ghost invisible ink, which shows up with a black light on non-bleached papers. COOOL! Goulet pens also sells this ingenious set of black light rings that you can attach to your pen or your finger as you write, illuminating in black light just your area of writing. Trust me, this is key: it is eerie to be writing if you can't see what you're writing! I'm writing with a Platinum Preppy M, which came from Goulet Pens already as an eyedropper conversion (and folks, I am happy to pay the extra $2 to Goulet Pens for them to do the eyedropper conversion for me - it's a time-saver, so this pen came all ready to go), and for a specialty ink such as this, I wanted to make sure to use a brand-new pen. Platinum Preppy eyedroppers are one heck of a great bargain for about $6 from Goulet Pens!



I do happen to have a larger black light, which is handy for the reading part, not so much for the writing... but it allows me to show you the whole line of ink and not just part of a word.



With the ivory color of this paper, this ink looks fabulous! It does not show up at all in my bright white Clairefontaine ink journal... that paper is just too white.



So back to the paper. This photo above is the most exciting photo to me of the whole bunch, and if you're a real fountain pen/paper aficionado, you'll guess why. This is the back of my ink tests page. Not only is there no bleed-through, there's not even any SHOW-through! You can only tell there is even writing on the other side if you look really closely. WOW! And I even flexed my flex nibs with Noodler's BSIAR and Herbin's 1670 Rouge Hematite inks... wet inks in very wet pens! LOVE it. This, as much as anything else, is why this is my new favorite paper. I will use it for second/additional sheets in letters, and I can write on both sides with ease. It's also a great size for the sort of stationery I prefer to use.



And finally, the back of this wonderful tablet. It comes in many sizes, both lined and blank, with black and orange covers. (The inside of the cover has the inverse color.) I chose orange this time, since my other Rhodia pads have black covers.

Important note: I am not affiliated with Goulet Pens, I am just a happy repeat customer. Here's the buying info: R by Rhodia No.16 tablet, 70 sheets for $7. This stuff is new and freshly out, but other retailers may be carrying it now as well.

Wrap-up:
If you wanted pretty much the paper that comes in Rhodia webnotebooks but in micro-perf tablet form, this is it.
If you wanted "off-white Clairefontaine," this is it.
If you want a great, high-quality writing paper for a great value, this is it.

Highly, highly recommended!

Comparison of grey fountain pen inks

If you've read my blog for a while, you know I keep an ink journal to keep track of all my fountain pen inks. I update it every time I refill or clean a pen, so it's a great record of maintenance, and of course it helps me remember which ink is in which pen! But I also play around in it from time to time, and ink comparisons are always great fun. I had a yen a while back to compare my grey inks - or at least, the grey and blue-grey inks I had loaded in pens at the time.

What you see above is a scan of that comparison.



I also took a photo of the page, in natural light (indirect sunlight), and to my eyes, this one (the photo above) is a far more accurate portrayal of the colors. But some people prefer scans to photos, so in the interest of a full range, I used both imaging options.

I hadn't realized, until I put them all together like this, how very greenish the Noodler's Lexington Gray is.

The inks and pens listed above:
Diamine Grey / Esterbrook 9550 (EF)
Noodler's Lexington Gray / Guanleming 706 EF
Iroshizuku Fuyu-Syogun / Platinum Preppy M
Diamine Prussian Blue / Esterbrook 9788 (M)
Diamine Registrar's Ink / Lantu Bazic Eclipse M

The Registrar's Ink and the Lexington Gray are both waterproof, so they show up on postcards with some regularity. The others are for the innards of a letter or a journal.

Do I have a favorite? I guess I'd have to flag the Iroshizuku Fuyu-Syogun and the Registrar's Ink as current top picks, both for the color and behavior.

For those who are as geeky as I am about this sort of thing, these comparisons are in a Clairefontaine Basics clothbound journal, just like this one I blogged about over a year ago, except the current incarnation has a black cover. I'm pretty happy with using this journal as an ink journal, but when I finish this one, perhaps I'll branch out. Who knows.

A random assortment of ink

Just one quick ink journal photo this time: Noodler's Sequoia, Noodler's V-Mail North African Violet, Diamine Violet and J. Herbin Vert Reseda.

The assortment is random, it's just a few I wanted to check out at that moment.

Maybe you'll be able to view a larger size if you have a Flickr account.

So far Diamine Violet is the winner - looks smashing in a pen (more views of that later), shades well, behaves well, and has the charming effect of changing color as it dries. It goes down much more pink/magenta, and you can just watch it dry more blue. I really dig that.

Noodler's Sequoia is too... meh... for me. If I want a green, it needs to be more green than this. Also, it dries a bit slowly.

Noodler's V-Mail North African Violet is a lovely bright purple color, but it also dries a bit slowly for me.

