Parker Esprit Mechanical Pencil Review

Parker Esprit Mechanical Pencil Review

So here I am, back again nearly four years on from my last review, and I am effectively picking up where I left off because back when I gave up on this blog, the Parker Esprit was next in line for review.

Parker launched the Esprit back in 2008, and some sites suggest the target market was businesswomen looking for a small relatively minimalistic but colourful writing instrument. 

First thing out of the box, a very nice protective carry case for your Esprit. That certainly does strike me as something suited to a ladies handbag.

Open up and we have the mechanical pencil, or pen. It certainly is a bright colourful object in metallic blue and chrome trim.

The Esprit is a telescoping design, so you carry it retracted and then you extend it to write. Officially to me it is a mini-pencil. The Esprit is though fully functional when retracted, so if you just have to scribble a quick note or you are happy with a short pencil then the lead advances whilst retracted and you can write away.

Retracted

To extend the pencil you simply pull the front section out of the main body. It has a rather satisfying suction sort of feel as you pull the front section out and a definite stop at the end. You then twist the two sections through about a quarter turn to lock them in position.

Extended

I really like the little graphic printed on the barrel showing the lead size and indicating the direction of turn to lock the extension in place.

To retract you simply reverse the process, but that worries me a little. My Esprit mechanical pencil has a rather metal on metal sort of feel and sound during the retraction process and I wonder over time if somehow the barrel is going to get scuffed. I must stress there’s not actual physical sign of that; it’s just a suggestion from the feel and sound of it. If you are a bit heavy handed then when the barrel hits the retracting end stop you can accidently activate the lead advance.

The lead advance mechanism is a standard push top ratchet. 10 clicks will get you 7mm of lead. As usual there is a small eraser under the top cap, and you remove it to access the lead refill chamber. The pocket clip is quite strong.

In the hand the Esprit feels quite light. The grip section does not feel particularly positive and the ringed grooves are certainly a necessary feature.

Well, I am not a businesswoman, and might not be the target market, but I liked the Esprit well enough. It is a lightweight colourful attractive interesting mechanical pencil for carrying around in a purse or bag. Apart from the carry case it’s certainly as unisex as most other mechanical pencils out there. I suspect though that Parker have decided the Esprit is on its way out so availability will decline.

•    Best Points – Interesting telescoping design
•    Not So Good Points – Not pocket safe without the carry case.
•    Price Range – Mid
•    Does this pencil make it into the Top 5? – No

Dimensions – Length 124mm extended and 106mm retracted, diameter 10mm across the grip section. Balance point about 70mm up from the tip when extended.

Social Slencil Mechanical Pencil

The Magnificent Seven - Part 5

The Social Slencil Mechanical Pencil

by Pencil Paul

The SOCIAL SLENCIL, mechanical pencil invention and lifelong work of Carl C Harris.

The pencil shown is a recent introduction to the Slencil line for me. I could not resist the central lead advance wheel coupled with the slightly Buck Rogers styling. The first models were introduced in 1933 and named the Stag, my pencil as shown is the later Social Slencil, copyright shows 1945 on the paperwork. Running alongside the pencil range were companion slim notepads also produced by The Slencil Company of Orange, Mass, U.S.A, and when you consider the bulk and fuss of carrying a fountain pen and address book of the period it all makes very good sense - a place to record the date of the Pony Club Diner & Dance or a swift note home to the folks from the front line. The super little Social Slencil, the way to take notes long before the advent of the personal electronic PA, barely 115mm long and approx. 2mm thick! The pencil is loaded by inserting 1mm lead into the nose point and pressing it into the clutch mechanism, then it can be adjusted by means of the centre wheel. The eraser is inside the end removable cap along with storage space for spare leads. That this tiny item of engineering was a success is born out by the fact that the company is still going strong producing new plastic versions of TOMORROW'S PENCIL.


Social Slencil Mechanical Pencil

Koh-I-Noor 5608 Notebook Pencil

From far away, and an embarrasingly long time ago, a parcel arrived in my letterbox. Amongst the contents was this interesting little fellow. The Koh-I-Noor 5608 Notebook 2mm mechanical pencil.

The 115mm length and 7mm diameter belie it's rather surprisingly substantial presence in the hand. Thats clearly an effect of the knurled grip zone and its weight to size ratio from all that metal componentry.
It's an ordinary push top ratchet mechanism pencil, but the lead is an 80mm length of 2mm diameter. Only one lead fits in the pencil, there is no spare carried inside. A replacement lead is fed in through the tip rather than in through the top end. Although not my favourite size, 2mm lead would suit many for writing quick rough and ready notes, particularly where thinner leads might get broken from the rough and tumble of being carried around in a bag, or where the writing situation is not ideal. There is no eraser under the top cap, rather it unscrews to reveal a lead sharpener.

