Stuart France
Active member
I wonder, is it a distinct Welsh thing to have cave logbooks, as used in Agen Allwedd etc?
There appear to be at least two good reasons for them:
1) Obtain insight into cave footfall trends and compare levels of use between caves
2) Know where to start looking for overdue groups in large cave systems if they adhere to a written-down route plan (but they?re no longer on their route plan if they got ?lost?)
3) Reassure national conservation bodies that can?t look at caves themselves, at least not officially for H&S reasons, that caving activity isn?t threating their professional interests.
I?ve just collected the logbook from Ogof Capel which I put there on 29/9/2011, so it tells me. The last entry is 19/8/2021 with about 20 pages left unused. It?s one of those A6 size surveying notebooks with plastic waterproof plain pages on which an HB pencil sometimes writes legibly. My replacement logbook is A4 size laser printed with tables suggesting what details to record, again on allegedly waterproof pages.
Obviously the footfall data is not of urgent interest if it?s only looked at once a decade, and the third reason for collecting now seems irrelevant following the departure of Natural Resources Wales staff from the very same ?cave management committees? that their predecessors such as the Nature Conservancy created many decades prior.
Anyway, people are habituated now to describing their visits in these underground cave diaries and I get complaints if the logbooks get full or the pencils are all broken which brings me to the real purpose of this posting - which is intel on waterproof paper and waterproof pencils.
NRW used to provide logbook pages on fairly thick plastic laser printable sheets but these had a glossy finish that pencil lead does not adhere to at all well. Of course the sheets got wet and muddy too, then the writing tends to wear off making the entries difficult if not impossible to decipher later on at home under a running kitchen tap to remove the thin mud coating.
I?ve solved the pencil problem with ?Woodless Graphite Sticks? branded Progresso (visit www.koh-i-noor.cz) and available on Amazon. These don?t snap or go blunt easily nor dissolve into a mush in caves. Not cheap, costing ?15 for ten HB pencils, but ideal for leaving for future use in caves.
Paper is more tricky. I?ve tried a ?Waterproof Paper? off eBay which turned out to be real paper impregnated with silicone water repellent. Sure enough, tap water runs off it like a duck?s back, but being fundamentally real paper it absorbs water over a couple of weeks in a cave and starts to go, well, soggy. The upside is that it is truly matt, so a bit rough to the touch just like paper is (because it is paper) and it works in laser printers, and pencil lead sticks to it permanently even when writing in the wet. Cost was about ?15 for 30 sheets.
Next up, a Xerox product called Premium NeverTear, also suitable for laser printers. It comes in boxes of 100 sheets which at the 95 micron thickness weigh 7.5g per sheet (a similar thickness to conventional 80gsm paper). It is also available in 120, 145, 195u and upwards thickness which might better suit caving use. The material is plastic film, not paper, so it does not go soggy, it has a semi-matt finish and HB pencil lead sticks well including the Koh-I-Noor pencils. Cost was about ?35 for 100 sheets.
Any more suggestions out there on notebook paper and pencils that survive a decade in a cave?
There appear to be at least two good reasons for them:
1) Obtain insight into cave footfall trends and compare levels of use between caves
2) Know where to start looking for overdue groups in large cave systems if they adhere to a written-down route plan (but they?re no longer on their route plan if they got ?lost?)
3) Reassure national conservation bodies that can?t look at caves themselves, at least not officially for H&S reasons, that caving activity isn?t threating their professional interests.
I?ve just collected the logbook from Ogof Capel which I put there on 29/9/2011, so it tells me. The last entry is 19/8/2021 with about 20 pages left unused. It?s one of those A6 size surveying notebooks with plastic waterproof plain pages on which an HB pencil sometimes writes legibly. My replacement logbook is A4 size laser printed with tables suggesting what details to record, again on allegedly waterproof pages.
Obviously the footfall data is not of urgent interest if it?s only looked at once a decade, and the third reason for collecting now seems irrelevant following the departure of Natural Resources Wales staff from the very same ?cave management committees? that their predecessors such as the Nature Conservancy created many decades prior.
Anyway, people are habituated now to describing their visits in these underground cave diaries and I get complaints if the logbooks get full or the pencils are all broken which brings me to the real purpose of this posting - which is intel on waterproof paper and waterproof pencils.
NRW used to provide logbook pages on fairly thick plastic laser printable sheets but these had a glossy finish that pencil lead does not adhere to at all well. Of course the sheets got wet and muddy too, then the writing tends to wear off making the entries difficult if not impossible to decipher later on at home under a running kitchen tap to remove the thin mud coating.
I?ve solved the pencil problem with ?Woodless Graphite Sticks? branded Progresso (visit www.koh-i-noor.cz) and available on Amazon. These don?t snap or go blunt easily nor dissolve into a mush in caves. Not cheap, costing ?15 for ten HB pencils, but ideal for leaving for future use in caves.
Paper is more tricky. I?ve tried a ?Waterproof Paper? off eBay which turned out to be real paper impregnated with silicone water repellent. Sure enough, tap water runs off it like a duck?s back, but being fundamentally real paper it absorbs water over a couple of weeks in a cave and starts to go, well, soggy. The upside is that it is truly matt, so a bit rough to the touch just like paper is (because it is paper) and it works in laser printers, and pencil lead sticks to it permanently even when writing in the wet. Cost was about ?15 for 30 sheets.
Next up, a Xerox product called Premium NeverTear, also suitable for laser printers. It comes in boxes of 100 sheets which at the 95 micron thickness weigh 7.5g per sheet (a similar thickness to conventional 80gsm paper). It is also available in 120, 145, 195u and upwards thickness which might better suit caving use. The material is plastic film, not paper, so it does not go soggy, it has a semi-matt finish and HB pencil lead sticks well including the Koh-I-Noor pencils. Cost was about ?35 for 100 sheets.
Any more suggestions out there on notebook paper and pencils that survive a decade in a cave?