aluminium

Just in time for Black Friday: a black pen – Muji’s aluminium hexagonal flat clip mechanical pencil (0.5 mm). This pencil and other pens from the black hexagonal aluminium range were first launched in August 2010.

 

The price

The official price in the UK is £9.95 (~$16.20; €11.95), at the current exchange rate this is more than 60% above the price charged in Japan …but Muji has recently removed this pen from their catalogue. It will not be stocked any more from Spring/Summer 2014, which means that you can get this and other black aluminium hexagonal pens for a very good price (I paid £3 in Manchester’s Trafford Centre) in shops where they are still available.  Be careful though, I have seen a few damaged pens among the black hexagonal pens on sale.

 

The material and shape

The pen itself is nice and well made, especially when considering its price. I obviously realised that it has a metal body, but I didn’t realise that the body is made from aluminium until I saw “Alumi” written in Katakana on the packaging. The pencil is comfortable to hold. The weight is under 15 g ^[1]My scales are very old, so this might be inaccurate. and this mechanical pencils has a slightly bigger hexagonal barrel (8 mm) than the average wood-cased pencil (7 mm). Because of the similar shape and weight handling is similar to the Caran d’Ache 844, which features an aluminium body, too.

 

The retractable tip

The most interesting feature of this mechanical pencil for me is the retractable tip. To retract the tip of many other retractable pencils you press the top button while pressing tip and lead sleeve against the table. If you want to retract the tip of this pencil you just press the top of the clip and the tip will retract. You might have seen a similar mechanism on ball point pens that retract when pressing a side button. Another thing to mention: the thin lead sleeve and the conical part of the sleeve are one unit and will both retract. I mention this because on a Caran d’Ache 844, for example, only the thin sleeve will retract, while the conical part will not retract.

 

The flat clip

The flat clip ^[2]…one of those words where the number of characters in Katakana (フラットクリップ) is the same as in English, which makes it look almost comically long compared to other words in … Continue reading is, as the name indicates, flat. Unlike most clips that are parallel to the body, but leave a few millimetres gap to the body, this clip fixed very close to the body with no real gap at all. It is hinged at the top and can be opened to an angle of up to about 7°. The clip itself is made from very thin material. I haven’t had any problems, like bending, so far, but I haven’t clipped the pen often either as I didn’t want to risk bending the clip.

 

The quality

Muji quality is usually good, but it can be hit and miss ^[3]Some good and bad examples: One of our Muji tea pots didn’t even last a week, while the mugs from the same set are still ok – nearly ten years later. Muji’s green A5 notebook is … Continue reading. I’m happy to report that the overall quality of this mechanical pencil is pretty good.

The inner mechanism of the pen is a bit loose. This is more common with metal body mechanical pencils, but is not really a problem. When you shake the pen you can hear it move, especially when it is in its retracted state. The sleeve/mechanism of my pen is also slightly loose, but this doesn’t cause any issues when writing. The pen also comes with an “emergency eraser” under the top button / cap. Mine came with five very smooth leads, but I think according to the Japanese on the packaging there should be six, I’m not sure though. One push will advance the lead about 0.75 mm, which is good for my style of writing ^[4]Some mechanical pencils advance too much lead per push which can easily result in lead breakage if you write using an acute angle.. Overall value for money is excellent, especially when paying the Japanese price or the Western discount price.

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The instructions are from the packaging of Muji’s aluminium hexagonal flat clip mechanical pencil (0.5 mm). I believe that the use of the instructions shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

Price: October 2013

Exchange rates: November 2013

For an even closer look click on any of the photos (as usual).

I’d like to thank Ms Adams-May for providing me with the dates of this pens availability.