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A New Special Edition Lamy Safari: LAMY BROWN The Black Edition 4

10 Jun, 2018 in Fountain pens / Lamy tagged Korea / Lamy / Lamy Safari / Line Friends by memm

Lamy’s store in K11 (on HuaiHai Road)

Like last year I found new special editions from Lamy in Shanghai, not available in the West.. This time it’s another Line Friends edition: LAMY BROWN The Black Edition.

The amazing aluminium container

The one comes in an amazing packaging: a thick-walled aluminium tube (with screw lid). I haven’t seen any packaging like this for a Pen before.

The Lamy Safari itself is the Matte type with the Line character’s name BROWN embossed in the cap.

The cardboard packaging that goes around the aluminium tube container

It also comes with a leather strap and metal buttons with browns face. The leather strap can be used to attach it to your belt, etc. The Lamy employee wore it around his neck.

Here’s a link to the official web page for this pen.

The Safari with the leather strap, if worn as a necklace

In previous year’s people contacted me to ask whether I can get them the special edition, but I already left Shanghai at that time. To avoid this happening again I bought two of these special edition pens for interested readers. I hope I won’t regret this decision. If you are interested let me know as soon as possible by leaving a comment here or by emailing me (if you know my email address).

The price is £65 plus postage. The item is in the UK.

Here’s a video showing the aluminium tube.

Watch the aluminium tube on YouTube for HD video.

I will add this Special Edition to the list of Lamy Special Editions on stationery.wiki in a few days (if no one else has done it by then). That list contains (so far) 26 Special Editions of the Lamy Safari.

Line Friends are popular in East Asia

More about Staedtler’s 925 15 2

1 Jun, 2018 in Mechanical pencils / Staedtler tagged 925 15 / Made in Japan / mechanical pencil / Staedtler by memm

Today: a closer look at Staetdler’s handsome 925 15 mechanical pencil. You might remember it from a previous blog post from 2017.

It’s quite affordable and surprisingly light, maybe even too light for some users’ liking. In this video we’ll have a closer look at the 925 15.

Open in YouTube to watch in high resolution.

I bought the 0.3 mm version, so the video is about only covering this version, but this pencil is also available in 0.5mm, 0.7mm and 0.9mm.

All parts of the pencil have been designed beautifully.

The official price is ¥500 (~$4.40; £3.30; €3.75), but by the time you add shipping from Japan (when you buy from eBay) the price is a bit higher – still not expensive though.

Price and exchange rates: December 2017

Staedtler’s new Wopex pencils: the 2B – 2H Noris eco 2

21 May, 2018 in Pencils / Staedtler tagged 2B / 2H / B / H / HB / Made in Germany / Staedtler / Wopex by memm

The new 2017 Noris eco (on the right) is capped

This blog had quite a few Wopex related blog posts over the years – and here’s the latest one: about the new generation of Wopex pencils. This is the third generation I know of, but there might have been more.

Previously… on Bleistift.blog

I got the sheet from the 2010 blog post out and added the new 2017 grades.

Just a quick reminder. Staedtler introduced the Wopex (pencil) in 2009 – it’s an extruded pencil and its body is made from a wood-plastic-composite (which consists of more wood than plastic). In 2010 Staedtler introduced the Wopex in 2B and 2H. I had a closer look at the 2B and 2H version in a 2010 blog post and couldn’t find much difference between the 2B, HB and 2H version. Fast forward to 2016. By now Staedtler is using the term Wopex only to describe the material used to make these pencils. Wopex is not used anymore as a name for the pencil itself – at least not by Staedtler. At the Insights X 2016, they had a few prototypes of the new ‘Wopex material’ Noris eco in 2H, H, HB, B and 2B. At the Insights X 2017, they showed the final product.

Close up of the 2010 vs. 2017 comparison

The new 2017 Noris eco

Looks

The design of the Noris eco is clearly inspired by Staedtler’s European staple pencil, the Noris, but like other Wopex material pencils, the surface of the extruded Noris eco feels rubberised. It is also eco-green, but has the same black stripe pattern as the yellow Noris or the red Tradition: The two opposing, labelled sides (let’s call them top and bottom) of this hexagonal pencil are black. The four sides (let’s call them the two right and the two left sides) are green with a think black stripe in between. I am mentioning this because some of the prototypes had a different pattern.

Unlike previous Wopex material pencils, the new Noris eco has a cap. It’s cool, man.

Watch on YouTube for high definition.

Performance

Great news. There’s a proper difference between the different grades in the new 2017 version. In terms of darkness and in terms of point retention. Compared to the Mars Lumograph in 2B, which is a very easy to erase pencil, the new Noris eco in 2B is more difficult to erase.

Eraser test – the bottom right square has been erased

If you see them in a shop I urge you to give them a try.

The pellets before they’re extruded into a pencil. From the Wopex sharpener blog post.

In case you can’t get enough of the Wopex. Here are some links:

2009: The world’s first blog post about the Wopex (Lexikaliker, in German)

2010: Staedtler WOPEX pencil review (Pencil Talk)

2012: Pencil Review: Staedtler Wopex HB Pencil (East…West…Everywhere)

2012: Staedtler Wopex Pencil (The Well-Appointed Desk)

I think the Pen Addict never had a Wopex review. If he did please let me know.

Some more post-2012 Wopex reviews can be found at Pencil Revolution, Comfortable Shoes Studio, The Weekly Pencil, The Finer Point, Pens Paper Pencils, Office Geek, Scribomechanica.

At the top, you can see the alternative black and green Wopex pattern. A picture from the ‘epic fail’ blog post.

I would like to thank Benedikt Schindler for his help in getting me the new 2017 Wopex. I still haven’t seen them on the high street in the UK.

Make Anything With Pencils

8 May, 2018 in Links / Pencils tagged HackSpace by memm

Another HackSpace post. After Paper Engineering it’s Make Everything With Pencils.

Read the whole blog post at https://hackspace.raspberrypi.org/features/make-anything-with-pencils and make a pencil-ring, a catapult or a bridge

The image in this blog post has been taken from iGameMom. I believe that the use of the images shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

Paper Engineering

23 Apr, 2018 in Links / Paper & Notebooks tagged HackSpace / paper engineering by memm

Well, the title ‘paper engineering’ certainly got my attention¹ when I visited the raspberrypi.org website during my lunch break.

You can read more about paper engineering in HackSpace Issue 6, available for £4 or free as a pdf download.

Paper Engineering Paper Automaton (Image © HackSpace magazine)

If you like this kind of stuff, have a look at this Raspberry Pi related blog post or this micro:bit related blog post.

The images in this blog post have been taken from HackSpace issue 6. I believe that the use of the images shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

A wiki I started in 2006 was initially a collection of cut out sheets from a German comic magazine. [↩]

Bleistift

Any old pencil won't do