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William Hannah’s dotted grid paper

Leave a Comment / Paper & Notebooks, Uncategorised / 22 August 2016 / paper comparison, violin plot, William Hannah

A few weeks ago Scribble sent me a sample paper pack containing paper sheets from many different companies, all carefully prepared (‘hole punched’ and the corners rounded) so that they can be used in Atoma, William Hannah or similar disc bound notebooks.

On more than one occasion I have stated how good Atoma’s paper is. It is basically in a class of its own – but with United Inkdom having a closer look at William Hannah’s notebook I thought it might be worth having a closer look at the paper that comes with the William Hannah notebook – different sheets of W.H. paper were part of Scribbles sample paper pack.

Printed on consumer equipment?

Let me start by saying that the William Hannah paper is rather unusual, at least the dot grid version is: It contains printer steganography. The best reason for this I could come up with is that the paper is prepared (cut, punched and the corners rounded) in very small batches. So small that consumer printing equipment might have been used to print the dot grid pattern. That would explain the yellow dots from the printer steganography as well as the fact that the purple used for the purple dots is made up of red and blue areas, i.e. the colour is mixed. ^[1]I assume that if you would do this big style you would use the colour you want to use instead of mixing it in your printer. The dots are also reflective, like colour laser printed documents, unlike inkjet printer printed documents.

Depending on your screen the yellow dots might or might not be easy to see — Depending on your screen the yellow dots in the picture above might or might not be easy to see

Regarding the printer steganography: you can certainly see repeating patterns. I don’t have the time at the moment or I would try to decode the pattern using the EFF’s instructions.

Paper quality

I find the paper to be of good, but not exceptional quality. In terms of darkness and roughness, it seems a tiny bit worse than the good Boise Offset Smooth 50#T “Whitewash” white paper you can find in the Field Notes County Fair edition, but it is certainly no match for Atoma’s paper.

If I had a William Hannah notebook I’d be happy with the paper that comes with it, just to keep things simple. It is good paper, but depending on how happy you are to go the extra mile it might be worth experimenting with refills from other brands.

Violin plot comparing William Hannah paper with previously tested paper

The violin plot was done using the same parameters (1.5 Newton force, etc) as the paper comparison in this blog post.

You can read more about William Hannah at United Inkdom and Scribble’s blog.

Atoma’s ruitertassen notebook, which is similar to William Hannah’s notebook can be seen in a previous blog post.

UPDATE: A year after this blog post I met David Round, the man behind William Hannah at the Northern Pen Show.

References[+]

References
↑1	I assume that if you would do this big style you would use the colour you want to use instead of mixing it in your printer.

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Plots and samples

2 Comments / Paper & Notebooks / 10 August 2016 / Atoma, Banditapple, Boise, Finch, Silvine

A quick follow up to the blog post comparing different types of paper.

Since there has been some interest in this topic, here the diagram with the samples above the plots.

A sample with not much variation results in a condensed violin plot, which is easy to see here.

It doesn’t seem to matter if a paper as lots of areas the lead can’t reach, i.e. parts that stay white. As long as the dark areas are properly dark the mark left by the paper feels dark.

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Comparing different types of paper

6 Comments / Paper & Notebooks / 5 August 2016 / 4G, Atoma, Banditapple, Boise, Field Notes, Finch, Silvine, Tomoe River

For quite a while I’ve been planning on having a closer look at how different paper performs for pencil use.

I think it started because I loved the County Fair Field Notes I got from Koralatov, but when I tried the Original Field Notes (FN-01 to FN-04) I didn’t like the paper at all. (According to the text in the back the County Fair edition is using Boise Offset Smooth 50#T paper, while the Original version is using Finch Paper Opaque Smooth 60#T.)

Well, I thought I better have a closer look. Long term, i.e. if this is of interest to readers, I plan on also measuring how abrasive the paper is, but I haven’t found an easily reproducible way of doing that yet that can be measured accurately, so I am focussing on how dark a line the different papers will produce with the same lead.

Following Kent’s post about the Lumograph being a good standard pencil, because it is good, not expensive and available world wide, I wanted to use the Lumograph, but for several reasons (I don’t want to bore you with them) I went with the next best alternative: Staedtler’s mechanical pencil lead.

Violin plot 6 papers — Violin plots showing the distribution of darkness of the marks left by the lead on different papers

Methodology

I try keep it short, but more details are available if there is interest.

Force used: 1.5 Newton (roughly equivalent to 150g)

Lead used: Staedtler lead, 0.7mm, the one that came with the Mars micro. I assume it is HB, but I have added a Staedtler 0.7mm HB lead to a recent order from The Pen Company, so that I can use those leads for future comparisons.

