Pelikan Auch

In German, ‘auch’ means ‘also’, ‘too’, or ‘as well’.

I’m told that Pelikan made their first branded fountain pen back in 1929. Then in 1934 they introduced their first mechanical pencil. Like the fountain pen it was also a Pelikan, hence its model name ‘Auch’ Pelikan 200 – the ‘Also’ Pelikan, or the Pelikan ‘Too’, model 200 mechanical pencil.

A while back one of my Scandinavian friends, a fellow who in the tradition of nicknames or ship-names I have named Manuka Pooh, went a-Viking and returned home with pocket loads of Pelikan plunder. Being a generous fellow he thought I might be interested in a Pelikan Too too and sent one down to me on the far side of the globe.
The web tells me that Pelikan made these green and black Auchs from 1937 to 1951 and this particular Auch supposedly dates from 1938 although I’ve no proof of that claim. It is in extremely good condition, virtually ‘as new’. There is no brassing or corrosion on the metal trims. The plastic body is in great condition. The wording ‘AUCH Pelikan D.R.P.’ is engraved into the top section of the pencil. Apparently D.R.P. stands for ‘Deutsche Republik Patent’.
The push top mechanism is quite stiff and clicky compared to most modern mechanisms, but this could be from age rather than design. Back in the day, this was quite a modern and sophisticated mechanism – many (or most) pencils were still using screw type mechanisms back then. The lead is 1.18mm. It tends to chew leads a bit, perhaps modern leads are not quite to this old birds taste.

Parker v Turner

With the recent purchase of my Parker Duofold Centennial, I now have two Duofold mechanical pencils. Both of them cost an awful lot of money. Over the past six to twelve months I have bought a few items from a pen turner and I became aware that many of the pen kits available are rather similar to the pen designs of some well known international brands.

The Penn State Industries Executive pencil kit will look rather familiar to anyone who has a Duofold pencil. Having spent a small fortune on a Duofold, I decided that I would check out a PSI Executive mechanical pencil and see how it stacked up against a Duofold, so I contacted my friendly pen-turner and ordered one.

Firstly of course with a custom made item like the Executive you get to choose your pen body material from the hundreds and hundreds of wood and plastic pen blanks available. You also have several choices of finish for the metal trims. I decided to play it safe and chose the classic 24K gold trim with Lava Bright Classic 2 ‘black with white thread’ acrylic body.

Secondly you must talk price with your pen turner. Now Duofold pencils are well into the stratospheric price range, and pen turners charge widely varying amounts, but in my part of the world an Executive is 10 – 20% of the price of a Duofold.

So then without further ado, I present the PSI Executive pencil, black with white thread colour. (All photos are clickable for hi-res)
And along side the Parker Duofold Centennial pencil, lapis blue colour.
You can't see it in the photos, but if you inspect the acrylic bodies closely you will see the Duofold is finished to a much finer level of polishing than my Executive was, but that will vary from turner to turner.

Pencil tips.The Executive is actually a 0.7mm screw mechanism compared to the Duofold being 0.9mm. The refill procedure for the Executive is…well lets just say it’s on the complicated side of town.

The Executive has some annoying play in its mechanism. The lead is free to move in or out a millimetre or so, thus when you first press the lead to the paper it will retract a fraction back up inside the tip. Now personally I find this rather annoying when I’m concentrating on it, but you don’t really notice it in general use. Certainly the folk in my office who have used my Executive or since bought one of their own don’t have any problem with the lead play.

Pocket clips and end caps.Lets take a look under the hood.
Beauty versus something a little more utilitarianSome residue left on the Executive. I don’t imagine Parker would leave that on a Duofold.Different tops on the end caps, with the Duofold having a black resin insert.Back in one of the first photos you will have noticed the little paperclip thingy. The pen turner tossed this paperclip in as a little surprise freebie ‘thank you’ with my pencil. The half-sphere end-piece is from material left over from my pencil body. Apparently with these clips he sometimes drills a hole in the centre of the end-piece and inserts a little something colourful - in my case instead of a semi-precious stone or some colourful glass, he felt a piece of 2mm pencil lead would be an appropriate jewel.

A Parker Duofold pencil is clearly outside of the price range that most people would consider paying for a writing instrument, but for 10-20% of that price a PSI Executive seems to offer a large percentage of the looks. Sure, pencil folk like me will start looking closely and find all sorts of things we think need improving, but the general public don’t give two-hoots about most of that stuff. From across the other side of the desk, a PSI Executive is a mighty fine looking object and most people would be very happy to own it, as am I.

National Brands

I’m sure we are all familiar with the international brands of writing instruments and mechanical pencils – the Pilots, Pentels, Faber-Castells, and Papermates of the world. Not that long ago there must have been hundreds and hundreds of smaller national and regional brands around the world. Many of these are gone now, but some still survive. An example of this is Penol in Denmark, who ceased manufacturing themselves, but still continue as a national distributor of products under their own brand name. There must have been quite a few manufacturers and brands in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Surely some of them still survive as manufacturers or as importer-distributors of their own branded products?

Anyway, I would be most interested to hear of any regional / national type brands that are still going in your part of the world. Leave a comment and let us know about the little guys still battling it out against the mega-corps.

Parker Duofold Centennial Mechanical Pencil

Back in 1988 Parker released their first Duofold since production previously stopped back in the 1940’s. It was released as part of their 100th anniversary, called the Centennial model, and is made in England by Parker UK.

(All photos are clickable for hi-res)

I don’t have a vintage Duofold, but from pictures and other sources it appears the modern Duofold pencil is visually a very close match for the original Parkers.

