William Hannah A6 Notebook/Planner - New Product Review

Last weekend saw the on-line launch event of the William Hannah A6 leather notebook/planner on the Facebook group using a live video feed.

David kindly offered to send me a sample to review, which I gladly accepted and it arrived in the post this last week.

The William Hannah A6 leather notebook was delivered in exactly the same style of gift box as the A5 (previously reviewed), the A6 box is shown here with a Philofaxy business card for size.

It opens in the same way as the A5 gift box to reveal the wrapped A6 leather notebook.

I have to say that the packaging and 'opening experience' (if such a thing exists!) is comparable to opening any Apple product with the detail that has gone in to the packaging and the presentation of the product.

If you wanted to give one of these notebooks as a gift, the recipient would be very impressed opening their gift.

Inside was a Bordeaux and Petrol Blue William Hannah A6 leather notebook.

It is nice to break out of my usual comfort zone of colours! See the website for all the colour combinations available.

The A6 notebook uses the same size 20 mm stainless steel discs as the A5 with the same spacing as well. There are just 6 discs fitted on the A6 compared to the 8 fitted in the A5. So all existing paper punches will work.

The stainless steel discs are finished to a high standard and the pages turn very smoothly.

Here are the two sizes together for comparison.

The William Hannah A6 notebook cover is made out of high quality Italian leather and the stitching is done to a high standard too.

Of course if you already own an A5 William Hannah notebook you can pop A6 pages in to the A5 without any problems because the discs are spaced the same distance apart.

I have experimented with putting A5 in to the A6, but that is still a 'work in progress' project !

Another comparison with the William Hannah A6 I did was to compare it with two slightly different size Van der Spek A6 ring bound organisers. 

In the left hand column of the photograph below there is a Van der Spek Senior with 20 mm rings, this is the same size as the discs in the William Hannah, so as you can see they are very close in size. 

The Van der Spek is designed for paper 95mm x 140mm so slightly smaller than A6, A6 pages work in that Van der Spek if you use top tabs on dividers. Where as the William Hannah has a more compact arrangement with its disc system and normal A6 paper. 

The right hand column is another Van der Spek Senior, but this time fitted with 25mm size rings and it is the full size suitable for A6 size paper. As you can see it is noticeably wider than the William Hannah A6 notebook, and thicker too. 

The William Hannah A6 is quite a compact A6, if that makes sense! It measures 160mm high by 125mm wide. The 20mm Van der Spek Senior measures 176mm high by 145mm including the clasp. 

The discs are threaded on to a stainless steel rod which is sewn in to the back of the leather cover in the same way as the ones are in the A5 model.

This gives the notebook very good rigidity and stability which is normally an issue for disc system binders.

With sufficient overhang and the quality of the Italian leather cover, this will protect the paper very well and your pages will not come to any harm in normal daily use.

There are a full set of A6 inserts available for the new model. They include diary pages as well as a variety of lined, dot grid, grid, to-do lists etc.

The paper is of very high quality and takes fountain pen ink without any issues at all. See the website for full details for all the inserts available.

There are also a small selection of accessories available for the A6 including colourful dividers and a matching leather and elastic pen loop, the pen loop fits in the same way as it does on the A5 model. I have already ordered a pen loop and some dividers for the A6!.

The William Hannah A6 Notebook is available in ten colour combinations 'off-the-shelf' these have been chosen to appeal to the majority of peoples tastes.

In addition, like the A5 you can order an A6 notebook in a number of bespoke colour combinations of exterior leather, interior suede and the colour of the thread both inside and outside.

You can also have your notebook cover monogrammed as well.

For current prices and availability of both sizes of William Hannah Notebooks and accessories please see their website.

Overall I am very impressed with the William Hannah A6 notebook, it satisfies many points for me, being flexible and compact as well as high quality and able to tuck in to a small bag without taking up too much space. I have always liked the proportions of A6 page size so it will be great to use it again as a notebook.

Thank you to David Round at William Hannah Leather Notebooks for providing me with the review sample.

Further Information:

• William Hannah Website
• William Hannah Users Facebook Group

William Hannah Discbound Notebook/Planner - Update

It has been over a year since I did my initial review of the William Hannah A5 leather disc-bound notebook/planner.

A lot has happened since then, David Round (Owner of WH) has continued to work hard in developing the product and the brand in general.

In May 2016 we created a small but friendly Facebook user group for William Hannah. It has about 170 members, it has grown slowly in the last year with people doing the usual thing of sharing photos and asking questions etc.

David does the occasional live video to the group to bring us updates and show off new leather colours. Whilst these are live events, you can watch them at a later date if you missed them which is good.

I've recently ordered a paper punch that will work with this type of book, in my search for a suitable punch I discovered a few different types available. As with all punches it pays to do your research because of prices and availability can vary where ever you are in the world. (see the links at the end of this post)

My punch should be with me in the next couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to creating some of my own inserts for my WH notebook to try it out in different ways.

