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Comment by bschwindHN | Hacker News Reader

The Frixion pens they sell in Japan are incredible for this. They're truly erasable, not like the shitty ones I remember from my childhood. The multi-color pens are especially useful. All the fun of brainstorming and erasability, without the bad smells and imprecise lines of whiteboard markers.

http://www.frixion.jp/lineup/work.html?pid=product_ball-3-sl...

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Be careful with those. Their ink is erasable because of the heat generated by friction (hence the name), which also mean content can be erased by other heat sources or in some situation like a notebook put in a car parked under the sun in summer. Moreover, doesn't seems super durable, so for notes that much be keep for long time, it is also not the best solution.

The reverse is true though, try putting it in the freezer and you'll see ;). Erasing them doesn't actually remove the ink, it just make it transparent.

I would never use those to write something important in a notebook. I did this and left it in my bag, the sun shone on the bag and because of the heat most of my notes got erased. Well because friction = heat, so it was the same thing.

I had the same experience, still use them. Most ball point pens are not archival safe anyway, so to remove the guess work I scan my important stuff with my phone's camera anyway. It's my go to method for creating a graph for what I'm writing anyway.

But if I were in uni or something and were forced to maintain multiple projects at the same time(modules) I would probably opt for something else.

Ball point might not be safe for archival, but I can still read the stuff I wrote as a child 30 years ago; the stuff I wrote with fountain pen and its water soluble ink, not so much.

Lately I've grown super fond of "micro" liners, which are 0.3mm water-based ink pens. To me, their feeling when writing is awesome. BUT IT IS WATER BASED. So even a light rain can wreak havoc on my notes.

Ball-point pens don't feel the same, and the colors don't stand out as much to me. I've accepted the fact that water is a dangerous thing to my notes now.

> BUT IT IS WATER BASED. So even a light rain can wreak havoc on my notes.

Water based != water soluble when dry

I would suggest you try similar pens with a different ink. Staedtler Pigment Liner and Sakura Pigma Micron pens (both of which come in 0.3 mm) use water based pigments which are waterproof when dry and archival. They both survive rain quite well in my experience and are used for outlining by some artists who then apply water color paints or other water based media without the dried ink bleeding.

There are also waterproof fountain pen inks. Platinum Carbon and Noodler's Bulletproof Black are two good ones.

For a common counter example to a water based substance being water soluble once dry consider water based exterior latex paint.

Will look into them, thanks for the pointer :)

Unfortunately every pen of this kind I've used suffered from being water soluble after dry, so I just assumed all where.

Exactly. I tried erasable pens in elementary school and they were more problems than they were worth. Dead tree carcasses are unfortunately "cheaper" than losing work. :'(

Haven't tried it myself, but from what I've heard, putting the paper/notebook in the freezer should bring back the ereased stuff

Yup this works, I use Frixion pens and have done this. On the other hand, if you take your notebook out in freezing temps your erased writing might reappear!

Cold makes "erased" notes to appear, nothing disappears in reality.

You mean I can put my old, blanked out by sun, notes in the fridge and they will reappear ? If that works you made my day, sir !

Incredible indeed. Please update to let us know if it worked!

It worked for me (I was trying to prove someone else wrong.)

It worked ! I'll check if it stays dark but my notes have been restored ! Thanks !

So cool, thanks for sharing.

Freezer for sure.

You can get it back by throwing it in a freezer, at least I was able to when I should prove someone wrong... :-)

(pilot frixion, blue, bought in Norway)

Here's[1] a proof I recorded a long time ago. Enjoy my notes on virtual memory.

[1]: https://youtu.be/hM4-4G36H7U?t=31

Yea, but if you reuse the paper, it becomes an accidental palimpset with all the layers visible.

For the original stated purpose of "whiteboarding", they're great. And like others stated, you can recover what you wrote if you really need to by cooling the paper past a certain threshold.

I've used those. I would say that they're not perfectly erasable and it still takes more effort to erase compared to a whiteboard.

I think the biggest thing here is the size of the canvas and the speed at which you can make changes. Sure, markers can be messy and smelly, I will give you that. Regarding the imprecision: when I am brainstorming I am not looking to be precise and I would argue that noone should be aiming for that; prototyping should be messy and quick to mutate.

>I would say that they're not perfectly erasable and it still takes more effort to erase compared to a whiteboard. I think the biggest thing here is the size of the canvas and the speed at which you can make changes.

Some FriXion colors do erase less well than others.

But to address your concern about effort to erase I recommend trying a little butane torch lighter. Little puffs (quick clicks) of a lighter on the FriXion ink is very effective as an eraser. A continuous flame strafed across a page will erase large areas without damaging the paper.

While a lighter might seem a bit inconvenient its much less cumbersome than carrying around a white board and eraser.

They sell them everywhere, under the PILOT brand.

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