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How to Get Started with Bullet Journaling

Leave a Comment / Paper & Notebooks / / ,

Today: a guest blog post by Majo Meneses about getting started with bullet journaling.

Bullet journals are increasingly prevalent. If you’ve heard of people who use bullet journals to map out their lives, you’re probably curious about how to begin. It’s very simple. A bullet journal can be used for a variety of personal purposes, such as tracking your tasks, priorities, upcoming events or even the books you’re reading. Journaling can also serve as a way to deal with mental health illnesses and other health-related issues. To get started, here is all the information you’ll need to guide you through the whole process of creating your own bullet journal.

What Is a Bullet Journal?

Bullet journaling is a list-making, recording, and planning system with infinite possibilities for customizations. Though there are several options for bullet journals, many bullet journalists choose dot grid journals. These tiny dots provide structure while promoting freeform drawing and versatility. Bullet journaling has increased in popularity since its introduction in 2013, and social media websites like Pinterest and Instagram are places where people can showcase their impressive artwork.

Benefits of Keeping a Bullet Journal

The popularity of bullet journaling comes from its effectiveness. The method is easy to use and open to all – you don’t even need a graph paper notebook to get started. Bullet journaling may be done in a notebook, on loose sheets of paper, or with a collection of rainbow-coloured jelly pens. Get rid of all the planners you’ve never used and learn how bullet journaling can improve your life.

Easily customizable

Bullet journaling’s easily flexible style is one of its most appealing features. You can write down everything in your bullet journal instead of purchasing a different journal for your everyday logs, or a school calendar, or downloading a budget app, and scribbling grocery lists on pieces of paper. To match your own aesthetic, use stickers, washi tape, and bright pens.

Allows organization

Disorganization is no longer a problem for those who keep a bullet journal. To keep your life on track, create hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly pages, colour-code activities, make to-do lists, and jot down the book review you don’t want to miss –– all in one place.

Encourages productivity

There’s nothing like taking anything off your to-do list to make you feel accomplished. When you see the things you need to do in front of you, it motivates you to do them so you can move on to the next big thing. When you look back on what you accomplished during the week, you get a sense of satisfaction that is priceless.

Ideal for keeping lists

Who doesn’t like having a complete, organized to-do list? Simply open your bullet journal to a blank page and begin jotting down movies to watch, your favourite quotes, plants to plant in next year’s garden, and places to visit. Relevant information such as passwords, birthdays, and contact numbers should not be forgotten in case your phone fails.

Helps tracking long-term goals

Consider all of your long-term objectives and write them down in your bullet journal. Bullet journals make habit monitoring simple: create a calendar that lasts anything from a month to a year, and cross off each day that you complete a new habit. You can evaluate your performance at the end of your time span.

Enhances creativity

Bullet journaling promotes creativity in a way that other types of journaling do not. Create a customized template to celebrate each new month, play with calligraphy, or draw a mood storyboard.  You’ll be shocked by how much fun you can have while creating your bullet journal, even if you don’t think of yourself as the creative type.

Key Supplies

Are you ready to begin your bullet journal journey? Setting yourself up for success is incredibly easy. All you need are a few basic items and you’ll be able to build the life of your dreams.

Journal

Quality paper, a faint dot grid, a durable front cover, and a back pocket for documents, receipts, and stickers are all features of the perfect bullet journal. Some papers often have bookmarks, which can be used to keep track of where you left off.

Pens

Choose your writing instruments. Bullet journal enthusiasts prefer fineliners, fountain pens, gel pens, brush pens, and highlighters. If you’re just getting started, start with a black pen, a few coloured pens, and a highlighter to see how they work.

Ruler

A ruler is useful for making straight lines and calendars. Since you can see where you’re drawing with see-through rulers, they’re a great option. For quick access, look for a ruler that fits into the pocket of your bullet book.

Stencils

Stencils are essential for maintaining a neat and symmetrical appearance in your bullet journal. There are numerous options available, ranging from circular habit trackers to uniform squares for creating regular and monthly calendars.

