Sorted By Manufacturer Archives - Page 51 of 89

Rotring rapid PRO 0.5

4 Comments / Mechanical pencils, Rotring / 2 October 2015 / mechanical pencil, rapid PRO 0.5, Rotring, sliding sleeve

During my hunt for the perfect sliding sleeve pencil I came across the Rotring rapid PRO 0.5. I’m looking for a sliding sleeve that slides back easily enough so that I can keep writing while the lead is worn down – without having to advance the lead all the time.

I bought the rapid PRO for £18.95 (~$29; €26) from Pilotfishpens on eBay. It usually sells for about £25 in the UK.

A well reviewed pencil

Having bought it because of its sliding sleeve I was aware of and have read reviews of the pencils, but every blog post or review pays attention to very different details, so if you are interested in this pencil please look at the other reviews (see list at the bottom of this blog post), they might contain more of the information you might be after – oh, well infinite diversity in infinite combinations.

Rotring

As far as Rotring mechanical pencils go, this is a fairly new model. It has been released many years after Sanford / Newell Rubbermaid took over. You can find more of my thought about how Rotring changed since Sanford / Newell Rubbermaid took this company over in my blog post about the Rotring Newton.

Looks – stunningly beautiful

I read Dave’s review and I have also seen reviews of other Rotring pencils with a similar surface, but I didn’t expect such a good looking pencil! The finish, matt but also reflective, is absolutely beautiful. I tried to capture it using HDR, a technique Lexikaliker has used many times on his blog, but the photo doesn’t show the real beauty of this pen in any way.

Other observations

The knurled grip area is metal, but the knurling is so fine, dust and small particles will stick to it. Nice looking, good to grip, but not easy to clean.

The lead it comes with is (for my taste) ridiculously soft. I like harder leads. This one is nice and dark, but gets worn down very fast.

The red ring is plastic, so the colour wouldn’t come off, as is common on Rotring Tikkys. Most parts are metal, but some parts, like the red ring and the screw threads, as well as the mechanism holding the sliding sleeve, are plastic. I wonder whether the pen will one day fail because of some cheap plastic parts, as was the case with my Rotring Newton, which didn’t last long at all

Sliding sleeve

The sliding sleeve, the main reason why I bought this pencil was a disappointment. You need even more force to slide this sleeve than you need to slide the sleeve of the Caran d’Ache 844, the worst performing sliding sleeve in a previous comparison. This renders one of the main advantages of a sliding sleeve, not having to forward the lead all the time, useless.

I really love the look of this pencil, so in the end I made a minor modification to make this pencil work for me (more about this in another blog post). The diagram shown here, comparing the force needed to slide the sleeve of different pencils, does however represent an off the shelf, unmodified Rotring rapid PRO 0.5.

Force needed to slide the sleeve. Excuse the image quality, I took the photo with my mp3 player.

Conclusion

A beautiful pencil. Not cheap, but also not one of the really expensive ones. I love the look. The sliding sleeve is too stiff for my taste, but can be adjusted if you don’t mind voiding your warranty. I hope it will last a long time and won’t fail because of some of the plastic components used.

As usual, please open images in a new tab for a high resolution version.

Price: September 2015.

Exchange rates: October 2015.

More about sliding sleeves in this blog post about their disappearance and this blog post about the Color Eno.

More reviews of the Rotring rapid PRO at

The notebook is handmade by Shangching. It’s not the first time you can see it in a blog post on Bleistift. I should really write a blog post about this notebook.

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Wopex vs Noris

8 Comments / Deli, Pencils, Sharpeners, Staedtler, Uncategorised / 29 September 2015 / Deli, Made in China, Made in Germany, Noris, Staedtler, Wopex

Facebook

After a bit more than three years and many posts later the Bleistift Facebook page reached 100 likes this week. Well, I have to confess that I cheated and invited some of my friends to like the page, anyway: next aim: 200 likes by 2018, but that will be more difficult, as I have already invited some friends plus some people will probably unlike the page over the next three years. We will see…

Wopex vs Noris

Anyway, onto the real blog post:

You might remember the blog post about the Staedtler 501 180 sharpener. Staedtler’s rotary sharpeners start with 501 and their Wopex pencils are associated with the number 180. Despite this sharpener being officially available in the UK I didn’t come across it yet, so I keep using my Deli to make a great Wopex point. Here’s a comparison of a Wopex, sharpened in a Deli 0635 and a Noris, sharpened in the same Deli.

If you like this you might also like Sharpening a Wopex.

No clipboard as we know it

4 Comments / Banditapple, Paper & Notebooks / 25 September 2015 / Banditapple, Made in Korea, ToBe Story

The Banditapple carnet x ToBe wooden board

Because of Kent from Pencilog I got to know Arnie, the guy behind Banditapple, and because of Arnie I got to know Eun Suk Bang, the designer behind ToBe Story.

