Has anyone found a good notebook for hobby engineers?

I have used the Black n' Red notebooks for my design sketches, often drawn with pencil at actual size, for more than 40 years. They were really well made, with thick board covers, sewn in signatures, with alternate pages lined or printed with millimeter graph paper and named 'Science Book A67966'. One could write on the spine of the book with dates or subject. Then, the product switched to spiral bound, which is impossible to label on the spine, and now the book is no longer available in either form.

The only substitute I have been able to find is the 'Science Book' produced by rhinostationery.com. This is inadequate . The cover is thin, the pages few, the binding is just staples, the spine too thin to label and , worst of all, the graph pages are printed with the smallest squares 2 x 2 mm. This causes me to make numerous errors of scaling if I am trying to draw actual size. I have been reduced to sticking sheets of A4 graph paper in a lined book with sellotape, which will disintegrate or become loose in time.

Perhaps commercial designers use only CAD, but for me there is nothing better than an actual-size drawing with the calculations alongside it and automatic archiving in a book that will last a lifetime or longer. Any suggestions?

Bunch of hits for ' Black n' Red ' on Amazon ... not all spiral-bound.

Dear Peter,

Yes, but the Black n' Red trademark is applied to dozens of different types of notebook, with different numbers. You can get them plain, all narrow feint, all broad lined , made with columns for book-keeping etc, and they all have numbers. Only the 'Science Book' A4 , number A67966 has the millimetre graph paper printed on alternate pages. I was definitely told that it is no longer printed. If you have really found a supplier of this type of book, please post details of where we can get it: I suspect I am not the only one who is searching.

Brad

Sorry I couldn't help .... I thought you were looking for a substitute not an exact replacement.

It says on-line ordering suspended, but you could try giving Ardent a bell.
http://www.ardentsystems.com/buy/A67966.html

Bill

I think this one fits the requirements:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Clairefontaine-Chartwell-Hardback-Laboratory-Books/dp/B00I4OFSFG/

Chartwell A4-641K appears to be the manufacturer's product number.

If that does not suit, have a look at their other offerings. I would be surprised if Chartwell do not have something in their range which you could not use.

Brad, Don't know where you are in the world but maybe this link is of use ?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Black+N+Red+Book+Casebound+90gsm+Graph+Ruled&_encoding=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=19450&linkCode=ur2&linkId=Q7EHUMJKIFWIQYW7&tag=csp-detail-image-21

John.

PS its a fact that this type of book is disappearing ! I used a Collins minute book for over 40 years as a repair register, they had about 300 pages and pretty much indestructible -- they took a lot of wear & tear ! They were costly at £80 -£100 but worth the money. We managed to get some smaller [less pages] versions recently but the covers are not as substantial.

The book factory seem able to supply a wide variety of notebooks at a price. The 1mm graph page does not appear to be a standard offering. Do you need the features of a hardback book for security and protection or would a loose leaf file filled with the paper you require be ok. During lockdown I printed some pages for accounting use for my wife as she was at home and her normal paper was unavailable. A pad I like for my doodlings is the 5mm squared quadrille but I fully understand your desire to source your preferred format notebook, after 40 years it must be the one that you find ideal but it is looking rather elusive.

Mike

Thank you all for your suggestions. No reply from Ardent by phone ( after a promise to phone me back) or to my email from Ardent. No graph pages on any of the Amazon B n' R books brought up by the link. The Book Factory seems to offer 5mm, like Rhinostationery.com as the finest division on metric graph paper. However, the Chartwell book looks ideal: very similar spec to the Black n' Red. I have ordered one from Amazon and will report back on it. Special thanks to DC31k : I have spent many long hours searching over the past years but failed to spot the Chartwell product myself.

Personally I much prefer larger squares on both sides - typically 5mm. They are pricey but Moleskine do very nice ones.

I have the impression that unless Chartwell can sell a lot of the books with 1mm squares we are all going to be obliged to use books with 5mm squared graph paper ( or , in the USA, 1/4 inch).My problem is that I like to draw metric things actual size. I have tried this for two years, using the 5mm Rhino science books, but drawing a 12mm diameter hole involves estimating the centre position in the middle of the square, which is inaccurate. x2 scale is often too large to get the whole drawing on one page and has often caused my aged brain to make errors and does not eliminate the need to estimate the position of the whole centre. Actual size drawings ( where you can check all your dimensions with a ruler to detect any errors of mental arithmetic) are perhaps always going to be an old-school hobbyist activity: commercial drawings will be all CAD. Bulk book sales in future will probably be educational where cheap 5mm books like the Rhino will suffice. Properly-bound books are probably just too expensive to manufacture for a specialist market to white-haired folk in their sheds.

