My mechanical pencil collection and various related things, thoughts and musings about them, reviews of mechanical pencils and other items, and more. I'm not prejudiced - all forms of pencils and graphite are welcome here, even some ink sneaks in too. You can use the sidebar links to find mechanical pencil reviews and other stuff.
The big day is upon us. Today our future King marries the future Queen. It’s pretty big news in my part of the world. For many the interest and popularity in the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middletonis not necessarily evidence of support for the monarchy but rather support for a seemingly nice couple tying the knot, an excuse for a celebration, some excitement, pomp and ceremony, a distraction from recent disasters and difficult times, etc.
Lots of people are joining in the celebrations in all sorts of ways. Like many ladies, Mrs Dave will be wearing a tiara and veil at work today. Well, the tiara is a little worse for wear because it broke and last night I was dispatched to the shopping mall to buy another one. All the dollar stores, department stores, etc. had been stripped bare. No tiaras or crowns to be found anywhere, so it was super-glue to the rescue. Equally I have heard that it is impossible to hire a wedding gown from any source – genuine wedding hire companies or fancy dress stores. Apparently many ladies are even digging their dresses out of the storage chest. “Wills and Kate Dress Up Wedding Parties” are all the rage, but Mrs Dave will be home, glued to the TV, champagne in hand. Local watering holes are also joining in the festive occasion with promotions such as half price drinks for all ladies in wedding dresses, beauty pageants for the best wedding dress, sluttiest hottest bride, etc.
So, what’s this got to do with mechanical pencils? Well, in the good old days, there’s no doubt we would have had plenty of royal wedding souvenir pencils to buy. You can see various examples of such items in this blog in previous posts such as Royal Tour Pencils, Royal Coronation Pencils and more.
I haven’t gone looking for Wills and Kate souvenir pencils, but have you seen any? Would you buy one? I haven’t had a poll for ages, so, vote in the poll.
******* Edit - The voting on the poll was 17 x Yes and 41 x No.
These days leads come in plastic. I'm far too young to have been around then, but back in the good old days, when life was slower and simpler, before everything came in plastic, lead refills came in...well...lots of different things.
Like glass tubes with stoppers.
Conway Stewart and Eversharp glass tubes - note the square leads.
Also there were all sorts of metal and wood tubes and containers.
Various metal tubes and containers
Special leads in heavy duty metal containers
Of course the claim of extra thin would be laughed at today. More like "thick for strength".
Moving on we have a variety of wooden tubes and containers
I really like these slotted wooden type holders.
Scripto's in wooden holders
0.036" = 0.9mm = 'Extra Thin Lead'
Wooden tubes for politicians?
Of course there were also just plain old cardboard boxes
Picture the group of tech-savvy folk at the café, enjoying their cappuccino and witty repartee when suddenly a light bulb goes off. Ah-ha, a great new idea for an iPhone app! But how to capture the moment and develop it just that little further whilst it’s still fresh in the head and surrounded by inspirational people all eager to assist? Well thanks to Pocket Sketches, the new iPhone sketchbooks are at the ready - a small notebook with a real life size iPhone screen template printed on the page so you can draw and layout exactly how your app will display on an iPhone screen.
Light card cover with 16 pages stapled in.
The paper is printed with faint gridlines, with iPhone template superimposed on one side.
At 89 x 141mm overall size, the notebook is a little smaller than A6.
Well, I don’t actually have an iPhone, and I’m not a tech designer guy, so I just used it as a normal sort of notebook. It worked OK.
Inside front cover. A place to put your contact details so if lost the nice person can return it to you...or at least know whose app idea they are stealing.
Inside rear cover – just look at how much money my app is going to make for me!
The notebook isn’t particularly robust or durable, but then I imagine it is not intended to have a long life. It’s to replace serviettes, hamburger bags, used envelopes and all those other bits of scrap paper that get pressed into service when inspiration suddenly strikes. I haven't really had any expereince with highly specialised notebooks before so this was a novel experience for me, and it seems a really good idea for those in the mobile app industry.
To be honest I’m a little surprised the folk at Pocket Sketches sent me some samples, but for me the notebook was such a specialised and unusual concept that I was happy to accept and put a mini review on the blog. Being tech savvy folk they even included a little sheet suggesting keywords and links to put in the review to help their search engine results ranking.
