Mechanical pencils

Happy Mechanical Pencil Day 2019

It’s time to celebrate Mechanical Pencil Day again. CultPens let me pick £50 worth of stationery and to get you into the mechanical pencil day mood I will give them away again, like last year.

This year I went with the theme of underdog mechanical pencils. That also means that most of the pencils were cheap and it’s not really worth me sending them out individually because international postage might cost me more than the value of the pencil.

Pencils for the giveaway
Prizes for Mechanical Pencil Day 2019

That means that this year I split the prize into two halves: The Gessner (the wooden one, third from the left with its ‘case’ next to it) is one half. You can find out more about the company behind the Gessner, plus a bit about the Gessner itself in the following video I made in the past. I think it’s one of many videos that was supposed to be used in a blog post, but the blog post just hasn’t happened yet.

All the other pencils plus the leads together are the other half. One of them is the lemon yellow Caran d’Ache 888 Infinite. I wrote a short blog post about this pencil on the CultPens blog.

The Bleistift.blog winner can decide whether he/she wants the Gessner or all the other pencils. Whatever is left will be a prize for Stationery.wiki.

Make sure you also visit Dave’s Mechanical Pencils and enter his giveaway.

FAQs:

Why is Mechanical Pencil Day on 5/7 (5 July)?

It’s on 5/7 or 7/5, depending on your countries way of writing dates because the two most popular lead diameters are 0.5 mm and 0.7 mm.

What do I need to do to take part in the giveaway?

I won’t force you to follow my YouTubeFacebook or Twitter account to take part in the draw for this giveaway. We’re all adults here and you should decide yourself who you want to follow. Instead of following my social media channels, all you have to do for a chance to win is to leave a comment at the bottom of this blog post.

When is the deadline for the giveaway, i.e. the deadline to leave a comment?

Deadline is 15 July 2019 at 12:00 (noon) Zulu time (UTC)

How will the winner be decided?

  1. I will use a random number generator to get a random number n. I will then check who wrote the nth comment.
  2. I will then check whether the nth comment is the first comment by a blog reader on this giveaway post. If it is the first comment by a blog reader on this post this reader will get the pencil of their choice. If the comment was written by myself or if it was not the first comment or if the reader wrote he/she doesn’t want the prize then I will go back to step one.
    This ensures that I won’t win a prize myself. It also means that you can comment as often as you want, but only one of your comments (the first one) will count for the prize draw.
  3. Deadline see above.
  4. I will announce the winner on this blog. The winner then has one week to contact me. If I don’t hear back from the winner within a week the prize might be given to someone else or used in another giveaway or contest or I might keep it myself.
  5. The remaining half/prize will be a prize for Stationery.wiki. You can, of course, take part in both, the Bleistift giveaway and the Stationery.wiki. In fact, I encourage you to.

Good luck!

Happy Mechanical Pencil Day 2019 Read More »

Mechanical Pencil Day is Coming ..Again

Mechanical Pencil Day is coming again and CultPens have offered me again to choose £50 worth of mechanical pencils. Just like last year I want to give them away again – half on Bleistift.blog and half on Stationery.wiki.

For last year’s prizes I tried to focus on unusual mechanical pencils. For this year’s mechanical pencil day, I want to take a closer look at affordable mechanical pencils that don’t get the attention they deserve.

Caran d’Ache 888 Infinite

Have a look at my short blog post for Mechanical Pencil Day on the CultPens site where I look at one of these mechanical pencils that doesn’t get enough attention and love.

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Titanium (again)

For a while now I’ve been a fan of Nitecore torches. Over the years I bought a few of their torches and one of them is part of my EDC.

My non-stationery EDC includes a Nitecore torch

What does this have to do with pencils? Wait for it. It’s coming now.

On a recent trip I took two of their torches with me, including one with a LiIon battery. The battery, also from their brand, and charged with a charger from their brand died from one day to the next. As it was only a few months old I tried contacting Nitecore.com. As they haven’t replied yet I was just about to try contacting Nitecore.co.uk and when visiting their web site I was reminded of their range of pens.

Since this spring their pen range also includes the Titanium pencil NTP40, which is using a pencil mechanism from Schmidt. A popular choice for the mechanism. The Monami 153 has the same ‘inside’. I also have a Tom Dixon brass pencil that is based on the Schmidt and you can find it in Kickstarter projects.

More about the Monami 153 in the video above.

The Nitecore certainly looks the part, but comes with a price tag of about $120 / £100. It would be great to try this pencil out one day. The Schmidt mechanism is very good and the NTP40 has good looks, too.

Image © Nitecore

If you like Titanium you might like this blog post from 2016.

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

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Pencil Calligraphy: a look at the Manuscript Lettering Pencil Set


Thanks to Scribble and the United Inkdom crew I recently had the chance to try out the Manuscript Lettering Pencil Set.

It comes with a glass file for shaping your own leads as well as preshaped leads in assorted colours.

Have a look at my video to find out more about this pencil set.

You can find further information on Her Nibs’ Blog and on Scribble’s Blog.

 

 

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Zebra’s Tiny TS-3

Ten years ago I bought Zebra’s tiny TS-3 mechanical pencil. Back then it cost £2.50. These days it’s a bit more expensive, but is still quite affordable.

You’d think that a pencil with such a small size, it’s only 10 cm long and has a diameter of just over 5 mm, it can only be used if no better pencil is available..

..but the truth is that it’s much more comfortable to use than many other emergency pencil, i.e. the kind of pencil that comes with some of the Swiss Army Knives.

In May I put a video review online that provides some more information about this pencil.

Compared to a selection of other mechanical pencils the Zebra TS-3 is tiny

It might not be your best choice for a daily writer, but it’s certainly a good choice for a pencil you can store in a pocket or bag so that you have a mechanical pencil when you need it. The comfort to size ratio is certainly better than what you might expect.

 

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