(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)
I purchased the Maruman Into-One Binder Mini in light blue, thinking it would be a handy replacement for loose index cards. It's the perfect size for a purse or backpack pocket, and the loose-leaf sheets make it quite versatile.
The binder is made of flexible, textured plastic, and the rings are attached with metal posts. The rings and opening/closing mechanism are made of clear plastic. To open, you simply pinch the mechanism with your fingers. Push the rings together in order to close the rings.
Unfortunately, one of my binder rings is out of alignment, so it doesn't close properly.
The binder is 5.9 inches/150mm wide, 3.6 inches/92mm tall, and 0.63 inches/16mm deep (where the binder rings are).
The binder comes with twenty pages of 80gsm lined (front and back) white paper. It is B7 size (130mm x 87mm = 3.4 x 5.1 inches) which is slightly larger than a 3 x 5 index card. Each sheet has nine holes, but the binder only has five rings. I'm not sure what the additional holes are for. Blue lines at the top and bottom of each page act as margins. Dots and dashes at 0.5mm intervals provide guidance if you want to draw vertical lines on the pages. The binder can accommodate up to sixty pages.
Considering how thin the paper feels, I was pleased by how well it stood up to various writing instruments. In my fountain pen test none of the inks feathered or bled through, with the exception of the wet flex nib in my Opus 88. There's some show through, but it's negligible enough that you can write on both sides of this paper.
The paper handled ink swabs with ease--I used very wet swabs but no ink bled through. The inks exhibited shading and pooling, but no sheen.
I also tested various pens and one pencil. The only bleed through was with the Sharpies (both ultra fine and regular).
The Maruman Mini Binder could be used in many ways. I listed several possibilities and created examples of some of them.
The Maruman Into-One Binder costs $7.25 on JetPens. You can get it in light blue, dark blue, and pink.
There are multiple options for filling the binder, including various print styles (ruled, graph, blank, to-do, and time planning) and colors/paper styles: white, pastel colors, croquis (for sketching), and scrap. You can also get a zip case, tabbed dividers, and paper protectors.
I love this little binder and plan to use mine for reading notes and memorization purposes.
(I purchased the Maruman Mini Binder and lined paper refill with my own funds.)
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