In the last few days I had more visitors than usual, so I had a look where they came from. Turns out that both the Pen Addict Podcast and Erasable linked to my blog, with more than 100 visitors coming from the Pen Addict Podcast and more than ten visitors coming from the Erasable Podcast. Thank you.
Anyway, this blog post was supposed to be about something else: about the Label Roll I bought in my local Tesco homeplus for £4 (~$6.30; €5.60). Not cheap, 3M products never seem to be, at least not here in the UK, but they always seem to be useful and last a long time. Post-its don’t seem suitable to label things, the glued area on the back is just too small and won’t last long enough – and their labels, which have the whole back glued, are even more expensive.
One of the main advantages for me is that the labels are much bigger than what you get from a embosser / demo label maker, so it is easier to read on big items. So, despite the expensive price tag quite a nice new item of stationery.
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 Lego Movie erasers (£0.75 each)
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).
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.
My latest acquisition: SUCK UK’s Wingnut pencil sharpener, made by Russian designer Sasha Blagov for the Ukranian Shpinat Bureau.
I bought this sharpener in Paperchase (in Selfridges) for £6 (~$9; €8).
It is, as the name suggests, a sharpener shaped like a wingnut.
First use
I did want to use an unsharpened pencil – you can see that the short blade of the wingnut sharpener will produce a much more obtuse angle than your average sharpener, so sharpening an already sharpened pencil with a normal angle down to a more obtuse angle would waste a lot of material. That means an unsharpened pencil was needed. The first pencil I tried to sharpen with it: a Venezuelan Mongol 480.
Sharpening did start well, but there soon was a point when it was difficult for the wood and lead to reach the blade, because the sharpening hole of the sharpener was too small for the pencil. My resulting annoyance with this sharpener is so big that I’ll to switch to a monologue now.
Is the Venezuelan Mongol wider than your average pencil? Maybe. Maybe that’s why it didn’t work. Hmm, let’s try another one. What other unsharpened pencils are on my desk – oh yes, there’s a Tombow Mono 100 in H. Let’s sharpen that one.
..
What? same problem again? Ok. I think I once read somewhere that the Tombow is wider than your average pencil, or did I mix that up? Anyway, let’s try another unsharpened pencil – here, a Chung Hwa 101 in 2B.
…
What the… The same thing happened again? ..and I spent £6 on this sharpener‽ [1]That certainly calls for an interrobang!
Design flaw
You’d think sharpening should be easy with this sharpener, but unfortunately there seems to be a design flaw which means that it is very difficult if not impossible to sharpen many pencils.
One problem is that the ‘cone’ you insert the pencil into starts to narrow immediately. Other prism sharpeners don’t narrow immediately, but have an area that helps to guide the pencil. This helps to keep the pencil straight, so you can always achieve a point with the same angle. Because there is no guidance for the pencil in the wingnut sharpener it is difficult to hold the pencil at the right angle. For some pencils I got an angle as acute as 24°, for other the angle was up to 37°. This means that you easily end up with an inconsistent angle (wasting material) or with a broken point.
Another problem is that even though the opening of the sharpener is ~8mm, which should be sufficient as the diameter of most pencils’ diameter isn’t more than that, the blade doesn’t start until a bit later, by which point the prism has already narrowed and is too narrow for most pencils.
Is the wingnut sharpener for coloured pencils?
I’m usually using graphite pencils, so I thought this sharpener might be made for coloured pencils, but a look at the ISZ’s sharpener guide shows that the diameter of the sharpening hole should be even bigger if was a sharpener for coloured pencils.
The pencil will rest on the shoulders created by the sharpener, which makes it impossible to sharpen any further.
Conclusion
The wingnut sharpener leaves me very disappointed. It is obviously a novelty sharpener, but that shouldn’t mean that it’s unsuitable for most pencils. If it was just a bit bigger it would actually work. I wonder whether this sharpener was designed like this on purpose [2]Maybe the prototype did work with Russian pencils, they might be slimmer, who knows – but did SUCK UK not notice? or whether things went wrong when the plans were turned into the finished products.
I hope I can return the wingnut sharpener and get my money back, next time I visit Paperchase in Manchester.
In my previous blog post I mentioned the Deli 0620 sharpener I bought when I was in Shanghai.
I you have followed my blog you might have noticed that I am very fond of Deli sharpeners. The Deli 0635 and the Deli 0668 are in fact my most often used sharpeners.
