Faber-Castell 1117

It is probably superfluous to write about the Faber-Castell 1117. Not because it is a very common pencil everybody knows about, but because this pencil is not new to the blogosphere. It has previously been reviewed at penciltalk and this isn’t its first appearance at Bleistift either: the 1117 was the supporting actor in the review of the Deli pencil sharpener 0668. So why do I write about it again? The reason is that I thought Faber-Castell stopped producing this entry level pencil – after I was unable to buy this pencil in shops that sold this specific model previously. Before you panic: Calm down, dear. The good news is that Faber-Castell confirmed that they are still making the 1117.

Price

My guess is that the 1117 is the cheapest pencil made in Germany1. Today, you can find the version without ferrule and eraser for as little as € 0.20 (~ 28¢; 17p), if you buy them in Germany  over the Internet. That’s a bit more than half the Internet price of a Staedtler Noris and about ¼ of a good Internet price for the Castell 9000. I bought the last few dozen in the local stationery shop Schreibwaren Jäcklein in my home town of  Volkach when I went there in April. eraser-tipped 1117s for € 0.58 each (~ 82¢; 51p) and the untipped 1117s for € 0.36 each (~ 51¢; 32p). Last November I bought the eraser tipped 1117s in B for € 0.29 each (~ 41¢; 25p), online at Schule-Uni-Shop / CTK, but CTK do not stock the 1117 any more.

Writing qualities

The lead of the 1117 could be better, there is not doubt about that, but in good Faber-Castell tradition it does last a long time before it wears down and needs sharpening. Once the pencil it dull or blunt it is, at least in my experience, less pleasant to write with. This is however quite normal for inexpensive pencils and only very few pencils would excel in this category. The 1117 is however usually quite smooth and there would be very few combinations of paper and pencil point state that would result in a scratchy writing experience. The lead could be darker, but this is again something we shouldn’t be surprised about as Faber-Castell measure and label the softness of the lead quite conservatively. The 1117 shows no problems with smudging when being erased erased. I would describe the eraser from the eraser-tipped version as “normal quality”. It performs a bit worse than the eraser of a Dixon Ticonderoga , is similar to the eraser of a General’s Semi-Hex, but much better than the white eraser of the Palomino Blackwing.2

Overall

This is an extremely cheap, or better: inexpensive,  pencil and value for money is definitely excellent.  Production of the 1117 started in 1991/1992 (20th anniversary soon!). When this pencil was first introduced it was unfinished, but for hygienic reasons later versions got a protective finish. The feel is however very similar to an unfinished pencil. Depending on your perspective this means that the pencil has a great grip or it is slightly too rough and therefore uncomfortable. The version without ferrule and eraser is available in 2B, B, HB and H. I have seen the eraser-tipped version in B and HB, but according to the label on the box the eraser-tipped version is available in five grades. All versions feature SV-bonded anti-break leads.

Næturvaktin, episode 8: Is Ólafur giving Daníel a Faber-Castell 1117? Will there be a pencil in the US remake? (Image © Saga Film)


Prices: November 2010, April 2011 and June 2011

Exchange rates: June 2011

I would like to thank Ms Schaklies from Faber-Castell for the additional information about the 1117.

The photo of Ólafur handing over a pencil to Daníel has been taken from episode 8 of the great, Icelandic comedy Næturvaktin. I believe that the use of this image falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

 

  1. Probably even the cheapest pen [↩]
  2. In case you wonder why I picked these two for the comparison: Those pencils were just lying on my keyboard. Thanks to Sean, Kent and Adair for these. [↩]

And now for something completely different

Lexikaliker’s banana ginger cake looked so tempting, how could I resist?

While I was preparing the dough I realised that some of the ingredients link to the pencil friends I got to know during the last one or two years. The butter was from Denmark (Hej Henrik) and I even used a cake tin that came from the same Danish company. Most of the ingredients were obviously British (Hello Bruce) and the recipe was from Germany (Hallo Gunther). I thought the ginger was bought from a US-American company (Hi Sean), but it turns out this chain isn’t American at all. I do have honey from New Zealand (Kia Ora David) and some very strong Canadian bread flour in the cupboard (Hi Stephen), but both were not needed for this recipe. What a shame I couldn’t include the countries from all my pencil friends.

Not easy to recognise: that's suppossed to be Lexikaliker's logo on the cake

 

Lexikaliker’s recipe has been slightly adjusted to fit the ingredients I could get:

  • 125 g butter
  • 150 g sugar
  • one pack of vanilla sugar (occasionally available from Lidl UK)
  • 2 eggs
  • 50 g starch
  • 200 g self-rising flour
  • 2 bananas
  • 50 g candied ginger

Icing:

  • 150 g icing sugar
  • 2 – 3 tablespoons lemon juice

Our gas oven is very difficult to use, it tends to be either too hot or too cold, but one thing you can be sure of: it delivers inconsistent results. Lexikaliker’s baking time of 45 minutes at 180 °C was nowhere near enough in our oven..

The Pen Shop

If you live in the UK you might like this: I noticed that The Pen Shop in Manchester (Trafford Centre) offers a 30% discount on Pelikan pens. The discounts are even better for Graf von Faber-Castell pens: they are 1/3 off. There is a good chance that other stores of this chain offer similar discounts. The Pen Shop is not cheap in the first place – which means that many of their Pelikan pens are not really cheaper than in some online shops. Some of their Graf von Faber-Castell pens are however real bargains I haven’t seen that “well priced” before (I don’t want to call them cheap). Unfortunately they didn’t have the GvFC mechanical pencil I am interested in.

These discounts seem to be across the range, i.e. including mechanical pencils, fountain pens, etc. Some of the (not so exciting) Pelikan discounts are available online, too, but the GvFC discount are unfortunately not available online.

The information I was given by the employee implied that the discounts would last until they sold these pens/brands off, but I don’t believe this as I was told something similar in the same shop in December 2009, but back then the discount were only for a short period of time.