The J. Herbin Vert Reseda was a gift. It is far too light for my taste. I put it in a pen once and could barely read it.

Noodler's V-Mail GI Green

This Noodler's V-Mail series GI Green ink generated a lot of hubub because of the "orange halo" that appears around thicker lines of the ink. It is clearly visible in these photos, especially on the wetter dip nibs used. However, Noodler's has since reformulated this ink to make it darker. The samples shown here are definitely the original version. You can view this large if you have a Flickr account of your own.



More views of the sane ink, from different dip nibs. You can also take a closer look at this one, with said Flickr account. I do have this ink loaded in a pen now, but the pen (a Platinum Riviere - thanks, Carroll!) is rather on the dry-writing side, and I've never been able to get the orange tones from the ink in that pen.

A few red inks

Here are some of my dark red inks, shown in pens and not in toothpick samples. We have Noodler's Tiananmen, Diamine Monaco Red, Noodler's Red-Black, and Noodler's Swishmix Burgundy. This is probably a fairly accurate representation of the colors, though most of the nibs were very much on the fine side. As for the Noodler's Swishmix Burgundy at the bottom, I have to admit I do not much care for it. I find it chalky, and that really bugs me in an ink in ways I can't even explain. If you have a Flickr account, you might like to see a larger version of this photo, where you can see the subtleties of the inks.



Next we have a cropped version of the top three inks, which I do like. This was not a conscientious red ink comparison, I just happened to refill a bunch of dark reds at once.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Noodler's Red-Black, which is usually too brown-looking for me. On some papers, usually coated postcards, you can really see the red undertones of the ink, but on most papers it ends up looking sorta brown like this. The upside is that it's partly waterproof - the black component is waterproof, so the red may wash away but the black will stay.

The Tiananmen and the Diamine Monaco Red have very special places in my heart. It doesn't hurt that the Monaco Red is in one of my very favorite pens - a red Esterbrook LJ with a semi-flexible 9048 nib. It's a joy to use, and the shading (color/saturation variation) in the Monaco Red is lovely.

Are you getting sick of the ink stuff? I am, a little bit. I have more ink photos in the queue, but I believe for my next post I'll jump ahead in said photo queue and post about a letter.

2 V-mail inks in pens, plus my new fountain pen!

Here are those photos of my two V-mail inks in pens. For those of you who are reading this who AREN'T pen geeks, these are the fruits of my Sunday excursion to the New England Pen Show in Boston, my first-ever pen show. It was ever so much fun. If you're not a pen-and-ink geek, then this post may not mean a whole lot to you. More letter stuff coming later, I promise - but I gotta share the pen-and-ink goodness with my fellow fountain pen nut readers.

I learned recently from the The Fountain Pen Network (FPN) forums that Boston Brahmin Black is indeed part of the V-Mail series. (For more background, see my Noodler's inks from the New England Pen Show post.) So the two inks shown at the top of the page, Midway Blue and Boston Brahmin Black, are both in that series. Oh, and you gotta view this one large to appreciate it.

Both the Midway Blue and Boston Brahmin Black are shown in Autopoint Big Cat pens, which I got as part of Richard Binder's nib-smoothing kit. I haven't even played with the smoothing kit itself yet, because these German "student pens" are already pretty nice and smooth.

Have I mentioned I am in love with Midway Blue? I am in love with Midway Blue. Excellent shading. Great, bright color. Dries really quickly. Hooray!

But I must also show you my new baby. I splurged (a calculated splurge, as I'd been considering this for month) on a Pelikan M200 with a custom Binder-ized nib (for those who aren't pen geeks yet have read this far, Richard Binder is a famous "nibmeister," or master of fountain pen nibs, known for his fine work and specialty nibs) of the XXXF Needlepoint variety. I tested one at his table and knew it was for me. This puppy is SUPERFINE, baby! For those of you that get letters from me, you already know of my penchant for reeeeeeallly fine nibs (and fine = thin, the opposite of a broad nib). I've never written with anything this fine before. You can see it in the photo at top with the Noodler's Squeteague. I am in love with my new pen.

Here's a bit of pen porn, a close-up of that needlepoint nib:



Oohhhh yeah. You can view this one large if you want to, too. Mmmmm.

Coming soon, back to letter-writing goodness - I'll have another really long, photo-filled post featuring the work of one of my intrepid correspondents, who did a photo documentary of every step of the wax seal process.

Happy writing! Go write a letter!

Noodler's inks from the New England Pen Show

As promised to many friends on The Fountain Pen Network (FPN), here are photos of all the Noodler's inks I tried out at the New England Pen Show in Boston this past Sunday. Inks were all tested in the provided Platinum Preppy brush pens, already filled with the inks. All are, of course, Noodler's inks.



