Staedtler Pencil Holder

Check this out over at Pencil Talk. Very interesting pencil holder, pencil extender, pencil thingy. The best of both worlds?

Light Reading

There’s pretty much a book on everything, but when it comes to pencils we aren’t exactly spoiled for choice, even less so when it comes to mechanical pencils.

One of the few pencil books is “The Pencil – A History of Design and Circumstance” by Henry Petroski (434 pages, cA5 softcover, 2004). It’s an interesting read for anyone interested in pencils, although its 99% woodcase pencils and mechanicals only get the occasional minor reference.

There are quite a few books on fountain pens, and since most older pens had matching pencils, these books are also worth reading. My local public library has a couple so I’ve read those.




This week I splashed out and bought a copy of the relatively recently published “Parker Duofold” by David Shepherd and Dan Zazove, in collaboration with the Parker Pen Company (361 pages, A4 softcover, 2006). As expected its 99% Duofold pens, but there are a couple of dedicated pencil pages, and a few other passing references and pictures, particularly as pen pencil sets. I haven’t read the book yet, just skimmed it, but it looks good. Lots of photos, reproductions of bright colourful advertisements, etc. Very easy on the eye. A little bit of light reading for a quiet winter evening.


I do actually have a new Duofold, have to get around to reviewing that after I’ve finished the book. Grrrrrrr….already I can feel the pull of the evil eBay, there must be dozens of Duofold pencils just waiting for my bid.

Mars Micro Comment

OK, I recently received the comment reprinted below.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Staedtler Mars Micro 775 Mechanical Pencil Review": Retractable sleeve is usually a sliding sleeve i.e. it slides upwards during usage. This is good for normal writing. But when it is used against a ruler (or template), the sliding sleeve may be pushed upwards, exposing too much lead and causing a snap. Thus retractable sleeve is usually not the best choice for drafting works.But this is not the case for Mars Micro 775. The sleeve is unique. It is fully retractable and sliding; but once it is fully extended, it will lock into its position. It then behaves exactly like a fixed sleeve that does not slide, which is perfect for drafting works. This is a pocket safe retractable pencil with a "fixed sleeve".I think this is the reason why some strength is needed to have the sleeve "fixed" and un-"fixed".For normal writing, there is no need to fully extend the sleeve. Extending the sleeve 3/4 ways is more than enough, and the sleeve slides while you write.

So, comments and thoughts please. I hadn’t really picked up on this in relation to the Mars Micro. I’ve had a very quick play with my Mars Micro. The Pentel PS315 has a different but somewhat similar sliding fixed sleeve. Anyway, just at the moment I haven’t got time to really get into this matter, so I’m throwing it out to you lot in the hope some of you will check, comment, etc. I’d ask you to put your comments on the original review rather than here on this posting.

Parker Jotter Mechanical Pencil Review

Parker Jotter Mechanical Pencil Review

Way back in the mists of time when I was a little fellow at school, a few of the older children had graduated to a “fancy” pen, a Parker ballpoint. There didn’t seem to be any other choices, seemingly the only fancy pen in the world was a Parker Jotter, although it came in a few different varieties – chrome or gold trim, coloured resin or steel lower body, etc. Well that’s my memory of it all anyway. So, not surprisingly, a Parker Jotter was the very first “good” pen that I ever owned. When I was about eleven and started intermediate school, my parents thought that I had reached that stage where I should have a “decent” pen, so a Parker Jotter arrived. I also had to start wearing a school tie and a cap. A tie! Everyday, all day at school. Anyway, I remember my Jotter was a brushed all-stainless steel model. I quite liked it, but somewhere along the way it got lost.

Currently I own two Parker Jotters. An older brushed stainless mechanical pencil and a new brushed stainless gold trim ballpoint. So strictly speaking this review is of an old Jotter pencil rather than a current production pencil.
The Parker Jotter is a bit of a classic. It’s been around for a long time, and has those long clean smooth classic tapering lines. It looks a plain, simple, no-nonsense but classy sort of writing instrument. It seems to me you normally see the Jotter pencil as part of a ballpoint pen and pencil set, rather than as an individual item.
The Jotter is a standard push top ratchet mechanism pencil, but rather unusually there isn’t an eraser under the top cap. Instead, if you unscrew the top half of the body there is a small eraser there, plugging the top of the lead refill magazine.

The screw thread on my old pencil is a fine machine cut thread, but on my new ballpoint the thread is a coarse rolled thread. I’m sure cost reductions were achieved by this change. But the rolled thread still works OK, and possibly its even better for those folk who seem to have a little trouble starting fine threads and end up cross-threading the damn things!

The body is different too. The pencil is much heavier and feels like the wall section is thicker than on my much lighter new ballpoint. Actually the ballpoint feels so light that in comparison you would think it was made from aluminium. But having said all this, neither Jotter is a heavyweight. Also the style of the end cap has changed – the old cap had a depressed centre, and the new one is a simpler flat topped pressing.

