Erasers

Staedtler’s sugar cane / corn / olive eraser

2 Comments / Erasers, Staedtler / / , ,
double pack of Staedtler's 526 83-5 eraser

Today: a look at a new eraser from Staedtler. I bought this eraser in August at Kaufland, a German supermarket-chain that is part of the same group as Lidl, on offer for €1.09 (~£0.92; $1.16). The normal price seems to be €2.20 (~£1.85; $2.33).

the back of the double pack of Staedtler's 526 83-5 eraser

The packaging advertises it as being made with a minimum of 56% renewable materials. This made me curious to find out more. Luckily Mr. Rüdel from Staedtler was able to provide some more details: the chalk that is typically used when producing this type of eraser has been replaced by olive pomace, i.e. the solid remains of the olives after pressing for olive oil. The eraser has been available since Autumn 2023.

Staedtler's 526 83-5 eraser

According to the official web page for this eraser, the plant flour that replaces the chalk can also come from corn. Additionally, the sleeve paper is made from by-products of sugar cane harvest..

This all sounds great, but the question now is whether the eraser performs well at erasing.

Luckily the 526 83-5 (that’s the official article number) doesn’t disappoint. Its performance is comparable to the well-known Mars plastic eraser, also by Staedtler.

eraser test of Staedtler's 526 83-5 eraser

My favourite erasers are still dust-free ones, but this is a nice performer with the added bonus of being made from renewable materials.

Price: August 2024

Exchange rates: October 2024

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ippo! x MONO

3 Comments / Erasers, Pencils, Tombow / / , , , , , ,

Thanks to Shangching from East…West…Everywhere my family got a parcel with some nice stationery surprises and our son, and by extension I, were able to try out Tombow’s ippo! pencils for school children as well as the corresponding eraser.

My understanding is that the pencils from this set aim at being easily erasable, so they have soft leads that produced nice, dark lines and the special eraser makes it easy for kids to erase any mistakes cleanly and nice, making the page ready for the next attempt.

Like many other Tombow pencils, the ippo! pencils, this set came with two in red, two in blue, two in yellow, are all made in Vietnam. The eraser was manufactured in Japan.

Hats off to Tombow, this set definitely achieves what (I think) it set out to do.

The eraser performs very similar to other dust free erasers, but feels softer, so makes for pleasant erasing. The pencils, being (Japanese) 2B, are very soft. The softness of the lead will probably help in making the user press less hard, so the writing is more likely to be on top of the paper whereas a harder lead might have made the user press down more, resulting in compressed paper where the line was. No compressed paper -> no deep lines, which will still be visible after erasing as a sort of crevice on the page -> the erased area looks very clean.

I also like the fact that the eraser sleeve is perforated, so you can easily shorten it when the eraser gets used up.

Compared to another dust free eraser on paper from the Monocle by Leuchtturm notebook

Overall a very nice pencil and eraser set. Similar to other Kakikata pencils the pencils have an area for labelling with your name and are uncapped.

ippo! x MONO Read More »

Faber-Castell’s Goldfaber pencil set

2 Comments / Eisen, Erasers, Faber-Castell, Pencils, Sharpeners / / , , , , , ,

Helping Hands

A few weeks ago David from Helping Hands Craft contacted me. He asked me if I want to review any of their products. I wasn’t aware of their shop before he contact me but was quite impressed by their selection of Faber-Castell products. As a review item I picked the Goldfaber pencil set for £4.50. Looking through their Faber-Castell items I was positively surprised to see other unusual items, for example

The Goldfaber pencil set

Back to the less exotic Faber-Castell item I want to write about today: The Goldfaber set contains

  • 4 Goldfaber HB pencils,
  • a sharpener (presumably from Eisen [1]an underrated sharpener brand I have been occasionally mentioning over the last twelve years),
  • and the big version of my favourite eraser [2]find out more in this 2010 blog post.

The Goldfaber pencils are made in Indonesia, just like the Columbus, its Irish cousin, and the Bonanza, its Arabic [3]The Bonanza used to be more widely available, but seems to be difficult to get outside the Middle East cousin. The pencil set is marked as being Made in Germany, so I was initially surprised and thought Goldfaber production has moved back to Germany, but when I checked with Faber-Castell they confirmed that this is a mistake and that they will fix this in the future. They have also confirmed that the Goldfaber is made in Indonesia. Unfortunately that’s as far as I got. My further request to get my suspicion regarding the wood being used confirmed was not successful.

