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My Harris Tweed Hobonichi Techo cover

Leave a Comment / Hobonichi, Paper & Notebooks / 11 July 2016 / Harris Tweed, Hobonichi, Techo avec

I still carry my Hobonichi Techo in the Galen Leather case, but I thought it would be nice to have a thinner alternative when I don’t want to carry ‘everything’ (phones etc) with me in one pack, so I ordered this Harris Tweed cover.

Too good looking to resist

..well, at least the point about it being thinner is my justification now. The truth is that I couldn’t resist ordering one after I saw how good looking this cover from Esplanade London is when I read Susan M. Pigott’s post at The Pen Addict. I’m not sure why there’s London in the name though, the cover seems to be from Kent. I guess London sounds good, especially for international buyers, but here in the North London doesn’t always conjure up the best associations.

Storage

Luckily Laura, the woman behind these covers, agreed to put a pen loop on the model I ordered. It normally doesn’t come with one.

Storage wise the case could be better. The ‘pocket’s on the outside are quite small – even too small for a Kaweco Sport or an Ohto Tasche. I guess you could put an eraser shield or a credit or loyalty card in there.

More storage space on the back, but not enough for a small pen

Harris Tweed

This is actually my third Harris Tweed item. Harris Tweed is wool cloth handwoven by islanders in their homes in the Outer Hebrides, an island chain in the North West of Scotland, about 100 miles North or Ireland ^[1]In the past I had fun looking around these islands on Google Maps..

The cover and my rucksack/backpack — The cover and the rucksack/backpack

My first Hrris Tweed item was coat I got in 2014 (for my 40th birthday). Here’s a photo from that time. It was cheap, but the lining was poorly made, so I had to get it redone in my home town, but even with the cost of having the lining redone it was still good value for money. By the way: the little one’s hat was knitted by Shangching.

My second Harris Tweed item was a rucksack / backpack from Timberland. I was very lucky as a Timberland outlet store sold it for around £20, it was originally several times that price.

My third Harris Tweed item is this Hobonichi cover. I paid £29 (~$37; €34) plus shipping. Royal Mail was rather slow and it took a week to arrive, but I finally got it. It is great and since I use the ‘Avec’ version of the Techo, the six months version, using this cover and the Techo makes for a really slim diary carrying solution compared to the leather cover.

I was originally tempted by a Scottish Lochcarron cover from Hobonichi, but import fees etc would have made it very expensive, so I’m happy I found this alternative thanks to Susan M. Pigott’s post at The Pen Addict

Price and exchange rates: July 2016.

References[+]

References
↑1	In the past I had fun looking around these islands on Google Maps.

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Faber-Castell Perfect Pencil II

7 Comments / Faber-Castell, Pencils / 5 July 2016 / Faber-Castell, Made in China, Perfect Pencil, Perfect Pencil II

There were a few great blog posts about Faber-Castell’s Perfect Pencil on Sean’s (retired) Pencils and Music blog and the (also retired) Pencil Talk blog had a whole series of blog posts about the different versions.

I have used Faber-Castell’s Perfect Pencil for quite a few years now and have mentioned it a few times on this blog, but I thought the blog posts I have don’t pay adequate tribute to this great pencil, so here is a closer look (I don’t dare to call it a review) at the cheapest version available.

The Perfect Pencil II

Officially called the Perfect Pencil II, but sometimes called the Perfect Pencil junior (for example at Cult Pens while The Journal Shop calls it Perfect Pencil II) this pencil was released in 2007. There are different colours available (blue, red, black, blackberry – the article number starts with 18 29, followed by another number for the colour) and this pencil can be bought for £3 (~$3.95; €3.55) or less. I bought mine in Shanghai and I think I paid the equivalent of £2 or less.

Like the more expensive perfect pencils it can be used as

a cap to protect the pencil point, making the pencil pocket safe
as an extender to write more comfortable with short pencils

and it features a built-in sharpener.

It is best to be used with eraser tipped pencils and official refills are shorter than normal so that the perfect pencil fits in shirt pockets etc.

It’s not bad looking, but for my taste the Castell version is much better looking ..and less bulky, but also a few times more expensive, so more of a problem when you lose it (I lost mine after a few years of use).

The Perfect Pencil’s history

The first perfect pencil, the brainchild of Anton-Wolfgang Graf von Faber-Castell, was part of the Graf von Faber-Castell line and came out in 1993. Back then the eraser was in the extender.

1997 Faber-Castell released more affordable perfect pencils (the Castell and Design versions are still available) and a year later the posh Graf von Faber-Castell perfect pencil changed to the more familiar version with the eraser under a small cap.

Here’s a video where I look at the Perfect Pencil II.

I suggest you click on it to open it in YouTube, you then get a higher resolution and you can play it with a higher speed on most devices (I like 1.5x). This video also looks at how products in China are marked (origin and date) and shows Shangching‘s Tomoe River notebook I use for diagrams in this blog.

Other manufacturers have released similar products.

Have a look at the Pencil Revolution’s review of Staedtler’s The Pencil and the KUM Tip-Top Pop Pencil.

More Perfect Pencils

If you want to move up to a more expensive version I recommend the Castell version, which can be bought for under £10 (~$13.15; €11.80). I have previously looked at the black edition of the Castell Perfect Pencil.

