Pollux

Handicraft with Bleistift VII – the Lexikaliker/Pollux/Leather Case™

Time for another Handicraft with Bleistift post.

Pencil point protectors

Since we’re talking about Handicraft posts anyway, my 2010 Handicraft post contained the sentence “my point protector is so simple, you probably thought of it yourself somewhen in the past” – well, there’s proof that people come up with the same idea [1]…from the blog post’s point of view ‘somewhen in the future’, there’s a video on YouTube by tintinonair, explaining how to make these pencil point protectors.

Lexikaliker’s Pollux Case

You might have seen Lexikaliker’s posts about his Pollux cases, first in Basteln mit dem Lexikaliker (14), then a different version in Basteln mit dem Lexikaliker (15).

Well, I went with the more traditional, original version from Basteln… (14).

I have never worked with leather before and don’t have much DIY/craft experience or skills in this area, but Gunther’s drawing and measurements make it very easy to copy his design, which is similar to the leather case you get with the DUX Adjustable Brass Pencil Sharpener DX42774.

Me being inexperienced the whole thing took over an hour, but the time was mainly spent on trying to pull the needle through the holes, using the pliers from my Swiss Army Knife.

Doing the threads both ways, i.e. after sewing through the holes going through them in reverse again, so that the thread is also between two holes on the opposite side of the leather (I bet there’s a word for this) didn’t help speeding things up either.

Disrespecting my Blackwing

Well, I was well entertained, listening to our favourite Scouser’s (Craig Charles) House Party. By the way, Craig Charles previously featured in this blog post. While listening I once thought Arrested Development were singing ‘disrespecting my Blackwing’, but it turns out they were singing ‘disrespecting my black queen’.

Well, the main thing I learned, other than paying more attention to song lyrics, is to try to cut the leather deep enough the first time as the knife I used to cut the leather was so sharp, when cutting a second time the blade won’t end up in the old, but will cut a new ‘channel’.

One thing to do for next time is to get a smaller needle and thinner thread. When I compared the thread to the one on my Rustico I saw that mine is much thicker. With a thin thread and needle the whole ‘pull the needle with pliers, like an ox’ part could have been skipped.

I love the look of vegetable tanned leather and how it slowly changed colour over the years, getting much darker.

Colour comparison (Pollux case on top of a Rustico case) – look how dark my Rustico case darkened over time. I guess the Pollux case will follow soon

The leather cost me £2.25, but there’s enough left to make two more cases. As for the rivet.. unfortunately, I had to buy ten (for £5.49), so I hope I can find a use for the other nine.


I would like to thank Gunther from the Lexikaliker blog for his great plan on how to cut the leather for this case.

You can see the colour of my Rustico case, when it was new, in this blog post.

References

References
1 …from the blog post’s point of view ‘somewhen in the future’

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Blades, pencils and Christmas tree ornaments

Just a few things I want to mention. I think there was something else I wanted to add, but I forgot…

Pollux spare blades

Thanks to Gunther from the Lexikaliker blog I got a set of spare blades for my Pollux when I met him last month at Insights X.  Thank you!

Pollux spare blades
Pollux spare blades

Royal Mail’s 17th century pencil

Royal Mail’s Great Fire of London Special Stamps feature a 17th century pencil. I don’t have the stamp, but I have the postcard with the same picture, so I thought I show you this pencil (the red one on the left), together with a similar pencil – the one from Staedtler’s historic pencil kit. Petroski (1989, p. 47) [1]Petroski, H. (1989) The Pencil writes that by 1610 black lead was used by artists and others to fit into their wooden pencil cases ..so a pencil being used in the planning of the reconstruction of London in 1666 seems realistic.

Royal Mail's pencil from 1666
Royal Mail’s pencil from 1666

Kaweco Christmas Tree Ornament

You might have already seen this on Bleistift’s Facebook page: There’s a Kaweco Christmas Tree Ornament.

Kaweco Tree Ornament (Image © Kaweco or Massdrop)
Kaweco Tree Ornament (Image © Kaweco or Massdrop)

 

 


The photo of the Kaweco  Tree Ornament has been taken from the Massdrop offer of this product. I believe that showing the photo in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

References

References
1 Petroski, H. (1989) The Pencil

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Two deliveries – from Japan and Germany

uniqlo-tombow

What an exciting day. I got two deliveries, one from Japan and one from Germany.

Both seem to be XL... (Japan in green, Europe in yellow)
Both seem to be XL… (Japan in green, Europe in yellow)

The parcel from Japan was sent from Yumiko, a friend of Sean, who helped me get a few things I couldn’t order myself …including Uniqlo’s Tombow t-shirts. I was able to get the Pelikan version here in Europe, but the Tombow version is not being sold here.

I was hoping that the Japanese XL will be similar in size to the European XL, especially since the t-shirts being sold here come with English/Japanese tags, but unfortunately it turned out that the Japanese XL is at least one size smaller than the European version – so the t-shirts won’t fit unless I lose a lot of weight. I guess I should see this as my incentive to lose more weight ..but I don’t think it’s achievable for me to fit into these anytime soon.

...the tags are different though
…the tags are different though

There was also something else in the parcel. Something very special.

Special Hi-uni

Not as posh as the ones shown on Contrapuntalism, but nevertheless extremely nice. Lexikaliker had similar ones, too.

 

The other parcel did contain a replacement Pollux. You might remember that had problems with my first Pollux. Thanks to Lexikaliker, without whom I wouldn’t have any Pollux, I got a replacement

Here’s a quick look at the replacement Pollux.

As a comparison: the second video features a knife sharpened pencil. You can also see Staedtler’s sand paper in the second video.

 

A Pollux sharpened Mars Lumograph
A Pollux sharpened Mars Lumograph

Lexikaliker has a blog post about the unsharpened Mars Lumograph pencils.

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Pollux

Möbius+Ruppert Pollux

You might remember Lexikaliker’s blog post about Möbius+Ruppert’s new sharpeners Castor and Pollux. Well, thanks to Lexikalier’s generosity I got my hand on half of these geminis, I even got the more interesting half: the Pollux, a brass sharpener that’s producing a concave tip.

Möbius+Ruppert Pollux

Lexikaliker has already covered all important points in his blog post about the Pollux, so I’ll keep it short and will just add a few of my impressions.

A pencil point before the blade treatment
A pencil point before the blade treatment

Out of the box the sharpener did sharpen well, but it was tearing/ripping the wood more than it should. Strangely enough the graphite point was cut very well, so I am not sure what exactly caused this behaviour that only affects the wood, not the graphite part.

You can see what exactly happened in this video:

 

 

 

A pencil point after the blade treatment
A pencil point after the blade treatment

I tried fixing it by sharpening the blade, first on a Belgian whetstone. You might have seen this stone in my videos about the Little Shaver. Unfortunately it wasn’t abrasive enough or I didn’t try long enough. I then tried my luck with Spyderco’s Sharpmaker and I got great results. After soe work on the blade the Pollux sharpened like a dream. Before working on the blade it produced shavings with holes in it, because the wood was torn. The shavings themselves had a thickness of around 0.25mm. After my blade treatment the shavings were thinner, 0.15mm thin – very thin.

Here’s a video I made after I worked on the blade:

Noris shavings from the Pollux
Noris shavings from the Pollux

Like Lexikaliker I measured an angle of around 18.5° for the pencil points produced by the Pollux.

The case drom my DUX DX4322 is a great fit for the Pollux
The case from my DUX DX4322 is a great fit for the Pollux

I have added the Pollux to my list of sharpeners.


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