Large Erasers

I'm compiling a list of currently available mechanical pencils with extendable erasers. Since I don't have or know of that many, I'd appreciate your assistance. I've compiled my draft list over on my sandbox play site, so if you you feel like helping please leave a comment over there. Thanks.

A Really Bad Pencil

I recently saw an auction for a rather weird pencil, and I bought it. From the markings on the case it appears to be an H & S brand number 485 Copper-Pencil, made in Germany.The case is wooden, you just pull the two tight fitting halves apart. The auction taught me a new word as the case was described as a treen case. My dictionary says treen = small domestic wooden antique.The pencil tip is a hard blue substance, quite a beautiful colour really. It doesn’t write though! A little bit of post auction web research has lead me to this conclusion – it’s a copper sulphate pencil, once used by doctors and vets to burn flesh off their patients. Gaarrrrr ! The mind-boggles. Thanks to the long term harmful effects of the local sun, I, like most Pakeha, am familiar with getting bits of me burned off by the doctor, but at least these days they use liquid-nitrogen which is quick and easy and usually only in the “sharp sting” rather than “serious pain” category. No manly stoic façade here, I just cringe thinking about this pencil being used to chemically burn bits off me.

It appears copper is still used on horses, but I won’t be telling my pony-mad nieces about that.For humans the references I found for these copper pencils are mostly medical journals from the late 1800’s and usually in relation to treating conjunctivitis and other eye-infections. Apply the pencil to the eyelids to burn off the infected and granulated flesh. They ain’t kiddin’. Here’s an extract from the memoirs of a British doctor in the Near East in the late 1930’s. It seems eye infections were extremely common amongst desert peoples.
“In the long summers most out-patients had conjunctivitis and they came by the hundred for 'drops'. The more threatening condition was trachoma which affected the upper lid and could deform the thin 'plate' that kept it in shape. This led to the eyelashes wiping the cornea and, when someone cut them short they scratched it. To prevent the cornea becoming opaque, the patient came as an out-patient to hospital for an operation. The common treatment for trachoma was to pencil the inside of the lid with the 'hajar gehennam', the 'stone of hell', a copper sulphate pencil.”
Here’s another bit of a shocker from the same doctor, “The thin strip of mucous membrane was cut from the patients lower lip. It was anaesthetised with a solution of cocaine. Cocaine has such a bad reputation these days that I must digress and mention how else it was so marvellous for us. A shepherd boy had been drinking water from a jar with a thin spout, pouring it straight down his throat. It contained a leech and when I saw him, it was hanging down from one of his vocal cords. It was with a solution of cocaine that I sprayed his throat so that he would not feel my instruments trying to grab the thing. We were both very patient and won in the end.”
Never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Well, I don't really know what it feels like to have a copper pencil used on you, maybe it's not all that bad, but the whole concept just seems painful and wrong. Copper sulphate isn't generally in the same nasty league as things like sulphuric acid, but I just don't see having a piece of 'the stone of hell' stuck in my eye as being an enjoyable experience.

Pantone Universe Coloured Pencils

By Crikey, when it comes to wooden coloured pencils, I’m not sure it gets any better than this!Pantone Universe coloured pencils. A whole tin of 24.Sqaure cross-section. Awesome stuff (and priced to match)

Each pencil is printed with its Pantone colour number and the details of number, name and emotional response are printed on the tin.Thus we do not merely have light blue, deep red and black, we have:
15-4343 “Ethereal Blue” – idyllic, balmy, pacifying.
18-1741 “Raspberry Wine” – tasteful, cultivated, discriminating.
19-0812 “Turkish Coffee” – plausible, robust, practical.

Don’t ask me how they sharpen, draw, erase, feel in the hand or anything. It's not as if I'm actually going to use them.

Pentel Technica-X PW45 Mechanical Pencil Review

Pentel Technica-X PW45 Mechanical Pencil Review

Maybe lots of people will disagree with me, but I’m always somewhat surprised by how few Pentel mechanical pencils have retractable sleeves. Pentel really seem to prefer fixed sleeves on their pencils which is fine, but not so good for the general writer and their pocket. So, I thought it was time I got around to the Technica-X, a Pentel vanishing point pencil.

