Printing your own stationery

Partner in crime - My Epson WorkForce 645 used waterproof ink.

It makes sense that picky fountain pen users who put time and effort into selecting just the right pen, ink, and nibs, also take the additional step of creating their own stationery, with their paper of choice, formatted as they like it, rulings and all, if no satisfactory stationery already exists.

Here are a few useful tools and services for printing your own stationery.

An automatic template generator

Tables created in Microsoft Word work just fine for simple lines, grids, and margins.  However, for more complex templates like dot grid patterns, online template generators like Incompetech are indispensable.

A printer with waterproof ink

Writing with fountain pen ink requires waterproof ruling on your custom stationery, to avoid smearing and bleeding.  Laser printers use waterproof ink, but the high costs of such printers, especially color varieties, can be prohibitive. A useful alternative is an inkjet that specifically advertises the use of waterproof ink.  I have owned the now discontinued Epson WorkForce 845 and its single-tray variant WorkForce 645 which both featured the "Dura-Brite" brand of water-proof inks, and can attest that their inks are indeed waterproof.  I assume the updated model Epson WorkForce WF-3640 performs as well.

If you wish to use the printer you already own, then there are third-party ink cartridge manufacturers that claim to produce waterproof ink that is compatible with certain printer brands.  However, the one time I used one of these third-party ink cartridges (a non-waterproof brand) hoping to save on ink costs, it ended up clogging my print heads.  Use such cartridges at your own risk, as printer manufacturer warranties will often not cover any damage the results from them.

A note on photocopiers

I have never used photocopiers to make personal stationery, but then I have never had access to free photocopiers.  Photocopying at something like Kinko's or FedEx is expensive to do in large amounts, costing as much as 15 to 20 cents to copy on sides of a sheet.  If you have access to cheap photocopying and your paper isn't too thin to cooperate, then photocopying is a convenient option.

A wide format printer for large-size bookbinding projects

Binding your own, sewn, 8.5x11" or A4 books requires folding paper that is twice that size, i.e. 11 x 17" paper or A3 paper (or larger, if you eventually want to trim edges). Printing templates for paper of this size requires a wide format printer.  I replaced my Workforce 845 with a wide-format from the same manufacturer that uses the same Dura-Brite ink, the Epson WorkForce WF-7520 . This has also since been discontinued and I again assume that the newer model, the Epson WorkForce WF-7620, works just as well.

(Note that I tend to choose printer models with two paper trays, for various personal reasons -- e.g. one tray for printer paper and one for stationery paper; or one for printer paper and the other for label paper. However, there are cheaper, one-tray alternatives to both the wide-format and letter-format Epsons mentioned above: the WorkForce WF-7610 and the WorkForce WF-3620 respectively.)

The Epson line prints up to 13x19" size but does not automatically duplex any size but letter. If you print on somewhat thin paper and want your rulings to line up on both sides, automatic duplexing is important, because many printers can shift papers by a millimeter or so from side to side when feeding, making it a headache to line up, say, a dot grid.  There's a Brother printer that duplexes up to 11x17" paper, but I'm uncertain whether its ink is waterproof (it isn't advertised as such) and I'm not sure alternative waterproof refill inks exist for this brand.

Printing on very thin papers, e.g. Tomoe

If you print on extremely thin paper, such as Tomoe River paper, you might need tricks to run it through a printer without wrinkling.  Whether or not your printer can print on thin paper seems to randomly vary from model to model. My regular-format Workforce 645 was able to print on letter-size Tomoe without introducing wrinkles, but couldn't avoid picking up multiple Tomoe sheets at one time.  My wide format WF-7520 from the same company, however, cannot print on Tomoe letter-size sheets without introducing wrinkles but can pick up one sheet at a time from a stack. The wide format WF-7520 introduces mild wrinkles and occasional thin vertical creases, but the paper remains quite usable.  Some claim that certain printer varieties contain specific settings for thin or fine papers, but mine does not.

My wide-format printer definitely cannot print on the A3 or 11 x 17 size ultra-thin Tomoe paper I like for letter notebooks without significant crumpling to the point of un-usability, with the paper often jamming in the feed, although it handles regular-weight A3 paper just fine. A trick I used was to stick the top and sides of a sheet of Tomoe on a similar-sized, regular thickness sheet of paper with restickable glue, then run it through the printer.  Then, turn it over and repeat.  The restickable glue usually lasts 8 to 12 sheets before needing to be reapplied.  Use paper that is slightly larger than what you need so that the sticky parts at the ends of the sheet can be trimmed off later.  A more time-consuming alternative is to rub off the glue with microfiber cloth.

Do note that any time I installed a fresh ink cartridge, there was excessive smearing and ink blots on my paper while running it through the printer.  This lasted for several weeks and affected only Tomoe paper and other fine papers, such as my label paper. Further, there was less risk of wrinkling if I set print quality to high, causing the paper to run through the printer more slowly.

I became worried at how, if my thin paper and backing paper weren't perfectly aligned, bits of glue would come off in the printer's feed.  Two years later, however, the printer is still working fine.

Consider printing presses

The restickable glue method eventually became tedious for me.  I could usually only print 20 to 25 double sided sheets an hour, and it took five or six printing sessions to obtain enough sheets for a notebook-binding project. The fact that the paper wasn't automatically duplexed meant my dot grids weren't perfectly aligned on both sides of the sheet, which became less annoying over time as I learned to use dark backing paper, but was non-ideal nonetheless.  A final if costly step you can take to avoid this tedium is to print your paper on a press, or have someone print it on machine presses for you.

A local studio near my house allows you to rent their manual presses for $15 an hour for DIY printing.  The press results in well- aligned grids and is far more efficient than the restickable glue method, producing 70 to 80 double-sided sheets an hour. However, it is far less cost-effective than printing, essentially adding $15 to the cost of a mere 75 sheets.

A partner press that my studio works with will print your design for you on machines, although the cost is exorbitant unless you're printing in volume. And when I say volume, I mean volume -- my studio suggests it takes at least 10,000 prints of the same template for the endeavor to be cost-effective. This is because the bulk of the cost involves creating the plate and mixing inks; afterwards, the task is automated, so the more sheets you can make from that plate, the more cost effective the endeavor. It is also cheaper to print large templates that are eventually cut down to letter size than to print on small sheets, due to how many cycles the machine must run.

For example, at the studio I frequent, printing one thousand 17 x 22 sheets (cut down to produce 4,000 letter size sheets) costs $300, but printing double that amount -- 2,000 17 x 22 sheets to produce 8,000 letter-size sheets -- costs only $25 more.  Printing 8,000 letter-size sheets from letter size paper, however, costs $575.  Therefore your most cost-effective option is to print as many larger-size sheets as possible from one template, and cut it down to size later.

If, like myself, you have selected your paper of choice and your template of choice, then investing in a "lifetime supply" of your favorite template might make it a worthwhile cost to have large volumes of your sheets printed up professionally.  (If you print on Tomoe paper, however, you might have a difficult time finding a press willing to print on it for you -- it took me three tries to find one.)

In Conclusion

There are many options of varying expense and varying cost-effectiveness for printing your own sheets.  Microsoft Word and letter-size paper of your choice might be all you need if you plan to print on letter-size paper of average weight, while larger or lighter papers might require looking into more complex printing options, from wider format printers to professional presses.  Your needs will dictate how far you go.