Washi Tape

One of bullet journalists’ favourite items is washi tape. These delightful rolls of tape come in an endless variety of colours, sizes, and patterns, making it easy to switch up the look of your journal. To keep your tape rolls sorted, consider investing in a wash tape dispenser.

Stickers

Stickers aren’t just for children, after all. Bullet journaling is taken to a new level with the addition of stickers. Decorate your pages with fun stickers to help you remember important dates and events while remaining efficient.

Sticky notes

Plans shift, and writing something down in ink can feel a bit too permanent at times. Here is where a sticky note comes in handy. Write down any potential dates or tentative plans on a sticky note and add it in your journal.

Stamps

It gets tedious to write and draw the same layout over and over again, so invest in some stamps to make creating regular and monthly spreads quicker and easier. They come in a variety of shapes, making it easy to personalize your bullet journal.

Pencil Case

You’ll be shocked by how quickly your array of pens and markers grows once you start buying them for your bullet journal. Consider buying a pencil case to keep all of your pens organized and accessible.

Watercolors

Watercolors are the perfect finishing touch to your lovely bullet journal. Portable watercolor sets make it easy to keep up with your regular sketch goals or add accents to calendars and lists when on the go.

Choosing the Layout for Your Bullet Journal

You can choose the types of spreads you want to use. What exactly do you want to capture? What do you want people to remember about you? Do you want to keep track of your accomplishments? Do you want to make a gratitude spread to help you be happier in your life? The bullet journal’s layout is built around these simple pages. Follow them, and you’ll be surprised at how much more productive you’ll be!

Index

The index should be placed at the very beginning of your bullet journal. You’ll have page numbers for all of your important documents, such as monthly calendars and sets, so you can quickly find what you need.

Future Log

Tasks, activities, goals, and appointments for the coming months are included in the future log. This is where you’ll keep track of long-term goals and goals that you want to accomplish.

Monthly Spread

The monthly spread includes a calendar and a job page to keep you organized for the month ahead. Begin planning the next month at the end of the current one, and keep track of any important dates in the future log.

Weekly Spread

Weekly spreads aren’t included in the original scheme, but they’re useful for organizing your week ahead. This is where you keep track of your appointments, deadlines, and goals. Weekly spreads are often used instead of monthly or regular spreads. Choose what works best for you!

Daily Spread

The daily spread is intended for use on a daily basis. Write the date as your subject at the top of your list, and then write down activities, events, and notes as they arise during the day.

Collections

Collections are a catch-all category for everything you want to put in your bullet journal that doesn’t fit into the other categories. You can use your journal to keep track of projects, priorities, brainstorming sessions, and lists.

Write away!

Bullet journaling is meant to be a convenient and enjoyable way to keep track of your day and get organized. Additionally, it becomes a fun, creative hobby, even if it may seem a bit too much to handle at the beginning. At the end of the day, it’s about you. So, look at your mistakes as opportunities to learn, be imaginative, and have some fun creating it. Your bullet journal can be whatever you want it to be.

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Portillo / Staedtler

Leave a Comment / Seen in the wild, Staedtler / / , , , ,

Tory turned TV presenter Michael Portillo has visited Nuremberg as part of his latest series (series 7) of Great Continental Railway Journeys.

Michael Portillo in one of his trademark high visibility suits is left of the fountain, the Staedtler store is right of the fountain. (Image © BBC)

I was delighted to see that he was outside Staedtler’s own shop in Nuremberg’s city centre and hope he had time between filming to visit the store.

I believe that the use of the screenshot, taken from the BBC series Great Continental Railway Journeys, falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service

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Preston’s Pelikan Hub 2018

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It’s been fairly quiet on this blog –  the beginning of the new academic year has been keeping me busy.

That made the two hours I spent visiting Preston’s Pelikan Hub last Friday even more precious. The Hub was in the same place as last year.

The outside might not have been as nice as last year, thanks to the scaffolding, but inside it was as nice as always.

We Preston Pelikan participants had a whole room to ourselves. Look! ..the green wallpaper even matched this year’s ink of the year 😜.