It's a particularly vicious looking little sharpener. Lots of nasty little fangs to attack the lead.

Just FYI - you can unscrew things and remove the pocket clip.

Thanks to Nick from Hungary for sending this to me.

Giveaway Feedback 3

Palimpsest was the winning girl in the 5th Birthday Giveaway 1, and she has kindly sent in a few words and pictures of her winnings. So, over to Palimpsest.

How wonderful to get a parcel in the post – and with a handwritten letter too. Many thanks to Dave’s Mechanical Pencils. The pencil within  is the Tasche SP-10T Ohto Japan. A mini mechanical pencil just over 100mm long but post the cap and it becomes a full-sized writing instrument. Cap and barrel are made of aluminium – lower part of the barrel is silver, the other half and the cap is a smoky pink. The tip, trim and clip are chrome. Unscrew the top and a mini eraser is revealed.

Performance? The Tasche SP-10T Ohto is a smooth writer producing a nice dark line. There is one disadvantage. The top of the barrel is a wobbly affair. By pressing it down a fresh pencil tip is revealed. When it doesn’t serve that purpose it rotates freely to the annoyance of this user. When the cap is posted the barrel is inadvertently pressed down to produce more pencil lead. This can be prevented by holding on to the chrome ring rather than the barrel when posting.

Eraser is so tiny that it must be used in emergencies only. But then trembling hands can hardly cope with the fiddly task of unscrewing the top. And it takes more than 5 seconds to complete the task.

Still, the mini Tasche is a winner for portability and smooth writing. And as all mechanical pencils it promises to go where no pencil sharpener can follow.

Thanks Palimpsest.
Just FYI, for anyone interested, here's my review of the Ohto Tasche mechanical pencil.

Filofax Organiser Mechanical Pencil Review

Filofax Organiser Mechanical Pencil Review

Until recently I didn’t even know there was a Filofax range of mechanical pencils and other writing instruments. For their organisers, Filofax’s website claims a heritage heading back towards World War 1 and an initial popularity with the military and the clergy - “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition”? In the field of mechanical pencils Yard-O-Led have arguably the oldest and most prestigious lineage. “Ummm, what’s your point?” I hear you ask. Well, these days Filofax and Yard-O-Led are both part of the Letts Filofax Group. Filofax brand and Yard-O-Led brand mechanical pencils are both detailed on the Filofax website. So, with that heritage and association you would expect a Filofax brand mechanical pencil to be better than average.
The mechanical pencil featured in this review is the Filofax Organiser pencil, which is listed on the Filofax website as the Mini Classic Pencil – Ribbed (Filofax), item code 561152. The website notes that it fits all Filofax organisers.

Well first off, a big tick for Filofax. Right there, with the pencil, there are five spare erasers. Now they are only small emergency use erasers, but it’s great to see someone supplying spare erasers with the initial purchase. It always strikes me as extremely cheap and penny-pinching that the prestige brands don’t chuck in a few spare erasers and a tube of lead refills when you buy one of their expensive pieces of jewellery that doubles as a mechanical pencil.

The Filofax Organiser pencil is of course a mini pencil so it is clearly only intended for short duration use. If you have smallish hands you could probably use it as an everyday pencil, but those with extra large hands will struggle. The ribbed design on the bright shiny silvery body certainly looks smart and it won’t look out of place in any situation where you had your Filofax organiser out for the world to see. I should be clear that I don’t have a Filofax organiser, but I do see them around and so have a passing familiarity with them.

The shiny metallic body doesn’t provide fantastic grip, but for short duration note taking that’s probably not an issue. At 22grams the Organiser pencil is quite weighty for a small mechanical pencil, and combined with its short stature this does give it a reasonably substantial feel in your hand. It is certainly one of the noisiest mechanical pencils around. It always seems to have a rattle or ring when you pick it up, use it, twirl it in your fingers, etc. Some may like that, some may not.

The pocket clip is good and strong; you need not worry about your pencil slipping off whatever you clip it to.

The top cap is a bit of a weak point in the design of this mechanical pencil. Firstly it’s clearly not the same metal as the body so it sort of looks dull or tarnished compared to the bright body. Secondly when you push fit it back onto the pencil it can go on at quite a wide range of angles and thus frequently isn’t on straight.