One of the comments on the recently published Rotring Rapid Pro mechanical pencil review was essentially asking about the differences between the 0.5/0.7mm and the 2mm Rapid Pro mechanical pencils. That’s a good question, and not something really covered in the review, so I will attempt to address it here. In a nut shell, there’s not much difference.
All three lead size models of the Rapid Pro are essentially stylistically and mechanically the same. The only differences are at the ends of the pencils. Lets start at the top.
As you can see the push top buttons have different ends on them. On the 0.5/0.7mm models there is a hole through which you can see the eraser underneath. On the 2mm version there is a black plastic end piece. There is a hole in the black plastic too, you just can’t see it in the photograph. The top button on the 2mm version doubles as a lead sharpener so you stick your lead in through the hole in black plastic, twist and sharpen. I’m not really a 2mm lead user, but the sharpener seems reasonable compared to other integral sharpeners I have tried. Remember the 2mm Rapid Pro is a push top ratchet mechanism mechanical pencil just like the 0.5/0.7mm versions. It is not a traditional clutch pencil with jaws.
If you pull the top buttons off you can see the difference in shape, and that the 2mm version doesn’t have an eraser. Also, the 2mm lead chamber is only big enough to hold one stick of lead at a time so there are no spares. You are writing with the only piece of lead in the pencil.
Now to the other end of the pencil. With lead sleeve retracted the tips look almost identical.
Of course the 0.5/0.7mm versions then have a retractable sliding sleeve whereas with the 2mm version the lead just comes straight out.
The Rotring 600 mechanical pencil is a classic icon in the pantheon of writing instruments. In recent times Rotring released a new pencil which has some similarities to the venerable 600. I refer of course to the Rotring Rapid Pro mechanical pencil. Back in June last year I held a giveaway on this blog for a Rapid Pro, and now it’s time for a review…well actually more than one review, and all three of them are guest reviews…a trifecta of Rotring champions, if you like.
So, here we have the Rotring Rapid Pro family of mechanical pencils - 0.5mm, 0.7mm and 2.0mm, all stylistically the same. The 2mm is a ratchet advance mechanical pencil just like the others. It’s not a clutch pencil.
The winners of my giveaway were Spuddybuddy and Rhonda Eudaly so I present their two reviews here, and the third triumvir is none other than Ovidiu who previously reviewed the mighty Rotring 600 here on this blog. We shall see what he has to say about its new brother, the Rapid Pro.
We will start the tri-review with Spuddybuddy, and in a first for DMP we have a video review.
Yep, no more reading, just sit back, get comortable and enjoy the Spuddybuddy Rotring Rapid Pro Movie below.
Well then, now for a more traditional review, here we have Ovidiu's written review.
************** Rotring Rapid Pro Mechanical Pencil Review - words and images by Ovidiu
The Rotring Rapid Pro is the newest release from the Hamburg based company, part of Sanford, who is also part of Newell Rubbermaid Company. And unlike the Rotring 600 or Rotring 800, officially available only in Japan, the Rapid Pro seems to have worldwide availability and also can be seen on Rotring homepage and also Rotring Catalog from 2010. I really commend Rotring for this bold decision to release, after so many years, a high quality mechanical pencil, that is, as they say, “the perfect professional tool for all sketching, writing and drawing applications”. We really needed a comeback from Rotring. There are three versions of Rotring Rapid Pro available, the 0.5mm, 0.7mm and 2mm and there is only one color available so far, silver, for all of them. The nice thing about the 2mm model is that it features an automatic mechanical pencil mechanism, rather than the standard clutch mechanism usually found in the classic leadholders.
The packaging consists from a grey cardboard box that slides into another which has the word “Rotring” embossed on it. You receive a lot more “package” than with the Rotring 600 for example. Of course, no true professional mechanical pencil comes without the mandatory user manual, in fact a folded sheet of paper, which, in this case, doesn’t refer to the Rapid Pro at all, but to it’s Japanese relatives, Rotring 800 and 600. This could be to the fact the pencil was bought from Japan and it’s quite possible that this manual could differ for other countries.
For sure, the Rotring Rapid Pro is a very nice pencil. Almost all the body is made of brushed metal, with some shiny polished surfaces on the tip of the pencil and the pocket clip. I usually don’t like shiny surfaces on pencils, especially on drafting pencils that I always consider should look more “serious” than the regular ones, but on the Rapid Pro, those touches really look good.