The wood fired Pizzas were absolutely delicious.

Here’s one I ate earlier..

The event was not only for humanoids. Here’s our feathered friend who came along..

..and our canine friend from the Hub.

..not to forget: some of our Hub’s Pelikans without feathers.

The fireplace made the whole place even cosier..

..as did the drinks (mine is the Diet Coke).

I hope Preston will get its own Pelikan Hub again in 2019.

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Mechanical Pencil Day is here!

149 Comments / Mechanical pencils / / , ,

It’s time to celebrate! The first ever Mechanical Pencil Day is here.

Why Today?

With the two most popular lead diameters being 0.5mm and 0.7mm the day was set to 05/07 (in the format used in UK, France, Italy, Spain, ..) that’s 07/05 (in the format used in USA, China, maybe Canada) or 5.7. (in the format used in Germany and other Central and Northern European countries). [1]I guess my personal mechanical pencil day should be 02/03 then 😛

To celebrate this special day there are, of course, prizes to be won.

Everyone’s Celebrating

CultPens was kind enough to supply more than £50 worth of prizes. They also agreed that I can split these between Bleistift.blog and Stationery.wiki. As part of their Mechanical Pencil Day celebrations they published a blog post from me on their blog yesterday (The picture are not form me, though). Other blogs give out prizes, too. I can’t list all the blogs that offer prizes, as I am not sure who exactly is taking part (this blog post was written before 5 July) but I know that Dave from Dave’s Mechanical Pencils has some fine pencils he’ll hand out. He’s the one who made me aware of Mechanical Pencil Day in the first place. Have a look at his blog for even more chances of winning fine writing gear than if you only take part in my giveaway.

How to Win

OK, here’s what’s on offer and how to win Bleistift’s giveaway prizes. By the way, I won’t force you to follow my YouTube, Facebook or Twitter account to take part in the draw for this giveaway. We’re all adults here and you should decide yourself who you want to follow. Instead of following my social media channels, all you have to do for a chance to win is to leave a comment at the bottom of this blog post.

Mechanical Pencil Day Prizes

..and here are the prizes. From left to right we have:

How will the winner be decided?

  1. I will use a random number generator to get a random number n. I will then check who wrote the nth comment.
  2. I will then check whether the nth comment is the first comment by a blog reader on this giveaway post. If it is the first comment by a blog reader on this post this reader will get the pencil of their choice. If the comment was written by myself or it was not the first comment I will go back to step one.
    This ensures that I won’t win a prize myself. It also means that you can comment as often as you want, but only one of your comments (the first one) will count for the prize draw.
  3. I will then repeat the first two steps until we have a winner for the second pencil. The second winner can choose from the remaining three pencils.
  4. Deadline is 11 July 2018 at 12:00 (noon) Zulu time (UTC), that’s 5:00 PDT [2]Tango, 8:00 EDT [3]Quebec, 13:00 BST [4]Alfa, 14:00 CEST [5]Bravo, 20:00 CST [6]Hotel, 21:00 KST/JST [7]India. [8]All these time zones remind me of the 1980s and early 1990s when MTV Europe was still free to watch. In Europe, you’re not really used to different time zones, but with MTV Europe being a … Continue reading
  5. I will contact you if you’ve won, but if I don’t hear back from you within a week the pencils might be given to someone else or used in another giveaway or contest.
  6. The two remaining pencils will be the prizes for the Stationery.wiki contest. You can, of course, take part in both, the Bleistift giveaway and the Stationery.wiki contest. In fact, I encourage you to.

Who can take part?

CultPens sent the pencils to me. I will send them to the winners using Royal Mail. They will usually send items to more or less all countries, but if you live on the ISS or in a research station in Antarctica and are not sure whether they deliver to you you can check on their Country Guide page.

I will send the pen using the cheapest method (this is a free blog after all, with no income from advertising). I think within the UK this is covered up to £20. Internationally the cover might be even higher. If you need the pen sent in a specific way let me know and I will see whether I can accomodate.

Good Luck.

