September 2018

Preston’s Pelikan Hub 2018

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It’s been fairly quiet on this blog –  the beginning of the new academic year has been keeping me busy.

That made the two hours I spent visiting Preston’s Pelikan Hub last Friday even more precious. The Hub was in the same place as last year.

The outside might not have been as nice as last year, thanks to the scaffolding, but inside it was as nice as always.

We Preston Pelikan participants had a whole room to ourselves. Look! ..the green wallpaper even matched this year’s ink of the year 😜.

The wood fired Pizzas were absolutely delicious.

Here’s one I ate earlier..

The event was not only for humanoids. Here’s our feathered friend who came along..

..and our canine friend from the Hub.

..not to forget: some of our Hub’s Pelikans without feathers.

The fireplace made the whole place even cosier..

..as did the drinks (mine is the Diet Coke).

I hope Preston will get its own Pelikan Hub again in 2019.

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Stationery Factlets #6: Staedtler was the first European manufacturer of mechanical pencil leads

6 Comments / Mechanical pencils, Staedtler, Stationery Factlets / / , ,

Time for another stationery factlet: Staedtler was the first European manufacturer of mechanical pencil leads.

Staedtler made lead holders and leads for the lead holders for a long time. Below is a page from their 1935 catalogue.

Staedtler Catalogue 1935
Staedtler Catalogue 1935

When thinner lead diameters were introduced Staedtler was the first European manufacturer of these thinner leads – the kind of leads I would refer to as mechanical pencil leads.

Staedtler’s catalogues from the 1960s don’t seem to show pictures of these leads, but the catalogue from 1970 does – and it shows a very familiar lead container.

Staedtler Catalogue 1970
Staedtler Catalogue 1970
Staedtler Catalogue 1970
Staedtler Catalogue 1970

The Mars lead container still has the same shape today, but the plastic is now transparent. The opening of this lead container has the perfect diameter for refilling Mars micro mechanical pencils as you can see in the old video from my 2015 neox blog post.

I would like to thank Eberhard Rüdel for his detective work regarding my mechanical lead questions.

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Not quite Handicraft with Bleistift IX – Labelling old Hobonichis

7 Comments / Handicraft / / ,

Work is keeping me very busy, but to prove I’m still around here’s a quick blog post, taken from the top of my pile of unfinished blog posts.

Just a quick look (not a proper Handicraft post) at how I label old Hobonichis, so that I can see the year from the Techo’s spines, i.e. without having to take them from the shelf.

I love Post-its on a roll. Not cheap, but very useful. Even though Post-its are supposed to be reusable I often use Post-it tape for permanent labelling. In this case I just used white tape and make sure the labels are all at the same height by applying the label on the new Techo when holding the previous year’s Techo next to the new one.

If it comes off you could prefold the tape to make sure there’s a proper 90 degree angle where the cover meets the spine and/or use longer tape so that it has more area to ‘grab’ the cover. I should add that to the blog post.

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