Not to mention, all the shelf space dedicated to 10.000 different iterations of those blasted Moleskine notebooks.... the cover and the form factor of the originals are nice, but the paper in them has gone from bad to horrendous!

Hi Booksniffer

Enjoyed reading this thread. One question for you: How does the Dutch Postal system stage letter rates? Here in Canada, anything up to an including 30 grams goes for the same price. The next step up is 31 to 50 grams, then 51 to 100 grams for anything letter sized. 5 sheets of 8½" x 11" (21.6 x 28 cm)  75 g/m² in a standard #10 (10.4 x 24.1 cm) envelope comes in at 27 grams. Even with postage stamp, return address label and a couple of fun stickers still comes in just under 30 grams.

Proper onion skin 36 g/m² and an airmail envelop can afford you up to 12 pages in one envelope for 29 grams, I've been known to type 10 pages when typing to a typewriter pen-pal in Eindhoven, so if you type long letters, then airmail paper does have its advantages. The disadvantages of airmail paper is its fragility and how easily it punches through unless you use a sturdy backing sheet or have an as-new platen, even then, a backing sheet is strongly recommended. Onion skin paper does not feed through scanners and printers, it gets stuck in the feed rollers. Flat bed scanning seems to be the only way to scan letters typed on onion skin paper.

However, if you really want to go old-school, place a sheet of carbon paper between the airmail typing paper and the backing paper and you'll have a carbon copy of each page as you type. Just remember to put a fresh backing sheet in for each new page of typing paper. All the best,

Sky

Greetings Once Again

The closest I've found to true onion skin paper is from The Paper Mill Store down in the USA. The site indicates free shipping to Canada on orders over a certain value. Might this be worth looking into for re-distribution in smaller quantities to forum member who might be interested? Just a thought,

Sky

skywatcher wrote:

Hi Booksniffer

Enjoyed reading this thread. One question for you: How does the Dutch Postal system stage letter rates? Here in Canada, anything up to an including 30 grams goes for the same price. The next step up is 31 to 50 grams, then 51 to 100 grams for anything letter sized. 5 sheets of 8½" x 11" (21.6 x 28 cm)  75 g/m² in a standard #10 (10.4 x 24.1 cm) envelope comes in at 27 grams. Even with postage stamp, return address label and a couple of fun stickers still comes in just under 30 grams.

Proper onion skin 36 g/m² and an airmail envelop can afford you up to 12 pages in one envelope for 29 grams, I've been known to type 10 pages when typing to a typewriter pen-pal in Eindhoven, so if you type long letters, then airmail paper does have its advantages. The disadvantages of airmail paper is its fragility and how easily it punches through unless you use a sturdy backing sheet or have an as-new platen, even then, a backing sheet is strongly recommended. Onion skin paper does not feed through scanners and printers, it gets stuck in the feed rollers. Flat bed scanning seems to be the only way to scan letters typed on onion skin paper.

However, if you really want to go old-school, place a sheet of carbon paper between the airmail typing paper and the backing paper and you'll have a carbon copy of each page as you type. Just remember to put a fresh backing sheet in for each new page of typing paper. All the best,

Sky

Alas, the cheapest price range here is 0 - 20 gr; so a bit less wriggle room!

I do actually own a flatbed scanner (one of my other revolving hobbies is shooting on expired medium format film), but since my computer has been on the blink for ages, it's not functional at the moment - much like my printer. ;)

But who needs a printer when you have a typewriter, right?

Anyway, I'm not too worried about saving copies of what I write, especially in digital format - but I have ordered some carbon paper to play around with.


Yes, backing paper always!!
Right now I'm using some nice sturdy paper from a 2012 insurance terms book; if I remember to put them the right way (that is, the wrong way) up, the page titles work as a nice early warning system for reaching the bottom of the page.
 

Laurenz van Gaalen wrote:

Booksniffer wrote:

although what I am really after now is some affordable airmail / onionskin type paper

 
Well, that is something I am searching for quite a while now. I have only found 60 gr/m general purpose A4 paper. I suspect Vlieger in Amsterdam may have real airmail/onionskin paper, but I have not been able to visit the store because of the lockdown.

If you find airmail or other very thin paper, please let me know.

Lau

 

The 60 gsm you found, is that the Clairmail paper?

I have some of that on it's way to me.
Pity that it is bright white; I prefer ivory, or yellow, or bone, or light blue etc.... basically, anything that isn't stark white.