Pressure used: 4.17 MegaPascals

As seen in this blog post a 0.7mm lead has a diameter of 0.68mm, that’s a surface area of 0.36mm². With a pressure of just over 4 MegaPascals the equivalent force used on an 0.5mm lead to produce this pressure would be 1 Newton.

I found these parameters to be a suitable trade off between force and diameter size. More force means more problems with me providing consistent, reproducible results. The obvious way out would be to reduce the lead size (= more pressure per square mm), but a smaller diameter means measuring the lead’s darkness becomes more difficult and less representative.

Paper

Some quick comments on the paper.

Atoma

Great and extremely dark for pencils. So unusually dark that you can easily switch to a harder pencil grade and get a similar darkness compared to other paper. My wife started using an H lead for writing in Atoma notebooks.

I did a control sample to confirm that the plot shown in the diagram is correct.

Banditapple

As always great paper! This is the latest generation of Banditapple paper: 4G, just released.

Silvine

Very common in the UK. Most Post Offices will sell Silvine products, but unfortunately the red Memo Books have become a rare sight. Silvine is planning to revive their red notebooks.

Boise

Used in County Fair Field Notes. Great paper.

Tomoe River

Very light and smooth paper. I expected a smaller standard deviation. The notebook used is a handmade notebook from Shangching, previously seen in this video.

Finch

Used in the Original Field Notes. I don’t like it for pencils. I should probably switch to using softer pencils in this notebook, then this paper might be alright. Also not good for fountain pens.

Box plots including two control samples on the right

The diagrams

The diagrams show the distribution of dark and light marks left by the lead on he paper.

I first planned on using box plots. I have heard that they even teach box plots in school these days, but I went with violin plots instead. violin plots are basically box plots with a rotated kernel density plot on each side. I thought this provides more information, compared to box plots, in the same space.

I have taken samples of exactly the same size from the mark left by the pencil on all these papers. In the diagram 3.0 represents white, 0.0 represents black, so you can see the distribution of dark and white in the mark left by the lead on the paper. A darker mark, like the one on Atoma paper, will show as a plot further down (closer to 0.0) in the diagram.

Smoother, finer paper should produce less variation, i.e. a more even colour, so the plot should be more condensed. Rougher paper should have more ‘peaks and troughs’ on the surface, so the darkest areas should be darker and the lightest areas should be lighter, resulting in a stretched plot.

There are two control samples, only visible in the box plots. They are taken from the cover of Field Notes Byline edition. They are just used to see whether using different samples in different scans will produce close enough results in the plots.

Where to go from here

If this is of interest I could look at the different types of paper used in different Field Notes. I could put the R code used to produce this on GitHub. I also have a great paper sample pack from Scribble I could have a look at. Long term the darkness could be plotted against the abrasiveness of the paper.

If there is at least one comment on this blog post I will continue exploring paper, if not I will write blog posts about topics other than paper that might be more interesting, e.g. pencils.

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The Magno – a magnetic lead holder

Leave a Comment / Mechanical pencils / 20 July 2016 / HribarCain, Kickstarter, lead holder

A few days ago I have received a Magno from HribarCain. First I wasn’t sure what to think of it and its unique feature, but now that I have tried it for a while I have to say that I really like this pencil and love the mechanism used to propel the lead.

The Magno is a lead holder with a magnetic mechanism, invented by HribarCain – a team of two British design engineers who started working on this pencil one and a half years ago.

The mechanism

The special thing about this pencil is the magnetic mechanism used to propel the lead. Instead of clicking a button (..and the lead ‘falls out’) you first loosen the front of the pen. You then move a ring on the outside of the body which will move a magnet inside the pencil. This magnet is attached to the lead. This gives precise control over how much more lead you want to expose.

I know that some people who bought the Penxo, a very different Kickstarter pen in a similar price range, had problems with the lead breaking easily. I did some initial drop tests and the Magno seems to cope well with being dropped: the lead didn’t break.

The Kickstarter

My understanding is that everything is in place to produce the Magno and it will get made anyway, but instead of just selling these pencils in an online shop HribarCain is launching a Kickstarter campaign on 22 July where early backers can get this pen for £20. The money raised will then be used for other design products they plan to make.

The options

The pen will be available in four colours that have an iPhone vibe to them, but unlike the Lamy LX the Magno’s colours aren’t a copy of the iPhone colour, which I think is a good thing.

Conclusion

When I saw the photos I thought the Magno is a bit on the bling looking side, but in reality the pen was more ‘serious’ looking than I expected. The ring is still a bit shiny for my taste, but overall the Magno is serious looking enough to use at work.