References

References
↑1 I guess my personal mechanical pencil day should be 02/03 then 😛
↑2 Tango
↑3 Quebec
↑4 Alfa
↑5 Bravo
↑6 Hotel
↑7 India
↑8 All these time zones remind me of the 1980s and early 1990s when MTV Europe was still free to watch. In Europe, you’re not really used to different time zones, but with MTV Europe being a pan-European TV station programmes were announced in different time zones.

Mechanical Pencil Day is here! Read More »

Uniqlo 2018 t-shirt

Pentel in 4XL

Leave a Comment / Pentel / / ,

A quick follow-up to the blog post from two days ago.

Today the postman brought a parcel.

Uniqlo 2018 t-shirt
Nice stamps, again

It’s one of the new Uniqlo t-shirts!

As reported previously the Japanese Uniqlo t-shirt sizes seem to be a size smaller than the European ones, i.e. a Japanese XL is more like a European L. Funnily enough, this is not consistent across Asia. Chinese sizes seem to be like the European ones, not like the Japanese ones.

Uniqlo 2018 t-shirt
Uniqlo 2018 t-shirt

Yumiko sent me the Pentel Sign Pen shirt in 4XL. Thank you!

Uniqlo 2018 t-shirt
Uniqlo 2018 t-shirt

I assume it’s going to be like a European 2XL or 3XL. It’s certainly more than big enough.

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The New T-Shirt Season Has Begun

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You might remember my previous Uniqlo blog posts.

My Tombow t-shirts from 2016.

If not: here’s a quick recap. Uniqlo has a series of t-shirts called “The Brands”. As part of this series, Uniqlo cooperates with international brands. Last time this included Pelikan and Tombow.

Well, the new Uniqlo t-shirt season has begun – and there are, again, stationery related t-shirts.

Bic t-shirt (Image © Uniqlo)
Bic t-shirt (Image © Uniqlo)

This time: Bic and Pentel.

Pentel t-shirt (Image © Uniqlo)
Pentel t-shirt (Image © Uniqlo)

Japan has more large sized t-shirts available for the new series, but ordering from Japan might not be necessary… when I checked Uniqlo UK I saw that this time they stock three of the four stationery related t-shirts.

I’d like to thank Yumiko for this information.

The images in this blog post have been taken from the Uniqlo website. I believe that the use of the images shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

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Pencils – unsharpened and hyper acute

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When looking at pencil points there are all sorts of angles you could sharpen a pencil to.

I guess an angle of 180°, i.e. an unsharpened pencil is as low as you could go – unless you want an angle > 180°.

Here’s a photo of an unsharpened pencil, seen in Season 10 of Inspector Montalbano (Il commissario Montalbano), between the two eraser-tipped Noris pencils. You can see his other pencils in this blog post from 2012. Where they got an unsharpened Noris from is a mystery to me. Maybe they removed the pencil point of a factory sharpened pencil?

Episode: A Delicate Matter (Image © RAI)
On the other hand you have pencil like the ones from Pencil Guide that seem to have an angle of 6.8° [1]Thanks to Sola and Gunther I now think the angle might be 6.8°. (for comparison: the KUM Masterpiece has an angle of 15°). They look deadly.

Gunther explains:

If you create a point with an angle of 6.8° (cone angle 3.4°) on a pencil with a diameter of 8 mm you expose the wood at a length of approximately 67.6 mm. This length and the pencil’s length are in a ratio of approx. 1:1.618.

1:1.618 is the golden ration.

Pencil Guide calls itself a pencil sharpening service company, but they only sell sharpened pencils and don’t follow David Rees’ business model.

(Image © Pencilguide.com)

I would like to thank Jun-Haeng Lee for the information about Pencil Guide.

The images in this blog post have been taken from Pencil Guide and from episode A Delicate Matter of the RAI TV series Il commissario Montalbano. I believe that the use of the images shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

References

References
↑1 Thanks to Sola and Gunther I now think the angle might be 6.8°.

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Suspicious Sellers

11 Comments / Fountain pens, Links / / , , ,

There seem to be a few suspicious sellers on Amazon Marketplace.

