A company called Rite in the Rain has been making weatherproof paper since 1916 and have kindly sent me some of their paper products and writing gear to test out. The benefits of their weatherproof paper is that water doesn’t ruin it unlike regular paper. You can actually go outside in the rain and get your Rite in the Rain paper dripping wet and it will still function as normal and even let you write on it while being drenched.
We all know regular paper doesn’t like to get wet. When wet, regular paper gets soggy, becomes easy to rip & tear, it can turn to mush if exposed long enough, and makes it nearly impossible to be written on.
Weatherproof paper specs:
- Water resistant
- Repels Water, Sweat, Grease, and Mud
- Tough Wire-O binding won’t get bent out of shape (notebooks or notepads)
- Use a Pencil or All-Weather pen (no gels or water-based inks)
- Flexible Polydor cover can take a beating (notebooks and notepads)
- Wood-based recyclable paper
- legal pad and copy paper can be used with laser printer
Use wet or dry with:
- all pencils
- Rite in the Rain pens
- wax markers
- crayons
- oil pastels/paint
Use dry only with:
- permarnent markers
- standard ballpoint pens
Wont work:
- gel pens
- most highlighters
- fountain pens
- water based paint
- acrylic paint
Rite in the Rain products are made here in the USA, in Tacoma Washington to be exact. Made here in the USA with US and imported components. I’m not surprised these products are made in Washington state since from what I’ve heard, it rains a lot over there. An interesting fact is that Rite in the Rain products have been around since 1916.
I’ve come across many projects where I needed to jot down notes while outside and rain is inevitable. I wish I would have known about Rite in the Rain weatherproof products years ago as their weatherproof paper is made to be used in rainy situations.
Rite in the Rain was kind enough to send me some of their weatherproof paper and writing gear. They sent me their top spiral notebooks and top spiral legal pads along with their tough mechanical pencil and all weather pen.
Their top spiral notebooks are pretty much standard issue but they use weatherproof paper which makes these stand out. The top spiral legal pads are also standard issue and also use their weather proof paper. What’s interesting about these is that you can rip a piece of paper off and you end up with a letter size 8-1/2″ x 11″ sheet of paper that you can insert in your laser printer to make weatherproof print outs. Pretty neat right? Of course they left you a plain white side on the back so you can use these sheets as printer paper.
The tough mechanical pencil uses thick durable 1.1mm lead. It has a tip that has a slit on both sides which is said to help it expand so the lead doesn’t break, wobble, twist, or fall out. You twist the head of the pencil to feed lead although I didn’t like that there’s no way to retract the lead at least not the regular way. To retract lead you have to do some fancy stuff to retract lead and to reinstall a new stick of lead, you can watch a video demonstration of how to do it here, but honestly I feel their method over complicates things. Personally I prefer click to feed mechanical pencils.
The all weather pen is your standard issue click ball point pen with a plastic body but with some pretty interesting specs. This pen is said to be able to write in any weather, it can write upside down, it has a pressurized cartridge, and can withstand extreme temperatures of -30 degrees F all the way to 250 degrees F. The ability to write in any weather makes it the perfect compliment to the weather proof paper especially while your out in the rain.
Testing:
While dry the weatherproof paper looks feels and acts like regular paper. That’s because it’s made out of wood fibers just like regular paper. The only difference I could tell was that the Rite in the Rain paper has a slight waxy feel to it and seems a tad bit stiffer than regular paper although the added stiffness doesn’t affect anything, you can still fold it or bend it like normal. As far as the waxy feel goes, I wouldn’t be surprised if it did have some sort of wax or similar substance coating the paper to make it water resistant. I took the Rite in the Rain weatherproof paper outside while it was raining and I exposed it the rain drops and the water ran down and beaded off the sheet. The paper pretty much repelled the water and didn’t get soggy like regular paper.
I was able to write while the paper was being poured on. I wrote with the mechanical pencil and with the all weather pen and the writing experience was pretty much the same as if I was writing on dry paper. One thing that I did notice was that the paper was affected by the constant exposure to water and appeared as if water did get inside the paper itself after heavy exposure to water. It did get a bit soggy in certain spots but it did not get as soggy like regular paper does. And the paper still continued to repel water and was perfectly fine to continue to be written on. I noticed that even though wet and affected by the water, it was not easy to rip or fall apart. It kept it’s integrity intact and required about the same amount of force to rip as regular paper when dry so I was amazed.
Another interesting thing I noticed was only the exposed side to the rain seemed affected by the water and the opposite side remained dry and the sheets underneath were unaffected and completely dry also. I also noticed that the paper did dry quicker than regular paper when it was affected by water and when it was dry, it left it a bit wavy just like how regular paper gets wavy after being wet and then dried.
I expected the pencil to write without a hiccup while there was water sitting on the paper so it was no surprise that it wrote without a problem. On the other hand, I expected the ink from the pen to have writing issues while writing over puddled sections of the paper, but no problems here so the all weather pen did a great job.
