Fürst 5.6mm Leadholder
The first thing I thought when I saw this leadholder for sale was, “That’s a huge lead!” and at 5.6mm, I have never seen one like it before. I bought it in the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Germany, and like it very much. |
| 5.6mm lead versus 0.5mm |
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| Furst 5.6mm Leadholder |
The supplied lead is fantastic - a very soft lead (2B according to the manufacturer’s website) that does not smear very easily. Up top, the pushbutton twists off to reveal a sharpener - convenient!
Overall, I would highly recommend this leadholder to anyone who sketches or draws - it is a great tool to have!
Pros: All metal body, solid feel, great soft lead, octagonal body, built in sharpener
Cons: None
Price: about USD $11.60, € 8,90
Thanks again Vikram. Hope you are happy with your week.
Dave.
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20 comments:
Thanks - very good photos. When you sketch, you can always use another leadholder :-).
And thanks for the link - the page also states that you can buy it in "magic" colour - I wonder what that is?
BTW doesn't "Fürst" mean nobleman? It looks very "noble" ;-)
regards Henrik
I got Rosetta Da Vinci pencil recently on Ebay, $14, shorter than this one, compact, cool. Check it out here
http://nikiraart.blogspot.com/
I do believe that "Fuerst" means nobleman, and I do think that it looks noble. After all, it had a noble price as well...
Vikram,
The Furst 5.6mm is a mightily impressive pencil.
How hard is is to obtain replacement leads ?
And what sort of grades are available apart from 2B.
I have a couple of Koh-i-Noor Versatil 5347 5.6mm pencils but without a sharpener on the button. 5.6mm sharpeners are not easy to get hold of and they also go blunt very quickly.
Pretty nice looking leadholder specially at that price point. Got a few 5.6 mm leadholders that certainly make for fine sketching tools when working in larger formats, so I tend to pick them up up whenever I come across them since they are pretty rare these days. Cretacolor 5.6 graphite drawing leads are available in 2B, 4B, and 6B plus charcoal, sepia, sanguine, and chalk options.
Also Blacksun leads in different grade. I have some, smooth.
http://www.carreroart.com.au/shop/pdf/p&p_graphite.pdf
nearly identical to the koh-i-noor hardtmuth 'automatic' [5640]... automatic refers to the single click pencil advance (4mm a click) ...sharpeners there. But the actual clutch is hidden away more like a traditional mechanical pencil. The 2B lead is good, but the pencil is an odd size and apparently won't take either 4B or 6B as slightly too thin lacking the flexibility of the traditional clutch jaws.
Mine is blue, silver available also, but afraid there is no 'magic' here, just a rather nice and slightly different leadholder (although not very different from this one obviously).
[got mine from cult pens website. Please note that other stationary suppliers are available] RRP must be somewhere between £10-£12.
as always cheers Dave and this time thank you Vikram too.
Kieran
I use carpenter pencils if I need a thick lead you get more resistance on the paper I tried some woodless pencils in HB and 2B and didn't care for em.
Woodless pencils are useful on big drawings.
The kind that have paper wrappings are best - just break off a chunk and use it sideways like a pastel.
"I do believe that "Fuerst" means nobleman" Yes, that's true. BTW, for all Nongermans: If you don't have äöüß on the keyboard, you should replace it with ae, oe, ue and ss (as Vikram did), then the pronunciation is correct...
http://www.woerther.de/falluebersicht.html
are other German 5.6mm pencils.
link was wrong :-/
only the models "Compact" and "Profil" are 5.6mm
this commentis is totally irrelevt to this post, yet i feel that this is major news in the mechanical pencil world
http://www.cross.com/switch-it/switchithome.aspx?cat_name=Switch_It_Home
the cross switch-it will allow users to turn there old cross ballpoint pens into pencils simply by switcing the refill
I've commented on this elsewhere.
It does work with a couple of niggles. It's only in 0.7mm. It will only hold 3 spare leads. The eraser is so small it's almost invisible to the naked eye.
But if you want a sterling silver Cross pencil or a pencil to match a Townsend pen - get a ballpoint and convert it.
I'm only concerned this will mean the end for the dedicated Cross pencils.
razide, Cult Pens have assorted grades of 5.6mm leads here: http://www.cultpens.com/acatalog/PenFinder.php#lead,ls=5.6
If you are using this for sketching then the leads are available from koh-i-noor. You can also get hard chalk sticks in white, black, sepia and russet.
Any idea where one can buy Fürst products?
In the U.S., the easiest place as of now to get the Fürst 5.6mm pencil is probably through Herb Lester & Associates.
http://herblester.bigcartel.com/
They are selling green ones!
I just bought my first 5.6 mm lead holder, also a German model, but by the company E + M. Like you, I'll only use it for sketching. Thanks for your excellent blog.
Jesse,
Canada
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