I hope this pencil will sell well so that there will be even more versions in the future. A Rotring-style matt black version, maybe even hexagonal, with a slimmer ring would be such an amazing pen, at least for my taste, others will disagree.

The Magno is very well made and when keeping in mind that there are many lead holders and clutch pencils with a plastic body that cost nearly as much, £20 is great value for money.

You can find the Kickstarter at this address.

A photo from the Kickstarter campaign (Image © HRIBARCAIN)

I’d like to thank Ashley from HribarCain who has sent me the Magno free of charge for review purposes.

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The Uni Shift and a look at 0.4 mm leads

4 Comments / Mechanical pencils, Uni / 15 July 2016 / 0.4mm, Made in Japan, mechanical pencil, Mitsubishi, Shift, Uni

Let me start by saying: It’s all Lexikaliker’s fault.

He praised the virtues of 0.4 mm pencils, so I had to order one.

I had a look at various 0.4 mm pencils and decided to go with the Uni Shift for £7.43 from Amazon Marketplace in the UK ^[1]When I bought it it was 3p more expensive: £7.46., in the USA it sells for $10.20, again on Amazon Marketplace …including shipping. In many online shops this pen can easily cost twice as much, though. I have no idea how the pen can be sent from Japan for such a good price.

Despite coming all the way from Japan it only took a few days before the pen arrived. The seller even remembered that I bought form him before.

0.4 mm

In theory

Well, this is my first 0.4mm pencil. You’d think 0.4mm doesn’t seem to be that different to 0.5mm, it’s just 20% smaller, but depending on how you write the difference in the graphite you lay down can easily be 30% or more.

Here’s a little table showing the surface area you cover, depending on which angle you write with and assuming you don’t rotate the pencil(!). The spreadsheet is available as a Google Doc, so you can check the formulas I used. Please let me know if you find a mistake.

Assuming a writing angle of 40° a 0.5mm pencil would cover a surface area more than 50% bigger than a 0.4mm pencil, so there is quite a difference.

In practice

…well at least that’s the theory. In reality things look a bit different. When I checked lead diameters with my caliper I got different numbers. Have a look at the table below. Note: 0.3mm and 0.35mm is used interchangeably my manufacturers.

Nominal value (mm)	0.2	0.3/0.35	0.4	0.5	0.7
Measured value (mm)	0.24	0.36	0.46	0.55	0.68

I am not sure whether I read about this discrepancy in the past, but when I had a look I couldn’t find any information about this on the web. Since my caliper isn’t ‘officially’ calibrated and is just for home use I won’t go into more details and speculation here, other that these might be legacy diameters manufacturers adhere to so that leads and pencil stay interchangeable.

Using the nominal value, an 0.5mm lead used at an angle of 40° has a 50% bigger surface area than an 0.4mm lead. Using the measured values the 0.4mm lead is closer to the 0.5mm lead, but the gap to the 0.35mm lead widens, see table below.

Lead size (mm)	0.35	0.4	0.5
Surface area (mm^2)(nominal diameter)	0.15	0.20	0.31
Surface area (mm^2) (measured diameter)	0.16	0.26	0.37

The main issue with 0.4mm pencils is that the choice of leads is not that big, but the excellent neox Graphite leads are available in 0.4mm.

Uni Shift

The main purpose of the pipe lock mechanism seems to be to make the pencil pocket safe, i.e. the rigid sleeve/pipe is hidden so that it can’t damage your pocket. I guess the mechanism used in the Uni Shift makes it easier to create a pencil where the sleeve is rigid and doesn’t wobble, compared to mechanical pencils with a retractable sleeve. Easier might in this case also equate to ‘cheaper to manufacture’.

The mechanism that locks the lead feels a bit clumsy. I don’t find it as nice as some alternatives, shown in the video, mainly because it is more difficult to use single handedly.

I like the grip section. It is made from metal. The upper body of the pen is only plastic. Considering the price of the pen this is however not surprising.

The pencil is excellent value for money, at least for the price I paid. If you don’t like 0.4mm you can buy the Uni Shift in many other lead diameters, too.

Price: June and July 2016
Exchange rates: July 2016

As usual please open images in a new tab to see a high resolution version. To see the video inhigh resolution please open in YouTube,

If you want to read more about Mitsubishi and it’s link to other companies with that name have a look as Estilofilos.

If you want to be amazed by Lexikaliker’s special 0.4mm pencil have a look at Sonderanfertigung and Sonderanfertigung 2.

The Uni Shift has been mentioned in The Pen Addict podcast, episode 152, at around 30 minutes. One of Brad Dowdy’s favourite mechanical pencils.

The Pen Addict and Dave have reviews of this mechanical pencil.

References[+]

References
↑1	When I bought it it was 3p more expensive: £7.46.

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