Mechanical pencils Archives - Page 8 of 14

The Uni Shift and a look at 0.4 mm leads

4 Comments / Mechanical pencils, Uni / 15 July 2016 / 0.4mm, Made in Japan, mechanical pencil, Mitsubishi, Shift, Uni

Let me start by saying: It’s all Lexikaliker’s fault.

He praised the virtues of 0.4 mm pencils, so I had to order one.

I had a look at various 0.4 mm pencils and decided to go with the Uni Shift for £7.43 from Amazon Marketplace in the UK ^[1]When I bought it it was 3p more expensive: £7.46., in the USA it sells for $10.20, again on Amazon Marketplace …including shipping. In many online shops this pen can easily cost twice as much, though. I have no idea how the pen can be sent from Japan for such a good price.

Despite coming all the way from Japan it only took a few days before the pen arrived. The seller even remembered that I bought form him before.

0.4 mm

In theory

Well, this is my first 0.4mm pencil. You’d think 0.4mm doesn’t seem to be that different to 0.5mm, it’s just 20% smaller, but depending on how you write the difference in the graphite you lay down can easily be 30% or more.

Here’s a little table showing the surface area you cover, depending on which angle you write with and assuming you don’t rotate the pencil(!). The spreadsheet is available as a Google Doc, so you can check the formulas I used. Please let me know if you find a mistake.

Assuming a writing angle of 40° a 0.5mm pencil would cover a surface area more than 50% bigger than a 0.4mm pencil, so there is quite a difference.

In practice

…well at least that’s the theory. In reality things look a bit different. When I checked lead diameters with my caliper I got different numbers. Have a look at the table below. Note: 0.3mm and 0.35mm is used interchangeably my manufacturers.

Nominal value (mm)	0.2	0.3/0.35	0.4	0.5	0.7
Measured value (mm)	0.24	0.36	0.46	0.55	0.68

I am not sure whether I read about this discrepancy in the past, but when I had a look I couldn’t find any information about this on the web. Since my caliper isn’t ‘officially’ calibrated and is just for home use I won’t go into more details and speculation here, other that these might be legacy diameters manufacturers adhere to so that leads and pencil stay interchangeable.

Using the nominal value, an 0.5mm lead used at an angle of 40° has a 50% bigger surface area than an 0.4mm lead. Using the measured values the 0.4mm lead is closer to the 0.5mm lead, but the gap to the 0.35mm lead widens, see table below.

Lead size (mm)	0.35	0.4	0.5
Surface area (mm^2)(nominal diameter)	0.15	0.20	0.31
Surface area (mm^2) (measured diameter)	0.16	0.26	0.37

The main issue with 0.4mm pencils is that the choice of leads is not that big, but the excellent neox Graphite leads are available in 0.4mm.

Uni Shift

The main purpose of the pipe lock mechanism seems to be to make the pencil pocket safe, i.e. the rigid sleeve/pipe is hidden so that it can’t damage your pocket. I guess the mechanism used in the Uni Shift makes it easier to create a pencil where the sleeve is rigid and doesn’t wobble, compared to mechanical pencils with a retractable sleeve. Easier might in this case also equate to ‘cheaper to manufacture’.

The mechanism that locks the lead feels a bit clumsy. I don’t find it as nice as some alternatives, shown in the video, mainly because it is more difficult to use single handedly.

I like the grip section. It is made from metal. The upper body of the pen is only plastic. Considering the price of the pen this is however not surprising.

The pencil is excellent value for money, at least for the price I paid. If you don’t like 0.4mm you can buy the Uni Shift in many other lead diameters, too.

Price: June and July 2016
Exchange rates: July 2016

As usual please open images in a new tab to see a high resolution version. To see the video inhigh resolution please open in YouTube,

If you want to read more about Mitsubishi and it’s link to other companies with that name have a look as Estilofilos.