Other interesting news is that William Hannah is going to launch an A6 version of the William Hannah Notebook. The A6 model will have 6 discs compared to 8 discs on the A5, they will be the same diameter and the same spacing as the A5 model.

Once again there will be a selection of leather colour combinations available as 'off the shelf' models and like the A5 you will also be able to order bespoke combinations as well.

Look out for news on this new product on the William Hannah website, address below.

Like the A5 you will be able to order from William Hannah a selection of high quality paper packs in different styles for the A6 in the same way you can for the A5.

The paper supplied by William Hannah is of exceptional quality, no surprise really as David is a fountain pen fan!

• William Hannah Website
• William Hannah Users Facebook Group

The punches I found: 

• Staples UK Arc Punch
• We R Memory Keepers 
• Atoma Puncher

William Hannah Notebook/Planner - Review

Following on from my overview of this relatively new disc bound product, I ordered a William Hannah notebook via the website in UK.

The ordering experience uncovered a few more bits of information. You can pick either an 'Off-the-shelf' colour combination from the 15 different combinations of exterior/internal colours. If you go down this route you then choose 60 sheets to go in to your notebook, these are included in the price of the notebook. You get to choose in increments of 10 sheets from Lined, Dotted, Plain, or Grid paper. You also choose the colour of the ink used on the sheets too from a range of 10 colours

Alternatively you can pay slightly more to go for a Bespoke Notebook where you get to choose the interior and exterior leather colours and the colour of the stitching as well. The cover can also be monogrammed. And as above you get to choose the pages supplied in the same way as the off-the-shelf option.

In addition you can order more pages from the range available. These include a diary, undated planner page, to-do list. You can also build a bespoke refill pack with 50 sheets in different ink colours. See the full range on the papers page.

So having ordered a notebook I was surprised when post lady appeared at our gate on Easter Saturday with a parcel, it's rapid delivery might have been helped by the fact that Good Friday isn't a public holiday here in France.

After the usual 'What have you got there?' from Mrs M... she stayed to watch me open the parcel! As you can see it comes in a very nicely packed outer box which will survive even the worse treatment I would think!

Un-boxing

Inside was a very nice heavy card black clamshell case/box which has the emblem of WH on it.

Open the case and there is your notebook nicely wrapped in tissue paper, again this is labelled with the company logo.

My first thought when I opened it was, what a lovely gift this would be for someone special in your life, it is beautifully presented and I'm sure they would be impressed, they might not know what it was inside, but that just adds to the build-up I think.

Some additional pages I received where in a protective sleeve again with a company label holding it closed.

The Notebook/planner

And here is my Black and Royal Blue William Hannah leather notebook.

The stitching is very nicely done along the spine and around the edge.

The leather is quite thick, but very supple.

You get a lovely burst of colour opening the notebook and the suede interior is soft to the touch.  The front sheet is slightly thicker card stock and features a place to write your name and other personal details.

Looking at it from a slight angle shows the eight stainless steel discs that hold the pages in place, these in-turn are threaded on to a stainless steel rod which is stitched in between the layers of leather at the top and bottom and in the middle.

The notebook comes with several useful information pages about how to use your notebook and gives  some ideas on how you might use your notebook. 

There is a sheet showing you how to remove and replace pages

So I put that to the test, once an engineer... always an engineer!

This shows the interior in more detail and as you can see the discs are free to move on the rod. The discs are 20 mm in external diameter, the internal diameter of the discs is 18 mm where the paper tabs run in.

Paper pen test 

I did some pen tests with a variety of pens on one of the plain pages. The paper is a delight to write on.

The only one that bleeds through the paper is the Staedtler Lumorcolor permanent OHP marker pen, I normally only use this for labelling plastic index tabs, so I'm not surprised at the results on paper. The large marker pen though didn't bleed through that was a surprise.

No issues with any of the other pens with a variety of different inks. The paper is 100gsm and as you can see the outer corners are neatly rounded.

This is a close up of the rear calendar page which is slightly thicker than a normal sheet, but it shows you the shape of the disc cut outs.

Inserts

Here are some samples of the pages in different colour inks

And the 'standard' lined, grid, dot and plain pages

These are the undated planner pages, on the reverse side (left hand page below) there are spaces for reviewing your week.

And the To-do pages have space for notes on the reverse side.

In Use

For some one who doesn't like writing in a ring bound planner/notebook because they find the rings get in the way, but they want to be able to remove and insert single pages, a disc bound system like the William Hannah notebook is a great option. The disc being so much smaller than your average ring bound organiser ring mechanism and much lower in overall profile I didn't notice them at all.

Dimensions

The dimensions of the William Hannah notebook are as follows:

Height 22.2 cm, closed width 17.0 cm, Thickness 2.6 cm, Open width 35.5 cm. 

