Printed Hex Grid for Hand Drawn Maps?

[talisid]

TL;DR does anyone have a good source for hex grid paper with around 50mm hexes printed in dashed/dotted light grey lines or something similar?

And, if you want to read some more words:

Hello CG people! (do you use CG to abbreviate Cartographer's Guild?)

I've recently started a campaign using the 5E D&D, after a long hiatus from gaming pursuits, and found myself getting a bit more in depth into the world-building side of things. I sketched out some maps on a regular 9x12 drawing pad, but that was annoying to estimate distances on. So I looked through some of my old stuff and found a couple pads of hexagonal grid paper (more on that below) which has maybe 2 hexes per inch. I decided this was a bit too big for the scale of map I want to draw, so I looked about online for something with smaller hexes (the 5E DMG recommends ~5 per inch). Sadly all I can find are a couple pads on Amazon: one with really thick lines, which I think are too dark; one with reasonable lines and almost small enough size, which is pretty good but I'm hoping there's better.

So I came here to ask if anyone knows of a place I can buy some similar to the ones I have, just with smaller hexes. Something tells me it's a hard ask, but I figured I'd try.

The hex pads that I do have are actually super cool, they seem to be a TSR product from around 1994 (that's the copyright date in case you can't make it out in the images). Each page has a neat (although admittedly space consuming) scroll artwork border. In each pad, half is double sided with a hex grid on one side and square grid (4 per inch I think) on the other side, while the other half is double sided with one side a blank scroll and larger square grid (2 per inch I think) on the other side. The other thing about them, which is probably my favorite, is that the grid lines aren't fully printed, they are just printed where the grid lines would intersect (i.e. at the vertices) and only in a light grey so it doesn't overshadow artwork drawn on top of it.

I've attached some photos, sorry about the quality (specifically the yellow spots, that's some camera artifact, not there on the paper), I can take much nicer ones if anyone wants.



P.S. This is my first post on the forums, although I have browsed around the wonderful maps and tutorials over the years. If I have posted in the wrong thread or formatted my post poorly, please please let me know and I'll fix what needs fixing!

[acrosome]

If you just google "hex paper" or "hex graph paper" or similar you can find free pdfs to print.

Here's a website where you can generate damned near any sort of graph paper you can image.

[talisid]

Thanks acrsome, but I have actually used incompetech.com and printablepaper.net before. I didn't just post on here without doing (at least some of) my research!

This paper is probably the closest either of them have.

I can work with that, but I'm really looking for a combination of 50mm or 1/5" size, the thin light grey style vertex intersection instead of dots or lines, and the fun scroll border detail.

Perhaps what I should really be asking is how those sites generate their PDFs, so I can make my own?

EDIT: Clarified the size hex I'm looking for.

[gilgamec]

So...you're looking for something like this?

[talisid]

So...you're looking for something like this?

Wow, yes, that is awesome, thank you! Care to share where that's from or how you made it?

I think I might just scan my pad and do a nice vector of the scroll border so I can use it when I want.

[gilgamec]

Wow, yes, that is awesome, thank you! Care to share where that's from or how you made it?

It's done in Asymptote, which is designed for making technical diagrams but isn't bad for mapping either. It's not like any of its power was used here, though; the hex paper is just a short, pale line rotated and tiled across the page at 1/5 inch intervals.