Why do I only mention these two models and no other Deli sharpeners? The problem with Deli sharpeners is that most seem to be aimed at children or pupils and look a bit too cartoony to put on your desk in the office – so when I came across a serious looking Deli sharpener, the 0620, I was quite excited.
Deli 0620 unpacked
The moment I saw this sharpener I thought of the Classroom Friendly Sharpener. I don’t have one myself, but having seen pictures of it in the past I thought this Deli 0620 looks very similar …but I had to wait until I was home to be able to compare the 0620 with photos of the Classroom Friendly Sharpener. More about this later.
Cheap and full of features
I paid 45元 (~ $7.25; €6.25; £4.75) in the stationery shop on Xiangde Road, mentioned previously. Unlike the 0635 and the 0668, the 0620 features a metal case and is quite a bit bigger. It has a very solid feel to it and comes with a desk clamp and a spring driven pencil holder that features auto stop (as expected). The 0620 seems to sharpen with the same angle as the 0635: it will produce a slightly concave point with an angle of ~ 17°.
The 0620’s spring loaded pencil holder
Oh no, tooth marks!
This all sounds great, but I have a big problem with this sharpener: it leaves tooth marks on the pencil, because the grips that hold the pencil while sharpening are not rubber covered. I guess many people don’t mind. As far as I know some of the best sharpeners do leave tooth marks, like the expensive El Casco sharpener as well as the cheaper, but still very expensive Caran d’Ache sharpener.
Sharpening a Korean TiTi T-Prime with the 0620
The problem is: I do mind! There are some things others seem to mind, like bar codes on pencils, that I don’t mind. On the contrary, I often even like them …but tooth marks? Maybe one day I can accept them, but not at the moment, so I fear my 45元 were not very well invested. I could try ‘improving’ the tooth mark situation by putting Sugru on the grip mechanism, but the point produced by the Deli 0635 is so similar, I might as well use the 0635 instead of the 0620[1]If I had some Sugru I might try ‘improving’ the 0620. Maybe I buy a pack one day, once it’s open it needs to be used up soon anyway, which might be a good reason to use some of it … Continue reading.
If you can cope with the horror: click on the bite mark picture to see the mutilated pencil in higher resolution.
Ugly bite marks on a beautiful pencil
The Deli 0620 and the Classroom Friendly Sharpener
One interesting point, mentioned earlier, is the similarity of the 0620 to the Classroom Friendly Sharpener. According to the pictures I have seen I would say the two sharpeners are more or less identical. I guess there could be several reasons for that, the most likely probably being that
The Classroom Friendly Sharpener is actually made by Deli
Both are made by another company
One is a copy of the other, or both are a copy of another.
Deli 0620 shavings
I don’t think one of these sharpeners is a copy of the other one. My guess would be that the the original isn’t famous enough to warrant a copy being made. Also, if you look at copied stationery, e.g. a Lamy Safari and a Hero 359, the copy is often of much worse quality than the original. I can’t really judge how the quality of both sharpeners compares as I only know the 0620, but it seems to be pretty well made. The only problem I encountered was that I couldn’t remove the burr mechanism. This problem doesn’t seem uncommon for Deli. Once I had two batches of 0635 in front of me, and one batch was perfectly fine, but on the other batch I couldn’t remove the burr mechanism on any of the sharpeners [2]I don’t think they are glued on on purpose as I can’t see any sense in that. I wonder whether there are other reasons, e.g. some tolerance issues and some parts being a bit too big, or … Continue reading. I assume that if you use enough force you could get the burr mechanism out.
Conclusion
A great looking sharpener that disappoints because of the tooth marks it leaves. Otherwise great value for money, like other Deli sharpeners.
Size comparison: 0668, 0620, 0635
As mentioned by Gunther and Koralatov in the comments: there are other sharpeners that seem to be produced in the same factory: the Carl Angel-5, the Kw-trio 031VA and the Helix A5.
Assuming the sharpener is made by Deli, because the point produced is so similar to the one produced by the 0635 [3]What a shame that it’s so difficult to remove the burr mechanism for a comparison, the question is: Did the 0620 get this acute, concave angle because of Deli’s existing mechanism or was this model’s angle always like this, even before Deli made this sharpener, and Deli made its mechanism like this to fulfil Carl’s (or whoever ordered this sharpener first) requirements?
