Pencil Gangnam Style?

With PSY’s hit topping the charts in the UK and the USA, I am wondering which pencil is the ultimate Gangnam Style pencil – luxurious, but also a bit crazy.

A hot contender is the Monami MP-4003.

Luxurious, but also a but crazy? Yes, but maybe a bit too kitsch.

Decadent? Yes. Even hedonistic? Probably not.

Steam punk? Dunno, maybe more like Art Noveau punk…

If the Empire State Building was in Korea, some might call the MP-4003 the Empire State pencil.

Quality

The Monami MP-4003 comes in a nice-ish plastic box and is accompanied by a nice lead container. Quality-wise you can see that the accessories that come with the pencil are not top class: the plastic box had a broken off corner and the lid of the lead container had a crack, probably not because they weren’t handled probably, but because of the materials used.

The quality of the pencil itself is better than that of the accessories, but if you look closely, you also notice very minor problems – like scratches on the surface of the plastic body, marks that might be sprue marks or problems with the friction fit of the cap, which is too tight …at least in the case of my pencil.

Design

The look of the pencil is fantastic, even though they have overdone it, at least for my Western taste. The knurled grip works well, but could maybe have a bit more grip. It feels like knurled for effect, not knurled for purpose and the knurled section also starts rather far away from the tip.

The cap gets wider towards the end. Something I like very much, probably the main reason why I like the Yard-O-Led Edwardian pencil or Graf von Faber-Castell and Faber-Castell Perfect Pencils with this design.

There is a lead hardness indicator, but oddly enough the only grade printed on the body is “HB”, which makes it nearly useless. One possible use might be to set it to “HB” for HB leads and to the black colour of the body for anything other than HB. Speaking of HB leads: the leads that come with the pencil are very soft and dark for HB leads.

Monami

Monami, the manufacturer, seems to be Korea’s biggest stationery company, but according to Kent almost all of their wood-cased pencils are cheap pencils for children with cartoon characters  printed on them. I couldn’t find this pencil on their web site, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is not being made any more. As far as I can tell my pencil was manufactured in 2011.

Conclusion

Value for money is good, with the price of this mechanical pencil being similar to most other mechanical pencils. I paid $6.50 (£4; €5) plus shipping on an auction web site. Keeping in mind that this pencil has more ‘metal’ on its body than most pencils in this price range makes it a very good price.

It is a nice pencil, but maybe a bit too much over the top. It reminds me of the kind of male fashion and accessories I have seen more and more often on recent trips to Asia: something that would look odd in Europe because it would look too delicate and playful, maybe even slightly unmanly. This pencil isn’t really at that level yet, but it is rather eccentric and likes to show off it’s golden coloured elements…

Alternatives

You can admire the MP-3003, IMHO a nicer, because silver coloured, version in Gunther’s virtual pencil case.

If the MP-4003 isn’t over the top enough for you, have a look at the Micro HEXA 10000 (again in Gunther’s virtual pencil case). It looks like a Pharao’s mechanical pencil with the grip of the Faber-Castell TK_Fine Vario.

 

Price and exchange rates: September 2012

 

Kronenheft

Kronenheft, Morning Glory pencils (with point protectors) and Noodler’s X-Feather ink

Back from Germany, I am going to try another four-in-one blog post. I did not take part in the Faber-Castell factory tour mentioned in one of the previous comments because of a bereavement – which resulted in a very different trip than planned. I hope to take part in one of their factory tours in December and hope to find the time to visit Staedtler’s shop in Nuremberg, too.

This is going to be a four-in-one blog post because I want to speed things up as there are so many things I want to write about but I do not write enough blog posts – so the queue gets longer and longer. The low number1 of comments on the previous four-in-one blog post about the Black n’ Red polynote does however make me think that writing about multiple items in one blog post does not give each individual item the attention it deserves, so I might switch back to one or two items per post…

…but today another (the last?) many-in-one blog post.