Right, well let’s start with the mechanism, seeing it’s the main point for me choosing this pencil. Personally I prefer to call such mechanisms vanishing points rather than this crazy “double-knock” that seems to be gaining ground from, presumably, some Japanese mis-translation. Double-action would make sense, but double-knock is just nonsensical. So, usual story with such mechanism – the first push on the push-top button advances the whole tip section out of the body and locks it in place. Subsequent light pushes activate the ratchet lead advance mechanism, 10 clicks will get you 5mm of lead. A heavy full push releases the spring loaded system to retract the whole tip section back up inside the body. Great stuff. The ultimate in pocket safety and lead sleeve protection. In this case the lead sleeve is a thin 2mm tube. There is a fraction of play in the tip section so those who cannot stand any lead wobble and value super-precision should probably not purchase the Technica-X. But really, it’s only a fraction, unnoticeable in normal use.The push top ratchet lead advance is very nice and smooth. I’m sure the marketing folk would be saying something like “New improved super-smooth easy-action”. Hmmmm, almost too smooth and easy. I actually had a little trouble with being too heavy handed and thus retracting the tip when I only wanted to advance the lead. Still, you get used to such things, and I don’t really want to detract from my overall very favourable impression of this vanishing point mechanism.

Right, well that’s the mechanism. What about the grip? It’s a fairly standard sort of rubber grip. A medium hardness compound so there is the tiniest fraction of movement under hand pressure. The grip diameter is a little on the wider side of average. There are concentric grooves to improve the grip. (?!?) As with many rubber grips, I am unimpressed by the surface of the rubber feeling slightly slippery, almost as if it has some oil or silicon on it. I note that a long finger-like part of the rubber grip moulding runs up the main bodyThis doesn’t appear to have any purpose and makes me suspect it’s simply covering up something – like the slot where a side clicker button would go. I was intending to do some comparisons with my other pencils and see if the PW45 main body was the body of some other pencil, but circumstances have conspired to scotch that idea. So, if you happen to do the comparison, let us know.

The usual “occasional-use only” small eraser is found under the push-top button. You remove the eraser to access the lead magazine. It is difficult to put the top-button back on without operating the lead-advance mechanism.The pocket clip works well. It slides easily onto a shirt pocket, and off when required. The tip of the clip is clearly a bit better than many similar tips that are simply folded under to make the clasp.

In the hand the overall feel of the Technica-X is quite good. It’s a got a little more weight than most similarly sized plastic pencils and the balance is good. I quite like the smooth flowing shape of the overall look. Smooth and streamlined. Markings on the body are “Pental Japan” moulded in at the top of the body, and “Technica-X, PW45, 0.5, 9b” printed on the body. The “9b” is very small, and I’ve got no idea what it signifies.Bearing in mind the price range this pencil fits into, it’s a pretty good score. With this in mind I’m surprised Pentel USA only offer it in 2 versions - 0.5mm red body or black body. Does this imply it’s not a great seller?

• Best Points – Vanishing point.
• Not So Good Points – Not much really - the rubber grip?
• Price Range – Economy.

Dimensions – Length 13mm, diameter 11mm at widest part of grip. Balance point about 60mm up from the tip.

Upgrade

It’s finally happened, I’ve joined the real world and upgraded to broadband internet access. Yes all this time I’ve been running this blog and surfing the net on dial-up access. Having written a typical mechanical pencil review in MS Word it’s then usually 30 to 60 minutes to upload it to Blogger and paste in the photos. Hopefully speedy internet will halve that. Of course the (so called) broadband speed I have, and the price I pay, would get my ISP prosecuted for fraud and racketeering in most countries, but that’s they way things are down here.

