Quality Steno Pad At A Frugal Price

[Armstrong]

I take a lot of notes, scribble ideas, and draw out designs. My favorite notebook is a steno pad for its combination of portability and convenient page size.

Tried the Office Depot brand steno pad. Does not appear to have a specific name, just says Office Depot Writing Pad. The cover has a black and gray design printed over dark gray background. It contains 70pgs, white paper and is not Greg ruled. The paper worked fine with regular ball point and pencil. The paper was terrible with fountain and roller ball pens. Neither fountain pens nor roller ball pens would write on this paper without frequent skipping. First time I have seen skipping due to the paper instead of the pen. Both my Retro 51 Tornado roller ball and a Pilot G2 gel ink pen readily bled through leaving ink dots, some of good size, on the next sheet. Using the reverse side of a page was out of the question. It appears to be a very thin, hard, paper.

After some experimenting I came across a readily available steno pad which works well with water based inks. Both a TWSBI medium nib fountain pen with a well saturated ink (Noodler's Purple Martin) and the Retro 51 roller ball wrote nicely on the paper. The nib was well wetted by forcing ink into the feed via the piston mechanism. The Retro 51 writes a wet line. Looking at the reverse page I could tell something was written on the front of the sheet, but it wasn't enough to interfere with clear writing on the reverse. The paper was canary yellow, 144pgs, and Greg ruled. The paper also comes in green and white. The steno pad is a 'TOPS' brand. The specific model is "The Docket". The cover is black with the model name printed at the bottom of the cover in gold ink. The paper appears to be 18-20lb weight, but I am no expert so take that with a grain of salt. The cardboard backing is heavy. Overall, a nice quality pad for about $8. When you consider the number of pages is double that in a typical steno pad, the price is not bad. Seems like a good deal when you consider it has quality paper which works well with a medium nib fountain pen and a wet writing roller ball. Tops appears to be widely distributed as a quick online search turned them up at Office Depot and Walmart.

Being a frugal shopper, I believe this is a good deal. How it would perform on a very wet nib like a flex or a broad tip I can't say. It worked well with the pens I used. The Tops Docket is now my notebook of choice.

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EDIT:
I checked the TOPS website (https://www.tops-products.com/) and found out the following information on this product.

Paper Weight: 16 lb.
Acid Free: YES
Back Cover Weight: 60 pt.

Tops price for the same notebook was much higher, so I would shop around. Mine cost $7.99 at Office Depot.