I really love the Banditapple carnets, I must have used them for more than five years now (just because my first review of them was a bit more than five years ago) and together with Atoma they are definitely one of my two favourite notebooks. Banditapple has the better paper, Atoma is more practical in terms of reorganising/reshuffling things around within the notebook.

My recent Lamy Line Friends and Banditapple carnet order also included two items from Eun Suk. One of them was the “wooden board”, being described as a little table to write on. The idea came from the fact the carnets are made from a tree, as should the surface be you put them on.

The wooden board is not only designed by her, she is also making them herself. Each board takes three to five days to manufacture, which involves cutting beech plywood with a CNC machine as well as applying three oil coatings before they get to dry.

They were sold in May this year as the Banditapple carnet x ToBe: wooden board. The price was $15. It was one of a number of side projects Banditapple was taking part in, all with low numbers of items being handmade and all of the items sold out very fast. There’s a good chance the wooden board will be available again if there is enough demand.

If have used the board many times when I needed a surface to write on and when the board was nearby. It was always very hand. There are three strings, so you can attach three notebooks if you want, but I usually just used it as a surface to write on.

Despite my admiration for the simple beauty of this board I have to say that there are also drawbacks, mainly that I haven’t figured out whether there’s an easy way of writing on the left pages of your notebooks if you use the wooden board as a clipboard and that the wooden board is only useful is you have it with you, but for practical reasons you usually wouldn’t have the board with you when you need it, unless you use it as a stationary notebook holder / organiser. In any case, it is a beautiful board!

Just a reminder, since I changed the WordPress Theme a few months ago most images are available in high resolution. Open them in a new tab for the hires version.

You can read more Banditapple related posts here. The Well-Appointed Desk has reviewed them, too.

You can read more about the John Lewis pencil used in the last photo in this blog post.

You can read more about the Noris colour used in the last photo in this blog post.

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Deutschland 83

5 Comments / Faber-Castell, Pencils, Seen in the wild / 31 August 2015 / Alexander Beyer, Castell 9000, Deutschland 83, Faber-Castell

After The Game: Another TV series about cold war spies. Sean told me about this one. It’s called Deutschland 83 and its current IMDB rating is 8.5.

As the name suggests it takes place in 1983. Here’s a Castell 9000 in B you can see in episode 4, used by Professor Tischbier (Alexander Beyer) from the East German Secret Service.

A Castell 9000 in B (Image © UF Fiction)

Faber-Castell pencils from 1983 – sounds familiar, you might remember this previous blog post about the Castell 9000 pencils for their 222nd anniversary – that anniversary was in 1983.

Here’s a comparison of the modern Castell 9000, as seen in Deutschland 83 – with the water-based varnish side facing the camera, and the actual Castell 9000 from 1983. The green got even darker, the thick line on the end of the pencils changed from gold to silver/grey and the text printed on the pencils has changed.

Castell 9000, 1983 and now — Castell 9000, now (top) and 1983 (bottom)

The screenshot in this blog post has been taken from Episode Four of Deutschland 83. I believe that the use of the screenshot shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

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Different kinds of Noris

Leave a Comment / Pencils, Seen in the wild, Staedtler / 25 August 2015 / Noris, seen in the wild, Staedtler, Staedtler Noris

A Chinese Noris

The Noris got another good spot on the BBC’s programme. Again on the Are Our Kids Tough Enough? Chinese School programme. This time in the final episode, where it was used to write Chinese characters.

Are Our Kids Tough Enough? Chinese School (Image © BBC)

A Work Noris

Then something else happened: after more than ten years I got the first Noris from my employer! We usually get Lyreco pencils in the stationery cupboard at work, but last week and this week I did another task in another part of my employer’s organisation ^[1]In case you are familiar with the UK Higher Education sector: I was doing clearing. – and there was a box of Noris pencils in the stationery basket. Maybe the good stuff (the Noris pencils) is usually reserved for management and special occasions? We did get all the good stuff on the day: they did provide tea, coffee, biscuits, even Snickers etc ^[2]and there must have been a serious Snickers thief. Every day at least three shoe box sized baskets of Snickers, Mars and KitKat disappeared. I guess everyone would have had to eat at least five bars … Continue reading, so if they give us expensive food, why not expensive pencils, too? I wish we had Noris pencils all year round at work…

A School Noris

…and finally – more Back to School offers. This time in Sainsbury’s. Five Noris pencils for £1.12. Not as good as the Staples offer I mentioned recently, but at Sainsbury’s you don’t have to take five HBs, you can also take the ‘graded’ pack.

The screenshots in this blog post has been taken from Episode Three of Are Our Kids Tough Enough? Chinese School, a documentary on the BBC. I believe that the use of the screenshot shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

References[+]

References
↑1	In case you are familiar with the UK Higher Education sector: I was doing clearing.
↑2	and there must have been a serious Snickers thief. Every day at least three shoe box sized baskets of Snickers, Mars and KitKat disappeared. I guess everyone would have had to eat at least five bars to make so much food disappear.

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