Sideby side : Rotring Rapid Pro and Rotring Rapid
The name alone suggests a resemblance with the Rotring Rapid, an interesting, plastic body / rubber grip pencil with a “vanishing point” mechanism and a very long eraser hidden under the cap.
But in the end, these two pencils don’t have too much in common, besides the fact that both are pocket safe. The Rapid Pro looks more like a Rotring 600 relative than Rapid’s one.
Rotring Rapid Pro flanked by two nice Rotring 600
The Rapid Pro is a very solid, well-made pencil. Writing with it I didn’t fell any play in the parts of the mechanism, which is quite rare these days, even with “pro” pencils. The grip is standard for a drafting pencil with a laser cut diamond like pattern. As you can see from the picture, the grip’s texture is much denser than the one from Rotring 600 and this really feels in use, especially if your fingers get a little sweaty, the Rapid Pro tends to slip much easier. Unlike the Rotring 600, Rapid Pro uses a so called sliding sleeve, which can be hidden inside the body for pocket safety, when the pencil is not in use. This is in fact not the only advantage of this kind of mechanism, because on long writing sessions the sleeve cushions inside the body while the lead consumes itself so this way you don’t need to push the pencil’s cap that often to advance the lead. The sleeve’s length is around 3mm and seems pretty sturdy, without too much play.
The grip texture difference between Rotring 600 and Rotring Rapid Pro
The body is hexagonal, finely brushed, but where the 600’s edges were quite sharp, here are a little rounded. As with the grip, I also find the barrel to be a little too slippery for my liking and since this isn’t a very light pencil, it’s quite a challenge to keep it stable in hand after you write with it for some time. The Rotring trademark, the red ring, is positioned this time between the grip and the barrel. Also, on the barrel the text “Rotring Rapid Pro 0.5” is written in black. There is no indication about the country where it was made anywhere on the pencil.
The shiny things : pocket clip, eraser, the cap, and the lead magazine
The pocket clip looks the same as the one found in Rotring 600, only this time it is polished and shiny. It is also removable.
The cap is also polished and has a small hole on top of it. The eraser is probably identical to the one in Rotring 600… small but functional if you have nothing else on hand. It sits on top of the lead magazine, which is made of metal.
The mechanism is a standard, automatic one, pushing the button the lead is advancing in small steps. The click is a quiet but audible one. Ten clicks will give you around 7mm of lead, just like with the Rotring 600. As you can see there is a fair amount of plastic used.
I was writing with the Rapid Pro for about one month and the impressions are mostly positive, but this should be expected since it resembles in many ways the Rotring 600. The grip is just a little thicker which is good, the sliding sleeve is a very nice and useful addition, since it helps you keep up in long writing sessions without the need to push the button to advance the lead. The build quality is as expected – very good, as it should be on an instrument of this kind.
In the end, probably the greatest thing is that Rotring finally re-opened to the world and decided to continue their rich tradition in producing high quality writing instruments.
Best points : Classic design, very good built quality, sliding sleeve Not so good points : Rotring was a little overzealous with the grip and barrel, a little too slippery for my liking.
Dimensions : Length : 145mm Thickness : 8mm (the barrel – between the points), 8mm for the grip. Price Range : Medium.
**************
Last then, but not least, we have the third part of our tri-review. It's by Rhonda Eudaly and is posted on her own blog. So, no point in duplicating here, this is the link to Rhonda’s Rotring Rapid Pro mechanical pencil review. Head over for a browse.
Well, that’s about it. I think we are all Rotring Rapid Pro’d out. It’s a fine pencil, a worthy addition to the Rotring stable…but will it reach the status of the 600…time will tell.
Please join with me in thanking all three guest reviewers for their sterling efforts, and wish them many years of Rapid Pro enjoyment.
Well the various Dave Turns Five giveaway prizes departed DMP HQ a while ago and reports of their arrival at destination are starting to filter back in. Here are two giveaways that are in the hands of their new owners.
First, the Pentel Sharp Kerry mechanical pencil won by “ThirdeYe”.
Once upon a time there was an innocent young fellow who got a dose of graphite, was lead astray and became a lead junkie, with way too many mechanical pencils.
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