PART 1 (View large for close-up)
Emperor's Purple (Kung te-cheng)
Purple
La Reine Mauve
Periwinkle
Concord Bream
Borealis Black
Mandalay Maroon (V-Mail series)



PART 2 (View large for close-up)
Baystate Blue
Dark Matter
Beaver
Midway Blue
North African Violet (V-Mail series)
Luxury Blue



PART 3 (View large for close-up)
All of these are from the V-Mail series:
GI Green
Midway Blue
Operation Overland Orange
Rabaoul Red
Midway Blue (I tested this one a lot, and ended up buying it. More photos of this ink in a pen coming shortly.)

Check out the cool orange tint on the edges of GI Green! That color is way too light for me, but the green-to-orange effect is pretty groovy. If you like it as much as I do, check out this ink review on the Fountain Pen Network. It REALLY shows off this ink.

The whole New England Pen show was a blast, but the Noodler's table was among the most giddy kind of fun. I really appreciate the savvy FPN members who gave me the excellent advice of bringing my own ink journal and getting samples of as many Noodler's inks as I could in there. I didn't try a lot of colors just because I'm not inclined to like them. I did try to get all the V-Mail series, just for fun, even though I'm not likely to buy an orange ink.

For my blog readers who are only into the letter part and this fountain pen and ink talk is making your eyes glaze over, sorry about that. But I gotta geek out here, because fountain pens and fountain pen inks are among my favorite parts of letter-writing.

Before I close, a little more on this special brand-new V-mail series of ink.

I spoke with Nathan Tardif, the maker of Noodler's ink, about these brand-new inks. First he was talking with someone else about them, so I listened in. Then I joked, "have you tested V-mail ink on a V-mail?" And he then said no, the inks were only 48 hours old, and showed me his printed sheet of info.

Apparently the V-mail series are prototypes, produced as a test batch for the NE Pen Show. He may start making more based on how folks react to these.

I believe he called them "vintage-style" inks, and said they are made from the same reverse-engineered dyes that he obtained for Boston Brahmin Black (the NE Pen show limited edition ink, that folks who attended the show got for free. I posted photos of the snazzy bottle in my blog post yesterday). He explained something I don't quite understand, having to do with mimicking vintage inks made by a pen company in the midwest (ummm.... Iowa? Ohio? I can't remember and I'm sure someone will dress me down because it's obvious who they're mimicking but I have no idea) that he can't name by name because they still exist.

ANYWAY. These new inks are "water-resistant," Nathan says, although they smeared when I smudged with saliva (my non-scientific test).

I bought Midway Blue, which is a very bright, very saturated light blue - a color almost like turquoise, that I never would have thought I'd like, except I saw it in person and loved it. Like I said, more photos of this ink actually in a pen (where, in my humble opinion, it looks much better than in a brush/highlighter pen) coming soon.

Other colors were GI Green (looked surprisingly light and minty to me), Operation Overland Orange, Rabaoul Red, Mandalay Maroon, North African Violet. There was a brown I didn't even try so I didn't write down the name.

The fact that a brand-new series of Noodler's ink would be making its debut at the NE Pen show was a total surprise!

Boston Brahmin Black ink bottle

I spent my Sunday at my first pen show: The New England Pen Show in Boston. It was a great time and well worth the drive. The first 200 attendees got this ink for FREE with their admission: Noodler's Boston Brahmin Black, the 2009 New England Pen Show exclusive color.



I will post ink scans SOON (later today or tomorrow, I promise!) - I took photos of this ink along with a whole bunch of other Noodler's inks that I got to test at the show - but here's the bottle for a teaser.

Rose parchment stationery from Victorian Papers

Here is some of my favorite stationery from Victorian Papers, which I can sometimes find on their website and sometimes not. This set I believe I actually bought at their B&M store in Kansas City.

I'm very proud of myself for matching ink color to the printing: this is Private Reserve Black Cherry ink.



On the envelope I used a different ink, Noodler's red-black, because it is fairly water-resistant. It matches fairly well, but not as well as the Black Cherry.

I had to use extra postage because I wrote soooooo many pages in this letter. Sometimes I do that.

Pilot Varsity refilled

Okay, so this post isn't DIRECTLY about letter-writing, but it is about fountain pens. And I write all my letters with fountain pens. And I write a lot of letters, and address even more envelopes, with this pen and this ink. So, on to the meat of the post...

Encouraged by this post on the Good Pens blog, I finally gave it a go and refilled a Pilot Varsity. Using needlenose pliers, you can just pop the nib bit out, dump out any unused ink, and fill with a much more exciting color. I wanted a nice fat line for my Noodler's Heart of Darkness, so this was a perfect fit. I address most envelopes with Heart of Darkness because it is so very black and also waterproof, so this is now my go-to pen for that purpose.

I didn't rinse the nib, and you can see in the top of the photo how much lighter the Pilot black ink is than the Noodler's black-black-black HoD.