Text paper! (UK based)

[nerakrose]

Hello - I promised the Renegade Europe discord server to do a little breakdown/comparison of the text papers I use for my bindings, photos included. This is that post.


Papers featured in this post.
LG = Long Grain
SG = Short Grain

A4 White Fabriano Arena Bookpaper 90gsm SG (sourced from Shepherds in London, link to product here)
White Fabriano Arena.
Lightweight quality digital print paper. Short grain, ideal for making A5 books. Excellent archival properties especially designed for long life.
-Acid free / Surface sized with starch <
-100% Chemical Woodfree pulp provides high strength

A4 Context Natural Recycled 80gsm SG (sourced from Shepherds in London, link to product here)
Context Natural Recycled
100% recycled paper with excellent environmental credentials. Ideal choice where whiteness is not prime consideration.
Range suitable for offset lithography, foil blocking, die stamping, letterpress, silk screen, inkjet and laser jet printing. Due to recycled nature, variations in shade and surface may occur.
Ideal for making A5 books, short grain.

A4 Recycled Superior Paper Oatmeal 100gsm SG (sourced from eco-craft.co.uk NB this colourway has been discontinued and is now Oat Fleck)
an off white with all over tiny greyish flecks, 100% recycled

A4 Recycled Superior Paper Biscuit 110gsm LG (sourced from eco-craft.co.uk)
a pale cream card with scattered tiny flecks and fibres, 80% recycled. Origin EU 80% from post consumer waste.

A4 Recycled Natural Paper 100gsm LG (sourced from eco-craft.co.uk)
White 100g - 100% recycled. Origin EU from 100% post consumer waste.

A4 Xerox Symphony Ivory 80gsm LG (sourced from Amazon)

A4 Munken Design Pure Smooth Cream 90gsm LG (sourced from G.F Smith, link to product page here)

A4 Munken Design Lynx Smooth Natural White 90gsm LG (sourced from G.F Smith, link to product page here)

All examples are printed on the same HP inkjet printer with the same black ink. If you click the photos they will open in a new window in the Actual Size. All examples shown feature the papers folded to either A5 or A6 size.


Side-by-side comparison of Context Natural (left) and Fabriano Arena (right, what's used in the bound example).
- Context Natural is greyish whereas Fabriano Arena is a very pale cream.
- Context Natural is more opaque than the Fabriano Arena
- Context Natural has a slightly rougher surface texture than the Fabriano Arena, which is silky smooth. the difference is negligible, but with sensitive fingertips and a side-by-side comparison this can be felt


Oatmeal (left, used in the A5 bound example) and Biscuit (right, used in the smaller A6 pamphlet)
- at 100gsm and 110gsm they are relatively thick and sturdy and very opaque
- they don't take moisture very well, making made endpapers (with PVA) is a hazard. glueing spines (with PVA) is fine. pasting them down to the covers in self-ended books using paste is fine so long as the book is immediately pressed using a moisture wicking paper/cloth and moisture barrier - do not try to smooth out wrinkles with a bone folder or similar, it will tear the paper. pressing the book will smooth the paper down.
- the flecks are a matter of taste IMO, I personally like them! your mileage may vary. The new colourway Oat Fleck appears similar to Biscuit on the preview photos, but I have yet to test both the colour and the grain direction


Recycled Natural White (left, used in the bound example) vs Munken Lynx Smooth Natural White (right)
- they are both white, but the Recycled is whiter
- Recycled Natural is opaque with almost no visible text, the Lynx shows a wee bit more text through from the other side
- Recycled Natural at 100gsm is thicker and a bit rougher on the surface than Lynx, which is, well, smooth and very silky in feel
- Recycled Natural, like Oatmeal and Biscuit, don't take PVA moisture well but can be self-ended fine with both PVA and paste as described above


Fabriano Arena (bound example) vs Munken Lynx Smooth Natural White (left) and Munken Pure Smooth Cream (right)
- this is mainly a colour comparison - the Fabriano Arena and the Pure Smooth Cream are very similar, very pale creams, whereas the Lynx is white.
- Munken Pure Cream is more opaque than the Fabriano Arena but all three have a very similar smooth surface feel


Recycled Bisuit (top left), Munken Pure Cream (top right), Xerox Ivory (bottom left) and Munken Lynx (bottom right)
- that Xerox Ivory is very very yellow looking, isn't it? it's also fairly transparent. I used it in my first three Urchin Specials and it's okay, but I think I'll be switching to Munken Pure Cream for subsequent books.
- Biscuit and Munken Pure Cream are similar, with the Munken a creamier shade and the Biscuit a more murky 'recycled' shade of cream. overall I think the Munken is nicer, but the Biscuit lends character - and was perfect for this pamphlet (an Our Flag Means Death fic)
- it's so funny how stark white the Lynx looks here, when we already know the Recycled White is more bleached. but a useful comparison to have!

A quick note about the two Munken papers, these are new to me and I haven't bound anything with them yet so I don't yet know how they take glue or paste. I've been looking for a source of Munken papers for a long time until I found G. F. Smith as Munken papers are used in commercial printing of fiction titles (amongst other things) so it's typically sold B2B in large sheets or rolls. G. F. Smith is technically a B2B seller (when you make an account they want your company information and job title, though you can proceed without a company if you don't have one) but also serve small scale specialists and artists looks like.