Kronenheft

The Kronenheft must be one of the most understated notepads available. I bought mine at Antiquariat Daniel Osthoff in August 2010. I mentioned this shop and some of the papers they sell in my blog post about the OHTO Super Clip. The Kronenheft notepad has been on the market for many years and is distributed by Carta Pura. It measures 15 cm x 10 cm and features a 290 g/m² Preßspanersatzkarton cover, an “imitation particle board” traditionally used, amongst other things, for book covers. It is a sturdy material made from wood pulp. The paper of this pad is 80 g/m² Salzer Werkdruck paper from Austrian paper manufacturer Salzer. Even though paper has been manufactured in Salzer’s town since 1469 and at the their mill, Obere Papiermühle, since 1579, the history of Salzer is slightly younger as the founder Kaspar Salzer did not have his own paper mill until 1798. Even though the 80 g/m² Salzer Werkdruck paper is not their best paper it is very good with a great feel and texture and a slightly creme-coloured tint.

Carta Pura, the distributor, sells this notepad in twelve different colours for € 7 each. You can also get a refill (40 sheets) for € 3. I paid less, but I am not sure how much exactly. FontShop used to sell them for a good price, but when I check recently I could not find it in their online shop any more.

The crown (German: Krone) in the Kronenheft

Morning Glory

This is the second appearance of a Morning Glory pencil at Bleistift. The first appearance was last month, when I wrote about RAD AND HUNGRY’s STMT X Korea kit. This time I used a much older Morning Glory pencil that my wife bought about ten years ago, the morning glory No. 33322-45229 HB. You would think that such a long product number can definitely point to one specific type of pencil, but there are actually different versions of the morning glory No. 33322-45229 HB pencil, with different colours printed on the pencil, but with the same product number.

The pencil itself writes very well. It could be a bit smoother, but it is by no means a scratchy pencil.

Pelikan M100

Since today is Star Wars day (May the Fourth be with you) I have to include the Pelikan M100, too. I cannot look at this pen without thinking of Stormtroopers and am convinced that if Stormtroopers had fountain pens  this Pelikan M100 would be standard issue! It is a great fountain pen and all of its parts are either white or black, even the nib is black. The piston mechanism does not feel as smooth as it does with a Pelikan M200 or a Souverän, but when this fountain pen was released in 1987 it was not an expensive pen so it is no surprise that the piston mechanism is not on the same level. The nib however is excellent for a steel nib and is quite flexible, too.

If Stormtroopers had fountain pens this Pelikan M100 would be standard issue. Here you can see the M100 camouflaged between other black and white items.

Noodler’s X-Feather ink

The ink used in the M100 is Noodler’s X-Feather ink, a black ink that is bulletproof, i.e. resistant to bleach, chemicals, light, etc. I have used this ink for years and am very happy with it. There is only one disadvantage I noticed. If you use it in a wet writer and use paper that does not absorb ink easily (e.g. post cards) it can happen that a layer on top of the ink does not ‘dry’ completely. In this case it can smudge or smear, even days after the text has been written. Under normal circumstances this is however not really a problem.

Conclusion

The Kronenheft is just great, but with its price tag I am not sure I will use it often. It copes well with ink (no bleeding though) and pencil and has a nice colour and texture.

You can find another photo of the Kronenheft in my previous blog post Wooden Letter Rack with Draw.

You can find English blog posts about Carta Pura at bloesem travel and at snowflakes & blackvampires.

Noodler’s X-Feather ink has also been used in my previous blog post Carrefour Bloc-notes.

I’d like to thank Ms Schwamborn from Carta Pura for additional information about the Kronenheft.

In case you wonder where my Cherry G80-3000LSC went: the photos show my wife’s desk, which is very similar – except the keyboard.

  1. i.e. one [↩]

More East Asian stationery

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Eco Bridge Paper Pencils. I want to mention a few other things that are being sold in the same shop sell. The items are not exactly cheap, so it is unlikely that I will buy them. This means I cannot write a proper review, but it would be a shame to leave these items unmentioned, as they are unusual and, for lack of a better word, interesting.

If I had to describe the shop I would say it is a shop full of random quirky things aimed at arty, Apple using yuppies. Things are not cheap, but it will be difficult to find them somewhere else. It is a kind of hip and cool version of Manufactum.

