The images in this blog post has been taken from Mostwanted-Pens.com. TV series. I believe that the use of Kaweco’s image shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.
Now that the Olympic Games in PyeongChang are slowly coming to an end and the Paralympics will start soon: Staedtler Noris colour pencils arranged in a specific shape you might find familiar. Over many years I have read again and again that the IOC is very protective of their trademarks (Wired had an article called Do not F@%! with the Olympics Logo a few years ago), so I won’t go into more details here what this is supposed to be 😉. I assume that my Welcome, PyongChang blog post didn’t break any rules and this one is hopefully sufficiently vague either, plus I don’t earn any money from the blog, no advertising here etc. so there are no commercial interests on my side if that makes any difference. Not that I expect the IOC to find a tiny blog like mine, but then again: AIs and machine learning can work wonders these days if they are looking for this kind of stuff.
Why such a click-baity title? It fits with the previous blog post title Staedtler at the Oscars and with so many people from all over the world in PyeongChang there’s bound to be a Staedtler pencil somewhere there.
PS: Since we are on the topic of PyeongChang again: Look what I saw in the language building of my University. Aren’t they cute?
Well, I certainly know which two movies I’ll be rooting for.
In the Wild
If you like this topic have a look at the Noris in the Wild page that lists Noris sightings in movies and on TV from the 1970s onwards.
Thanks to Stephen for this information.
I have added these to my ever growing list of Staedtler sightings I should make screenshots of, but in this case it might take a while before these movies make it to free to air TV channels, so don’t expect to see them here anytime soon.
One issue is related to Retro 51’s refills, one related to their categories, lines and editions. Luckily the users in The Pen Addict’s Slack channel are extremely helpful and knowledgeable when it comes to Retro 51 so the confusion with Retro 51’s series, categories, lines etc has been solved.
The other issue, relating to their refills, took me a while to figure out. This was probably not helped by the fact that I don’t own a Retro 51.
The short answer is: I think Retro 51’s rollerballs accept standard G2 refills, which means you can turn them into rollerball, gel or ballpoint pens.
Here are some of the bits of information I found along the journey. They might be old information for you, but since I am more into pencils and fountain pens than refillable non-disposable rollerballs a lot of this was new to me.
ISO standard
Refills are standardised in the ISO standard 12757.
ISO 12757-1 is for general use, i.e. there are not too many demands on the ink.
ISO 12757-2 is for documentary use, i.e. for writing documents that are required as evidence and the standard also looks into things like how the ink is coping with bleach, etc.
Refill overview
Confusion
There seems to be contradictory information on the web when it comes to the G2 refills. This is probably not helped by the fact that Pilot has a pen called the G2. Based on what I have seen so far G2 and RB refills tend to get confused.
The G2 standard seems to have its origin in Parker’s Jotter refills, which came out in the 1950s.
I have produced a little table with further information about these refills. It also includes average writing length per refill based on the information by Premec. Other refills may vary.