The lead advance mechanism is a standard push top ratchet. It is quite a noisy clicky mechanism. Ten clicks will only get you about 5mm of the 0.7mm lead, which is a rather short amount. The lead sleeve is a short fixed pipe, but for a pencil designed to be carried in a folder, pocket safety isn’t really an issue. There is a lot of spring cushioning on the sleeve so combined with 0.7mm lead its pretty hard to have a breakage. The eraser is beneath the top cap, and you remove it to access the lead refill chamber. I had some trouble refilling the leads as the chamber and entrance hole are quite small and tight such that new leads may interfere with the stick of lead already in the mechanism. I would personally suggest no more than 2 spare leads at any one time.

Well, that’s about all I have to say, so to close this is a good mini pencil as part of your organiser system.

• Best Points – It looks small but classy.
• Not So Good Points – The top cap as discussed above.
• Price Range – Mid.
• Does this pencil make it into the Top 5? - No.

Dimensions – Length 112mm, diameter 9mm.

NOTE
This Filofax Organiser pencil was supplied by Euroffice, an office supplies specialist in the UK, in exchange for a review of the pencil and an acknowledgement.

Filofax and Yard-O-Led

Filofax centre ring

Papermate Pacer Mini Mechanical Pencil

What a surprise! I was in a large stationery and office supplies store the other day and there were three new mechanical pencils on display. Three new models offered on the local market! Astonishing. Now, two of them were BICs and I’d seen them on overseas websites, but the third was a Papermate that had previously escaped my attention. I wouldn’t normally have purchased any of these new mechanical pencils, but the Papermates were very cheap, and it was such a red letter day I decided to hand over some coins and get a couple. I’m not going to review it, but here’s the Papermate Pacer Mini.

Pacer Mini with clear transparent body and coloured translucent end section/pocket clip.Mini eraser under the end section. The Mini is 114mm long with the sleeve retracted, and the rubber grip is 11mm diameter at its widest point.

Well anyway, at the price it was for sale at, it seems a useful little offering for the pocket or purse.

Now, I decided to take the barcode sticker off one of my Mini’s and it left a horrible sticky mess behind. I hate that, particularly because there’s no need for it. Anyway, in the past I have usually used a citrus based cleaner to remove the goo but I remembered that back at the beginning of the year ‘Anonymous’ left a comment on my Guestbook that a good quality eraser like Staedtler Mars Plastic was ideal for removing this sort of label goo. Well, they were right. It did. Nice and easy. I tried a soft PVC-Free eraser first and it wasn’t much good, but then Mars Plastic took it off no worries. I think the hardness is probably the key rather than the actual eraser material. So next time this happens to you, I recommend trying a vinyl eraser.

For ink-folk there is also the BP version, the Sport Mini, which has a reverse sort of colour scheme to the Pacer Mini, namely coloured transparent body and clear end section/pocket clip.

Swank Mechanical Pencil

Here’s an interesting little mini mechanical pencil. It measures 77mm long, (that’s pretty much smack on 3” for non-metric folk), and the body is 5mm square section. It’s a nice shiny golden colour, but no, it’s not gold.

Now you can use it as a pencil, as is…
Or you can pull it out of the body…Looks rather smart with that lined pattern. Quite classy really. I don’t know the correct name for that pattern – perhaps light godron? The eraser is unused but rather old and hardened, and stuck tight in the body. Anyway, the pencil is a tip feed as you would expect from an older 1.18mm screw mechanism mechanical pencil.

Stamped into the body is “SWANK, PAT. PEND.”. That’s the only markings on the pencil. So, a quick bit of internet searching, and now I’m just blithely repeating internet information here, so it could well be rubbish, but apparently Swank is a US jewellery company founded in Massachusetts in 1897. Originally they manufactured and distributed men's and women's costume jewellery and during World War I they made dog tags for the US military. After WWI they changed focus to produce only men's jewellery and accessories. They are still going today, and apparently their products are common in US department stores. (OK, don’t leave me hanging here, nip out to your local mall and confirm or deny this.)

Right, so much for that company history and unpaid advertorial. What exactly is my mechanical pencil? A few vintage and antique dealer websites show this pencil and most describe it as a mechanical pencil tie-clip.


Others say it’s a mechanical pencil money-clip.
Ha! I hope at least some of you appreciate that I had to dig my ties out of storage, and go to the bank especially for those shots - I don’t normally carry any Rutherfords in my wallet. Some unkind people have suggested moths are more likely in my wallet. How rude! The cheek of them! In case you haven’t noticed, most photos in this posting are clickable for hi-res. Yep, revel in the sartorial elegance of those ties.