Continuing from the Eco Bridge Paper Pencils, along the Korean stationery theme, they also sell Korean ‘notebooks’ (actually what I would call exercise books). They look nice and are labelled in French. Unfortunately importing them from Korea made them cost five to ten times the price of a similar (plain looking) notebook from Europe. If you want a really nice, thin notebook this might be it.

Another product imported from East Asia is a set of 36 squary, coloured pencils from Japan. It retails for £60 and is part of the Düller range. The Düller range also includes a pen designed by Dietrich Lubs, who is featured in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The coloured pencil set is designed by Naori Miyazaki. Unfortunately I was not able to find out more about her1, except that she is not featured in the Museum of Modern Art. The MoMA online shop does however sell a clock designed by her. Back to the pencil set. There is some rather strange text in German written on this pencil box about combining German taste and Japanese handiness, which looks instantly East Asian because of the character spacing. In different online stores in the UK and Australia the price of this pencil set can vary dramatically. I thought I saw it in an American online store for $96, but I was not able to find it any more to confirm this price.

Also for sale are fairly big animal shaped erasers and Penguin pencils.

You can find more information about the Penguin pencils at penciltalk.

The Lamy 2000 and other products by its designer can also be found in the Museum of Modern Art.

  1. I assume it is a female name [↩]

Battle of the eco pencils

Before I start talking about the eco pencils I want to emphasise that I call them eco pencils because they are marketed in this or in a similar way. Why are they marketed like this? Because they do not use wood, but alternative materials. While I do believe that they could be more ecologically friendly than wooden pencils I have no proof and in the same way that for example biofuel or hybrid cars bring new problems, there might be hidden problem I do not know of when it comes to the production of the eco pencils.

The six eco pencils. Paper left, other materials right.

When it comes to wooden pencils there are also big differences, e.g. between pencils using wood from certified1, well-managed forests and pencils with wood from unknown and more dubious sources. It certainly would not be a problem to produce pencils without wood that are actually less environmentally friendly than traditional wooden pencils. In absence of any incriminating evidence I will however give the six eco pencils tested in this article the benefits of the doubt and will refer to them as eco pencils, as intended by their manufacturers.

First I will have a closer look at the extruded pencils.

CD case pencil

Let’s start with the red pencil, made from recycled CD cases. I found this pencil a few weeks ago, somebody must have lost it …or forgotten it …or more likely: did not want to use it any more because it is so horrible (more on this later). When I first found it I was quite excited. The pencil point was broken off, so I could not use it and had to sharpened it in my Deli pencil sharpener 0635, which I soon regretted. You had to use considerably more force compared to sharpening a wooden pencil in the Deli and to be honest, the Deli has not been the same since. The red plastic is much harder than wood and must have somehow blunted the burr cylinder. The Deli 0635 still works, but does not operate as smoothly as in the past. Writing with this pencil is not very nice. The line is not particularly black and the pencil manages to give you a waxy and scratchy feeling the same time. The writing on the pencil reads “Pencil made from recycled CD cases”. I wish it stayed a CD case.

Ticonderoga Renew HB Soft

On to the next pencil. The Ticonderoga Renew, made from recycled tyres. I was quite excited when I received my pack of ten.This excitement started to disappear when I tried to sharpen these pencils. They are even harder to sharpen than the red CD case pencil. Rotating the pencil in any sharpener will make you fear for the sharpener. I fear the pencil will manage to blunt every blade it touches. Once I started using the pencil any last bit of enthusiasm I had left for this pencil was gone completely. It was scratchy and the line is certainly not dark at all. Sometimes it seems to perform better, so I suspect that the lead is of different quality in different parts …or maybe the difference in performance has to do with the writing angle or the degree of sharpening. Sometimes writing with this pencil is nearly acceptable, but only nearly. Overall it is even worse than the CD case pencil. BTW, there is a warning, printed on the box “Not for use with electric sharpeners”.

