Being into fountain pens you keep exploring paper which is good for fountain pen inks. In India it is difficult to get the likes of Rhodia, Clairefontaine or Tomoe River Paper Easily. So Iam always on lookout for some good paper.

This is the review of one of the spiral pad which I got from my workplace which is called Saraswati Spiral Pad No. 5, where No. 5 signifies the size which is B5.

These note pads are manufactured by MSTC (MANGAL SAIN TRILOK CHAND JAIN PVT. LTD.) and they manufacture lot of stationary items like ledger books, sketchbooks, notebooks etc. They also have a webpage : LINK

DESIGN & BUILD

There is nothing to talk about here much as the pad has run of the mill cardboard cover with transparent pvc spiral thread.

The graphics on the main pad cover is just ordinary and looks like a shoddy job.

Saraswati Pad – Main Cover

The rear cover is plain white and is easy prone to marks thickness and quality is same as main cover. Both main cover and rear cover are laminated.

Saraswati pad – Rear Cover

As far as the spiral thread is concerned it is quite sturdy and the built quality is at par.

PERFORMANCE

The quality of paper as far as using 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.

To begin with there is no mention of paper quality. So I have no idea about the gsm.

As far as colour of this paper is concerned it is not super-white or even white, rather it leans into bit greyish category.

Saraswati Pad – Greyish White Paper

However its surprisingly is smooth to write on and takes easily most of the inks and pens. There is minor bleed-through which happens in case of some wet nib pens and some wet inks e.g. Pilot Custom 74 Music nib which writes very wet and also Jinaho X750.

Saraswati Pad – Writing on it

Saraswati Pad – Writing on it – Lateral View

Saraswati Pad – Writing on it – Rear side – Lateral View

Saraswati Pad – Writing on it – Rear side – Top View

As visible from above there is more bleed-through on rear side where combination of Pilot Custom 74 with music nibs and Montblanc ink was used, similarly in case of Jinhao X750 with Edelstien Amethyst.

It is also noticeable that there is little shading on the paper and I believe paper is not at all ink resistant and thus drying times are less.

Also I might point out that barring the writing sample of Edelstien amethyst ink there was no feathering.

Saraswati – Written Samples with Different Ink and Pens

Saraswati Pad – Written Samples with different ink – Close-up 1

Above image clearly shows no feathering and also you can see little shading in blue ink which is Kale Royal Blue.

Saraswati Pad – Written Samples with different ink – Close-up 2

In above image you can see bit of feathering with Jinhao X750 and Amethyst ink.

Performance summary is as follows:

Ink Resistance : Moderate

Paper Texture : Smooth

Feathering : Very Low

Bleed-through : Low

Shading : Moderate

Sheen : Low

VALUE

The pad costed me nothing as I get this as regular supply at my workplace, however its costs around Rs. 25 ( US $0.38).

There was no mention of no. of pages or quality of paper, however when counted there were total 50 paper leaves thus making 100 writing sides.

CONCLUSION

I think the paper is worth more than every penny where I can use mostly use both sides of the paper for general use at such a low cost.

I will certainly recommend this to someone who loves to use fountain pen and want some pad for rough use which has good resistance to feathering and bleed through.