Don't worry, they'll be fine when you do your drawings because you'll be looking for them, in fact many times I just use the lines as a rough background to do my isometric drawings. What you want are lines that you can just barely see. The trouble is that the lines are so dark they compete with my layouts. I have expensive Clairefontaine grid books with expensive paper designed for fountain pens. The trouble with most grid notebooks, and I've searched far and wide, is the darkness of the lines. they just choose not to, to increase profit margin (and because 90% of the buyers, won't notice anything different when using gel, ballpoints, or pencils).You would think that a grid ruled notebook isn't much to get exited about but if you use these as often as I do you get particular about several aspects of a notebook. It is possible for companies to do recycled paper very very well. But most stuff now is usually younger replanted trees (if they don't just use recycled materials) is inconsistent and feathers in weird places (like how moleskine has a spidery like feathering). There was an old trick of looking for notebooks that said Made in Brazil, and similar, because at the time they were still pretty much cutting down old trees which meant stronger more consistent paper fibers that handled feathering/bleed better. Only thing that could feather/bleed it was a fat sharpie (or oddly enough a Bic Z4+ rollerball), but then they switched to a "Bio-Blend" (30% sugarcane, 70% recycled material, thicker feel), which they said most customers liked the change, but bled and feathered horribly with liquid inks. Some sugarcane options are good, it used to be that when Roaring springs sold "Environotes" 100% Sugarcane, it could take anything and everything, even my huge 2.0 wet stub with a very wet ink. (Moleskine isn't that great for fountain pens, and the company themselves said it's designed primarily for pencils and ballpoints). Mead 5-star wasn't designed for liquid inks, and just like Moleskine they're mainly good for pencils, ballpoints, and gel pens. I used the same inks with the same pens on both pages and the images speak for themselves. Shading is much more prominent and it even brought out the slightest hint of sheen with my Parker Blue/Black ink! It's been 20+ minutes since I wrote on the Pen+Gear paper and the ink is still shiny and smudgeable. Oddly enough, Noodler's Apache Sunset refused to dry at all on this paper. ![]() Dry times were increased, but that is to be expected when the paper doesn't absorb ink like a sponge. To my surprise, the Pen+Gear notebook performed way better than the Mead Five Star! There was virtually no feathering, no ghosting, and no bleedthrough. ![]() ![]() I decided to test out one of my old notebooks from high school, before I began using fountain pens. ![]() My notes were either one-sided or mildly illegible ever since I picked up the hobby a few years ago. I've been buying Mead Five Star notebooks for the past few school years and I often dismissed the feathering and ghosting because I always assumed it was to be expected with wet-flowing fountain pens. I found myself bored and distracted while taking notes for my online Psych 101 course and realized something I should've noticed a while ago.
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