On a recent trip to Manchester I noticed that Muji’s low centre of gravity mechanical pencils finally made it to Europe.
Muji’s low centre of gravity pencil in Manchester
Last year they weren’t available in the UK or Germany, which prompted me to visit Muji’s “global flagship store” on Huaihai Road in Shanghai [1]It’s one of the stationery related stores I forgot to write about in my recent series of Shanghai related blog posts from my trip in August 2016..
The main purpose of the visit was to get my hands on this pencil for Gunther and myself.
They even had a cafe. I haven’t eaten Muji food before.
The food was quite good. It was slightly more expensive than expected, but the price was acceptable.
In the stationery corner there was a lot to choose from.
Pen and paper wise there wasn’t much more than what I am used to from Manchester, despite Manchester only having a small store now (the bigger one closed down about ten years ago)…
..there was however a lot more choice in terms of desk organisation (trays, boxes, ..).
The decoration was quite nice and it was easy to try products out before buying.
Can you spot the low centre of gravity pencil in the picture above?
As usual you can open pictures in a new tab to see them in high resolution.
Let me start by saying: It’s all Lexikaliker’s fault.
He praised the virtues of 0.4 mm pencils, so I had to order one.
I had a look at various 0.4 mm pencils and decided to go with the Uni Shift for £7.43 from Amazon Marketplace in the UK [1]When I bought it it was 3p more expensive: £7.46., in the USA it sells for $10.20, again on Amazon Marketplace …including shipping. In many online shops this pen can easily cost twice as much, though. I have no idea how the pen can be sent from Japan for such a good price.
The Uni Shift 0.4mm locked
Despite coming all the way from Japan it only took a few days before the pen arrived. The seller even remembered that I bought form him before.
0.4 mm
In theory
Well, this is my first 0.4mm pencil. You’d think 0.4mm doesn’t seem to be that different to 0.5mm, it’s just 20% smaller, but depending on how you write the difference in the graphite you lay down can easily be 30% or more.
Assuming a writing angle of 40° a 0.5mm pencil would cover a surface area more than 50% bigger than a 0.4mm pencil, so there is quite a difference.
In practice
…well at least that’s the theory. In reality things look a bit different. When I checked lead diameters with my caliper I got different numbers. Have a look at the table below. Note: 0.3mm and 0.35mm is used interchangeably my manufacturers.
Nominal value (mm)
0.2
0.3/0.35
0.4
0.5
0.7
Measured value (mm)
0.24
0.36
0.46
0.55
0.68
I am not sure whether I read about this discrepancy in the past, but when I had a look I couldn’t find any information about this on the web. Since my caliper isn’t ‘officially’ calibrated and is just for home use I won’t go into more details and speculation here, other that these might be legacy diameters manufacturers adhere to so that leads and pencil stay interchangeable.
Using the nominal value, an 0.5mm lead used at an angle of 40° has a 50% bigger surface area than an 0.4mm lead. Using the measured values the 0.4mm lead is closer to the 0.5mm lead, but the gap to the 0.35mm lead widens, see table below.
The main purpose of the pipe lock mechanism seems to be to make the pencil pocket safe, i.e. the rigid sleeve/pipe is hidden so that it can’t damage your pocket. I guess the mechanism used in the Uni Shift makes it easier to create a pencil where the sleeve is rigid and doesn’t wobble, compared to mechanical pencils with a retractable sleeve. Easier might in this case also equate to ‘cheaper to manufacture’.
All sleeves out
The mechanism that locks the lead feels a bit clumsy. I don’t find it as nice as some alternatives, shown in the video, mainly because it is more difficult to use single handedly.
I like the grip section. It is made from metal. The upper body of the pen is only plastic. Considering the price of the pen this is however not surprising.
All sleeves in
The pencil is excellent value for money, at least for the price I paid. If you don’t like 0.4mm you can buy the Uni Shift in many other lead diameters, too.
Price: June and July 2016
Exchange rates: July 2016
As usual please open images in a new tab to see a high resolution version. To see the video inhigh resolution please open in YouTube,
If you want to read more about Mitsubishi and it’s link to other companies with that name have a look as Estilofilos.
A few months ago I was able to get a Mascot for a good price. The Mascot is a propelling pencil made from sterling silver. A few years ago Dave showed it on his blog.
Origins
Mine is stamped with the date letter G, so it must be from 1956 or 1957 [1]see https://theassayoffice.co.uk/send-us-your-hallmarking/date-letters, a time when the maker, Edward Baker, was already part of Yard-O-Led (In 1952 Frank Tuffnell became the majority shareholder of Yard-O-Led and acquired Edward Baker [2]see http://www.yard-o-led.com/#our-story. In 1955 Yard-O-Led took over Edward Baker [3]see http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Yard-o-led_Pencil_Co ). Despite having been part of Yard-O-Led the pen doesn’t seen to have been marketed as a Yard-O-Led pencil. This could be down to the fact that the internal mechanism works in a different way.
You can see the G on the right
According to The Writing Desk all Yard-O-Led pencils ever made accept 3″ leads [4]see http://www.thewritingdesk.co.uk/showproduct.php?brand=Yard-O-Led&range=pencil+refills, but I can’t see how these could fit into the Mascot – so maybe the different mechanisms in Yard-O-Led and Edward Baker pencils and the resulting difference in leads used was part of the reason why the pen was not officially sold as a Yar-O-Led. My pencil came in a Yard-O-Led box and with Yard-O-Led instructions, but as the pen is 60 years old these might not be the original box and instructions that came with the pen.
Measured up
Including leads the Mascot weighs about 28g and has a diameter of just over 8mm – round pencils tend to have a diameter of about 7.5mm and hexagonal ones have about 7mm between opposing sides. The pen a bit more than 12cm long.
