Friday, June 29, 2012

Knock, Knock?

Knock, knock,
Who's there?
The blogger who takes large vacations and then comes back with a fury.
The blogger who takes large vacations and then comes back with a fury WHO?
Me!
Consider this a fury. If I were hairier it would be a furry fury, but I am not...so a simple fury will do.  Does everyone know how amazing Jetpens is? The kind people over there sent out a few things for me to take a look at and I am not the type of guy to get a pen (teaser: or non pen) and blog about it the first day I receive it.  No, instead: I use it, I pass it around.  I take it to dinner with my friends, I sleep with it. (Too far?)

How did this one get by me? I swore that I had a good grasp of the better pens and pencils available out there but this one was a surprise.  It was new to me. Presenting the...Pentel Kerry. It might be because I rarely shop for (what I consider) medium end Mechanical Pencils but I am still amazed that this one was not in my collection or on my radar.
(As always, click for larger, better pictures) At a dinner party the other night when I pulled this out to show it to everyone.( I am that guy.)   My friend- I will call him Bill-  (that's actually his real name,  weird huh?) was all over it,  saying he had a blue one in architecture school and that he still had it around the house.  I was impressed. Pentel has been making this one since 1971 and I am sure it has gotten a few engineers and architects through school.
So once you pull off the cap and place it with a firm click on the back end of this thing you have a very respectable mechanical pencil. I know there must be others but I can't remember another MP with a cap like a regular pen. Let's break it down with more surprises:
Surprises:
1. How smooth all the moving bits are.
2. How comfortable this is in my hand.
3. Trying to figure out where the eraser goes when it is posted.
4. That nice readers like you come back after I take the Spring off to play squash and travel the US for work.
There it is,  sneaky little thing.  Hidden away when capped, but easily accessible when it is in write mode. Some people in their reviews say that the metal eraser cap will get a little loose after use,  but mine stayed solid. (Everyone knows if you give the cap a tiny squeeze it helps also right?)  I don't  know,  I do like my Mechanical Parker's but this might just win overall due to the cool features.  Jetpens sell a bunch of styles and you can purchase this version right here.
More details on the .5 here.  I have been dragging this one around the Country for a few weeks and I definitely like it.  Black is usually my "go to" color but I have not minded this shade of red at all. Impossible to describe...but the weight feels right to me. Not too light,  not too heavy.  It feels like a good mechanical pencil should feel.
Great saying.  I still do not know why I shoot a writing test for a pencil, call it a habit.  I like being surprised and if a pencil can do it,  I like it even better.
Thanks again,  another post coming early next week and a bunch of news coming out of this site. Thanks again for reading.

Seth

Update:
"Bill" sent in a photo of his pencils.  These are at least 10 years old.



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