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Originally Posted by pinkhedgehog OK, I'll bite. I'm one of those nuts who really wants to know the details about paper weight. What is the difference between text and cover and why do they weigh different amounts if they're both listed as 80lb? Feel free to PM me if you want if you think you'd bore everyone but me. I'm always looking up crazy stuff like this on the internet.
Thanks!
Heidi |
OK, but don’t say I didn’t warn you:
There are five different grades of paper. Or six, according to some folks. Confusingly, there are a bunch of different names for most of the grades, but the five grade names I’m most familiar with are bond, text, cover, tag & index.
You have to know both the grade AND the weight to see how heavy paper is. The higher the number, the heavier the paper WITHIN THE SAME GRADE. So 28 lb. bond is heavier than 20 lb. bond and 92 lb. cover is heavier than 80 lb. cover.
It gets more complicated when you’re trying to compare the weight of papers in different grades, however. Paper isn’t manufactured in 8 ½ x 11 size; it’s cut down to that size from its original “parent�? size sheet. The size of the parent sheet is different for each grade of paper.
The parent size of bond is 17�? x 22�?
The parent size of text is 25�?x38�?
The parent size of cover is 20�?x26�?
The parent size of tag is 24" x 36"
The parent size of index is 25 ½�? x 30 ½�?
Paper weight is quoted by “basis weight.�?
Basis weight is the weight (in lbs.) of a ream of 500 original parent size sheets.
For example, “28 lb. bond�? (like you’d use for office letterhead paper) means that a ream of the 17�? x 22�? parent sheets weighed 28 lbs. Similarly, “80 lb. cover�? (like SU’s confetti cardstock) means that a ream of the 20x26 parent sheets weighed 80 lbs.
80 lb. cover stock is actually heavier than 80 lb. text because it takes fewer square inches of the cover paper to make up the 80 lbs. (because a parent sheet of cover is smaller than a parent sheet of text.) 80 lb. text stock is the equivalent of about 45 lb. cover stock. Make sure you know what grade & weight of paper you’re buying, and consult an equivalency table to help you figure out its relative weight.
You sometimes also see paper weight is expressed in caliper (thickness in thousandths of an inch) or grams/sq. meter. And that’s not all, folks – there are a million other things to consider when choosing cardstock, like the coating, the finish, how it absorbs ink, the degree to which it curls when exposed to heat, the degree of whiteness, blah blah etc.
cardstock thickness