Well, I say they are suspicious, but I prefer to tell you what’s going on so that you can judge for yourself.

There are several accounts on Amazon Marketplace selling fountain pens for £7.99, £8.99 and £9.99, but even pens usually selling for several hundreds of Pounds are being offered for under £10.

Some of these sellers have real names, some just have random letters as their seller name. All of them seem to be registered in the USA. I wrote ‘seem’ because I don’t know whether Amazon will actually check the address used by sellers who register.

Why would they sell these pens so cheap, far cheaper than what they’d have to pay from the manufacturer?

..and especially when Amazon offers their “A to Z Guarantee”, which means that if there is a problem the customer won’t be out of pocket (and Amazon will probably chase the seller to get their money back…).

I rule out that this is just a simple mistake form the sellers. All these pens are sold by new sellers on Amazon Marketplace and they put a lot of them online. One wrongly priced pen might be a mistake, but not if all you offer is under £10.

Explanation a) Maybe it’s a bored millionaire who just wants to make people happy by reselling pens with a colossal loss.

Explanation b) Maybe they want to get people’s address details? ..but I guess there are easier ways of collecting people’s addresses

Explanation c) When you pay they get the money from Amazon and keep it for a while. Delivery times are very long (many weeks), so they have many weeks before the customers can complain that the product didn’t arrive (and then the postal service can be blamed), so it will be a long time before they have to return the money. Time they could use to get interest on the money or time to pack it all up and disappear.

Well, the good thing is that if anyone wants to try these sellers out and my suspicion that this is dodgy is right the customers are only out of money for a few weeks – until Amazon reimbursed them, so the risk for customers seems small.

Update: shortly after posting this I have been told that Scribble has discussed this issue a few days ago in Facebook’s Fountain Pens UK group. Thanks Mark Porter, for letting me know.

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Staedtler’s Mars 501 180 – the Wopex sharpener

11 Comments / Sharpeners, Staedtler / / , , , , , ,

Welcome to a slightly delayed blog post. The video for this blog post was put on YouTube quite a while ago, in February, but the blog post is only out now as a busy period at work meant that I didn’t get round looking for my protractor earlier. [1] …because I switched to using a protractor when measuring angles I want to stick with this method so that all pencil points are measured the same way.

The Wopex

Unfortunately there’s a lot of Wopex hate going on in some parts of social media where people discuss pencils – and there are very few people defending the Wopex [2]…with Johnny being the most determined defender in the Erasable group on Facebook. Thank you for that.. Luckily the Wopex can convince in the long term: I was very happy to read Deirdre’s blog post where she turned from a Wopex hater (‘I HATE WOPEX’) to someone not only tolerating the Wopex, but even accepting it and it’s advantages (Some quotes: ‘graphite […] actually isn’t that bad’, ‘point retention is great’, ‘if you are writing on toothy [3]As expressed previously, for various reasons I am not keen on the expression ‘toothy paper’, but since this is a direct quote it will be one of the few occasions you can find this word in … Continue reading paper, the WOPEX really shines’).

Suffice to say [4]Yes, I learned that expression when I watched the English version of Star Trek Voyager., I love the Wopex.

Just a quick reminder: Unlike normal wood cased pencils the Wopex uses a wood-plastic-composite instead of wood. The wood-plastic-composite consists mainly of wood and is, in my opinion, orders of magnitude better than pencils that use plastic instead of wood. Not only does the Wopex sharpen better, the lead – extruded together with the pencil – is also of much better quality, too.

