Thursday, February 07, 2008

A Wooden Mechanical

Here’s my winnings from a recent online auction. The seller described them thus, “I was given these pens as a gift over 10 years ago and they have just sat in a drawer ever since. The two smaller ones were handmade by a friend of my mothers in Australia. The two larger ones I can't even remember where I got them from. One of the larger ones is a retractable pencil. I don't know what woods they are made of but they are very nice pens.”
I bought them for the pencil, as I don’t have any turned wooden mechanical pencils.

The pencil is a decent size, being 143mm long and 12mm diameter at the lower body, and at 45grams it's certainly far heavier than your average pencil. It’s a screw action feed, you wind the top half of the body around to propel or repel the lead. New leads are fed in through the tip. You pull the top half of the body off to reveal a small eraser and the lead storage chamber. The wood is nice and smoothly finished, the black and gold metal trims look nice, although on close inspection there are some indications that they are not exactly “superior quality”, but overall I’m glad to have this pencil and matching ballpoint to help fill a gap in the collection.







Photo - MP on left (non-retractable tip) and BP on right.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

nice dave!!! I have one that has my name engraved in it. Gift from my wife our first summer together. Have never used it... It;s a twist, with .9mm lead...yuck.

germ

Kiwi-d said...

Germ - I salute your foolhardy bravery. "yuck"....? Are you mad? Leaving this evidence out in the public domain. I'll just assume you are supremely confident your wife will never read a pencil blog and so won't find out your opinion of her present.

Pencraft said...

Hi Dave, I produce these pencils myself as a pass time and you can view my items available for sale on Ebay in the shops section under Pencraft UK.
The 2 larger pens you have there are made from Purple Heart, the smaller one with dark hatching on may well be Indian Laurel. The other ... not to sure at the moment
Best regards, Kev.

Kiwi-d said...

Hello Kev, thanks for the information. You have some nice looking stuff on eBay, particularly the Blue Abyss Duofold style. Very nice.

Anonymous said...

Thank you Dave, of course any pen, pencil or available items can be made to your own needs, eg Blue Abbys mechanical pencil? Please feel free to enquire any time, Just mention your name.
All the best, Kev.

Anonymous said...

naw, i just don't like .9mm or twist lead pencil. and no, the wife will never see this unless i tell her...... she rolls her eyes at this stuff.

germ