I think Brad's analysis is correct. Although well-bound Lab and Engineering notebooks are available, they seem to have settled universally on 1/4" or 5mm grids. This is probably what most people want.

How about buying a stack of millimetre graph paper and glueing sheets into a 5mm notebook as needed? Or inserting pages of whatever type into one of those binders with separate plastic page envelopes? Not as good as the right thing, but maybe a reasonable compromise.

Just a comment, because it depends on what you're doing, but drawing actual size on paper is mostly a no-no in my workshop. Though I often make rough sketches on 5mm squared paper, they're rarely trusted on their own and I confirm anything remotely complicated formally with 2D or 3D CAD.

It's because working in metal is usually done to 0.02mm / 1thou accuracy, for which a 1mm grid is far too coarse. More generally, drawings need special care. In professional practice, they're often marked "DO NOT SCALE FROM DRAWING", because doing so causes horrible mistakes. Instead drawings explain the geometry, but only the draughtsman's dimensions are trusted. He gets them right by doing the maths or by allowing CAD to calculate it, not by eyeballing a grid.

But there are plenty of exceptions. 1mm accuracy is reasonable for woodwork, and squared-paper is always a good place to start. Like Brad I find it effective to keep drawings and notes together in a book, which CAD isn't good at. My problem is mislaying the notebooks rather than the size of the squares!

Dave

I use a Panasonic toughbook CF19.

I'll get my coat........

Maybe.

The reason I knew it existed is that we used the soft cover version in our civil engineering laboratories (steel structures, hydraulics, concrete, public health) at university. I guess the basic concepts of material science have not changed and much the same labs. were taken by chemical, mechanical and manufacturing engineers so there will still be a demand for them. I have also used Chartwell survey books for many years - they are made from rag paper so do not fall to bits when wet.

I did think of suggesting you use the first page of the new one to plot annual usage against life expectancy, so you can stock up now in case they cease to produce the book.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Clairefontaine-Chartwell-Hardback-Laboratory-Books/dp/B00I4OFSFG/

Success! I ordered the Chartwell book suggested by DC31k (as above) and it is a good substitute for the obsolete Red n' Black A67966 Science Book. As the photos show it has a strong back, but is appreciably thinner than my old books and weighed 22% less, so probably has thinner and lighter paper. The Chartwell paper is very slightly more transparent than the Black N' Red but not enough to matter. The number of pages is 180 in Chartwell, 192 in the Black n' Red. Inside the Chartwell book was a label stating that this one had a manufacturers' product code A4-641K ( 1/5/10mm graph divisions) but there is a version with 5mm squares, code number A4-646, with a yellow cover instead of green. Both versions, when opened, have a graph page on the left and a lined page with thin lines 10mm apart on the right.I ordered several books, which should see me out, and leave enough for others on this forum who may want the same kind of book.

My reason for searching was to allow quick actual-size sketches to be made at the start of a design process. I usually then go and look for suitable bits of metal in my scrap box or order stock to make the parts and modify the dimensions according to the stock I can find and making more sketches if necessary. I mark in the intended final exact dimensions but certainly do not take any measurements off the drawings. If the design is larger than an A4 sheet or complicated I draw on A3 graph paper with 1 mm divisions on a drawing board,often at 2x scale, with 1/2 scale or 1/4 scale for wooden furniture.

Thank you to all who helped in this quest!

Sorry to drag this one up again, but I have just learnt of this website:

https://leafgraphpaper.com/

and this thread seemed the most appropriate place to make note of it.

Amongst other things, they have IMPERIAL graph paper (0.1" squares) so that might be useful for someone designing in inches.

… and in similar spirit [if you can cope with loose leaves],

I must recommend this App to iOS/iPadOS users:

**LINK**

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/gridmaker/id1154310963

MichaelG.

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Note: the critical reviews are by people who did not understand the concept