The leather cover is 3mm thick made up of two layers of leather which is stitched at approximately 7 stitches per inch.

Comparing it to a Filofax Boston A5 with 20 mm rings:

Height 23.4 cm,  Width 18.3 cm,  Thickness 3 cm 

Comparison to other disc/wire bound systems.

There are several other disc/wire binding systems on the market that offer a similar ability to put in and remove pages.

The picture below shows two others apart from the William Hannah one.

First of all the MiracleBind/Filofax is a wire bound notebook system the cut holes are a totally different shape and also the pitch of the holes (spacing between them) is different to the Arc and William Hannah cut holes. So even if it was the same shape the pitch is different so we can't really try that out at all.

However the Arc disc system does use slots or holes at the same pitch as the William Hannah system, as you can see the shape of the cut out is slightly different, but still within tolerance and fit for the William Hannah discs.

I was therefore able to try some pages punched with the Arc paper punch in the William Hannah notebook and they fit perfectly and the pages turn just fine as well. I went a step further and without telling my wife Alison, I asked her to try turning both the Arc and William Hannah pages to see if she could notice a difference between them.

The only thing we both noticed was that the pages punched with the Arc punch moved fractionally more than the ones supplied with the William Hannah notebook. I think that can be explained by looking at the slots (the vertical cut to the edge of the page) that are cut, the Arc ones are fractionally wider than the ones of the William Hannah pages.

Overall though we both think that that if you have your own pages to insert in to the William Hannah notebook and you already have an Arc punch then it will work just fine in this notebook.

Using the pages with a ring bound system

A lot of us are also A5 ring bound organiser users, can you swap pages between the two systems?

Naturally I had to try this option. I took a pre-cut page from the William Hannah note book and punched it with my Filofax A5 punch. As you can see only two of the holes cut in to the slots for the notebook, but the other four holes are fine. Therefore you would be able to inter-change the pages between an A5 ring bound organiser and the William Hannah notebook.

Conclusion. 

I think this is very well thought out product the attention to detail in the presentation and packaging stands out. The notebook is very well made is quite slim yet the discs hold a surprising quantity of paper. It is a very professionally finished product and it will not look out of place in a business meeting or at home in your study or living room.

The initial price of the notebook might seem high, but when you consider what you get in the full package and the way it is very well presented and the price of additional inserts is very reasonable for the weight and quality of of the paper used.

Offer for Philofaxy Readers.

William Hannah would like to offer Philofaxy readers a free 50 sheet pack of plain paper if they order a notebook. All they need to do is mention the Philofaxy review in the "SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR SELLER" box during checkout, and they will include the paper pack with your order.

I know that some people have already ordered a notebook because of the initial article, and it doesn't seem fair that you missed out on this offer.

Therefore, if they just drop William Hannah an e-mail (see below) with your notebook number (it's engraved on the top ring of the notebook), then they will send you the plain paper pack.

The Company

The website: http://www.williamhannah.com

Email: support@williamhannah.com

The Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamHannahUK/
The Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WilliamHannahUsers/

You Tube Channel:

Check out the launch video from last year.

Thank you to William Hannah Limited for responding to my various questions about their products and for supplying various samples shown in the review.

William Hannah - The Notebook/Planner

I was in conversation with someone in Toronto the other day and he was asking what it was I blogged about.... Oh no I thought what will they think... So I sent them the link to Philofaxy.

They came back with a link to a friend of theirs who had created a notebook/planner product. It is a customisable disc bound notebook/planner, but the way in which the discs are linked is different compared to the Arc disc bound books. So I went and had a look for myself and I was quite impressed with what I saw.

The brand name is William Hannah Ltd, they are based in England and their website is very detailed and I was able to message the company to get answers to one or two questions about the products and their responses came back very quickly.

The cover is made from Italian leather and is available in 5 different exterior colours and in total there are 15 different colour combinations of exterior/interior colour. The interior is in a suede finish. It looks well made and should last a life time.

The mechanism is based on a disc system but the discs are slotted on to a bar, this gives the system some rigidity not present in other disc binding systems and I think this is a definite improvement. The spacing is similar to the Staples Arc disc system but the holes in the paper are a slightly different shape. The discs are made with stainless steel so they won't rust.

The paper and inserts use good quality 100gsm paper. It is described as having a smooth finish, so it should accept fountain pen ink quite well. Naturally this will vary depending on the nib width and type of ink.

The number of inserts available include a week per page diary, undated week planners, lined paper, plain paper, graph and dotted pages, there is also a sample pack. These are all at very reasonable priced for A5 inserts on good quality paper.

Check out the launch video from last year. 

The website: http://www.williamhannah.com

The Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamHannahUK/

You Tube Channel:

Have you ever used a disc bound planner/notebook?

Thank you to William Hannah for permission to use their images in this post which are their copyright of course.