The Pen Loop in the diary provided by my employer.
I recently bought Leuchtturm’s Pen Loop, a pen loop you can affix to any notebook to add a pen loop. A good idea, but I have to say that I am quite disappointed. The loop itself is stitched to a squary pad that is self-adhesive on one side. The problem is that a small ‘tab’ of this pad protrudes into the loop. This tab is self-adhesive, like the pad, which means that pens in the Pen Loop will get in contact with the self-adhesive side and some of the glue will stick to the pens. As a result the pencils I put in the Pen Loop so far got very sticky. I assume this will improve once all the glue has rubbed off to my pencils. The tab is also quite hard, I wouldn’t be surprised if it can scratch the surface of delicate pens. I only used painted pencils [1]General’s Semi-Hex and the AMOS Dixon Ticonderoga so far – no pencils with a natural finish, so I was able to either remove the glue from the paint or sharpen the pencil to remove the ‘glued’ paint.
The gluey tab that makes my pencils sticky...
Conclusion
A great idea, but the execution is lacking.
It would be interesting to know whether all Pen Loops have this problem or whether it’s a Quality Control issue and the one I bought has been sewed too close to the pad…
Congratulations to Pyr. Random.org’s random number was seven, which means that he won the Reidinger pencil giveaway and will receive the magnet pencil and the Swarovski pencil set.
Produced in Poland for PZ Cussons, a manufacturer of soap and personal hygiene products from North West England, this shaving cream is very interesting for pencileers, molyvophiles [1]Someone passionate about pencils and molyvologues [2]A student of pencils – mainly because of its name. Disappointment is however unavoidable after a quick look at the list of ingredients: there is no graphite in this cream. This is possibly a precaution to spare modern office workers the chimney sweeper look when they go to the office after having used a graphite based shaving cream. Graphite lovers will have to make do with pencils and graphite pots, but they can be satisfied with the knowledge that there are personal hygiene products with them in mind, even though they don’t contain graphite…
A big thank you to Sean from The Blackwing Pages for making the world a happier place by inventing the word pencileer and to Lito from Palimpsest for enriching our vocabulary with the word molyvologue.
I bought the razor, seen in the photo, many years ago. It’s Merkur’s 34C, which has been on the market for 80 years. I was very surprised when I recently noticed that the 34C won About’s Reader Choice razor of the year 2011 award. What a good choice. This razor is really great.
You might recognise the name Reidinger from Lexkaliker’s blog. He wrote about their “Pencil Configurator” in one of his previous blog posts. Despite their pencil configurator, Reidinger is not really a pencil manufacturer but is selling pencils, including carpenter pencils, and folding rules as promotional gifts.
The magnet
Good it's not a CRT...
One of their products is a magnetic pencil, which I got sent by Mr Lorber earlier this month, together with some of Reidinger’s crystal pencils [1]using Swarovski elements. It is a black wood pencil with a neodymium magnet at the end. Unlike Viarco’s or Lexikaliker’s version the magnet is hidden by a metal sleeve and is not directly visible. A metal disc is available and comes with one of the magnetic pencil sets, for sticking to non-metallic surfaces so that the pencil can be placed there. The disc is however not magnetic. A quick attempt to magnetise the disc using the magnetic pencil was unsuccessful (I was hoping to magnetise the disc to be able to use it for Eberhard Faber’s Microtomic or General’s Kimberly pencils). You might know that neodymium magnets are the strongest permanent magnets available and I have to say it is pretty amazing how much these pencils “stick” and what you can do with them: if you can connect two pencils at the end you can swing them around, which is pretty fun.
The pencil
Don't need the metal disc here...
The pencil itself is very good. It lays down a very dark line, is easy to erase and sharpen and is quite smooth, similar to a good pencil, like the Staedtler Tradition or Noris, but short of an excellent pencils, like the Faber-Castell Castell 9000, the Tombow Mono 100 or the Staedtler Mars Lumograph.
After talking to Mrs Morse from Reidinger I found out that many of their pencils are manufactured in Eastern Europe and are made using lime wood [2]American English: Linden wood and was told that the quality of the materials has been certified by TÜV. I am however not sure where exactly the magnetic pencils and the crystal pencils are made. I know that some of the other crystal pencils available are made in China, but to my surprise there seem to be several factories making black wood crystal pencils as Mrs Morse confirmed that their pencils are not from China. Last year my wife bought some crystal pencils from The Pen Shop. They are in her office at the moment – so I cannot check now, but I should have a look and compare them to the ones from Reidinger…
Magnetic and Crystal Pencils
Giveaway
As these magnetic pencils are promotional gifts you cannot buy them individually. I believe you have to buy at least 288 for an order, but since Mr Lorber sent me several of them I am happy to give away a pack of three crystal pencils with Swarovski elements and a magnetic pencil with a metal disc. I am happy to send the prizes to any country as long as Royal Mail doesn’t refuse to send them there. I will use random.org to get a random number and the author of the corresponding article will get the price (unless I am the author or the comment is definitely spam). To take part please leave your comments at this blog post before Sunday, 4th September 2011, 23:59 UTC.
I would like to thank
Mr Lorber for sending me these pencils and
Mrs Morse from Reidinger for providing me with more information about Reidinger’s pencils.
Sean from The Blackwing Pages for the Eberhard Faber Microtomic and the General’s Kimberly pencils I tried to use with the metal disc.
I was just looking for Staedtler carbon leads at Cult Pens when I noticed that there are four Staedtler pencilmaker sets to be won on their blog. They post internationally, deadline is 31 August 2011.