At a time like this it’s good to keep ones feet on the ground and recall where it all started. Just in case you haven’t already seen this, here’s the oldest known pencil in existence.

http://www.pencilpages.com/gallery/oldest.htm

Rite In The Rain

I found a parcel in my letterbox the other day. I’m not sure what I did to deserve it, but Stephen from Pencil Talk sent me some Musgrave, FSC Canada and Papermate Canadiana Naturals wooden pencils. I haven’t seen any of these before so it was good to get them. However, the main contents of the parcel were four notebooks. A small black ‘Moleskine’, a brown ‘Field Notes’, an orange ‘Rhodia’ Bloc No 08 and a ‘Rite in The Rain’ No 393 All-Weather Spiral. Fantastic stuff. I’ve seen Moleskines locally for astronomical mind-boggling prices, but the others I have only seen on the net and I don’t think they are imported down here. As indicated by my blog sidebar link to Black Cover I am interested in notebooks.

I like that the Field Notes notebook has tick-boxes to indicate a ‘handsome reward’ (or not) for returning a lost notebook. More than that though, the inside back cover has very detailed product specifications, and an excellent list of ‘Practical Applications’ for the use of the notebook.
I do a fair bit of note taking out in the field for my bird studies, but it’s generally in fine weather. Telescopes and binoculars don’t work that well in the rain for the sort of work that I do, so I don’t really have too much trouble with wet notebooks. However, the Rite In The Rain is a most intriguing product and I couldn’t resist giving it a proper try-out. One of our recent former Prime Ministers described our country as “irreducibly pluvial”. The dictionary tells me he meant it rains an awful lot, so I only had to wait a few days for the weather report to include “frequent showers, some thundery and very heavy”. So it was on with my best raincoat, storm-pocket filled with a Rite In The Rain notebook, and three test pencils – Staedtler Mars Lumograph HB and 2B, and a BIC #2 mechanical pencil. I wanted to try different lead grades as well as ceramic and polymer leads. Taking inspiration from ‘Field Notes’, I decided on a route that would allow me achieve nine of their Practical Applications.

Right, lets not beat about the bush, the Rite In The Rain is fantastic. It works. Period. Full stop. Woodcase and mechanical pencil leads both wrote as if the paper was dry. In a particularly heavy thunder shower I rubbed my hand all over the page so it was totally wet, and made sure I wrote through an unbroken film of running water. To all intents and purposes I was writing underwater, but it was basically just like writing on dry paper.

Sorry about the state of handwrting, but I've got a good reason - driving rain, freezing wind, hands shaking, notebook balanced on my knee, etc, etc, etc.

Here’s a quick 2-minute sketch of the golf course where I stopped. Note the absence of golfers at 8.30am on a weekend morning. It was driving rain on the tee rather than driving off from the tee.
What I did notice though is that the paper did absorb water in from its edges. This became a bit of a concern with the spiral binding. All those square holes for the wire spiral make a lot of edges and I became concerned about the pages becoming soggy, weak and tearing out. I think I would personally look to use a stapled notebook rather than spiral bound because of this. Also the wet pages did tend to stick together a little. Still all this is minor stuff in the big picture. Pencil is normally pretty useless on wet or damp paper, but not on Rite In The Rain paper. I suspect erasability is a little reduced on dry paper, and out in the rain the difference between HB and 2B lead grades seemed reduced.

Back home, I wasn’t sure how to dry out the wet notebook. I was a little surprised there was nothing printed about this in the notebook. I decide to blot off the excess moisture with a towel, and then put the notebook in the linen cupboard to air. The paper dried out reasonably unaffected although there is a little wrinkling. I checked the Rite In The Rain website but couldn’t find any drying instructions either, but one of the “User Stories” was an acquaintance of mine! The guy thrown overboard with his notebook on the way to Guam.

Just for the record, my walk achieved the following Practical Applications:
03-Inspired Ramblings
05-Shoddy Sketches
06-Half-Ass Calculations
12-Small Ideas/Notions
17-Escape Routes
23-Phone Numbers
24-Treasure Maps
26-Topographic Studies
28-Scrapbook Fodder

So, get yourself out in the rain.