The search for that elusive paper which is good for fountain pen brought me to one of the paper which I was using to print handout for the design presentation, the paper was JK Cedar. While printing, I realised the quality of paper is good and its super white bright and then I decided to give it a shot with few of my fountain pen and inks.
J.K. Paper is exporter of Branded Copier Paper to over 35 countries. They are the market leader in India in Branded Copier Paper segment. Apart from Office Paper, they also have manufacture in Packaging Boards, Printing and Writing Paper, and Speciality Paper like MICR Cheque Paper. They have two paper mill in India in Odisha and Gujarat.
This review is about one of the copy paper from J.K. Paper Ltd. called J.K. Cedar.
DESIGN & BUILD :
Well there is nothing much to talk about as far as design or build is concerned as this is a copier paper which comes in Ream of 500 sheets.
The paper is marketed for colour copying and printing purpose.
The packaging is done in nice glossy coated paper which just serves the purpose right. As you can see the paper size is A4 and it is 100 gsm and the whole ream weighs around 3.12 kg.
As far as packaging and cover is concerned it is how all the papers are packed in reams and supplied all over. So nothing much to say here.
PERFORMANCE :
As I have mentioned earlier and I believe most of us all know that the quality of paper as far as using with fountain pen is concerned is dependent on lot of parameters like ink resistance, shading, sheen, feathering, bleed-through, paper colour, smoothness or texture and few others. Few properties are also dependent with ink properties like shading and sheen.
The paper is super bright white paper. And the quality of paper is 100 gsm.
The paper is quite smooth and has no texture. The fountain pen actually glides over the paper. It is very smooth to write on and most of the Italic pens, which used to pick fibres in other low quality copier paper, also performed amazingly well.
As visible from above samples and even the close-ups, it is clear that there is no feathering and bleed-through in most of the ink except the Chelpark Black which shows some bleed-through on rear side and I believe the ink is not good.
The paper is quite good when it comes to resisting inks and provides decent amount of shading also. I see some sheen (mostly with Iroshizuku and sailor inks) which was difficult to capture as the sheen was on lower side.
It has performed extremely well with most of the inks.
Performance summary is as follows:
- Ink Resistance : High
- Paper Texture : Very Smooth
- Feathering : None
- Bleed-through : Very Low
- Shading : High
- Sheen : Low
VALUE :
This ream of 500 sheets was bought by me at discounted price at Rs. 250 ( US $3.75)
The paper can be used to print different patterns like I do before start writing ans you can also get the paper notebook bind.
At Rs. 0.50 per sheet ( US $ 0.01 per sheet) and that too such an amazing performance its a steal. It has fabulous value for money.
CONCLUSION :
If someone asks me what is best paper for fountain pens manufactured in India, I would say JK Cedar.
I recommend this to all the users of fountain pen community. Its easily available on Flipkart and Amazon.
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Vaibhav Mehandiratta
mehandiratta 