If you want to be amazed by Lexikaliker’s special 0.4mm pencil have a look at Sonderanfertigung and Sonderanfertigung 2.

The Uni Shift has been mentioned in The Pen Addict podcast, episode 152, at around 30 minutes. One of Brad Dowdy’s favourite mechanical pencils.

The Pen Addict and Dave have reviews of this mechanical pencil.

References[+]

References
↑1	When I bought it it was 3p more expensive: £7.46.

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Disappointed with the Rotring 800+’s stylus tip

2 Comments / Mechanical pencils, Rotring / 27 June 2016 / Made in Japan, Rotring, Rotring 800+, stylus tip

I recently got the Rotring 800+ in black and 0.5mm, a mechanical pencil I was very excited about. Unfortunately, the 0.5 mm version in black was slightly more expensive than the silver or 0.7mm version.

What is special about the 800+

According to Rotring’s website, the Rotring 800 was introduced in 1993. It features a retractable sleeve and lead ^[1]It is not a sliding sleeve, so it is either fully retracted or fully extended. When retracted the sleeve will disappear in the body of the pen.. The Rotring 800+, introduced in 2014, is a very similar pencil that features a stylus tip at the front of the pencil, so when the sleeve is retracted you can use the front of the pencil for writing. In that respect, the 800+ is different as most ‘combination pens’ with a stylus tip have it at the end, for example instead of an eraser.

The stylus tip and the sleeve (extended)

Rotring’s roller-coaster price

When including postage cost Amazon was the cheapest, selling this version for just under £49 (~$65; €59). Reichelt was cheaper, but unless you buy other products from them to get free shipping the postage cost would have ended making this order more expensive than on Amazon.

Well, suddenly, a few days later, this pen got £10 cheaper, despite the falling post-Brexit vote Pound and it now sells for under £39 (~ $52; €47). It was a gift from my wife, so I didn’t pay for it, but still, £10 cheaper now – not happy. Nevertheless, when it was bought £49 incl. postage was the cheapest price, as far as I know.

Do you remember my Scraping pencils post where I programmed an R script to track price developments on the Cultpens web site? Camelcamel does something similar, but automated, for Amazon products – and when you look the 800+ price is just crazy – according to Camelcamel this pen sold for nearly £60 in December 2014 but was less than £25 in December 2015.

Stylus performance

Have a look at this video where I have a look at the performance (if that is the right word here) of the stylus. It is quite disappointing. The Staedtler’s Noris Stylus is much cheaper, but performance is similar.

The video should display the force needed in Newton, but this doesn’t seem to display on all mobile devices. It should however work if you watch the video on a computer.

When I asked Rotring about the poor performance of the stylus tip their reply included these statements.

There is no difference of sensitivity between different rubber. We also found that you do have to press a little more than with a finger.

Well, as you can see in my (unscientific) test there was a difference between different rubber tips. The second rubber tip that came with the pen needed a force of between 1.2 N and 1.5 N, but the third rubber tip only needed between 0.1 N and 0.8 N.

You need to press quite a bit for the stylus to work. Just a quick back of the envelope calculation that will not be very precise: if I take the Axial Pen Force mentioned in this paper ^[2]Van Den Heuvela, van Galenb, Teulingsc, van Gemmertc: Axial pen force increases with processing demands in handwriting, see http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691898000316 and put them into the equation from this paper ^[3]
Schomaker, Plamondon: The relation between pen force and pen-point kinematics in handwriting, see http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00203451, assuming an angle of 45°, you get a normal pen force of less than 0.9 N. So I some users, on some devices, only have to press a little more than compared to normal writing, but I doubt these people use the same force when they use their fingers on their smartphone. In my case, because I don’t press very hard when writing, the normal pen force used is much lower than the 0.9 N from the back of the envelope calculation. I need to press harder than to get the 800+ to work on my devices, compared to writing on paper and I =most definitely= need to press harder to get the 800+ stylus tip to work compared to using my fingers.

