By Type Archives - Page 50 of 85

Why did the sliding sleeve disappear?

17 Comments / Mechanical pencils / 8 May 2015 / Caran d'Ache 844, mechanical pencil, Orenz, Pentel, Pentel Orenz, sliding sleeve, Staedtler Microfix

Getting to know the sliding sleeve pencils again

Thanks to Lexikaliker whetting my my appetite and with some help from Shangching I got my hands on a Pentel Orenz. I have been using it for a few weeks now and like it very much. A blog post will follow, hopefully, once my time permits.

One of the nice features of the Orenz is the sliding sleeve. You don’t have to keep manually forwarding the lead to be able to keep writing. Instead the sleeve will slide back while you write until there’s no sleeve left. Only then do you have to forward the lead – and the sleeve will slide out again.

You start writing like this... — You start writing like this…

Retractable vs sliding sleeve

Just to clarify, when I write about a sliding sleeve I mean a one that slowly slides back while you write. The other type, a sleeve that is either completely out (for writing) or completely in (for transport) is the type I call a retractable sleeve. I hope these labels are correct, I’m not sure, but this helps to avoid confusing both types. Please let me know if the names I use for the sleeves are wrong.

In the past

The sliding sleeve is nothing new. The Staedtler Microfix ^[1]Available from 1977 until 1988. I used in school could do that. At that time Staedtler sold mechanical pencils with three different types of sleeves: fixed (F models), half slide (HS models) and full slide (S / SL models), but as far as I know the sliding sleeves have disappeared in the late 1980s.

...after a while it looks like that — …after a while it looks like that

Why are they gone?

Unfortunately these types of mechanical pencils are quite rare. I can see the advantage of a fixed sleeve for an engineer who needs his or her pencil to create precise drawings, but these days that kind of work is done on a computer – so why did the sliding sleeve not come back? In my opinion it provides a much better writing experience than a fixed sleeve mechanical pencil.

You can still get mechanical pencils with sliding sleeves. One example is Caran d’Ache’s 844 pencil, mentioned previously, but the 844’s sleeve is quite wide meaning it will prevent full contact of the lead with the paper – the sleeve is in the way when you are writing.

You can still buy new old stock (NOS) of the Microfix, but it’s not cheap (If I were to win the lottery this weekend I’d buy the whole set).

Do you know of any nice sliding sleeve mechanical pencils still available?

References[+]

References
↑1	Available from 1977 until 1988.

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Faber-Castell’s erasing knife

2 Comments / Erasers, Faber-Castell / 27 March 2015 / 181398, erasing knife, Faber-Castell

Today: another kind of eraser. This one has been quite useful on many occasions. One of the recent opportunities to use it was when I received dozens of printed cards that turned out to be printed with a mistake. Thanks to this ‘eraser’ I was able to ‘erase’ the mistakes from all the printed cards easily – by scratching them off the surface.

It’s Faber-Castell’s erasing knife 181398. One of its official purposes is to sharpen Faber-Castell’s charcoal sticks, but it can also be used on paper or to sharpen pencils, as demonstrated in one of Faber-Castell’s official videos (jump to 1:12).

Faber-Castell erasing knife — Sharpening a Castell 9000 in F

This erasing knife has been around for 35 years. Gunther was kind enough to send me one in 2012 as I wasn’t able to get one in the UK at that time.

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A broken Wopex

9 Comments / Pencils, Staedtler / 27 March 2015 / 2H, disaster, Staedtler, Wopex

Sniff..

I guess I’m a glass half empty guy. One of my Wopex in 2H broke today. A glass half full guy would probably rejoice, now being in possession of two pencils instead of one.

I used it to open one of the fire doors at work using the pencil. Something I am sure I did with other (wooden) pencils in the past. They survived, my Wopex didn’t.

I guess the fact that it the Wopex is hard to sharpen made me subconsciously assume that it would have a high fracture strength.

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Lego erasers (again)

Leave a Comment / Erasers / 20 March 2015 / eraser, Lego, Lego Movie, Made in China, Made in Germany

The Lego erasers by Senator (€0.75 each)

Lego erasers from China and Germany

I have mentioned the Lego erasers in two previous posts: The first Lego erasers where made by Senator in Germany. When they moved production to China the erasers got much more expensive, rising from €1.49 for two to £7.95 for four ^[1]They were more very expensive in the UK, I’m not sure about the situation in other countries. They got cheaper now (£2.99 for four), but the Chinese made Lego erasers are still more expensive than the German made ones were – unless you get lucky, like I did, and get them on offer. In my case it was on offer because the supermarket wants to get rid of their stock. I paid £1.49 (~$2.22; €2.06) for a pack of four.

