Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/12/the-time-i-risked-my-life-borr.html
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My problem was people would “borrow” my pencil and then complain about my choice of lead, or the chisel point I used for lettering. Eventually we went to CAD and all those manual tools went into a box that is still sitting in a closet.
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You were afraid of being killed…over a $16 pencil?
I’m not taking advice from some damn mechanical pencil thief. We have ways of dealing with your sort around here.
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What is the cash value you think is is reasonable to worry about being murdered over? Pretty sure people have even been murdered over things that had no cash value whatsoever…
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Pftt, you can have your mechanical pencils. Touch my Staedtler Mars lead holder and I’ll gut you like a pig.
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No, I wasn’t.
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I started working in print and publishing in the very, very early days of photo-typesetting, when creating artwork still involved drawing up grids, using Letraset and Mecanorma rub-down lettering, and doing text corrections slicing in new text with a scalpel, so you develop an affinity for certain tools, pens, pencils, etc.
Scalpels were normally Swann Morton No 3 handles with a 10A blade, but I favoured a No 7 handle, which was longer and slimmer, and with the tail end smoothed off and polished made an extra tool for rubbing down Letraset. I also had one favourite pencil, a Rotring Trio-Pen, with three lead options in one barrel, 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7mm,; I always had a 4H lead in the 0.3mm, a blue lead in the 0.5mm, and an HB in the 0.7mm, for varying parts of construction of artworks, the blue lead in particular because it wouldn’t photograph with lith film.
There would be a major ruckus should anyone borrow any of my stuff!
I still have my Rotring Trio, must be forty-odd years old, cost a bit a the time, shows it’s worth buying quality.
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I own one. I hate it.
Specifically, I can’t stand the metal cross-hatching on the grip. After a fairly brief while using it, the surface starts abrading the side of my middle finger, just from the minute shifts that invariably occur while writing.
My Kuru Toga 0.3mm, on the other hand, is a joy.
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On my first day of work as a draftsman, back in the days when CAD was for freaks I was just about to draw my first line on a huge A0 transparent sheet with my beloved Rotring mechanical pen when my boss asked me if I seriously wanted to draw with “that crap” and handed me a graphite mine pen. The sort you have to sharpen. Prevents one from scratching the paper every time the mine is down, breaking these shitty little mines all the time and smearing graphite all over the paper, he said. Also “who needs line strengthes on a sketch? That’s what ink and brains are for.”
He probably was right. Before I ever was tempted to give mechanical pens a chance again, I had become an expert on CAD. I still had the mechanical pen (a 3.5mm Rotring) two months ago with the very same graphite mine in when I cleaned up my crammed desk and finally threw it away. If you didn’t use it for the last 25 years, you’re not going to use it at all…
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Stalling Tactic Fail
Executioner: “Prisoner. Choose the means of your death.”
Prisoner: “I wish to be stabbed with a Montblanc Meisterstück.”
Executioner: “You have expensive tastes.”
Prisoner: “And make sure it’s filled with J. Herbin Bleu Nuit ink.”
Executioner: “We happen to have those… right here.”
Prisoner: “Shit.”
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I ended up replacing an older, much cooler-looking mechanical pencil with a Kuru Toga. It’s fantastic. After a couple of different wrist injuries to my writing/drawing hand, lightweight and squishy grip suddenly became hugely important, and the Kuru Toga writes with almost as little effort as my favorite fountain pen. (The wrist injuries also turned me into a fountain pen weirdo. I keep trying to convert people to using them – it’s like I accidentally joined a cult.)
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The bit that sold me – “I hardly write anything longhand anymore, never mind with a pencil!” – was that the Kuru Toga mechanism rotates the lead about 9 deg. every time you press it against the paper. Hell, it’s even in the name.
“Kuru” (クル) is an onomatopoeia for something turning or rotating, and “toga” (トガ) is taken from the verb “togaru” (とがる), meaning to taper to a point or become sharp."
Everything else – the feel, the weight, the texture – were just a bonus, really.
Go figure; I write longhand a fair bit more now. With a pencil, even.
(and before anyone asks, no, I really can’t tell the difference the rotation makes in a 0.3mm. Shuddup. It’s still awesome. (and I can tell the difference in the 0.5mm, because of course I needed more than one Kuru Toga))
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No, I think that’s how you keep a pencil like that, by threatening anyone who comes near it, or placing it under lock and key at the close of each day.
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They’re nice pencils, but I’ve found them to be more sensitive than most to the lead-sleeve at the tip getting bent. You can straighten it somewhat, but the feed is never quite as smooth…
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You took the tools of her trade and you were surprised she nearly killed you?
Draftspeople were VERY possessive of their pencils/pens/etc because this was literally how the earned their money.
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The kind of person who borrows a pencil will use your type scale as a cutting edge.
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This man speaks the truth. And with a #4 lead properly sharpened, you could do it with the pencil alone.
I still use mine for design and layout work. Staedtler’s new mechanical pencil sharpeners are a vast improvement over the old pot metal ones that leaked carbon dust like a sieve.
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