Well balanced
Despite it being thicker and certainly heavier than a wood cased pencil it does feel small in your hands …modern pens are usually bigger, but the heavy weight of the Mascot, for its size, makes it feel solid and expensive.
Yard-O-Led’s name came from the fact that their pencils could hold a whole yard of lead in refills. If you are of the metric persuasion: 1 yard has 36 inches, so you would need 36 of these inch long refills for a yard. My Mascot came with 6 leads, but it could probably hold around 12 leads. 12 inches are one foot, so I guess Foot-O-Led would be more suitable as a name for the Mascot than Yard-O-Led.
I assume slightly longer 1.18mm leads from Kaweco or Wörther would fit, I have’t tried it out yet, though. These slightly longer leads are 30mm long.
Sharpener
I like a fine point, so I sharpen the leads with Faber-Castell’s lead pointer sharpener box (what a name) 18 41 00. These sharpeners usually cost around €0.60. They are for leads with a diameter of 2mm, but work with 1.18mm.
Overall
It’s a great looking pencils, even though it is a bit small for today’s standard. I love the wider top/end of this pencil. It is similar to other pens from the past. These days similar tops can be found on Graf von Faber-Castell pens or the Castell 9000 Perfect Pencil (you can see them in this blog post).
You might have seen my Facebook post about the recently released 0.5 mm and 0.7 mm version of the Orenz and about the Orenz Mannish Line that will be released in June.
The Mannish Line has some interesting colour combinations. Very tempting.
The UK packaging
The Orenz in 0.5 mm and 0.7 mm doesn’t seem to be available in Japan. The one I bought was the official UK version, but made in Japan, of course.
The UK Orenz on Silvine Memo Books
The sliding sleeve
The 0.3 mm version of the Orenz needed quite a bit more force to slide the sleeve than the 0.2 mm version, see the sliding sleeve table for more information. This made me think that the 0.5 mm version will need even more force to slide the sleeve, but to my surprise that was not the case. While the 0.3 mm version needs more than 0.1 Newton, the 0.5 mm version needs only about 0.1 Newton. That’s still more than the best 0.5 mm pencil, the Staedtler Microfix S, but as far as I know, this is the best value for a pencil currently in production. Using different leads might result in different values, but both the 0.3 mm and the 0.5 mm version of the Orenz were tested with the original leads they came with.
Great centre of gravity
Vitals
Weight: 10.4 grams
Length: 14.5 centimetres
Diameter of the grip section: ~8 millimetres
Force needed to slide the sleeve: ~0.1 newton
This blog post has been brought to you by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Conclusion
Overall: it’s a fantastic pencil. Pentel’s pencil designs are very polarising for me, I either love or dislike them, but the Orenz has a design I really love, unlike the P20x series liked by many, but not me.
It’s a shame that this pencil is only available in black. Pentel, please release it in other colours, too.
There are two pencil purchases I’ve been thinking about for a while. One of them is a Rotring 800+, but with a price tag of more than £40 I haven’t been able to convince myself to buy it yet [1]I guess I should buy it. In a recent Pen Addict podcast they were talking about a similar situation https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/204 , it all reminds me of a Bavarian movie called ‘The sooner … Continue reading.
Every now and then I check whether I find a good offer for this pencil in online stores, on Amazon and on eBay. Earlier this week I was just checking CultPens again (so far they have been the cheapest store for the Rotring 800+ when taking postage into account) when I saw an offer I couldn’t resist: Lots, really lots, of ‘free’ items if you buy a Staedtler Initium pen.
So many ‘free’ add-ons…
The Atoma leather notebook
The most tempting of these ‘free’ add-ons was Atoma’s Leather notebook [2]Mady by Belgium’s Ruitertassen.. Most tempting for two reasons:
I am using my Atoma notebooks on a daily basis, at work and at home, and I really like it
and I really like the look and the graceful ageing of tanned leather [3]Think Yo no bi, which reminds me: I just hope my Rustico notebook doesn’t get too dark over time, but based on experience with a leather bag I think I will be fine
…so this notebook was the reason why I went ahead and ordered the Staedtler Initium pencil.
I think I was probably even more interested than I otherwise would have been because of the recent flood of blog posts about William Hannah’s similar notebook after they sent free samples and discounted samples to many bloggers [4]including Scribble, Philofaxy, Pen Paper Pencil and Gourmet Pens.
Drool, so much nice stationery
Staedtler’s premium line
I do love Staedtler products, you might have noticed that this blog has more articles about Staedtler than about any other manufacturer [5]So fat there are 50 Staetdler articles. Faber-Castell, the number two only has 39 articles at Bleistift. but so far I haven’t been very excited about their foray into the world of more expensive stationery, their Initium line. Based on the photos I have seen online I think the Initium fountain pens look like cheap ‘own brand’ pens from a high street stationery chain – I might revise my opinion when I see one in reality, though, photos can be deceptive. The pencil on the other hand looks nice to me, but maybe not >£60 nice. So I went with the mechanical pencil instead. On the photos it looks better than the fountain pen, but I couldn’t really imagine how the clip works – is there a spring like in the Lamy 2000?
Arrived!
Well, my purchase has arrived now, I just unpacked the items. First impression: The body of the Staedtler pencil looks a bit more plasticy than expected, but overall it looks good. The Atoma leather notebook looks just amazingly beautiful!
I’m very much looking forward to trying all the items out.
I guess I should buy it. In a recent Pen Addict podcast they were talking about a similar situation https://www.relay.fm/penaddict/204 , it all reminds me of a Bavarian movie called ‘The sooner you die, the longer you are dead’
Think Yo no bi, which reminds me: I just hope my Rustico notebook doesn’t get too dark over time, but based on experience with a leather bag I think I will be fine
