Observing the blog “dashboard”, I noticed that a milestone was just passed – the 2500th comment. It was made by M-C, responding to a post on the pencils of France.
My sincere thanks to the many commenters for your contributions.
Wörther Shorty 3.15mm leadholder
Wörther is a company I’ve come to admire.
“Quality” is easy to state, but what does it mean from a manufacturer? A formal policy process? An informal process? A philosophy?
In the realm of mechanical pencil manufacturing, I will leave a formal response to that question to the experts, but from a personal perspective, the products of Wörther seem to be the embodiment of the idea.
Whether plastic or metal, they seem to use quality materials. Their products have design elements that are thoughtful and original. I’ll mention a personal favourite, the Slight pencil, in a future post.
The Shorty is a 3.15mm clutch leadholder. A centimetre or two longer than the Kaweco leadholder, it is much more easily held, and has a practical hexagonal shape. It comes in a variety of colour finishes. My choice of grey does tend to highlight stray graphite smudges. The clip is integrated with the clutch advance mechanism, and creates a great sensation and surprise when opening the clutch, as the clip/button visibly descend within the pencil. I have never seen a design like this, and it is an example of why Wörther’s products are so interesting.
While plastic, there are no seams, and the pencil appears quite solid.
The pencil ships with three cardboard tubes, each containing a different refill type – graphite in 7B, a vibrant red, or a rarely seen white lead. It seems the Shorty is being offered as a general purpose marking pencil.
Overall, it a great writing implement with an excellent design.
Dollar store find
The “dollar store” isn’t typically a place I’d look for anything, let alone writing implements. Yet, I was recently in one, and found this 2.0mm mechanical pencil, with a package of mixed-grade refill leads. For one Canadian dollar – which is currently about 86 US cents, or 63 € cents.
The bilingual (English/French) packaging doesn’t indicate much. The pencil comes with a mixed grade package of HB, B, 2B, 3B, and 4B leads. The mixture is appreciated, though the spectrum seemed narrower than I expected in testing.
The pencil can be refilled through either the tip or the cap – a nice feature.
The pencil is extremely lightweight – 7.6g unfilled, and appears to be made of lightweight plastic and metal with a blue rubberized surface. The grip area is triangular.
My general expectation of a “dollar store” product would be low quality, and while this pencil is definitely not going to replace my Staedtler 925 25 20, neither is it unacceptably cheap. The design does seem original, with a nice enough colour palette choice. It is comfortable to hold, functional, and very lightweight. While this blog doesn’t favour no-name items, for this price, the pencil and refill leads are an almost shocking offering. Maybe it is the Tata Nano of leadholders.
Has anyone else found any interesting discount office supplies?
On the buses
Regular pencil talk readers have seen a few train-themed pencils from Japanese manufacturers. Take a look at the kossy-RS4 blog (in Japanese) for even more examples!
The transportation theme continues, this time with destination signs from London buses used as the inspiration.
I like them!
(The post title is borrowed from the early 1970s hit British TV show.)
Recycled bamboo pencil
A recent trip to a large city didn’t allow for much stationery shopping. All I managed to bring back was this pencil.
The pencil has no markings, but was in a display that claimed the pencil was made of “recycled bamboo”, and the eraser of “recycled rubber”.
The pencil surface is rough – very rough. Yet I’ve learned through the feedback from a past post that some prefer a surface like this.
It writes well, though the eraser doesn’t do too well at erasing the pencil’s markings:
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Overall, the pencil leaves a good impression that I can’t completely explain.
Faber-Castell Textliner 1148 highlighting pencil
The highlighting pencil is one of those specialty pencils that never really worked for me – the idea is great, but the ones I’ve tried from Lyra, Staedtler, and International Arrivals had weak pigmentation, and were not very effective.
I’m very happy to report that I’ve finally found a woodcase highlighting pencil that works as well as the liquid felt tip alternatives.
Faber-Castell’s Textliner 1148 is oversize, and in Faber-Castell’s popular “Grip” format – triangular with raised “grip” dots.
Announced this year, it appears to supersede a hexagonal predecessor, even assuming the same bar code. I actually have a couple of the hexagonal variety that I never got around to trying.
Available in five colours, the lines are fluorescent and saturated, just as they should be.
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Close-up photos reveal that they leave a bit of pigment residue, the only minor flaw that I observed. They have become a standard office supply for me, and I have no trouble recommending them as a great specialty pencil.