Bookblock Custom Printed Notebook Review

Spawned from a Kickstarter campaign in 2015, Bookblock Notebooks allow you to build a notebook just for you. Their covers are customizable with your own artwork, and their are several different options for notebook layouts and paper options. Bookblock offered to make a Pen Addict logo notebook for me earlier this year and I gladly took them up on the offer.

Working with Bookblock to get the notebook made was as simple as providing them a high resolution file of my logo. The cover art doesn’t have to be a simple logo or brand either. You can upload you hand-drawn artwork, digital designs, or anything else you want to show off on the front cover of your notebook. They even snuck in The Pen Addict tagline on the back cover of mine, which was a nice touch. The quality of the logo printing is excellent, and the colors were spot on. The other examples I have seen from Bookblock look equally as nice.

Dark smudge around the logo

Before getting to the paper choices, there were two issues with my notebook I brought up to the Bookblock team. One, their choice of packaging negatively affected the logo design during shipping. The notebook wasn’t wrapped inside the cardboard envelope that it shipped in, causing it to rub the cover all the way across the Atlantic. You can see in the picture how the dark grey ink smeared across the white. It’s going to get dinged up anyway with regular use, but I want to be the one to do it. This is an easy fix though, as one layer of bubble wrap should do the trick.

Secondly, there are no grommets or other protection where the elastic band connects to the back of the notebook. When you are printing the covers of the notebooks in color you are going to see chipping and wear around those holes if they aren’t protected, and it will likely get worse over time.

Writing - front

The grommet issue is directly related to the choice of notebook, in this case Monsieur. There are a few other choices, such as Moleskine, Castelli, G.F. Smith, and Bookblocks own brand name. And honestly, I would choose all of them over Monsieur due to the poor paper they use.

Writing - back

When using any type of wet ink, from fountain to rollerball, you can feel it seeping into the page as you write. With the metal nibs of fountain pens, especially the finer ones, you can feel the paper loosening and even getting caught in the nibs of finer pens. Ballpoints and gel inks are generally ok and pencils are great. Markers obviously need not apply, although that can be said about almost any standard notebook.

As an idea and product, Bookblocks has what it takes to provide quality to the end user, but they could use better paper choices. I would choose Moleskine over the Monsieur every time, and word from friends is that the Castelli Notebook they offer handles most inks very well. Hopefully we will see other options in the future.

My thanks to Bookblock for sending this notebook to me at no charge for review purposes.

Tom Bihn Field Journal Notebook Review

There is no bag maker that impresses me more with their quality than Tom Bihn. Just holding and touching their products makes me smile because I can feel the quality in my hands and see it with my eyes. That is before I even begin using their products, which always surprise and delight with their thoughtful design.

I arranged with Tom Bihn a few months ago to test drive and review their Aeronaut 45 max size carry-on for my pen show travels (review coming soon!) and they surprised me with news of a relaunch of their Field Journal Notebook. I reviewed the original model back in 2010, and they asked if I was interested in taking a look at the latest edition. Yes please!

The Tom Bihn Field Journal Notebook was designed as it was named - for work in the field. Think biologists, geologists, park rangers and anyone that needed a durable, weatherproof way to carry their writing and research tools. As it turns out, it is perfect for artists, writers, journalists, students, and anyone else who wants high quality portable storage for their stationery.

With an exterior made from 1000D Cordura, the Field Journal Notebook can get wet, dirty, and take a beating while protecting your writing kit. The water-repellent YKK zippers add to the durability factor, as does the tight stitching. The tolerances on this case are impressive.

If you need maximum storage in a small format then you are in luck. I count 16 different pockets, and knowing Tom Bihn, there is likely another one or two I haven’t discovered yet. All standard pens and mechanical pencils fit with ease, with only the longest wooden pencils needing to be moved to one of the two pouches they can fit in.

The paper is held in place by a small format three-ring binder which accepts 5 1/2” x 8 1/2” paper (exactly half of an 8 1/2” x 11” sheet). You can choose from grid or lined 100% recycled Neenah Conservation Paper when ordering, or add on Crane's Crest 24# 100% cotton paper as an extra.

