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

[DrPenfection]

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 Hannah notebooks and the paper that is in them. I was intrigued and did some further research. Other reviewers have done wonderful reviews on the notebooks and gave good reviews 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 Hannah 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:

Slide1.JPG


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.

Slide2.JPG
Slide3.JPG

Each of the papers were nicely smooth and pleasant to write on. The Fabriano has is the least smoothness 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 Hannah paper.

In terms of sheen, the New Tomoe River and the William Hannah 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 Hannah 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:

NEW PENS INK feather close up.jpg

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 Hannah 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").

WH v Sanzen spread comp.JPG

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 Hannah 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:

2022-08-25_16-23-12.jpg

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 Hannah 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 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.


****** Correction: The correct spelling is William Hannah