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Drehgriffel Nr. 2

1 Comment / Leuchtturm 1917 / 6 July 2022 / Leuchtturm, Leuchtturm1917, Made in Taiwan, Monocle, Montblanc M, stilform

If you like stationery, you have probably come across the Drehgriffel by now.

Leuchtturm’s ^[1]Officially Leuchtturm1917, but I will also use Leuchtturm without the number to shorten the name. first reincarnation of the century-old Drehgriffel has been around for about two years. When it was released, its beautiful design won the Red Dot Design Award in 2020.

The first reincarnation Drehgriffel, designated the Nr. 1, is sold as a gel pen and accepts G2 style refills.

Drehgriffel Nr. 1 on a MONOCLE by Leuchtturm1917 diary

Price

As is common for Leuchtturm1917 products, the pen is designed in Germany and made in Taiwan. I bought my Drehgriffel in July 2021 from CultPens for £18.50. Given what is going on in the UK and around the world, it comes as a slight surprise that the price has not changed in the last twelve months and is still £18.50 at the time of writing (July 2022). The price is in line with what you would be expected to pay for similar pens and normally you can’t find the pen much cheaper in the UK – unless there is an offer, like the current offer for £15 by The Paper Collective.

Innards and design

My Drehgriffel came with a Leuchtturm1917 branded, Japanese-made black gel refill in 0.5mm.

I love the design of the Drehgriffel. It has an old feel to it, thanks to the shape, the pastel-y colours and the old feel of the writing on the pen’s body.

The pen feels extremely well made and has an aluminium body with some plastic insides. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a clip, so mine spends its time on my desk, rather than in my shirt pocket.

Nr. 2

Leuchtturm has recently released the Nr. 2 version of the Drehgriffel. This version won the Red Dot Design Award 2022 and is the mechanical pencil version. Where the Nr. 1 had a white grip section and twist head, the Nr. 2 sports these elements in black. Despite my love for pencil I have not bought one yet as it is only available in 0.7mm – a rather big lead diameter for my handwriting which I prefer to be small (to get more on the page).

Leuchtturm group

I won’t do a review of the Drehgriffel Nr. 1 as there are already several reviews out there (you can find a list at the end of this blog post), instead I’ll tell you a bit about the Leuchtturm group that owns Leuchtturm1917. The company has been around for more than 100 year and, like Rotring, they are from Northern Germany (Hamburg). For many years their main business was linked to products for collectors of stamps, coins and other items. Lucky for us stationery fans they started Leuchtturm1917, which by now has branched out from notebooks and diaries to also include nice pens. The Leuchtturm group also own Semikolon and other brands, but most interesting for readers of this blog will probably be their brand Stilform.

The Stilform and Montblanc M fountain pens, both with magnetically held caps

If I want to simplify an explanation of what Stilform does I would boil it down to the following: Stilform uses Kickstarter to finance the production of pens made from Aluminium. These pens use a magnetic mechanism to hold the cap in place, similar to the one made popular by the Montblanc M. They are nice but a bit chunky, with a choice of (Bock) nibs. Their fountain pens don’t contain glue or plastic. I bought some of their accessories and my favourite, with a permanent space in front of my monitor, is their wooden pen holder, a bit like a pen tray for one pen.

Stilform’s wooden pen holder with a Cross Verve fountain pen

References
↑1	Officially Leuchtturm1917, but I will also use Leuchtturm without the number to shorten the name.

Lamy xevo

5 Comments / Lamy / 1 July 2022 / ballpoint pen, Colani, Lamy, Lamy xevo, Made in Germany, Pelikan

What has the world come to?? A blog post about a ballpoint pen at Bleistift.blog‽

Well, it is a very good looking ballpoint pen: Lamy’s xevo in lightgrey (I find the black version more boring looking, so ordered the lightgrey version).

I bought this pen for £7.90 from Pen Heaven. The price in the USA is $10 and in Europe it is €7.90.