The version I got is being sold as part of the Lego Movie franchise – but as far as I can tell there’s no difference between the normal Lego erasers and the Logo Movie erasers, except the colours.

Performance

To compare the erasers I used Banditapple 3G paper and a Simbalion pencil. Performance wise the Lego Movie erasers are pretty good. You might have read in previous blog posts that I prefer dust free erasers. The Lego erasers performed as well as or even a bit better than a Mono dust free eraser (a dust free eraser, but not one of the best dust free erasers).

Looks

This eraser has much stronger sprue and flow marks than the Senator eraser did. Unfortunately I can’t take a comparison photo as I have given my Senator erasers away (I think to Hen from Rad and Hungry).

legomovie-all — The sprue marks are quite obvious

Overall

For the price I have paid these are excellent erasers. Performance for a not dust free eraser is excellent.

Prices: April 2010, January 2012, February 2015

Exchange rates: March 2015

References[+]

References
↑1	They were more very expensive in the UK, I’m not sure about the situation in other countries

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Noris colour wear and tear

4 Comments / Eberhard Faber, Pencils, Staedtler / 9 March 2015 / Brunnen, Der grüne Block, Eberhard Faber 1410, Made in Germany, Noris club, Noris colour, Staedtler, Wopex

Introduction

Here’s my first follow up post about the Noris colour, the coloured pencil made using Wopex material, which has been mentioned in a previous blog post. I bought my set of six Noris colour for £2.49 (~$3.76; €3.46) on eBay. There are also sets with 12 and with 24 pencils available.

As explained earlier I have been looking for a coloured pencil, one that is suitable for writing, for quite a while now. The Noris colour is one of the best pencils for this purpose I have seen so far.

The test

Now this is not a scientific exploration of how fast the lead will wear down, I have neither equipment nor experience, but just to give you some rough idea what I did:

The average normal pen force used to write the sample lines was approximately 1 Newton. I don’t know the average axial pen force. There was obviously a lot of variation as I wrote by hand – with more force being used for downward strokes. As you can see the point broke a few times. It would be great to have a pencil hardness tester, like the Elcometer, to make these tests more objective ^[1]They’re actually supposed to the the surface you scratch with the pencils, not the pencils themselves. I guess I should either start a Kickstarter (think potato salad) to try to get my hand on … Continue reading.
All pencils were sharpened using the Deli 0668, i.e. with an angle of approximately 20°. The Deli was dialled back one full rotation (360°) do avoid creating a point that will break too easily.
The paper used was from a Brunnen – Der grüne Block (previously seen in this post)

Old and new Noris coloured pencils. The old ones didn't take part in the comparison. — Old and new Noris coloured pencils. The old ones didn’t take part in the comparison.

Before

All pencils, the Noris colour, the Eberhard Faber 1410 and the Noris club 144, had an initial line thickness of 0.1 mm – 0.3 mm (vertical / horizontal variation).

After

The point of the Noris colour wore down the least. After one line of writing the line variation was 0.3 mm – 0.5 mm.

The point of the Eberhard Faber 1410 wore down the most. After one line of writing the line variation was 0.5 mm – 0.6 mm.

The point wear of the Noris club 144 was in the middle. After one line of writing the line variation was 0.3 mm – 0.6 mm.

Conclusion

The Noris colour performed best. Subjectively the point felt better than what the numbers suggest, but then the Noris is also the pencil that left the lightest mark. The Eberhard Faber 1410which wore down fastest left the strongest marks on paper.

Despite the light marks the Noris colour is in my opinion the best pencil for writing or marking. It is also easy to erase.

Price Noris colour: February 2015.

I bought the Brunnen notepad in August 2011 in McPaper, Schweinfurt (Germany) for €1.19 (~$1.29; £0.86).

I bought the Noris Club pencil in 2008 from Woolworths went they into administration. I don’t remember the price.

I bought the Eberhard Faber pencils in 2010. More information about them can be found in this blog post.

Exchange rates: March 2015.

References[+]

References
↑1	They’re actually supposed to the the surface you scratch with the pencils, not the pencils themselves. I guess I should either start a Kickstarter (think potato salad) to try to get my hand on a pencil hardness tester or try to build my own one.

Noris colour wear and tear Read More »