Bought a $12 fine-tip pen set off Amazon and it bled through every single page of my notebook

The ink soaked straight through to the next spread and ruined two weeks of habit tracking, and now I am back to using my old Pilot G2 at $3 each - anyone else get burned by a cheap pen that looked good online?

3 comments

3 Comments

simonl1110h agoMost Upvoted

Used to be one of those people who swore cheap pens were just as good for everyday stuff... but after a similar bleedthrough disaster with my bullet journal I got totally converted. Those little fine-tip sets look so promising in the photos but the ink is always watery and thin on the page. Now I just stick with what actually works instead of chasing a bargain.

rileyellis14h ago

Hold up though, I gotta push back a little. I've bought those cheap fine-tip packs before and some of them work great for doodling or quick notes where bleedthrough doesn't matter. The trick is to use them in cheap notebooks with thin paper, then you're just asking for trouble. I keep a separate cheap sketch pad for testing out new pens before I trust them in my journal. Your Pilot G2 is bulletproof though, no argument there.

elizabethtaylor10h ago

Bet you've got a whole graveyard of dried out cheap pens in that sketch pad too. It's like a pen hospice in there. 😉