The mechanism on the Jotter is a good positive clicker, with 10 clicks advancing 6mm of lead. I believe it’s only available in 0.5mm lead, which is a little unusual in these days of 0.7mm popularity. The tip is a short cone with a short fixed sleeve about 2mm long. Fine for writing and ruling an occasional line, but there’s no pocket safety here. Also I find the tip looks a bit incongruous. It really breaks the smooth continuous lines of the body. I don’t like it, and I’m sure they could have done something better.

The pocket clip is a good reliable steel clip, and of course it has the trademark arrow design. The clip and top button trims are polished, whereas the body is brushed. As well as providing contrast with the trims, the brushed effect gives you a little something on the grip front, but on a hot humid day, the brushed effect won’t really help much and things might well get a little slippery. With the long tapering body you can grip the pencil anywhere you like, but it’s a fairly narrow body so not really for those who like a “fat” grip.

“PARKER” and “Made in USA” are discretely stamped into the body.

Overall, this is a good pencil, and I like it, but for pure functionality its not too hard to do better.

• Best Points – Classic solid steel.


• Not So Good Points – Tip not retractable.


• Price Range – Mid.

Dimensions – Length 133mm, diameter about 7 - 8mm in the common grip area, 10mm at the widest point. Balance point about 70mm up from the tip.

Sorry about some of these photos not being the best – its actually quite hard taking close ups of a shiny reflective metal object with just a basic camera.

I Love These Guys

Recently my attempts to obtain some Koh-i-noor leads ended in disappointment and an invitation to buy some snake protective clothing?! Well, they’ve upped the ante on me now. These guys are great. I buy a pencil from them, and a few weeks later a big brand new 2007-2008 full colour, A4 size, 728 page catalogue arrives. Totally unasked for. Posted to me all the way from the USA. Talk about chasing my business, and global warming get stuffed.

Its chock full of fantastic stuff. Two of my favourites:-

• “Beaver & Otter Trapping Techniques”, softcover, 114 pages. Awesome. Unfortunately, (a) similarly to snakes, we don’t have any beavers, otters or other such similar things here in NZ; and (b) never seen one, but I think I’d like beavers and otters and don’t really want to trap them. But hey, I’m sure this booklet is full of really interesting practical stuff, and if I’m ever lost in the Canadian wilderness and really really hungry, then I’ll be damn glad I read this booklet.
• “DNA Depot Family DNA ID Card” – an experimental test kit to take and analyse DNA from your family and produce the family DNA tree. Umm, not really sure why a forestry company would be selling this, but just imagine the possibilities… “Hey Mum, how come my DNA looks like yours but doesn’t look anything like Dads?” My mind just boggles. Think of all the lawsuits for “emotional torment” from incorrect test results, let alone the lawsuits from the correct test results! This test kit is just mayhem and mischief packaged up in a box!

It’s almost enough to make me take up a career in the forestry industry just so I can legitimately shop with these guys.

Uni Return’s Mechanical Pencil

Right-o, here we have snippet number three from my “Japanese Sampler”, the Uni Return’s M5-318 0.5mm mechanical pencil by Mitsubishi Pencil. So thanks again to my friend from Japan for sending these.

It’s a relatively lightweight all-plastic pencil, although its internals are mostly metal. I quite like the look and rose pick colour scheme of my particular pencil, but the rubber grip really spoils things for me. The rubber grip is a cheap looking translucent matt finish that just doesn’t go with the glossy transparent remainder of the pencil. Also its one of those useless rubber grips that is hard and not really all that “grippy”. Why bother?
When I first open my Japanese Sampler package and had a quick play with all the pencils, I was a little disappointed that one of them was broken. It was this one, the Uni Return’s. You see, it wouldn’t advance the lead. I tried feeding new lead in, both from the magazine and through the tip, I pulled it apart several times, and so on. But it was just erratic, sometimes it advanced lead, sometimes it didn’t and sometimes it…and then it started to dawn on me. Things suddenly became clear. They didn’t call it Uni Return’s for nothing. So, this is a seemingly normal push top ratchet lead advance mechanism, but really it’s not. If you push down lightly on the top of the pencil lead is advanced, BUT, if you push down hard the lead is retracted, i.e. returned. Well, hands up, I surrender, you got me, I’ve never seen or heard of this before. There's sort of an extra little collar piece inside the tip mechanism, and when you push down hard it is pushed forward to grip the lead stick and then drag it back when you release the pressure.
I imagine if I could read Japanese the writing on the little stickers on the pencil would have alerted me to this double function, but I don’t, so they didn’t. Though intrigued, and in awe at the creative concept and engineering process that put this mechanism together, I am ultimately not a fan of the Return’s. You see, it’s easy to push too hard, to retract the lead when you really wanted to advance it. Particularly when I was at work and in a bit of a hurry, or some fool had just irritated me and my pencil was bearing the brunt of my frustration, I’d be pressing down hard on that pencil and no damn lead was coming out.

You know they even have it worked out so that one "return" click will retract about 4 or 5 lengths of "advance" clicks. Basically one return click will always retract the whole lead even if you have over-advanced it a couple of times. Good thinking.

So, hey, good on you Mitsubishi Pencil, fascinating idea, just doesn’t quite work in the real world. Well at least in my world anyway.