Three reviews in one! Lochby, based in the US, offer three groupings of products: a Tool Roll, an A5 Field Journal, and three different A5 Tomoe River Notebooks. The Tool Roll is a pen-wrap type product that has some extra pockets and different ways of folding or wrapping; the Field Journal reminds me a lot of a Travelers’ Notebook for A5 paper; and the A5 Notebook refills are rather self evident!

I saw these products on Instagram once and thought they looked really interesting. Not too long after that Chris, founder of Lochby, reached out for me to review them, so thank you to Chris for sending these out!

Lochby Field Journal

Starting off with the Lochby Field Journal, this is a notebook holder for A5 notebooks. It’s made out of a brown waxed canvas exterior with an aluminium buckle, a pen clip, a back pocket with velcro, and a strap to hold the Field Journal from on the spine. It has a practical and robust feel to the construction.

On the inside of the Field Journal is a warm yellow honeycomb-patterned interior fabric along with more pockets including a mesh pocket. There are also the elastic bands which are used to hold up to four A5 Notebooks (though I wouldn’t be surprised if with additional elastic bands of the right size this could be increased).

The wax canvas offers a great alternative for people who want to avoid leather. Being waxed, however, this probably is not vegan-friendly (though it would be at least vegetarian-friendly(?)).

The Field Journal weighs in at 300g (10.6oz) and is 17cm x 25cm x 2.5cm (6.75” x 9.75” x 1”). That 2.5cm thickness is used to great effect with the multiple notebooks.

Each Field Journal also comes with an A5 68gsm Tomoe River Notebook refill and costs US$39 (AU$57, €35, £30).

The four elastic band holders mean that four notebooks (and up to six, as mentioned below) easily fit inside without the need for other methods to attach more books (such as with Travelers’ Notebooks need for an additional elastic band to hold more than one). While there are four elastic band holders to hold four notebooks it is actually formed out of one extra long band through two holes in the spine of the book. The spine is also wide enough to easily hold the four notebooks; thicker notebooks, within reason, should work as well.

The elastic pen holder is firm but not so firm that thicker pens are a hassle to attach. On the left (when looking at the open Field Journal) there are two business-card sized pockets as well as a deeper pocket and then a mesh pocket. Behind all that is a long side pocket-sleeve. To the right there is one large pocket-sleeve. As mentioned the exterior spine of the Field Journal has a handle to hold the notebook. Personally I haven’t used this much as I keep these types of stationery items in bags.

The deep side-ways pocket to the left and underneath the rest of the pockets and the other side-ways pocket to the right also provide options to slip a fifth and sixth notebook into them (slipping the appropriate cardboard covers into each pocket-sleeve) taking the full amount of notebooks up to six! I managed to put 6 notebooks, including thick notebook, into the Field Journal without a worry (other than it looking a little chunky)! 2.7cm (1”) of notebooks! Not bad.

There is a lovely rustic colour theme with the dark low saturation brown canvas exterior and the honey yellow interior. The canvas does display signs of use but they aren’t distracting and aren’t strong. I believe they add to the character of the Field Journal.

Each A5 Notebook fits best when the elastic band holder is slipped into the entire of the notebook with equal amounts of paper on each side.

Each notebook remains rather flat and easy to write on regardless of where the notebook is in relation to other notebooks. That said, the middle two would still be flatter.

The stitching is tight and, to me, looks secure. Nothing was loose or looked fragile and the metal buckle secures solidly to the fabric hook. Lochby boasts that the stitching is “double stitching and bartacking throughout” and that the buckle is also “Aircraft-grade aluminum”.

It can be a little slow to hook it up but you get used to it soon enough and are more efficient in it. The waxed canvas exterior is expectedly water resistant and while this is great to prevent water splashed onto the Field Journal’s exterior it isn’t going to protect the notebooks from water splashing to the side.

Tool Roll

The Lochby Tool Roll is essentially a a pen wrap with extra features (and not just for pens). Like the Field Journal that it complements well, it is made out of a brown waxed canvas exterior and a honey yellow interior. Lochby suggests that the Tool Roll can be used as a “pen roll, dopp kit, cycling tool kit, artist roll, or even first aid kit. The options are endless.”. I’ll be focusing on using it as a stationery kit!

Unrolled the Tool Roll is 20cm x 40cm (8” x 16”) and weighs 155g (5.5oz). Each Tool Roll costs US$39 (AU$57, €35, £30).