The pellets before they’re extruded into a pencil

In the vial above you can see how the material looks like before it is extruded into a pencil. I got this vial at the Insights X trade fair. The pellets remind me of a company I worked for during my holidays in the 1990s. They were manufacturing extruded pipes and had similar looking pellets. The recycled pellets smelled very much like washing powder. As far as I remember extruding from recycled material was not easy, the material kept expanding in the wrong place resulting in uneven products. Unrelated – but there must be so much knowledge going into the production of a product like the Wopex…

The new Noris eco pencils in 2B, HB and 2H

The Staedtler 501 180

I first mentioned the 501 180 in a blog post from 2014, but a few months ago I finally got my hands on one – they are not very common and not easy to come by in the UK. The article number has gives some clues to this sharpener’s purpose: Wopex pencils have article numbers starting with 180 (e.g. 180 40). Staedtler has now switched to using the word Wopex to describe the wood-plastic-composite material, and is not using Wopex anymore to describe pencils made from this material, but independent of how the name Wopex is used, the pencils made from Wopex material still use article numbers starting with 180 (e.g. 180 30 for the new Noris eco).

Article numbers for Staedtler’s rotary (i.e. hand crank) sharpener start with 501 (e.g. the Mars 501 20 rotary sharpener) so 501 180 is the perfect [5]I try to avoid using the word perfect, but in this case it is justified, I think. article number for this sharpener, 501 for a rotary sharpener and 180 for Wopex. The 501 180 was designed by Helmut Hufnagl and is made in Taiwan.

Left to right: Deli 0635, Staedtler 501 180, Deli 0620

The Video

Here’s a video where I compare the 501 180 to two other rotary sharpeners.

Clipping the pencils’ points off at about 7:30 really hurt and felt rather wasteful, but wasting so much good pencil when the auto stop of the other two sharpeners didn’t work was of course even more wasteful (…even though it didn’t hurt so much, maybe because the machine did the crippling of the pencils).

Left to right: Deli 0635, Staedtler 501 180, Deli 0620

Tip: Open the video in YouTube, you can then play it at higher speeds, e.g. 1.5x.

Here’s a little table comparing the different points created by the three different sharpeners.

Sharpener:Deli 0635Staedtler 501 180Deli 0620
Angle:17°19°17°

..and here are the different points made by the different sharpeners.

Left to right: point sharpened by Deli 0635, Staedtler 501 180, Deli 0620

The Auto Stop

There is just so much less material wasted when the auto stop works. If you don’t have the 501 180 and your sharpener’s auto stop doesn’t work, have a look at the end of the video where I show a way of dealing with this problem. I am mentioning this simple trick here because my simplest videos seem most appreciated (e.g. how to refill a mechanical pencil), while my complex videos (e.g. the DelGuard pen force test) remain rather unloved.

Left to right: point sharpened by Deli 0635, Staedtler 501 180, Deli 0620

 

I have added the Wopex Mars 501 180 to the list of sharpeners, sorted by angle.

Many thanks to Benedikt Schindler for his help in getting the 501 180 to me in the UK.

References

References
↑1 …because I switched to using a protractor when measuring angles I want to stick with this method so that all pencil points are measured the same way.
↑2 …with Johnny being the most determined defender in the Erasable group on Facebook. Thank you for that.
↑3 As expressed previously, for various reasons I am not keen on the expression ‘toothy paper’, but since this is a direct quote it will be one of the few occasions you can find this word in this blog
↑4 Yes, I learned that expression when I watched the English version of Star Trek Voyager.
↑5 I try to avoid using the word perfect, but in this case it is justified, I think.

Staedtler’s Mars 501 180 – the Wopex sharpener Read More »

Field Notes Utility’s amazing Mohawk paper

3 Comments / Field Notes, Paper & Notebooks / / , , , ,

The Field Notes Utility has the same three colours as a Staedtler Noris

As far as I remember there’s one episode of The Pen Addict podcast where Myke, living in the UK like me, got his Field Notes subscription before Brad. Usually, though, it takes a bit longer for a subscription delivery to hit this side of the pond – but in the end (about two weeks later than most) the 34th quarterly edition ‘Utility’ hit my letterbox.

Overall Build Quality

Lead Fast’s review of the Utility edition mentions poorly cut notebook corners and splits at the bottom of the spine. Well, I must have been lucky: My corners look good, no problems at all, while some other Field Notes of mine, like the Cherry Graph notebooks I bought from Fred Aldous, are cut in a poorly fashion.

My Utility corners are much better than my Cherry Graph corners

The spine? A small tear, not even worth mentioning.

