Editing The Pen Addict 152/transcript (section)

== Mechanical Pencils ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So the next three pencils I want to talk about could take the number one spot on any given day. And they're all by one company and they're all by Pentel. And Pentel makes some of the best mechanical pencils on the market.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The ones I like and the one that really kind of got me started when I was a kid is the Pentel Sharp P Series. Now, if you take a look at this, you know, you may not know the name, but I guarantee you recognize this pencil and the barrel and the barrel colors and the shape and design. It hasn't changed in 30 or 40 years. And it's still really, really high, high quality. And what Pentel has done is they've kept the design exactly the same. So like the 05 comes in this blue and the 07 comes in black and the 09 comes in this mustard yellow. The green, I forget what size that one's in. And then recently in the past few years, what they've done is, well, all those stock items are exactly the same. They added in some really neat additional barrel colors like a metallic blue that I picked up a couple years ago from JetPens and a carbon fiber style. It's still a plastic barrel, but a carbon fiber. Look, they make some really, really cool designs and they're still really inexpensive. Like the stock ones are about five bucks. The special color ones are about eight bucks. I can't help but pick those up every time I see the special one. And every time I do always think about George at my supply room. You're familiar with him, right? Myke, he's the guy that supplies Mad Men, all the old school pens. Yeah, yeah. George is like a collector extraordinaire. When I see like a new Pentel Sharp in new colors, I would like pick one out like in the blue. He has to have everything of every style ever. It's hilarious. He collects them all in a serious manner. You want to talk about Pen Addict? He might be the cult leader. If we ever could get into his garage or his supply room, as you will, I think we'd all be kind of blown away. So that's the classic of the Pentel line. The Graph Gear 1000 is the engineering workhorse. It's the full metal pencil. It's got a knurled barrel with like these little cushions on the grip.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's got a really stern knock and retractable mechanism. It's just when people talk about their favorite mechanical pencils like that are in the engineering, drafting, architecture field, it's usually Rotring 600 and then this Graph Gear 1000 in some way, shape or form. They're just built to last, built to take a beating, built to be durable and really good looking on top of it. So it's a really, really cool pencil. The third one is the outlier in the Pentel group. And it doesn't get enough love. And I've praised it before. And I actually gave mine away and I got to get another one. It's the Pentel Sharp Carry.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is a weird looking one.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's an amazing mechanical pencil. What it is, it's a capped mechanical pencil. So you carry it around like a capped pen. You uncap it, put the cap on the back end of the barrel, and then that's your knock. And it just, it clicks out from there. It's so comfortable. It's so well made. It's one of those pens or pencils, excuse me, that you get and you just fidget with it. You just, you're trying to figure out, okay, how does this work? And it shouldn't be this simple. And this design shouldn't work the way it does. And it really, really does. It's compact. You know, it's definitely pocketable when you're not using it. You know, that's a great thing about this pencil. You know, a lot of mechanical pencils that don't have the retractable pipe, they're going to poke you or stab you when you least expect it. This one's capped when you're not using it. So that's a great feature to just throw in your pocket and go. So the Pentel Sharp Carry is a way, way, way underrated mechanical pencil and something you guys should look at if you haven't been. So that's kind of where I draw the line as the most popular pencils for me personally. The Rotring, Uni makes great stuff, and Pentel.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Then you start getting into other pencils that are really good, but they're either not standard in their designer style or just don't have a lot of foothold in the usage of customers, things like that. But are still good and kind of go under the radar. Like, for example, the Retro 51 Hexomatic. Like if Myke Dudek was on here, he'd be all about this pencil because it's made to look just like the Rotring 600. The thing is, it's almost the exact same price, and I'd just go ahead and get a Rotring 600. It doesn't mean this Retro 51's not good. It's great. It's great looking. It's great feeling. But for the same price as the Rotring 600, I'd just get to that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' One I do like a lot, Tombow makes some really nice low-end pencils, like $5 and less. They have one called the Olno Body Knot. It's this really...