The Tool Roll can be wrapped in different ways depending on how the interior is being used. It can fold into a book-like shape or it can ‘roll’ up into a burrito shape. You can also place the flap with the mesh pocket on the inside or outside.

On the inside there is a mesh pocket with a zip to hold items as well as three sections within the ‘wrap’ section. These sections offer different sized elastic holders (for tools or pens). The left most section (with the mesh pocket to the left) offers four smaller holders, the far right offers three larger holders, and the middle offers two very large tool-holding elastic bands. Behind each section is a pocket that can hold pocket-sized notebooks. This is where how you fill the Tool Roll matters as to how it is wrapped. With no pocket notebooks you can wrap the whole thing up like a burrito. If you have a pocket notebook on the left and right you can fold down the middle of the ‘large’ elastic holders in the centre compartment. If you have all three filled with pocket notebooks you can only fold in the creases in between the notebooks.

Larger pens easily fit this tool roll (four-size and the three-size) as the elastic is tight but supple enough. Smaller pens fit best in the smaller holders. The two larger sections are good for holding stubby tools like the knife and glue-stick I have.

The mesh pocket to the left side is the length of the width of the tool roll and fits a decent amount of stuff including a bulky traveler notebook clamp.

The top and bottom of the wrap also has flaps that cover the top and bottom of pens or items that you have inside. This gives some decent coverage from all sides (though by no means water proof, the contents aren’t directly exposed to the elements).

The same aluminium buckle as on the Field Journal has four different places it can clip into which reflects how there are different ways to fill the Tool Roll which makes it more or less bulky.

Longer items such as longer pencils do not fit within the Tool Roll, unfortunately. This shouldn’t be too unexpected, however, as these pencils are noticeably longer than most pens.

Like with the Field Journal the wax canvas is expectedly water resistant. Due to the flaps and how it can be wrapped this could offer more protection from accidentally splashes.

A5 68gsm Tomoe River Notebook Inserts

The three notebooks of 72 pages on offer are Plain, Ruled and Dot Grid. The Dot Grid spacing is 5mm and the Ruled is 6mm. Different colours and minimalistic logos differentiate the different notebook styles both on the front and back covers of the book itself and the paper wrapping that they come with. The refills cost US$8.99 (AU$13, €8, £6.8).

The cover is unadorned apart from a hexagon shaped symbol below the Lochby logo which shows the style of notebook. The same symbol is on the back in the upper centre.

The paper in the Notebooks is 68gsm Ivory (White) Tomoe River which allows for decent sheen and shading with good resistance to bleeding and feathering while also avoiding the ghosting that is more prevalent on 52gsm Tomoe River. You can see 68gsm Tomoe River at the bottom of most of my Ink Reviews. The dot grid and the plain are presented exactly how you would expect but the lined is a little more interesting! At the top there are guides for how you might turn this into grid and each line is numbered.

The inside of the front cover has a square with lines on it fore describing the notebook and authoring it (not that I use this part, generally). The written lines, as mentioned, are presented differently here with the page divided into two larger sections of 12 lines and a smaller section at the bottom of 8 lines. These sections are divided by a line with dashes in it to help with turning the page into a grid (with a ruler). All the lines are also numbered on the left.

The binding is a huge 38 hole string binding with the string going all the way through the cover to the outside. These stitches are tight and don’t appear to be susceptible to falling apart.

The cover is a lovely rustic and simple brown kraft cardboard. It’s got some nice texture. There’s nothing much to it apart from it doing it’s job and fitting the aesthetic well.

I love the practicel and useful aesthetic and the thoughtfulness of the designs here by Lochby. If there’s room somewhere there’s usually a practical element built wherever that room might have been be that pockets, a handle, variable buckling lengths, or the ability to easily hold multiple notebooks. These products are well thought out and have the small details that I appreciate. They have an aesthetic of something that is meant to be used, apropos the name, ‘in the field’. The honeycomb styling of the honey-coloured inside works well with the brown canvas outside (and, of course, the bee logo of Lochby).

In a very handy change to many stores, shipping is presented up front and easy to see for international and US buyers:

USA: $5.99, Canada: $14, Europe: $15, Australia/New Zealand: $19, Asia: $19, Latin America: $15, Africa: $19. These shipping prices aren’t amazing but they aren’t terrible and are pretty much par of the course for sending stuff from the US to Australia (where I am)!

Thanks again to Chris at Lochby for sending these over for Review! Check them out on Instagram as well!

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I received these stationery items free of charge for the purpose of giving an honest review. I was not otherwise compensated and everything here is my own honest opinion. There are no affiliate links.