Some small marks

Instead, some of the covers were a bit dirty, something brown or dark red on front and back. With that bright colour and surface you can see marks more easily on this edition ..but hey, they’re gonna get dirty anyway with use, so that’s not really worth mentioning either. I only mention it because the issue of build quality was brought up in the Lead Fast review, so I report back that overall my Utilities arrived in great condition.

Graphite on Paper

Let’s have a look at the paper used: Mohawk Via Vellum 70#T “Pure White” paper with “Get-It-Done Gray” soy-based Saphira ink.

Mohawk Via Vellum (Open in new tab to read labels)

To test it I followed the usual procedure explained here: The pencil lead used has a nominal diameter of 0.7mm and an actual diameter of 0.68mm (more info about nominal vs actual diameters can be found here). This is equivalent to a surface area of 0.36mm². A force of 1.5N is used, which, in this case, is equivalent to 4.17 MegaPascals for this surface area.

As you can see in the image above I also had a look at the blank paper this time. You can see the “Pure White” and “Get-It-Done Gray” brightness coming in at around 2.9 and 2.5 respectively. 3.0 would be a perfect white, at the top of the y-axis. Lower values, toward the bottom of the y-axis, represent darker colours.

I then measured how dark the line on the paper is.

Mohawk Via Vellum compared (Open in new tab to read labels)

The Mohawk Via Vellum paper produces much darker lines than any of the other papers used in Field Notes I have tested so far.

A quick explanation: the wider a violin plot the more measurements of that shade of grey there are (white at the top, black at the bottom). The top of a violin plot represents the whitest shade of grey measured in a sample, the bottom of a violin plot represents the darkest shade measured. The lower the violin plot is placed the darker the line the lead produced on this paper. The higher the starting point at the top of a violin plot the whiter the lightest spots measured, which usually means the higher the starting point the whiter the paper. The Black Ice post contains a video with more explanations.

To see more information about the violin plots from this blog post please open the images in a new tab, you can then read the labels which are rather small when the images are unenlarged and formatted for this blog post.

I haven’t looked at point retention at all. More out of lack of time rather than lack of interest. You might very well think that there’s a causal relationship between darkness and point retention, but I couldn’t possibly comment as this wasn’t measured and is not what this violin plot is about. One thing to mention though, if you use a thin lead mechanical pencil (0.2mm, 0.3mm) the (undetermined) abrasiveness of the paper doesn’t make much difference as you are usually writing without rotating the pencil which will form a chisel point very soon, but your line on the paper will still be thin thanks to the thin lead.

The Utility (second from top) is thicker than other Field Notes

What does this mean?

What it means for you depends on what kind of pencils or leads you use, how you write or how you want your lines to be.

I prefer to write small to get more onto a page, so I love mechanical pencils with 0.2mm and 0.3mm leads as well as pencil sharpeners that produce points with acute angles and slightly harder pencil, like F, just so that the fine point lasts for a few words [1]By the way, this is not reflected in the labels of the plots, I had to write big there so that it’s easy to read..

When the Palomino Blackwing came out Sean send me a few. I took them to a meeting at work and writing with them was literally pointless as they didn’t hold their point for my style of writing for more than one word.  I haven’t really used them since as they are too soft for my writing. The fact that the company just stole Sean’s work and, as far as I know, hasn’t apologised to this day hasn’t helped to convince me to try other Blackwings either. Hmm, someone powerful doing whatever they want to normal people like you and me, where have I seen that recently. Anyway, the point here is that for me this paper is great, maybe because I don’t write using soft pencils anyway. At Pencil Revolution HQ, where soft pencils are more common, it’s a different matter and only some pencils are working well on this paper as explained in a blog post.

Conclusion

I’m quite excited and think this might become one of my favourite Field Notes editions. A great choice of paper and finally a metric ruler. I have often wished that the ruler printed in all Field Notes had metric labels, too.

 

 

References

References
↑1 By the way, this is not reflected in the labels of the plots, I had to write big there so that it’s easy to read.

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