There is also the more direct successor available, the Perfect Pencil III, bulkier, but with a built-in waste box. The cheapest seller I found in the UK so far is the Journal Shop where it sells for £3.95.

If you like to read more about the perfect pencil: Here are more Perfect Pencils at other blogs

John the Monkey compared the Perfect Pencil II and the Castell version.

Lung Sketching Scrolls had a look at the Fun version seen in the image of the brochure above.

Pens! Paper! Pencils had a look at the Castell version.

Economy Pens had a look at the Castell version.

The Well-Appointed Desk had a look at the Perfect Pencil II.

Exchange rates: July 2016 (post-Brexit vote exchange rate)

As usual: please open the images in a a new tab to see the high-res version.

I would like to thank Faber-Castell’s Edith Luther for the additional information she has provided.

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My new diary – hint: it’s a Hobonichi Techo

7 Comments / Hobonichi, Paper & Notebooks / 1 July 2016 / Hobonichi, Made in Japan, Techo avec

Today is the first day in my new diary.

For many years I’ve been using the diaries that my employer has provided. I have shown them previously in this blog post where I put a NFC tag (from a price tag) in my diary, so that my phone goes quiet when I put it on top of the diary (e.g. in meetings).

A photo from the 2012 blog post where I put a NFC tag in the diary

From digital to analogue, Apple Newton -> Nokia Communicator -> Filofax

Well, here’s a short version of my diary experience. In the 1990s I used to use the Apple Newton’s calendar (there was a point when the old model was sold very cheap in 1994 or 1995, so I couldn’t resist and bought one. Later there was a point when Apple offered you the later model for a very small fee if you returned your old Newton, I did that, too.).

Well, after Apple decided to drop the Newton I bought a used Nokia Communicator and used it as my diary.

Later, in 2001, when I moved to England, I bought a Filofax. My Communicator was pretty slow by then, maybe because all the memory was used up. In the 1990s Filofax wasn’t very well known in Germany. I think I only knew about it because of the 1990 movie Taking care of business – the German title of the movie translates as “Filofax – I am you and you are nothing”.

My old and new paper diary

Well, let’s fast forward fifteen years. I used to like the Lyreco diaries my employer provided, but this time they ordered a slightly different one and it seems so much worse, so I decided to buy my own diary. I didn’t really consider a Filofax because I remember that I found flipping pages in the ring bound Filofax annoying …so I thought I try a Hobonichi Techo. Lexikaliker, as usual one of the early adopters of new trends, has mentioned the Hobonichi Techo in 2013 ^[1]I wonder how many items would me much less known in the stationery fandom if it wasn’t for him. The Swiss Wood pencil, the Pollux, the Janus, the Greande, … this will be a very long … Continue reading.

The kind of work I do means that I need a diary from summer to summer, rather than January to December, so I bought the Hobinchi Techo avec, July – December in A6, just to try out whether this is for me. My previous diary used to be A5 and Susan M. Pigott’s excellent review at The Pen Addict indicates that A6 might be a bit small, but I thought I try ‘portable’ for now, I can then still switch to A5 in January if this one turns out to be too small.

First observations

Thickness

My first observations: the diary is not as thin as I thought it would be. According to Nanami Tomoe River paper has nearly half the thickness of copy paper, but this six months diary seems about half as thick as my twelve months diary (if you deduct the thick lids), even though my old diary has lots of extra pages before and after the ‘page a day’ section.

The Techo isn't as thin as I expected - The diary on the right has twice as many pages — The Techo isn’t as thin as expected – The diary on the right has twice as many pages

Pencil leads

The Orenz is a great pencil for this diary, the 0.2mm lead helps to write small so that you can get more on a page. I did also try to use my Color Eno leads, but these coloured leads don’t like to ‘stick’ to the paper and the colours are very difficult to read. Have a look at the image below. W15 and W14 (in graphite) are easy to read, but the word in orange (Assessment) and the squiggly line in green (both Color Eno leads) are not.

Graphite is easy to read, coloured leads are not

Erasing

Erasing on this paper is great. The ink on some printed documents can rub off if you use an eraser, but when I use an eraser ^[2]The Faber-Castell dust-free. on the Hobonichi Techo the graphite gets removed but the print on the pages stays, just as it should.

I have recently started using an eraser shield, in this case Staedtler’s eraser shield ^[3]Made in Taiwan, Shangching helped me get it, together with the Orenz I use in the Hobonichi. and it is a great addition to the Hobonichi (you can see it on the left in the image below), especially if you use very fine leads and write small.

Hobonichi Techo avec Jul-Dec — Now housed in my Galen Leather cover

As usual, please open images in a new tab to see the high res version – this doesn’t work for the 2012 and the Creative Commons images.

I have bought the Hobonichi Techo avec from the official store for ¥‎1188 (~$11.60; £8.70; €10.40) plus postage.

Price: June 2016

Exchange rates: July 2016

I have already linked to the Hobonichi Planner review at The Pen Addict. If you want to read more I suggest reading Shangching’s and Sola’s reviews.

Maximising pen storage while staying jeans pocket friendly

References[+]

References
↑1	I wonder how many items would me much less known in the stationery fandom if it wasn’t for him. The Swiss Wood pencil, the Pollux, the Janus, the Greande, … this will be a very long list.
↑2	The Faber-Castell dust-free.
↑3	Made in Taiwan, Shangching helped me get it, together with the Orenz I use in the Hobonichi.

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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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