Staedtler Wopex HB

Last in the category of extruded pencils is the Staedtler Wopex. According to Staetdler the fibre material is made from 70% wood. The pencil is much easier to sharpen then the previous two pencils, but it is still not anywhere near a wooden pencil. As the lead is extruded, not made the traditional way, writing with it is more similar to writing with the previous two pencils than it is to writing with a pencil that has a traditional lead. Luckily there is no scratchiness, instead the lead is quite waxy. The line of the Wopex is also much darker, more like a line from a traditional pencil. Having used the Wopex for a few weeks now I have to say that depending on the paper and writing surface used, writing with the Wopex can be a very pleasant experience. Its lines  are a bit more difficult to erase than those of most traditional pencils and it is about twice as heavy as a traditional pencil, which is quite nice.  Another nice feature is its nice, “grippy” surface.

Top - bottom: CD case, Ticonderoga Renew, Staedtler Wopex, Eco Bridge, O'Bon Newsprint, Tesco

Next I will have a look at the pencils that use rolled paper instead of wood.

Eco Bridge

Recently I had a closer look at the Eco Bridge pencils, so I will not go into too much detail again. It is a nice pencil, but one thing I noticed is that, compared to other paper pencils, the rolled paper is more likely to get ripped away during sharpening, presumably because of no, less or different glue applied to the paper before rolling.

O'Bon Newsprint 2B

Next is the O’Bon Newsprint pencil. Mine seems to be made from paper that might have been part of a financial newspaper from mainland China. The pencil is  made in China, but the newspaper you can see on the packaging of the pencils seems to be from Malaysia, which is where O’Bon seems to have its origins (don’t quote me on this, I am only 99% sure). Malaysia seems to be the new El Dorado for stationery lovers. If you like pens from the higher end of the market you might have come across Pen Gallery, an online shop from Malaysia. Pelikan is kind of Malaysian too. Pelikan, and recently Herlitz, were bought by a Malaysian business man and stationery aficionado who, according to some newspaper articles I read, fulfilled his lifelong dream when he bought this stationery giant. A lot of Faber-Castell products are made in Malaysia, too …so now it turns out  O’Bon is from Malaysia as well. I wonder whether this is more than a coincidence. On the other hand Staedtler closed its factory in Malaysia this year. OK, one last Malaysia pencil fact: The most common pencil grade in Malaysia is 2B. Getting other grades is even quite difficult. Back to the O’Bon pencils: they are actually very good. Even though they are 2B they hardly smudge and the line is nice and dark. Unlike the Eco Bridge pencils the O’Bon pencils can be sharpened and still look good, as the paper does not rip away.

Tesco pencil

Now to the last paper pencil. The Tesco paper pencil is quite similar to the O’Bon as it is also made from real newspaper, while the Eco Bridge seems to use paper specially made for the pencils, which reduces the eco-ness considerably. The Tesco pencil is also slightly slimmer than the other two paper pencils and much cheaper. The surface is smooth like the O’Bon’s surface while the Eco Bridge pencil has a rough paper surface. By far the biggest drawback of the Tesco pencil is that it smells horribly for several days after taking it out of the package. Something that makes me think that the glues being used cannot be too healthy. On the plus side the Tesco pencil is one of the cheapest pencils around, but my local Tesco stopped stocking them so I fear they might be difficult to come by in the future.

Conclusion:

Unfortunately most of the pencils are only available in some markets. The Ticonderoga Renew box has a UK address printed on the reverse, but I have never seen this pencil in the UK. Staedtler has a worlwide distribution network, but the Wopex does not seem to be available in all markets.

The Staedtler Wopex is, without a shadow of a doubt, the winner of the extruded pencils tested here. There are of course also other extruded pencils, like the ones from BIC, but they were not included as I have never used them. Last time I used other extruded pencils they were horrible writers, similar to the CD case pencil and the Ticonderoga Renew, so I assume that there are not many nice extruded pencils available. One problem with the Wopex that I should point out is that the last millimetre of the point can break easily if you have over-sharpened it.

The winner of the rolled paper pencils is the O’Bon Newsprint. It can be sharpened without problems, the surface finish is really nice and it does not have the horrible smell the Tesco pencil has in th ebeginning.