The barrel is acrylic, and mine is Lapis Blue (or Blue Mosaic or Blue Marble) colour. It is a very nice colour and the acrylic is very bright and shiny, but somehow it doesn’t have the depth of colour or intensity that I expected. I am a little disappointed to say that in my personal opinion old Conway Stewart Nippy pencils and their ilk have a depth and intensity of colour that outshines the Centennial. Now don’t get me wrong, the Centennial is a beautiful thing, it’s just I expected a little more in the colour department.
The presentation case is nice, with velvet flock covering, and notes Parker’s Royal Warrant.


The gold trims are very classy.The mechanism is 0.9mm screw action - the lead is advanced or retracted by winding the gold top round.The eraser and its gold mounting ring are truly a sight to behold.A very beautiful pencil, but you certainly pay a pretty price to own one!

If I Had A Dollar

There are certain milestones that should be acknowledged, and one of these milestones has just passed for this blog. If I had a dollar for every page that had been viewed on this blog then I’d be living the Life of Riley because I’d be a millionaire. Yes, that’s right, my Sitemeter counter of Page Views has just ticked over the 1,000,000 mark.

A few stats then as of the time of writing this:
Total Visitors = 401,144
Average Visitors per Day (Last 7 Days) = 601
Page Views = 1,000,014
Average Page Views per Day (Last 7 Days) = 1,382

A couple of months ago I installed a Flag Counter that registers the country of origin of visitors. Sitemeter also does that, but doesn’t store the data long-term, so whilst I had a reasonable general idea of the locations of my viewers I didn’t have any cumulative data.

My flag counter has currently recorded visitors from 118 territories, although 4 of the flags are flags of ‘Unknown’ (e.g. ‘Unknown – Asia/Pacific Region’, ‘Unknown – Satellite Provider’) so I don’t think they count. The flag counter has confirmed the obvious – given the language that I blog in, national populations and internet usage, it’s a no-brainer that the Big 4 of the Anglosphere (USA, UK, Canada, Australia in that order) would completely dominate my visitor locations. But beyond that, there have been a few surprises. I am surprised at Singapore showing up at 7th and Turkey at 19th, both considerably higher placings than I would have anticipated. Given the popularity of stationery and pencils in Japan I shouldn’t be surprised at Japan being the highest ranking non-English speaking country, but for some strange reason I am. My antipodes are down in the south of Spain, so a special Hola! from the Antipodes to my antipodes. Speaking of Spain, I have been very surprised at how the Portuguese-o-sphere has been out-ranking the Hispano-o-sphere, with Brazil ranked 10th and Portugal 21st compared to Spain at 11th and Mexico at 30th.

Of course, as always, I must say a special thanks to those of you who are regular readers, those who have sent me stuff over the years, correspond with me, link their sites here, make comments on this blog, etc. It is all much appreciated. Anyway, thanks for reading, hope you will continue to do so in the future.

Ka kite ano.

Pentel Caplet A105 Mechanical Pencil Review

Pentel Caplet A105 Mechanical Pencil Review

Low cost ballpoint pens with caps aren’t particularly common in my part of the world, but they used to be reasonably common back when I was in school. Perhaps that is why the Caplet has a somewhat retro and nostalgic feel about it for me. The Pentel Caplet is clearly a rather simple basic pencil, its point of difference being its cap. The cap covers the tip when not in use, providing total pocket safety. When you are ready to write, the cap can be posted onto the end of the pencil so you are les likely to forget and lose the cap. Posting the cap does have two disadvantages. Firstly it fits over the eraser so that with the cap on, if you want to use the eraser you have to take the cap off, and then the eraser also has its own eraser cover to remove as well. Secondly posting the cap on the end activates the lead advance mechanism, which may not always be what you want. Personally I always chose to post the cap as without it the top end of the pencil looked somehow incomplete, I worried about losing the cap, and I preferred the little extra weight and top-heavy feel obtained with the cap on. The grip zone of the Caplet is a fairly narrow diameter and consists of a series of raised rings or waves. It is quite functional and successful.

The lead advance mechanism is a standard push top button ratchet system. Ten clicks will get you 7mm of 0.5mm lead. With my clear transparent Caplet I quite like seeing the internal mechanism operate and advance and the lead as I click away. Rotating the body around gives various optical distortions of the leads inside the refill chamber making then change in diameter and even appearing square rather then round. In keeping with this clear theme the lead retaining ring in the tip is moulded from clear rubber. The eraser can be pulled out to refill the lead chamber. The eraser is 13mm long, but only about 3mm can be used as 10mm is inside the housing that holds it. Personally I dislike seeing a dirty eraser stuck on the end of my pencil so the clear eraser cover is another reason I wouldn’t use the eraser except in emergencies.The cap has an integrally moulded pocket clip which is quite functional compared to many similar clips. A barcode is printed on a transparent label stuck on the cap and it is rather unsightly. You can of course remove the label, but the printing appears to be non-permanent as it scratches or rubs off easily. Rather strange. Overall then the Pentel Caplet is a good choice amongst the economy grade pencils.

• Best Points – The cap is something different for a change.
• Not So Good Points – Posting the cap advances the lead.
• Price Range – Economy.
• Does this pencil make it into the Top 5? - No.

Dimensions – Length 155mm with cap posted, diameter 8mmmm. Balance point about 85mm up from the tip with cap posted.

The Final Word - Thanks to 'Redds' from Malaysia for sending me this pencil.

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