First impressions

I didn’t realise this until I actually held the pen in my hands: It reminds me very much of the beautiful Lamy Colani, with similar organic shapes. Especially the triangular front section with its flowing shapes, but also the matt-ish off-white plastic, bear some resemblance.

The pen is extremely well made for a pen in this price range. You can see the mould lines in good light, but that is not an issue. For comparison: on my xevo ^[1]I assume thanks to good quality control it will be the same on every xevo. the mould lines are not more obvious than on a Lamy Safari.

The clip is also very well made. It looks like solid sheet metal clip, but it is actually made by bending the material on the outside, i.e. it is not solid like the one you’d find on the Lamy scribble. Just like on the Lamy 2000, a mechanism holds the clip which means the clip can swing outwards instead of relying on the clip’s material to bend when clipping it onto something.

The xevo’s metal clip. You can also see a mould line on the plastic body.

Size

Size-wise the xevo is quite big. It is roughly similar in size to a BIC four colour ballpoint pen and certainly bigger than many other ballpoint pens that aren’t multi pens, like the Caran d’Ache 849.

Top to bottom: Caran d’Ache 849, Lamy xevo, BIC four colour multipen

The xevo is so long that in my typical shirt pockets I have to clip it in towards the middle of the pocket. The middle tends to be slightly deeper. If clipped in on the outside (like the Perfect Pencil in the image below) it would only be clipped in for a few millimetres, so would more likely fall out or get lost.

The Lamy xevo (next to a green Perfect Pencil 9000) in a shirt pocket

Altogether an excellent and beautiful pen for the money. My one issue is that it only accepts Lamy M16 refills, so it is nearly impossible to use a gel refill. I discuss this in more detail in the video below.

References
↑1	I assume thanks to good quality control it will be the same on every xevo.

Staedtler Triplus x IKEA MICKE

Leave a Comment / Staedtler / 24 June 2022 / IKEA, Made in Germany, Made in Poland, Micke, Staedtler, Triplus

Today: just a very quick idea to share with you.

The Staedtler Triplus Fineliner Pen Sets come with a nice cardboard insert to hold the pens in place. Our son has Ikea’s Micke desk which has a whiteboard back. Staedtler’s Triplus set insert is held in place on the whiteboard by two magnets.

It’s a great way of storing the Staedtler Triplus pens: they don’t take away desk space but are easily accessible and have a fixed place they can always be put back to.

@bleistift.blog
Staedtler Triplus × IKEA MICKE The Staedtler Triplus Fineliner Pen Sets come with a nice cardboard insert to hold the pens in place. Our son has Ikea’s Micke desk which has a whiteboard back. Staedlet’s Triplus set insert is held in place on the whiteboard by two magnets It’s a great way of storing the Staedtler Triplus pens: they don’t take away desk space but are easily accessible and have a fixed place. #staedtler #ikea #triplus
♬ She Share Story (for Vlog) – 山口夕依

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A broken Orenz

8 Comments / Mechanical pencils, Pentel, Uncategorised / 17 June 2022 / Made in Japan, mechanical pencil, Orenz, Pentel Orenz

If you read Bleistift blog regularly you might have noticed that I really like the Pentel Orenz. I think it’s the best sliding sleeve pencil since Staedtler’s Microfix.

The sliding sleeve works well and the pencil’s design is great, too, but unfortunately there is one weakness in the design that caused one of my Orenz mechanical pencils an issue: The metal clip is very close to the push button and there is only a very narrow strip of plastic to hold it in place. This narrow strip of plastic is will have to bear the brunt of any outward pressure the springiness of the clip cannot handle.

If you regularly clip the pencil onto slightly thicker pockets (or notebooks etc) the plastic will weaken over time and will eventually break off. In my case I regularly carry the Orenz in a pen pocket on my jacket. The pen pocket is not that thick, but apparently thick enough to cause this issue.

If you are squeamish please look away, the following photos, showing pencil mutilations, are not a sight for the faint hearted.

When the plastic from my Orenz broke off I didn’t initially notice as I was in a meeting. I just noticed that, when holding the pencil, the clip seems to be very loose.