Grammage - a lamentation

Lounge
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Sorry, “US Letter”, that is 8.5x11 inches (279.4mm x 215.9mm, yaaay).

Wat.

–
That’s one of the remarkable things about life: it’s never so bad that
it can’t get worse.
- Calvin

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All right, @anarcat

Your size (!) is about the same as a European A4.

Spontaneously, I’d pick a 250 or 260 gsm paper,
matte or glossy.

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

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awesome, thanks. i was recommended 240gsm+ as well, and another friend said 200gsm+ would be enough.

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I like heavy paper. Feels good in the hand and doesn’t wrinkle as much. :slight_smile:

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Morning, @anarcat,

Here is a suggestion that would make it easier for you to decide.

Ask the print shop to send you a dummy in correct size, correct number of pages,
correct bindning (wire-o?). Or simply buy a copy of last year’s cal, to let you have the feel of the thing.

Do you have a (professional) paper shop nearby? Do they have a dummy shop?

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

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hey @Claes,

So a little more context… I have a sample from last year made from a mass-produced, “go to the pharmacy, put a USB key in and we print you a calendar with your family picutres” process. That’s basically my standard: colors are okay, paper seems sturdy… My problem is I don’t actually know what gsm that paper is. I’ll try to get that information.

As I said, I also made a few test prints. The 148gsm definitely felt too flimsy, and I have yet to try out the 200/240gsm.

A “dummy” is a good idea - I could probably do that with those shops. My problem with the print shops is they charge about as much as the pharmacy: 15$/calendar, which I find a bit too expensive for my budget. I want to print between 20 and 30 calendars, so 15$ each means basically 450$ (CAD). That’s a lot of money for a small project like that… And yes, ideally, the process would be the reverse of this, I would get paid for my photographs, but I’m really just “amateur” at this point and those will be christmas gifts…

Long story short, I’m trying to keep costs under control. :slight_smile:

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Oh, and one of the shops said they would print on a Carolina Cover 10 pts C2C… I’m drifting off-topic here, but here are the papers I’ve considered so far:

Ideally, I’d just find a ~210 or 240gsm, C2C (or C2S? who knows!) that would feed in one of the printers I have access to and just do this cheaply. Those are the printers:

… but yeah, maybe I should move this to another thread. :slight_smile:

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Oh, grumble, grumble, grumpf!!!
Since we talk about gsm, you can measure it yourself!
See my first post, above.

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oh wow, you mean actually weighting the thing! Duh! Thanks for hand-holding my brain on that one - i’ll just do that! :slight_smile:

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YES!

Also: XEROX

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Sorry, what’s that? :slight_smile:

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If you are a sweet talker (sweet writer?) you just might be able to
obtain a sample pack from them?

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interesting idea, i might just try that :wink:

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@anarcat Do you have a Staples with a print centre near you? Your experience may vary but I find that some can be very helpful despite being a big box store. I had a few experiences where the employee would let me see various weights and types of paper and print samples until I got what I wanted. I didn’t have to be a sweet talker. :slight_smile:

Bonus: I met one of the original hosts of the recently cancelled TV show Daily Planet at a Staples. Jay Ingram didn’t know me but I waved anyway. However, he didn’t notice me at all because he was super angry about his printer and possibly bad customer service. His face was visibly contorted. I guess everyone has a bad day. :blush: Unfortunately, all the Staples in my area closed. Maybe they do mostly online sales now…

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Staples have been quite helpful: they suggested a 148gsm paper but that didn’t seem strong enough for my purposes. But worst: they didn’t have it on the shelves, only “behind the counter”, a recurring problem I found in many print shops.

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I see. The ones that I went to when I need to do stuff were gracious enough to let me touch the paper and make sample prints. At the more esoteric shops, they not only did that but they also showed me samples of their previous work on different ink and paper combinations. That was when I didn’t know anything.

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So I finally got around weighting my “standard” calendar I got hanging on the wall already. As it turns out, a single “US Letter” page actually weights 16 grams (±1g). It’s not exactly 8.5x11", more like 277mmx214mm (±1mm), so the paper weight is between 250gsm and 289gsm. So I would bet it’s 280gsm paper.

Problem is: that kind of paper is impossible to find in retail here. I tried phoning in every possible Staples (called Bureau En Gros here) and all they could find me is the 150gsm (40lb) I mentioned earlier. I can see that stuff online at the USA version of the site (e.g. here) but not on the Canadian site. And I can’t find any other place where they sell

That’s incredibly frustrating. Canada is one of the largest producers of paper in the world. We are continuously cutting down our ancestral forests, sometimes very poorly, to produce everything from lumber to news paper (and don’t forget toilet paper) yet I can’t seem to find a single place to buy the paper professional print shops seem to take for granted.

Even Amazon (which I usually boycott) refuses to ship me that kind of paper. What’s going on here? Is there some international conspiracy from corner-store calendar makers to keep people from doing their own?

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I feel your pain. Sounds like it should be a simple matter! When living in London (UK) I used to go frequently to Falkiner’s on Southampton Row. The whole shop is based on touching various papers! They have a pretty crazy collection though much of it would kill a printer. My printer proved able to survive anything I threw at it. Not without some coaxing though. I’ve probably spend a man age fishing shreds from the guts of the printer.

Have you considered paper for plotters (large format printers) usually comes in rolls as well as sheets. May need to cut down though. 280gsm might be a bit hard to get flat.

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Perhaps not wanted, but the standard A4, 80g/m² sheet is exactly 5grams (A4 is exactly 1/16 (2⁴) of a square meter). Which puts the 500-sheets ream at exactly 2.5kg.

This said, even in my metric country, we still have fairly poetic sheet sizes.

The “Grand Aigle” being the format of nautical charts produced by our “S.H.O.M.” used to be a major constraint in any sea-going watercraft.