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You'll have to pull up the picture. I don't even know if I can explain it, but you put it in your hand. It's got this really thick rubber grip, and in the middle of the barrel, you just kind of like put pressure on it from... Like you're gripping the pencil, and then you just kind of bump it in your hand while you're writing, and it ejects the lead or lengthens the lead. It's really well done, and it's a really neat pencil, but it's kind of gimmicky, and it uses these bright colors, you know, that might not be for everybody. You know, it's certainly not a classic, typical engineering pencil. Then they do one called the Tombow Mono Graph Shaker, which I was actually really surprised how well it did, because it was so inexpensive. I think it's only like $4 or something like that. It's just a high-quality, everyday-use mechanical pencil, and you'll see a lot of these that I'm talking about all have that one extra thing. They're not just a standard mechanical pencil. The Tombow Olno Body Knot has an interesting knock mechanism. The Graph Shaker has a shaker mechanism to advance the lead. And then the next one on the list, do you want to say something?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sorry, I was going to say, do you think that a lot of these companies do this because stuff like the Kuru Toga exists? Like, you can't do that because that's their thing, so why don't we do our own thing that makes ours a little bit different?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Almost all of these were ahead of the Kuru Toga.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay, cool.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There's maybe one or two on this list that aren't. Certainly, like all the Pentels, the Rotrings, and the Unis, the other Unis besides the Kuru Toga, were before the Kuru Toga. The Olno Body Knock and Graph Shaker were after, but Shakers have been around for a while. That's a pretty standard.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I've clearly got some Toga buyers.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. No, that's good. And the Pilot Delphil, which is another one, which Pilot doesn't have a really strong mechanical pencil game, if you've noticed in this list, the Japanese companies, Pentels kind of, aside from Uniball, the Kuru Toga, Pentels kind of got the market in mechanical pencils. They have it covered from the very, very expensive models to the high-end mechanical pencil models.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But Pilot doesn't have very much action in this space, and I don't even know what drafting-style pencils they have. Certainly, if they do, it's nothing that's grabbing me. But the Delphil is one I like because it has a fully retractable lead pipe. It's not just the pipe that comes back in. It's like the whole tip of the pen retracts into the pencil.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I just noticed that. I was going to say that I like that. That's a nice addition. Because you don't end up with that little metal bit sticking out, which, like, stabs you in the leg or something.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. So a lot of pencils will allow you to just retract the pipe, but this retracts that whole front-end section into the barrel, and it works really well. It's a real strong, you know, feeling when you do it. It doesn't feel janky when you do it. It's a real strong click, and it gets back up in there. So that's kind of the primary shopping list. So you've got my favorites, you know, some of the unis, Rotring, Pentel, some in the middle market that do some things that you may or may not like but I found pretty functional. Then we've got some that I'm not a fan of at all, and we're going to talk about those, and I'm going to make some people mad. But first, we've got one more sponsor we want to get to, don't we?

'''Myke Hurley:''' This week's episode of The Pen Addict is also brought to you by MassDrop. MassDrop is an online community for enthusiasts of all kinds, from audio and electronics to quilting and cooking. It's a place for you to connect with people like you to discuss your favorite products and activities and buy them together. MassDrop represents a new type of online experience that combines community, content, and commerce. MassDrop is not a flash sales website. It's not a deal site. It is a place where enthusiasts can meet and connect over the products that they love. It is a forum where people can vote on and discuss the products that they're passionate about and then connect directly with manufacturers to buy products together and get bulk pricing. The thing that is most important to MassDrop is that they want to build communities around things that their users love because that's what they're passionate about doing themselves. Ultimately, they are here to help you by making the products you care about more affordable and accessible and provide you with a platform to connect with other like-minded enthusiasts. I know that group buys is something that's really important to the pen community. Some of the stuff that we buy can be expensive and MassDrop can help with this. Buying in bulk can bring those costs down. I mean, I've checked them out myself and I've seen some great deals in the past. I looked on the website earlier today, Brad, and I saw that they're currently a couple of two deals that interested me. 15% off a Retro 51 fountain pen and up to 42% off a Lamy Studio fountain pen. So people should go and check those out because they're going to be ending soon so you want to go and check them out. So you can do that by going to dro.ps slash thepenaddict That's dro.ps slash thepenaddict and sign up right now. Thank you so much to MassDrop for supporting this show and all of RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Awesome. Thank you, MassDrop. That's a seriously good community over there and they do good stuff. They are the best. Yep, yep. All right, so let's get negative here and tell you about all the pencils that I don't like. You know, I talk about the good. You got to cover it on the flip side with the bad stuff too. So let's see how many people I can make mad on this list with the dog and their favorites. Number one, which I think I'll actually get the confirmation of is the Rotring 800. It's a poor excuse for a fountain pen to cost that much just to add in the retractable, the fully retractable tip. The 600 is a fixed tip fountain pen. The 800 was...

'''Myke Hurley:''' Do you mean to say mechanical pencil when you keep saying that?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Pencil. Yeah, sorry. It is the pen addict, you know. Cut me some slack.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I know. We don't make no second-rate pencil podcast, huh?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Killed a man with a trident.

'''Myke Hurley:''' In all fairness, though, if you are somebody who actually wants to hear people that know about pencils talk about pencils, you should check out the Erasable podcast.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Wood case pencils, not mechanical pencils. They will cut a man if they bring up mechanical pencils. That's a persona non grata over there.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But then I retract my statement. Statement retracted.