One interesting point I should mention is that some of the eco pencils (Wopex & O’Bon) claim that they last longer than normal pencils. I have not looked into this yet and cannot comment on it. If you think you noticed that they last longer please let me know.

Eraser test with Mars plastic pen on Bloc Rhodia No 13

I would like to thank Sean from Pencils and Music for the Ticonderoga Renew pencils. I found a Ticonderoga Renew review at Quality & Style.

I would like to thank Lexikaliker for my first Wopex pencil. You will find reviews of the HB and 2B Wopex on his blog (Google translation). You can find a review of the Wopex (in English) at pencil talk.

I would like to thank Kevin from O’Bon for sending me the Newsprint pencils free of charge. Even though I received them free of charge I tried to be objective and believe that this article was not influence by the fact that I received the O’Bon pencils without having to pay for them. You can find a review of O’Bon pencils at pencil talk.

  1. e.g. FSC, PEFC [↩]

Eco Bridge Paper Pencil

Last time I visited Selfridges, they had the Robot Pencil Sharpener from Kikkerland on a shelf. I recognised it from Dave’s Mechnical Pencils, but I am sure I have also seen it in other blogs. Of course I could not resist and was drawn to it. Next to it there were also some other novelty pencils and eraser, including big dinosaur shaped erasers, Penguin Book pencils and paper pencils. This being Selfridges the items were not cheap, but I still bought the robot sharpener and the paper pencils.

Eco Bridge Pencils & Kikkerland Robot Pencil Sharpener

The paper pencils are from a company called Eco Bridge and are made in Korea. I paid £3.95 (~ $ 5.95, ~ € 4.40) for three pencils. The price in Korea is 2300 Won (~ £ 1.35, ~ $ 2.00, ~ € 1.50). Not cheap, especially when keeping in mind that until recently Tesco sold similar pencils made from rolled Chinese newspaper for less than 5p (~ 8¢, ~6ct) each. O’Bon’s newsprint pencils, reviewed at pencil talk, cost $5 (~ £ 3.30, ~ € 3.70) for a pack of 10.

The Eco Bridge pencils  is definitely softer than the Tesco pencil or the average European HB pencil, its softness is comparable to a Staedtler Mars Lumograph B, Faber-Castell 9000 2B or Palomino HB. Smudging is similar to other pencils of this softness. To my surprise the Eco Bridge is a very good pencil. It is much smoother than a Dong-A Fable HB, one of the few pencils from a Korean company that is, as far as I know, produced in Korea. I normally prefer pencils where the point stays sharp for longer, but softer pencils like the Eco Bridge have the advantage of delivering a nicer, darker black when writing.

Eco Bridge Pencil (front) & Tesco Pencil (back)

When it comes to sharpening the pencils the Tesco pencil performs better than the Eco Bridge. The blade of the sharpener (in this case the Eisen 402) seems to cut the Tesco paper much better, while the paper in the Eco Bridge is more likely to get ripped away. While the paper used for the Tesco pencil is rolled paper with Chinese characters on it, probably from a newspaper or something similar, all three Eco Bridge pencils have a similar colour distribution on the paper, red in the middle, near the lead, and recycling beige on the outside. I suspect that the paper used for the Eco Bridge has been recycled and printed on specifically for this pencil, in order to produce this pattern on the paper. This would also explain the higher price tag. This recycling process might be responsible for the rougher paper, compared to the Tesco pencil, which results in the paper ripping easier.

Eco Bridge & Tesco on Bloc Rhodia No 13, eraser test with Mars plastic pen, smudge test on the right

Conclusion:

The Eco Bridge is not cheap, but it is a nice pencil. It might not be able to compete with really good pencils, but it is better than most “average” pencils. If you like B or 2B pencils and happen to see the Eco Bridge pencils in a shop you could give it a try. On the other hand this money would (nearly) buy you one of the good pencils (9000, Lumograph, Palomino, Mono).

Price and exchange rates: March 2010.

I would like to thank Kent from Pencilog for the Dong-A Fable used for the comparison.