On a separate test I decided to further test the all weather pen while writing upside down since that’s one of it’s features. Any one that’s tried writing with a ball point pen upside down quickly realizes that the pen can only write for a few seconds before no more ink comes out. This is due to gravity pulling the ink away from the tip. So I tested this out with the all weather pen but to make this test even more interesting I gave the all weather pen a handicap before it even started writing. I grabbed the pen by the tip and swung the pen 20 times to try get as much ink away from the tip as possible to make the test even harder for the pen. Then I proceeded to write with the pen while upside down as I wrote on a piece of paper overhead. I scribbled for a good while for maybe about 3o seconds and the pen kept on writing. So it pretty much passed the upside down writing test with flying colors. And for a comparison I did the same test on a regular ball point pen with the same 20 swings and it wrote very little upside down before the pen ink gave up, maybe for about 5 seconds.
The list towards the top of this article shows what types of writing utensils can and can’t write on the weatherproof pencil and if they can while wet or dry only. I tested a few writing devices to see for myself what can and can’t write on the weatherproof paper. It wasn’t an extensive test and it was done only while the paper was dry because I already know many writing devices don’t work well on wet surfaces but that’s more the ink’s fault and not the papers fault.
Most highlighters are on the wont work list. I tried a bright yellow highlighter first and it was between a pass and a fail. At first the highlighter ink seems to go on well but it can easily be wiped off leaving some ink behind. The longer it’s left on the paper before being wiped leaves a stronger color but never as bright as when it first went on so I’ll let you guys decide if this is a pass or a fail.
I tried a Bic permanent marker with a fine tip and wrote just fine so it passed. I tried a Milwaukee Inkzall (permanent marker) and got the same results although if I wiped the ink right away it would smear but this is normal, if left to dry a few seconds it would not smear. So the Inkzall passed.
I tried some regular markers (not permanent) and the ink beads up on the paper. I tried the smear test and it didn’t matter whether I wiped the ink a second after or many seconds after – the ink smeared terribly. Regular markers failed to write on the weather proof paper so don’t try it.
I didn’t have any gel pens to try so I couldn’t do this test but just as a reference, gel pens are on the wont work list even when dry. I had plenty of ball point pens and they wrote just fine on the weather proof paper.
I had crayons and even though they’re on the work when dry list I decided I’d try them anyways and as expected they worked just fine.
So in conclusion – the Rite in the Rain paper is very good water resistant paper. It doesn’t care if it gets wet and you can keep on writing wet or dry making this the perfect paper to use if you do plenty of writing outside and much of it happens in rainy weather so you can keep on working even when it rains. The paper does get affected by constant exposure to water and water will get inside the paper itself making it slightly soggy but it doesn’t affect the ability to continue to repel water and can still be written on just as normal. It also doesn’t get as soggy or tear easily like regular paper does when it gets wet. The tough mechanical pencil does the job and it requires you to twist the tip to feed lead – there’s not much to say here although I didn’t like how you could only feed lead but not retract the lead. Also my personal preference goes to click to feed mechanical pencils. I was very impressed with the all weather pen as it had no issue writing directly in puddled water and it was a champ at writing upside down for a ball point pen, and I would easily recommend this to anyone even if they don’t have a need for writing on wet surfaces because the ink does not fail when writing upside down.
As far as the negatives go, I wasn’t crazy about the mechanical pencil as the pencil was not able to retract lead in the easy traditional way, but other than the pencil there was nothing to complain about the products themselves as they all worked very well. But as far as prices go, they are up there. I did a quick search on Amazon and the Rite in the Rain 3×5″ notepads are just under $6, a 4.6″x7″ notebook is $8.49, the all weather pen is just under $13, 200 sheets copy paper is $32, the legal pad is $18 with a three pack for $25, and the mechanical pencil is $11.47 just to name a few and these are prices for single items! (Note: Some Rite in the Rain products are priced lower on their own website at http://www.riteintherain.com/ than they are on Amazon. Although the price of shipping on the Rite in the Rain website can bring up the total cost of a single item to nearly the price of Amazon’s price or higher. You’re best bet is to buy in bulk to keep shipping at a minimum on the Rite in the Rain website. Also some products on the Rite in the Rain website are as much as they are on Amazon or more so it’s a mixed bag.)
I’m a very thrifty shopper and I can get notebooks, notepads, pens, and mechanical pencils at my local dollar stores and get them in multiples for a buck. But technically the dollar stores don’t offer the same products as Rite in the Rain since the dollar store items don’t offer weatherproof paper and their pens and mechanical pencils aren’t the same quality nor can their ball point pens perform upside down or write perfectly fine in water. Rite in the Rain products prices are up there but lets not forget that Rite in the Rain products are made here in the USA and their products can do what the other’s can’t although you have to pay a premium for the added usability. If you don’t need to write in the rain, users will have a hard time justifying the higher price points. But for those that need to write outside and can’t be forced to stop writing because of a little or a lot of rain will find the Rite in the Rain paper products as lifesavers and may justify their premiums.
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