For testing, I used the same pens across all three papers. While you’d think the two Neenah papers would perform identically, I slight felt differences between the two. The lined was smoother than the grid, but the lined also had more ghosting on the back. There was no real bleed or feathering, even with my fountain pens, so that is a big plus. In a blind test I could possibly tell a difference, but they are the same paper stock and I could be delusional.

The Crane’s Crest is a different animal. It doesn’t have much texture to the touch, but you feel it when writing. My plastic tip drawing pens had trouble on it, leaving a drier line than on the other paper choices. This makes it great for pencil though, and likely watercolors or heavier media. The Crane’s Crest is also the only page that is perforated.

Click here to see the full size writing sample.

All in all, the paper choices are nice, but if I were a heavy user of the Field Journal I would look at punching my own pages of a paper I know and love.

Filed in the “they thought of everything” category, the three-ring mechanism is removable and can rotate 180 degrees to accommodate left-handed writers, or those writing in other languages. There is also a plastic leaf clipped into the binder that you can move to have a hard backing behind the page when you write.

As with any Tom Bihn product, it is not possible to fawn over it too much. They are that good, and the Field Journal Notebook is no exception. A delightful product made by a delightful company.

The Field Journal Notebook comes in 13 colors with several add-on choices and retails for $90.00.

My thanks to Tom Bihn for sending me this product at no charge for purposes of this review.

Wow has my model grown in 5 1/2 years!

Field Notes Shenandoah Review

(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)

Summer is nearly here, all the plants are turning green and blooming, and there's an abundance of troublesome pollen in the air and on our cars. Before we know it, it will be the middle of the summer and we'll be begging for cooler weather. Given that information, I'm a little perplexed as to why I chose to open up the Shenandoah Field Notes over something more bright and cheery. My only excuse is that these covers are gorgeous and I can't get enough of them.

The Field Notes Shenandoah edition was released last Fall, and it's quickly become one of my personal favorites. After I used up my first pack, I ordered some more to keep on hand. They're good notebooks, and I've really enjoyed using mine.

Specifics

Being a Colors edition, the specifics are a tad different than the standard offering.

The Shenandoah edition was printed in September 2015 in a run of 40,000 3-packs. The three books each feature a popular tree found in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia: the Red Maple, Sweet Birch, and Chestnut Oak. The back of each notebook features a drawing of the leaf and a short description of the tree. Each notebook has a unique color scheme, which features a different color for the outside and inside of the cover.

The paper inside the notebooks are all grid pattern, and the paper is Finch 60# instead of the standard 50# found in their standard notebooks. Of course, it's the standard 3.5" x 5.5" size with 48 pages per book for a price of $9.95. No surprises there.

Performance

One of the first things that caught my attention about this edition was the paper they used for the insides. 60# weight, to be exact. The normal Field Notes books use 50#, which doesn't do well with fountain pens or wet liquid rollerballs (like a Retro 51 Tornado or Pilot Precise). I was excited to give it a try since I haven't had any direct experience with this paper before.

Long story short? It performs better than the standard Field Notes paper. But, if you dislike show-through, it will really disappoint you. I happen to really hate show-through, so I've relegated these notebooks for gel pen use only. Still, I wasn't hoping for too much with these notebooks because they're so utilitarian and easy to use with anything that you have on hand. It's part of the appeal for me.

Fine-tipped fountain pens will work well enough on the paper, but wetter, larger pens will destroy the paper. That being said, it's a smooth paper that's a joy to use. I just prefer using non-fountain pens with it. I had a slight hope that this would be a great fountain pen paper, but those hopes were dashed after I turned over the page I was testing on. On the other hand, there isn't a lot of feathering with most nibs/inks I tried, so that's a positive.

Bottom line, this paper can handle fountain pens, but it's not optimal. There are much better options out there in the 3.5" x 5.5" category.

Conclusion

I'm fairly picky about which Field Notes editions I like, and the Shenandoah edition really hit the sweet spot for me. They're gorgeous notebooks, the paper inside is a step above the normal books, and they use a grid pattern paper. My favorite color of the three is Sweet Birch. Honestly, if I could buy 3-packs of Sweet Birch, I would jump all over it.

You can still pick up the Shenandoah edition at several retail locations and online stores. I purchased a pack from Field Notes first and JetPens later.