I noticed that the force needed is different for different devices, so the Rotring 800+ might work better on your device, but in any case, you will need much more force than you would if you used your fingers.

I disagree with Rotring’s statements. As far as I can tell there seems to be a difference between different rubber tips and you need to press much more, not just ‘a little more than with your finger’ to get the stylus tip to work.

Conclusion

The Rotring 800+ brought a few disappointments:

Having paid too much because the price is fluctuating so much (yes, you could blame Amazon for this, but of course people don’t want to pay more than necessary and the cheapest seller, Amazon, happens to be the one with the fluctuating price), making you think you might have gotten a bad deal.
Performance of the stylus that is not at all as expected. Luckily I can use it ok-ish for swiping on my virtual keyboard ^[4]I use one of those swipe keyboard inputs as once you ‘get a lock’, i.e. the device recognised something is pressing against the display you don’t need too much force to keep the movement going.

Price and exchange rates: June 2016 (These are post-Brexit vote exchange rates)

If you found the bit about the axial pen force interesting, I have previously mentioned this, including in the Del Guard post.

You can find reviews of the 800+ at the Pen Addict and at Clicky Post. There is also a YouTube review of this pencil.

As usual, please open the images in a new tab to see them in high resolution.

References[+]

References
↑1	It is not a sliding sleeve, so it is either fully retracted or fully extended. When retracted the sleeve will disappear in the body of the pen.
↑2	Van Den Heuvela, van Galenb, Teulingsc, van Gemmertc: Axial pen force increases with processing demands in handwriting, see http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691898000316
↑3	Schomaker, Plamondon: The relation between pen force and pen-point kinematics in handwriting, see http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00203451
↑4	I use one of those swipe keyboard inputs

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The Mascot

9 Comments / Edward Baker, Mechanical pencils, Yard-O-Led / 23 June 2016 / Edward Baker, Made in England, Mascot, mechanical pencil, propelling pencil, Yard-O-Led

A few months ago I was able to get a Mascot for a good price. The Mascot is a propelling pencil made from sterling silver. A few years ago Dave showed it on his blog.

Origins

Mine is stamped with the date letter G, so it must be from 1956 or 1957 ^[1]see https://theassayoffice.co.uk/send-us-your-hallmarking/date-letters , a time when the maker, Edward Baker, was already part of Yard-O-Led (In 1952 Frank Tuffnell became the majority shareholder of Yard-O-Led and acquired Edward Baker ^[2]see http://www.yard-o-led.com/#our-story . In 1955 Yard-O-Led took over Edward Baker ^[3]see http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Yard-o-led_Pencil_Co ). Despite having been part of Yard-O-Led the pen doesn’t seen to have been marketed as a Yard-O-Led pencil. This could be down to the fact that the internal mechanism works in a different way.

According to The Writing Desk all Yard-O-Led pencils ever made accept 3″ leads ^[4]see http://www.thewritingdesk.co.uk/showproduct.php?brand=Yard-O-Led&range=pencil+refills , but I can’t see how these could fit into the Mascot – so maybe the different mechanisms in Yard-O-Led and Edward Baker pencils and the resulting difference in leads used was part of the reason why the pen was not officially sold as a Yar-O-Led. My pencil came in a Yard-O-Led box and with Yard-O-Led instructions, but as the pen is 60 years old these might not be the original box and instructions that came with the pen.

Measured up

Including leads the Mascot weighs about 28g and has a diameter of just over 8mm – round pencils tend to have a diameter of about 7.5mm and hexagonal ones have about 7mm between opposing sides. The pen a bit more than 12cm long.

Despite it being thicker and certainly heavier than a wood cased pencil it does feel small in your hands …modern pens are usually bigger, but the heavy weight of the Mascot, for its size, makes it feel solid and expensive.

Refills

The leads have a diameter of 1.18mm ^[5]Dave talked about the fact that 1.18mm, 1.1mm, 1.15mm and 1.2mm leads are usually the same. and are nearly an inch long.

