Dot Grid Journal, 120 gsm

Details

A dot grid journal, 192 pages, thread sewn in twelve signatures of sixteen and cased onto 2.5 mm board, with numbered pages and a bound-in index. The whole argument for a journal like this is the paper, and a journal that ghosts is a bad journal whatever the number on its cover. Grammage alone does not settle it either: a poorly sized 120 GSM sheet will feather a fountain pen line into a caterpillar, and a well sized 100 GSM sheet will not. So three separate things are measured and printed. Grammage, on a disc cut from the bound book. Opacity, which is what actually decides whether the reverse side is usable. And behaviour with a real pen, described rather than summarised into the phrase fountain pen friendly, which is printed on almost everything and tested on almost nothing.

• 192 pages, which is 96 leaves and 192 sides, in 12 sewn signatures of 16 pages. Counted per lot against the cover figure
• Grammage measures 120 GSM to ISO 536, tolerance plus or minus 3 percent, so 116.4 to 123.6
• Opacity 96 percent, ISO 2471. At that figure a dark fountain pen line on one side reads as the faintest shadow on the other, and both sides stay usable
• Fountain pen behaviour, tested with a steel nib and this store's own 30 ml ink. Extra fine to broad: no feathering on the line edge, no bleed-through, faint ghosting visible on the reverse at broad. Shading and sheen show, because the sheet is sized rather than absorbent
• Ink drying time is slower for the same reason. A wet medium takes about 12 to 15 seconds to be smudge safe, and a left-handed overwriter will smudge it. That is the trade-off for no feathering and we would rather print it than let you find out
• Dot grid at 5 mm pitch, 0.3 mm dot, 25 percent grey, printed to disappear under a drawing rather than sit on top of it
• Every page numbered, with a four page index bound in at the front
• Thread sewn and cased. It opens flat at any page including the first spread, which matters when you are ruling a box across a gutter
• Acid free to ISO 9706, elemental chlorine free with AOX under 0.2 kg per tonne. ECF is not chlorine free and we will not round it up
• Virgin fibre, no recycled content, no leaf on the cover implying any
• Spine measures about 12 mm, from a 0.126 mm caliper at 1.05 bulk across 96 leaves