Posts filed under Pencil Reviews

Kaweco Frosted Sport Mechanical Pencil Review

(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her first novel, The Bone Weaver’s Orchard, now available where books are sold!)

Kaweco has a gift for simplicity and the simple Frosted Sport Mechanical Pencil is the perfect illustration of that. There's nothing fancy or complicated about it. You remove the end cap to insert a piece of lead or two, pop the cap back on, click it, and write. There aren't any extra moving parts or gadgets--all it does is pencil, and it does it well.

It lacks an eraser, but I prefer to use a separate eraser, rather than have a proprietary refill that I have to stockpile. Still, that could be a deal-breaker for some.

The pencil is the same size and plastic material as the Kaweco Sport fountain pen, and this one matches my lovely frosted lime pen. It's chunky, but lightweight, and very comfortable to hold and write with. It has a steel tip cone and logo on the end cap, and the Kaweco brand engraved in silver paint on the body. The nose cone does not retract at all, but it's not as delicate or stabby as the narrow lead tubes on other pencils. It's more like the tip of a rollerball pen. The lead can be retracted by holding the button down and pushing the lead in.

Inside the pencil, there's a narrow tube to hold the lead refill. It's only wide enough for a piece or maybe two, so keep extras nearby if you go through lead quickly. The lead that it comes with is very nice to use. It's smooth and soft, but doesn't break easily. It can be dark with pressure, but shades well. the regular writing line is a bit pale, toward the middle of its greyscale. You can refill it with any .7mm lead you prefer, though, and JetPens has a handful to choose from.

The pencil does not come with a clip, but Kaweco sells separate clips that slide onto their pens and pencils. These work fairly well, but can come loose or scratch the plastic. I do worry about the durability of the plastic, but I have other Kaweco Sports that have been heartily knocked around with no consequence.

Overall, I've really enjoyed using this pencil. My only real complaint? It doesn't fit behind my ear! I need some sort of Kaweco headband to strap pens and pencils to for the days I have no pockets.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Posted on August 15, 2019 by Sarah Read and filed under Kaweco, Mechanical Pencil, Pencil Reviews.

Penco Prime Timber 2.0 mm Mechanical Pencil Review

I was swayed by the style.

Penco is a brand I had heard of and seen online, but never had the opportunity to purchase one. That changed with a visit to Archer Paper Goods in Atlanta a few months ago, where I bought this Prime Timber Mechanical Pencil.

Penco’s products have a vintage-modern aesthetic that I love. Their lineup contains mostly basic office goods - pens, pencils, notebooks, binder clips, clipboards, etc. - which are all very consistent in their look. If Aaron Draplin founded Poppin I think this is what the result would look like.

Aesthetics aside, the product still has to be good, and the Prime Timber Mechanical Pencil is.

At first glance you might think this was a clutch pencil, especially looking at the elongated barrel and 2.0 mm wide graphite often found in that type of pencil. But no, this is a standard mechanical pencil with a click mechanism. Nothing wrong with that at all, other than being able to more finely control the exposed lead length and not having to press the lead into the page when retracting it with a clutch.

The exterior barrel is incense cedar from the US, which gives you that traditional pencil smell in a mechanical pencil setup. It feels great, too, like a standard full length hex barrel pencil, but slightly heavier.

It ships with its own sharpener, which is almost mandatory for 2.0 mm pencil goods. Not everyone has a good tip pointer laying around their desk. Penco refers to it as a corer, which I enjoy because of sentences like this: “When putting the core into the corer, it may cause the core to break if the core is pulled out too long.”

In practice, the corer is the weakest part of this product, leaving a barely sharp, sometimes crooked, tip. If you think you might use 2.0 mm lead frequently, then it will be worth investing in a nicer one. The popular KUM Long Point Sharpener has one on the side of the barrel, or you can get a stand-alone pointer like the Alvin Rotary for those dagger-tips when you need them.

The B-grade graphite is a real highlight of this pencil. I haven’t used many 2.0 mm sticks outside of my beloved Caran d’Ache Fixpencil, but the Penco lead has more of a natural graphite feel than the more waxy feel of the Fixpencil. It does wear down quicker because of this, but the darkness, smoothness, and overall feel are all better.

That said, I’ll take the Fixpencil over the Prime Timber every time due to the barrel feel, clip, and my clutch vs. mechanical mechanism preference. Maybe I’ll just switch the lead over the the Cd’A.

I paid $17.50 for mine, which feels about right. If you shop around, you may find them for a few bucks cheaper. They are ¥900 ($8.35) directly from Penco.

I really like what Penco is doing on the design front, so I’ll try to pick up a few of their pens to see how they are. I also love the look of their General Notebook, so that one will be at the top of the shopping list. Yes, even ahead of the Baseball Bat Pen.

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Posted on July 22, 2019 by Brad Dowdy and filed under Penco, Mechanical Pencil, Pencil Reviews.

Pilot Frixion Colored Pencils Review

Well, these aren't all bad. The textured coating on the body feels great and provides excellent grip, and the design overall looks lovely. That's the extent of the 'pro' column. The 'con' column lists every other feature of the Pilot FriXion Colored Pencils.

The lead is waxy and brittle with poor pigmentation. It only lays down very faint color and even that has messy inconsistency. The soft tip wears down quickly and breaks when you attempt to sharpen it.

The FriXion magical eraser does remove all color, briefly, from the colored area, but it does not remove the waxy residue--just its coloration. So you can't easily go back over the area with anything else, whether that be another pencil or mixed media. Also, after a few minutes, the color begins to creep back into the erased area.

These Frixion pigments suffer the same weakness as their pen inks--the erasure is a heat reaction, so changes in temperature to your work can also affect the visibility of your notes/sketch/journal. I tested it by putting my page in the freezer, where much of the pigment reappeared, and then also taking the page with me while I ran errands and left the paper in my hot car, where most of the pigment disappeared.

I know the Frixion line is beloved by many. I, personally, am averse to writing anything in disappearing ink. I know that, in theory, it can always be re-appeared, but it still makes me nervous. And while I understand the unique advantages of an erasable pen, an erasable pencil is ... well, most of them. And this doesn't erase any better than the others. I think it's safe to say that other pencils erase more completely, as there isn't a waxy residue left behind.

These are priced at $22 for the 12-set, and over $3 each open stock. That's over a dollar more, apiece, than many high-quality artists' pencils. That's actually a bit alarming, and way overpriced. Even if these worked pretty well, that would be expensive. But, alas, they don't, and that makes these a product that I recommend avoiding.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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