If I had some Sugru I might try ‘improving’ the 0620. Maybe I buy a pack one day, once it’s open it needs to be used up soon anyway, which might be a good reason to use some of it on the 0620.
I don’t think they are glued on on purpose as I can’t see any sense in that. I wonder whether there are other reasons, e.g. some tolerance issues and some parts being a bit too big, or whether the sharpener was assembled before the paint could dry properly, etc.
I’m not a big fan of spiral bound notebooks or notepads. Spiral binding will usually put me off buying a notepad, but in the case of the spiral bound, Chinese made nu: tough paper I couldn’t resist.
I saw this notebook in the supermarket run by my employer’s /my university’s students’ union and the words “paper made from stone” managed to grab my interest at first sight.
Material
The paper is made from 80% ground limestone / chalk and 20% HDPE (many plastic bottles are made from HDPE) and promises to be water-proof, wipeable, tough, durable and, to my surprise, recyclable and biodegradable [1]I don’t know much about plastic, so I would very much appreciate if someone could explain biodegradable in the context of HDPE. A quick look on the Internet seems to suggest that you can make … Continue reading
In case you wonder, the Kaweco was filled with non erasable ink from Diamine.
How does the paper behave?
..with pencils
Compared to normal paper the pencil line left on this ‘stone paper’ feels much darker . The line also feels wider. Applying less pressure when writing will also produce a fairly dark line, more so than writing with less pressure on normal paper. I suspect this behaviour is caused by a rougher paper surface. You can certainly feel more friction when moving a finger across the ‘stone paper’, compared to normal paper.
How does the ‘stone paper’ compare to similar products? The lines left on this paper are also darker than those a pencil would leave on paper from a Rite in the Rain notepad. Altogether, this paper produces an unusual, but pleasant pencil writing experience.
Left: Rite in the Rain, Right: nu: Tough Paper
..with fountain pens
Let’s stick to the similar Rite in the Rain notepad for a moment. It’s pretty useless when you want to use it with a fountain pen. The ink just stays on the surface of the paper, it might even form tiny droplets …until it eventually dries. Because the ink didn’t really penetrate the top layer of the paper the colour of the writing is usually quite light. The behaviour of fountain pens and ink on nu:’s tough paper is quite different. The written text even looks very similar to text written on a normal piece of paper, with two differences:
there is an absence of visible texture on the ‘stone paper’, in my opinion this does influence the look of ink more than the look of graphite
the moment your fountain pen is a wet writer, even if only to a very small degree, the ink will take a really long time to dry.
On the above image you can see text written by a Kaweco Sport with an EF nib. The cartridge was empty and the pen was therefore an extremely dry writer. Drying took a few seconds. The lines made by the Pentel Tradio on the other hand, not a wet writer when I compare it to some of my other fountain pens, took just under 10 minutes to dry. On normal paper the Tradio‘s lines only take a few seconds to dry.
Left: Rite in the Rain, Right: nu: Tough Paper
How strong it the paper?
The paper seems to cope better with ‘bad conditions’, like wetness and physical impact. When trying the tear it nu:’s tough paper does behave rather unusual. Unlike the Rite in the Rain paper, which provides a similar ripping experience to traditional paper, ripping the tough paper feels a bit like ripping thin sheets of plastic. This is probably cause by the HDPE content. Normal paper usually rips in such a way that a sheet of paper lying horizontally will not be separated by a clear vertical line. Where the traditional paper is separated one half of the torn paper might contain more of the top layer of the paper, while the other half of the paper might contain more of the bottom layer of the torn paper. The tough paper however seems to stretch a bit where you tear, then separate clearly, while the stretched part curls slightly. It feels rather plasticy.
Left: Rite in the Rain, Right: nu: Tough Paper
Conclusion
Altogether a nice notepad. It’s an interesting novelty and I’m sure I’ll enjoy using it, but I’m not sure I’ll buy more once the novelty effect has worn off.
I paid £2.50 for this notepad. It’s spiral bound, has a tough cover and back, and has 160 sheets of paper.
I don’t know much about plastic, so I would very much appreciate if someone could explain biodegradable in the context of HDPE. A quick look on the Internet seems to suggest that you can make HDPE biodegradable by changing the recipe slightly. On a different note: biodegradable plastic reminds me of Dave’s biodegradable pencil test.
