BUBM pen roll

BUBM pen roll

Just a very quick post showing you my new pen roll. I’ll call it BUBM pen roll, just because there’s a BUBM [1]BUBM stands for Be Unique Be Myself, with it being an imperative I would have gone for Be Unique Be Yourself. logo on the roll.  My pen roll was advertised as a “Cable Organizer Roll Up Bag Storage Case for Tool Batteries Pen Earphone”.

BUBM pen roll

I bought it for £3.59 (~$5.15; €4.55) from eBay, including postage. The same item was being sold for a lower price by other sellers, but these cheaper ones would have come directly from China and would have taken a long time, this one was already in the UK.

Difficult to see, but the URL bubmcase.com is printed on the green surface
Difficult to see, but the URL bubmcase.com is printed on the green surface

Material-wise it reminds me very much of Nock products. I compared it to the Nock pen case I have. The Nock product does look more sophisticated, but I can’t say I am surprised ..and for the price I paid the BUBM pen roll is extremely good value for money and quite well made.

BUBM pen roll

If you use it for pens it will usually be big enough, but very long unsharpened pencils, like the TiTi Kyung In T-Prime in the photo above, are a bit longer than the 17cm of the case.

I noticed that some of my pens and pencil slid out of the pen case when the roll wasn’t stored horizontally in my backpack – only wider pens and those with a rougher surface (unpainted pencils) stayed where they were. The surface of painted pencils doesn’t seem to have enough friction and pencils are rather slim, so they won’t be held in place – unless you put a lot of them in one slot – so if this was a dedicated pen roll it would make sense to have narrower slots, but as this is more of an all purpose pen roll the wider slots make more sense.

BUBM pen roll

Well, let’s go a bit off topic then and look at other uses for this pen roll.

Off topic: Swiss army knives

Here’s an example where I used the pen roll for Swiss knives. I’ll go even more off topic by giving a short explanation of each of the knives.

BUBM pen roll

 

The first knife from the left is an Elinox. Elinox was Victorinox’s economy line and this is the last knife my father used at work. I don’t know what happened to the ones he had before, maybe they were too ‘used up’ and he got rid of them. This one’s blade is pretty ground down from sharpening it with the tools in his joinery. As a kid I was so used to Elinox knives that I thought the Elinox logo is the ‘normal’ logo for Swiss army knives. When I first saw a Victorinox I thought they must have recently changed the logo. I also thought only the real posh knives come with tooth picks and tweezers, because Elinox knives didn’t have those.

The second knife form the left is a Swiss Cheese Knife from Victorinox. I got it a few years ago when Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG sent them out for free if you bought Swiss Cheese and sent them the bar codes, plus postage. Luckily this promotion was open world wide, so I could send them bar codes from cheese i bought here in the UK, I just had to send them together with the postage in Swiss Franks.

The third knife from the left is a normal Vicorinox Spartan. Maybe my father’s Sunday knife, but I should date it to be sure.

The fourth knife from the left is Wenger‘s equivalent of the Spartan, I think it’s called Hunter. My wife got it many years ago, but she already had a similar one so I got it.

The last knife is a Swiza. This is the D04 version. which has a screw driver instead of a cork screw. Swiza only started selling knives similar to the well known Swiss army knives a few months ago.
A quick note on the link Victorinox – Wenger- Swiza: Victorinox and Wenger make/made Swiss army knives, but Swiza, originally a clock manufacturer, is fairly new to the world of knives. Their knives have not (yet) been used by the army, so Swiss folding knives might be a better term to describe Swiza’s knives. Like Wenger they are from the Canton of Jura.
A few years ago Victorinox bought Wenger. In the last few months two things happened:  Victorinox started selling Wenger knives under their own Victorinox name (Delémont Collection) and a former Wenger CEO has started to make knives again, now under the Swiza brand.
To be honest: the Swiza knives look better on pictures than in reality. They aren’t bad knives at all, but what makes them interesting is probably the fact that they are new. For use in the UK they are not great as they have locking blades which means they are “illegal to carry in public without good reason”.

Please let me know if you liked the off topic part of this post and whether you’d like more or less off topic, i.e. not stationery related, bits like this in the future

 


Price and exchange rates: April 2016

You can see Lexikaliker’s small black and red and big Swiss army knives on his blog.

Dave has also shown his knives in the past.

 

You can also catch a glimpse of another one of my knives in a previous blog post.

References

References
1 BUBM stands for Be Unique Be Myself, with it being an imperative I would have gone for Be Unique Be Yourself.

7 thoughts on “BUBM pen roll”

  1. Thank you for showing the roll. I like the catch! It looks like it is easy to handle. – Thank you also for showing your Swiss knives and for explaining them! I haven’t heard of Elinox and Swiza before. Yes, I like the off-topic part of the post 🙂 I am interested in knives too, and my favourite one is the Victorinox Deluxe Tinker (which also has a Philips screwdriver instead of a corkscrew). I have it in my shoulder bag all the time!

  2. Thank you for your comment.
    I am happy you like the off-topic part.
    I also have a Deluxe Tinker! A few years ago I bought a Deluxe Tinker and until recently I had it in the small pocket of my trousers (watch pocket) every day. I recently stopped carrying it as I thought it is illegal in the UK, but have since found out that it isn’t – so I should start carrying it again. I did expect more use of the screwdriver though. It is often too big, but no problem: I have a Mini Champ on my key chain ;^)

  3. Hi Matthias, my son is saving up to buy his third Swiss Army knife (the first being “for kids”, the second something for fishermen his grandfather passed on to him). Very interesting! Thanks for showing them 🙂

  4. Nice collection of sharpeners there, Matthias 🙂

    I’m a big fan of the Spartan myself – blades and the bottle opener being the tools I feel that I need, with others being “nice to have”. I also have a “Rambler”, a tiny “keychain” Swiss army knife that sports a blade, bottle opener, scissors and nail file. The end of the bottle opener is also a tiny philips head screwdriver, the right size for screws on eyeglasses. I think the Rambler has a better selection of tools than the more commonly carried, but similar in size Classic SD. (https://www.victorinox.com/global/en/Products/Swiss-Army-Knives/Small-Pocket-Knives/Rambler/p/0.6363)

    FWIW, the most recent equivalent of the Spartan in Wenger’s range seems to be the “Classic 07”, sold as the “Commander” in the US.

  5. Thank you for your comments.

    Sola, I’ve seen the ‘for kids’ version once, when I was walking to ‘Staedtler Welt’ (see https://bleistift.memm.de/2012/08/staedtler-welt/ ). It was in a shop window down the road. Which one does he want to buy?

    John, the Spartan is really great. Value for money is excellent and the tools are so useful (except the cork screw, at least in my case). I used to have a similar, but simpler knife on my key chain – a corporate gift from the company my brother used to work for, but I replaced it a few years ago when I got a Minichamp from my wife.
    I first thought the Wenger is a Commander, but the Commander seems to have a nail file…

    Gunther, I recently bought little hook carabiners for my knife and mini torch for my keyring. I was tempted to buy new ones for a long time, ever since I saw the one you use in a blog post (back then I asked you and you gave my some additional information). The once I got are different, but I love them. Makes taking torch or knife off the key chain much easier.

  6. These clips/carabiners are very handy! I have a McGizmo clip on every keyring and on some knifes, a small torch etc. With this the items can be combined and attached to lanyards etc easily.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.