Here is a comparison of the Xerox Ivory against Canaletto 160gsm (from Shepherds) which I used for the case and dustjacket, the Canaletto is the same pale creamy colour as the Fabriano Arena and here looks white against the Xerox. I didn't include the Canaletto in this post because I don't use it for textblocks, it's too thick for my tastes, but it works very well as a covering material and needs a gentle hand when pasting down, use a different paper or a cloth on top when smoothing out with the bone folder.


Comments welcome, suggestions of alternative papers and sources also welcome!

P.S. Mods: can I have a 'resources: paper' tag (or similar) please? :)

Comments

[jellyfishlover]

Oooh, thanks for typing this all up! It's really neat to see the differences in paper both in color, texture, and opacity!

[nerakrose]

happy to share, I hope it'll be helpful for others :)

[chubsthehamster]

resources: paper tag now up! Thanks so much for sharing such an in-depth guide, this looks so helpful!

[nerakrose]

happy to share :) once I run out of Oatmeal (I bought a ream of 500 sheets and by my guesstimate I have ~200 sheets left) I'll get samples of Oat Fleck and update this post. I think I'm finally at a point where I have go-to papers that I know work for me so I hope this will be helpful for others looking for papers. :D

[sunshine304]

This is super interesting, thank you!

I’ve been using either Clairefontaine DCP 100g ivory or Clairefontaine Papago 80 ivory/crème (Germany). I find the colour easy on the eyes, it’s got a great feel to it, and print looks very good on it. The 100g has a good opaqueness, too. I might branch out and try some other papers at some point, but that’s the “good” printing paper I can easily buy at a local graphics shop. I also don’t cut down the format, I just make all books DIN A5 because I’m lazy. XD

So far, I’ve only used PVA or PVA/Paste mix on the spine and the paper takes this quite well. I do always use some waste sheets or plastic sheets when pressing though, because otherwise the wetness definitely will seep through and the paper gets “wavy” (as has happened with one of my books where I forgot those safety sheets…).

[nerakrose]

I have had a quick google and it looks like Clairefontaine paper is available in the UK also! I want to try it out, I'm always interested in new book paper. what is the grain direction like on the ones you use? I know not everyone cares about making sure the bookpaper is the right grain direction, but I like to try to make sure it's the right way around.

yes! I also always use a moisture barrier (actually just two sheets of plastic that used to be an 'envelope' for some decorative paper that I've cut to size) and something absorbing (actually just some cheap cloth from the grocery store cleaning supply section! it's absorbent and thin enough that it doesn't mess up the book in the press) because I found out the hard way that not having anything like that definitely messed up the rest of the textblock.

for the recycled papers in this post where I mentioned using this method for sure it seems like the recycled paper WANTS to be wet or very easily absorbs moisture and warps and starts falling apart, so it's extra important to not miss this step! the adhesive, whether paste or PVA (or EVA which I've also used a few times) seems to hold the paper together pretty well once it's dry again it's just while it's still wet from the adhesive one needs to be careful.

[sunshine304]

I've got it in DIN A4 and it's long grain which would be the wrong direction, actually. XD But I've found that it doesn't cause many problems because of it, likely because it's sold as the "good" copy paper for fine correspondence with great printer compatibility or something. The only time I've had a problem was with the book where I'd forgot the sheets for moisture. I do press the blocks to death, though. XD
I would prefer to have paper in the right grain direction but DIN A4 in short grain is super hard to find and also quite expensive. And I'm too lazy to cut up bigger sheets. XD

I usually use those transparent plastic folders/pockets. XD I've got lots of those things. That's worked well so far, but perhaps adding a thin cloth might also be a good idea.

Ugh yeah I've had those problems where the paper basically falls apart or tears easily as long as it's wet with some design papers I use for covers. I get those as scrapbooking blocks because they often have nice designs and are cheap, but it's definitely not the greatest paper quality. The front is usually okay, but cutting the edges folded on the inside... Definitely was a bit of a learning curve to let those particular papers dry some first. XD

[nerakrose]

oh but A4 long grain isn't necessarily bad! I use it for my A6 sized books because then the grain direction is correct. ;) it's part of the reason why I've been looking for good long grain *and* short grain papers for so long, because I want nice paper for both A5 and A6 sizes. (and A7, but that's short grain again so same paper as A5.)

so this is the cloth I use: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/255284917 it's a thin sheet folded twice (I cut along the fold to cut to size). because it's so thin it doesn't add extra bulk to the book in the drying process and because it's soft and absorbent it helps with the moisture from the paste. I usually use a whole sheet (in the original fold, it's just wide enough to fit inside an A5 book) for the initial hard press of about 15 minutes then I take the book out of the press and replace the sheets with a fresh dry sheet cut in half (so folded only once) and put the book back in the press but don't press it as hard this time. and always with the plastic moisture barrier in place of course!

[sunshine304]

So far, I've been too lazy to make A6, they're so small! XD It would also mean yet another trip to the shot for cutting the paper in half and ugh. I could perhaps at one point try ordering big sheets of paper and have them cut to size with right grain direction when my company orders something from the ptinter again. We used to have an industrial bookbindery in the same house, that would've been perfect because they always got loads of paper deliveries and had all the right machinery. But alas, they are no more. :/

What I at least was able to do was order Duo 222 booklinen through work, as the only two sellers I've found so far only deliver to companies (and at least one of them actually checks this stuff...). But my boss didn't mind and so now I'm waiting for two big parcels of linen. XD

I'll have to check if I can find those cloth sheets at a shop. I checked the discounter I often shop at but they have limited options. Perhaps at one of the bigger supermarkets, because they look quite useful!