Yard-O-Led’s name came from the fact that their pencils could hold a whole yard of lead in refills. If you are of the metric persuasion: 1 yard has 36 inches, so you would need 36 of these inch long refills for a yard. My Mascot came with 6 leads, but it could probably hold around 12 leads. 12 inches are one foot, so I guess Foot-O-Led would be more suitable as a name for the Mascot than Yard-O-Led.

I assume slightly longer 1.18mm leads from Kaweco or Wörther would fit, I have’t tried it out yet, though. These slightly longer leads are 30mm long.

Sharpener

I like a fine point, so I sharpen the leads with Faber-Castell’s lead pointer sharpener box (what a name) 18 41 00. These sharpeners usually cost around €0.60. They are for leads with a diameter of 2mm, but work with 1.18mm.

Overall

It’s a great looking pencils, even though it is a bit small for today’s standard. I love the wider top/end of this pencil. It is similar to other pens from the past. These days similar tops can be found on Graf von Faber-Castell pens or the Castell 9000 Perfect Pencil (you can see them in this blog post).

You can find more Yard-O-Led related goodness at United Inkdom, Scribble’s Too Many Pencils and Dot Cross Dot.

References[+]

References
↑1	see https://theassayoffice.co.uk/send-us-your-hallmarking/date-letters
↑2	see http://www.yard-o-led.com/#our-story
↑3	see http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Yard-o-led_Pencil_Co
↑4	see http://www.thewritingdesk.co.uk/showproduct.php?brand=Yard-O-Led&range=pencil+refills
↑5	Dave talked about the fact that 1.18mm, 1.1mm, 1.15mm and 1.2mm leads are usually the same.

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Pentel Orenz 0.5

9 Comments / Mechanical pencils, Pentel / 26 May 2016 / 0.5mm, Made in Japan, mechanical pencil, Memo Book, Orenz, Pentel, Pentel Orenz, Silvine

Another Orenz post.

I bought this Orenz from eBay seller Morgan’s Direct for £4.99 (~$7.30; €6.50).

0.5 mm, 0.7 mm and the Mannish Line

You might have seen my Facebook post about the recently released 0.5 mm and 0.7 mm version of the Orenz and about the Orenz Mannish Line that will be released in June.

The Mannish Line has some interesting colour combinations. Very tempting.

The Orenz in 0.5 mm and 0.7 mm doesn’t seem to be available in Japan. The one I bought was the official UK version, but made in Japan, of course.

The sliding sleeve

The 0.3 mm version of the Orenz needed quite a bit more force to slide the sleeve than the 0.2 mm version, see the sliding sleeve table for more information. This made me think that the 0.5 mm version will need even more force to slide the sleeve, but to my surprise that was not the case. While the 0.3 mm version needs more than 0.1 Newton, the 0.5 mm version needs only about 0.1 Newton. That’s still more than the best 0.5 mm pencil, the Staedtler Microfix S, but as far as I know, this is the best value for a pencil currently in production. Using different leads might result in different values, but both the 0.3 mm and the 0.5 mm version of the Orenz were tested with the original leads they came with.

Vitals

Weight: 10.4 grams
Length: 14.5 centimetres
Diameter of the grip section: ~8 millimetres
Force needed to slide the sleeve: ~0.1 newton

This blog post has been brought to you by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Conclusion

Overall: it’s a fantastic pencil. Pentel’s pencil designs are very polarising for me, I either love or dislike them, but the Orenz has a design I really love, unlike the P20x series liked by many, but not me.

It’s a shame that this pencil is only available in black. Pentel, please release it in other colours, too.

Price and exchange rate: May 2016.

This mechanical pencil has been added to the sliding sleeve table.