Goldfaber 1221

The Goldfaber 1221 pencil is a nice writer. It is HB but writes darker than a Castell 9000 in B. I am not surprised though – I always found the 9000 to be lighter than similar grades in other pencils. Pearson’s Graphite 2015 confirms this, the Goldfaber HB is listed with a darkness of 12, the Castell 9000 B with a darkness of 8 [4]higher value = darker. The wood being used in the Goldfaber is also very good. For the price you pay the quality is excellent, but it can’t compete with high-end pencils from Faber-Castell or other brands. Out of the four pencils from the set one is slightly bent, two could have a better centred lead and all four don’t have a perfect paintjob. These small shortcomings don’t detract from the positive impression left by the dark graphite and the nice wood, especially not at this price [5]Eraser and sharpener are approximately half the value of the £4.50. There was also a faint smell of paint when the Goldfabers were fresh out of the box, something Faber-Castell’s Castell 9000 with its water-based varnish doesn’t suffer from, but the smell disappeared after a while.

Sharpener and eraser

The German-made sharpener, presumably an Eisen 040, does an excellent job, as does my favourite eraser, the Malaysian-made 187120, a dust free / no dust eraser.

A video with an overview

Conclusion

Overall, this is a very nice pencil set, especially if you want a nice eraser and want a small sharpener and don’t need it to be a container sharpener.

Just to spell it out, I have not been paid for this blog post or for any other blog posts.

References

References
↑1 an underrated sharpener brand I have been occasionally mentioning over the last twelve years
↑2 find out more in this 2010 blog post
↑3 The Bonanza used to be more widely available, but seems to be difficult to get outside the Middle East
↑4 higher value = darker
↑5 Eraser and sharpener are approximately half the value of the £4.50

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Legend

1 Comment / Erasers, Stabilo / / , , ,

It’s easy to be suspicious about a product when its name feels a bit overconfident. In the case of the Stabilo legend 1198 eraser, I can report good news, though.

Happy colours

This Malaysian-made eraser is available in five bright colours and is surprisingly cheap: you can sometimes find it for under 50p (~50c; ~50¢) – or rather that’s the price per eraser if you buy a multi-pack. Stabilo’s international and German web sites don’t mention the legend, so it is probably not a very important product for them, but the packaging of my box of twenty is labelled in many languages [1]GB. MY, DE, FR, IT, ES, Pt, RU, GR, SA, TR, HR, which suggests that it is officially available in most European countries.

Notice the rolled up eraser dust on the left

Even though there is no mention of it being dust-free it behaves very much like a dust-free eraser, i.e. the erasing ‘dust’ rolls into strands which makes erasing a pleasant and mess-free task. The ‘dust-free-ness’, together with the nice bright colours, make it a good choice for my taste. The legend is not that common, which is a shame, but if you ever see it in a shop, maybe give it a try…

Price: April 2021

References

References
↑1 GB. MY, DE, FR, IT, ES, Pt, RU, GR, SA, TR, HR

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This and that (hexagonal cedar eraser edition)

2 Comments / Erasers, Seed, Sharpeners, Staedtler, Tombow / / , , , , , , ,

A parcel from Japan

Last month Tombow released a new eraser (Japanese announcement, Google translation). It’s quite similar to an old, familiar friend, the Staedtler Mars plastic, but with a Tombow Mono inside. The eraser stick has a diameter of 6.7 mm and a length of 100 mm.

Tombow’s new Mono Stick and Staedtler’s Mars plastic

Tombow isn’t the only company with new erasers. Look at this special eraser from Seed. Seed’s Radar is one of their famous erasers. This version has a sleeve made from 300 year old cedar wood.

Cedar Seed

Here it is again, next to some other Seed erasers.

Comparison: different Seed erasers

Since we are talking about Japanese erasers: in case you were wondering about the symbols you can find on them: have a look at this document from JEMA, the Japan Eraser Manufacturers Association (Google Translation). It also contains explanations regarding testing.

from the JEMA document (Image © JEMA)

I also noticed the Orenznero, discussed previously, in the Bun2 magazine…

 

..as well as a nice sharpener and organiser from Nakabayashi. There’s an automatic (~£28; $39, €31) and a manual version (~£9; $13; €10) of the Pacatto sharpener.

The Stationery King [1]Sean rightly wonders whether he shouldn’t be the emperor of stationery. did of course have several appearances, too).

…and now for something completely different. I dare to include it because it has hexagonal in the title: Hexagonal Phase.

The computer animations from the TV series were actually hand drawn.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is back. The Original Cast of the Original Radio 4 Radio Comedy in new episodes, written by written by Eoin Colfer.

Image © BBC Radio 4

 

I would like to thank Yumiko for the nice parcel and Gunther and Sola for the additional information.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy images in this blog post are from the BBC series of the same name. I believe that the use of the image shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

References

References
↑1 Sean rightly wonders whether he shouldn’t be the emperor of stationery.

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