Originally published at: Overengineered mechanical pencils | Boing Boing
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I love my Mitsubishi Uni Kuro Toga.
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Sigh …
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When I last looked, the Kuro Toga with the updated rotation mechanism wasn’t available in a primarily metal version. Do you know if that’s changed? I love how the Kuro Toga works, but I wish it had more heft.
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was looking for other “pencil porn” videos - but using that term brings somewhat different search results.
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It disturbs me to see hardware with that much plastic in important areas like ‘threads’ aspiring to the status of ‘over-engineered’.
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It seems to me that the “support sleeve” design would cause the lead to stop writing when the pencil detects “too much” pressure & extends the sleeve. This would be frustrating.
Yes! I still use one of these for everyday drawing. I like the thicker lead. Fortunately I have a stock of NOS leads for it because modern leads are very slightly narrower and don’t feed as well.
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Ah, yeah, looks like the situation is the same, then. The Kuru Toga advance spins the lead twice as fast and features a protective sleeve to help guard against lead breakage, but it’s only available (to my knowledge) in plastic barrels.
Though my 30+ year old Logo II 0.5 mm suites me just fine, I can appreciate some of this new, cool pencil tech.
Now I wish they would stop calling it “lead” and just say “graphite”, or come up with another one syllable word for the writing material, “graft” as a shortened version of graphite, “chark” as short for charcoal? Get marketing on this!
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On the other hand, if the lead snaps because of too much pressure it will stop writing, and waste lead. I think it trades a large frustration for more but much smaller frustrations.
Get the all-metal version. The 0.5mm feels and writes like a dream. The 0.3mm feels a little scratchy on paper, though.
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For you pencil and engineering nerds out there, might I recommend The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance by Henry Petroski (goodreads.com)
JetPens and haunt them periodically, despite ‘trying’ to wean myself off of more writing instruments.
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I have the same one as Chipsa linked, very comfortable to write with! There are new metal “Kuru Toga Advance” models, but I still like this old metallic one version, seems more classic than the new ones: Uni Kuru Toga Advance Upgrade
Same! Been a customer for 10 years, I keep a perpetual shopping cart with them which I periodically dump into my door! I want to try the new Pentel Orenz Nero but it keeps getting backordered. The Zebra bLen and Pentel Calme are the current “that seems interesting” items of this cart batch. Besides that is just refills and leads, have a few favorites since my first order which I keep refilling.
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Thanks to you both - I may try it. The kurutoga advanced has a very pleasing mechanism, it’s just far too light for me. I actually prefer using my rotring .7 despite its complete lack of advanced features.
I think the reason I went with the kuru toga advance is that it’s available in a .7 as well, but I can give a .5 a try. Anything less than that is good in theory but better than my handwriting skill really enables.
For years at work I used a Sanford Extend 0.5mm or its identical twin, a Staedtler Retro (shown) because of a feature I consider more important than the ones listed here.
These are double click pencils. The first click extends a broad lead sleeve, the second advances the lead. When retracted the end of the pencil is about 5-6mm wide, so there’s no danger of stabbing one’s self or one’s pockets.
I just found that the two I still have are vintage collector’s items and sell for $25-40 online. (Of course as time goes by, more and more of my possessions fall into that category).
That’s super clever!
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