More about the Orenz can be found in these Bleistift blog posts: Pentel Orenz 0.3, Peanuts Orenz 0.2, The sliding sleeve and the Pilot Color Eno, Why did the sliding sleeve disappear?…

…or at The Pen Addict, I Liek Pencils, One Lone Man…

…and at Lexikaliker, who was probably the first outside Japan to write about this pencil.

You can read more about Georg Christoph Lichtenberg at Wikipedia.

The notebooks in the photos are Silvine Memo Books.

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Staedtler’s posh pencil and Atoma’s posh notebook

12 Comments / Atoma, Mechanical pencils, Paper & Notebooks, Staedtler / 21 May 2016 / Atoma, Cult Pens, Initium, leather, mechanical pencil, Staedtler

Expensive pencil purchases

There are two pencil purchases I’ve been thinking about for a while. One of them is a Rotring 800+, but with a price tag of more than £40 I haven’t been able to convince myself to buy it yet ^[1]I guess I should buy it. In a recent Pen Addict podcast they were talking about a similar situation https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/204 , it all reminds me of a Bavarian movie called ‘The sooner … Continue reading.

Every now and then I check whether I find a good offer for this pencil in online stores, on Amazon and on eBay. Earlier this week I was just checking CultPens again (so far they have been the cheapest store for the Rotring 800+ when taking postage into account) when I saw an offer I couldn’t resist: Lots, really lots, of ‘free’ items if you buy a Staedtler Initium pen.

cultpens-initium — So many ‘free’ add-ons…

The Atoma leather notebook

The most tempting of these ‘free’ add-ons was Atoma’s Leather notebook ^[2]Mady by Belgium’s Ruitertassen.. Most tempting for two reasons:

I am using my Atoma notebooks on a daily basis, at work and at home, and I really like it
and I really like the look and the graceful ageing of tanned leather ^[3]Think Yo no bi, which reminds me: I just hope my Rustico notebook doesn’t get too dark over time, but based on experience with a leather bag I think I will be fine

…so this notebook was the reason why I went ahead and ordered the Staedtler Initium pencil.

I think I was probably even more interested than I otherwise would have been because of the recent flood of blog posts about William Hannah’s similar notebook after they sent free samples and discounted samples to many bloggers ^[4]including Scribble, Philofaxy, Pen Paper Pencil and Gourmet Pens.

Staedtler’s premium line

I do love Staedtler products, you might have noticed that this blog has more articles about Staedtler than about any other manufacturer ^[5]So fat there are 50 Staetdler articles. Faber-Castell, the number two only has 39 articles at Bleistift. but so far I haven’t been very excited about their foray into the world of more expensive stationery, their Initium line. Based on the photos I have seen online I think the Initium fountain pens look like cheap ‘own brand’ pens from a high street stationery chain – I might revise my opinion when I see one in reality, though, photos can be deceptive. The pencil on the other hand looks nice to me, but maybe not >£60 nice. So I went with the mechanical pencil instead. On the photos it looks better than the fountain pen, but I couldn’t really imagine how the clip works – is there a spring like in the Lamy 2000?

Arrived!

Well, my purchase has arrived now, I just unpacked the items. First impression: The body of the Staedtler pencil looks a bit more plasticy than expected, but overall it looks good. The Atoma leather notebook looks just amazingly beautiful!

I’m very much looking forward to trying all the items out.

You can read more about Atoma in my 2012 blog post about this system.

References[+]

References
↑1	I guess I should buy it. In a recent Pen Addict podcast they were talking about a similar situation https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/204 , it all reminds me of a Bavarian movie called ‘The sooner you die, the longer you are dead’
↑2	Mady by Belgium’s Ruitertassen.
↑3	Think Yo no bi, which reminds me: I just hope my Rustico notebook doesn’t get too dark over time, but based on experience with a leather bag I think I will be fine
↑4	including Scribble, Philofaxy, Pen Paper Pencil and Gourmet Pens
↑5	So fat there are 50 Staetdler articles. Faber-Castell, the number two only has 39 articles at Bleistift.

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