Now, those sites mentioned above usually state the pencil is marked U.S. PAT. 124227 and some claim known provenance back to the 1940 - 50’s from Granddad. My pencil says “Pat. Pend.” so it presumably predates that. Some sites claim it dates to the early 1900’s. Anyway, however old it is, it’s a nice little novelty pencil and I’m glad to have it.

Lamy Spirit (Model 163) Mechanical Pencil Review

Lamy Spirit (Model 163) Mechanical Pencil ReviewHere we have another rather unusual offering from Lamy of Germany. The Spirit mechanical pencil comes in two variants – model 161 in high gloss stainless steel and model 163 in palladium. My pencil is the palladium variant, and it is palladium plated rather than pure palladium, because, well, palladium is really expensive. Rough ballpark figures, but depending on the grade, US $10 would get you something like 1 or 2 kg (2 -4 lbs) of stainless steel or alternatively you could exchange your US $10 note for about 0.001 kg of palladium. Thus I feel comfortable with my theory of palladium plated rather than pure palladium.

The Spirit is clearly intended for storage in confined spaces – inside a compendium, cheque book, purse pocket, etc. Its construction is reasonably simple, the whole pencil consisting of two major assemblies, which I think of as the “mechanism” and the “body”. The “body” starts out as flat sheet metal punched to the correct shape. The edges are then folded up and around to make the traditional round body and the end folded over to form a pocket clip. The "mechanism" (including tip section, etc) is then secured inside the body and the pencil is essentially complete. You can see the join where the two wings of the body are folded around to butt up against each other.In the past questions have been raised about some expensive pencils having push top mechanisms whereby over time the push top will scratch and wear against the body thus becoming unsightly. I am pleased to report that Lamy have placed a plastic sleeve inside the top folded section up by the pocket clip so that the push top button should not scratch and wear over time as it is clicked up and down. You can hopefully make out the black plastic sleeve in the photo below.The whole central column is the “mechanism”, and moves up and down when you activate the push top ratchet lead advance mechanism. You can’t hold that section when you push the top button or it won’t “push”. Ten clicks of the mechanism will get you about 8mm of 0.5mm lead.

Beneath the push top button is one of the smallest erasers around. On the other hand they give you quite a long length which you can adjust up as required. There is also a needle for clearing lead jams. (No, I will not be putting the Spirit onto my list of mechanical pencils with extendable erasers.) The tip section is a fixed short conical sleeve. General writing purposes only and only semi pocket safe. Up at the other end of the pencil the pocket clip is quite strong and flexible. Its does a good job although the ball on the end of it didn’t always facilitate an easy slide on to papers or pocket.The rows of tiny holes punched in the main central grip section of the body provide an interesting aesthetic element. To one degree or another they must also help improve the grip. However, this pencil is narrow, thin even. At only 6mm (1/4 in) diameter the main grip section is not going to win any awards for comfort. You’ll never see one of those “Recommended by the Arthritis Foundation” stickers on the Lamy Spirit. For a person like me who has a medium sized hand and good dexterity the Spirit is perfectly fine for short duration occasional use. Taking some notes at a meeting, scribbling a list in a notebook on the run – no problems; but regular daily use for lengthy durations at a time, well, I suggest you look for another pencil. That is not what the Spirit was really made for. To give you an idea just how thin the Spirit is, here below it is pictured with a Forest Choice woodcase pencil, a Lamy Scribble and a Lamy 2000.The Spirit is an all-metal mechanical pencil, and despite being so narrow it weighs in at 15 grams and outweighs many a much bulkier plastic pencil. The balance point is obviously down towards the tip and that combines to make the Spirit feel surprisingly substantial in the hand. Deep in thought? Need something to help keep those mental cogs turning, well I thoroughly recommend this pencil when it comes to twiddling around with in your fingers.

Thought for the Day: Imagine the shock if Lamy produced an “ordinary” mechanical pencil. Now that would be radical.

• Best Points – Unusual looks without looking cheap or fragile.
• Not So Good Points – For its intended role as a compendium type pencil there aren’t really any bad points that i want to mention.
• Price Range – Mid / High.

Dimensions – Length 143mm, diameter 6mm at grip zone. Balance point about 65mm up from the tip.

Note: I have tagged this posting with the mini pencil label because although its length precludes it from being a true mini pencil, the Spirit is intended for many of the same applications as a mini pencil.

A Mini Mini

Here’s a real mini pencil. Only 65mm (2 ½ in.) long, plus a little tassel cord. I suspect it was marketed as a golf pencil back in the 1960’s or so. You twist the metal tip to advance or retract the lead.