Bandit Apple Carnet Handy (Hanoi Red) - Lots of Pictures

[KBeezie]

Edit: Images resized to 640px wide max (bottom write samples were already less than that), Click the image to enlarge. Also had to remove a couple images because 15 is max.

I purchased this Banditapple Carnet Handy in Hanoi Red from GouletPens when I was ordering a new Platinum Cartridge. The price looked good and I wanted to see how well the Vietnamese Handmade notebook was.

First some initial pictures of the notebook itself:







Appearance wise it's rather nice, it sort of reminds me of the Moleskine Cahier notebooks and are similar in size. The covering has a more pronounced texture than the Moleskine Cahier, not quite as cardboard feeling. The pages feel smooth but not so 'soft', and they are a tiny bit thicker feeling than the Rhodia 80g paper (though it's 80g itself as well) I have, not nearly as smooth as the vellum on Rhodia.

It can lay flat once you fold it out from the center, but not really that easy to turn it inside out.

There are however some inconsistencies on a number of pages, some blotting/discoloration here and there, the most noticeable issues being a hand print on the last page, and some creases and a hole in one of the center pages:






(yes those little yellow pieces are part of the page)

Actually writing on the pages was pretty comfortable, it's not soft/fibrous, but it's also not glossy feeling, more like consistent textured notebook paper that gives most of the pens a somewhat pencil feel writing on them, though a couple of my pens (Montblanc 225 with a fine nib, and Pilot Metropolitan) felt extremely smooth on the paper, not glassy but next to no resistance while still getting that somewhat pencil feel.

Feathering seems to be minimal to non-existent, even with my very wet nib/ink combinations (Falcon+Blue Steel, Goulet Medium + Monteverde Blue, Snorkel Medium + Black Eel), some bleed on the scribble patches from the Falcon, 3776 and Pilot Metropolitan Medium.

Crops of written areas:









Shots of the show-thru/bleed-thru (concentrated on three spots that actually bled thru)







After shooting the above, roughly five minutes later I decided to start rubbing my hand accross the page to see if any of the writing would smear. Only two did, the Monteverde Blue in the Goulet Medium, and the Black Eel in the Snorkel + Medium.





The Monteverde Blue is probably quite lubricated, because even as I was padding it down with a paper towel it kept coming off on the paper towel, it was like I couldn't get it completely dry.

Before I scanned it (to avoid getting any ink on the scanner glass), I tried rubbing paper towel across both of the smearing inks (hence why the write sample seems more smeared than the photos above).



Backside http://static.karlblessing.com/paper...apple_back.jpg

Overall for the price I find it to be quite nice, if it was just more consistent (ie: not having some of the discoloration, creases or 'prints') would be quite worthwhile for the price because even Rhodia would feather with my Falcon+Blue steel combination, but Rhodia doesn't absorb ink quite as much as this notebook does.

As a note: This is the only copy of their Journal I have had some experience with, so there's a chance that this is a one in a thousand fluke with the quality of the pages.