TWSBI Precision pencil

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Hey EDCF!

Thanks to camporama for pointing me in the right direction over at http://edcforums.com/threads/looking-for-a-pencil.132435/ . Seriously man, you get the Tru7h Pencil Nerd of the Month award.
I haven’t seen a review of this here, so…review!
This just in! Well, this just in a couple weeks ago. You didn’t expect me to drop some worthless “Unboxing impressions” review on you guys, did you?!

Its the TWISBI Precision mechanical pencil. .7 lead (I write on a variaty of surfaces and hate broken lead) with a solid point (as opposed to retractable, I keep the pencil reasonably well stored and don’t have call to pocket carry), and silver (matches it’s new stainless buddies: Parker Jotter, Sharpie stainless pen, and Sharpie stainless marker).

First, general impressions:
Build quality is really solid. I can find exactly three, no four non metal components. There’s a tiny grabber gromet deal in mechanism. I haven’t tried removing it and have no desire to do so. As aforementioned, it’s really small. There’s an oring between the tip and the body. I assume this is to prevent the tip from unscrewing. That’s gone, baby gone. It induced a tiny bit of slop, and I hate extra parts that are just along for the ride. A little finger torque and it’s prefectly solid now. If I have any further issues, I’ll add a half drop of blue threadlocker.

Beautiful matte finish. I read somewhere it was an aluminum body. I work with a lot of aluminum. This feels too heavy for that, but the color could be right. ESspecially sitting with the body sitting next to the gloss stainless surfaces. My guess is a stainless or possibly brass body with some kind of silver matte coating. Probably stainless, but it’s a hollow, complex surface, so it’s hard to tell by feel. Lasering and printing on the clip and body are spot on. The clip is a beautiful, solid, KISS form following function design. I expect I could remove it with some effort to rebend if it ever got tweaked. However, it’s not falling off by itself.

Then you have the lead and eraser. Not sure those actually count, but we’ll be talking about them REAL soon.

GENERAL IMPRESSIONS: 9/10. Points docked for the silly oring.

INTERNALLS AND FUNCTIONS:

Okay, like I promised, we’re talking about the eraser. Soon enough for ya? This is the main reason the TWSBI pencil stands out over, say, the Rotring 600 or the long line of other, equally or sometimes more cool pencils. Seriously, the pencil was $25 plus a very reasonable shipping fee from TWSBIs site. But I digress.

Here’s the rant. I cannot in my tiny brain comprehend why anyone anywhere would ever design a tool not self contained to preform it’s basic function. You don’t get out of your car and bolt on some separate add on every time you want to go into reverse. By far, the main (perhaps only) reason for a pencil’s existence over a pen is so you can remove the mark. Otherwise, why not carry a pen and be done with it? Can’t you just carry an extra eraser? No! Sorry, I have no room for extra stuff in my EDC to make poorly designed gear work at a minimum standard when there’s better options. All these beautiful pencils on the market? They almost all have no eraser or some special unrespactable nub that takes a real effort to uncover. If you do use it, it’s about a single shot deal, then you dig in your kit to find it’s the last one that was included. Now you get to order their sparking special eraser nubs. Rinse, repeat until you end up with a pencil shaped hole in the drywall. I use the eraser a fair amount when using a pencil because I use it for things I either know I’ll need to remove know I’ll want the option.

So you read the rant. Or you didn’t and you’re skipped down to this. That’s fine. Anyway, the eraser is about 1/3 the diameter of a Pentel TwistErase, which is what I’ve been using to now. Ugly bugger. All plastic, big fat rubber grip that gets caught on everything and pulls the pencil halves apart and spills lead everywhere. Yaaaay! Tangent? Right. So it’s a really pretty elegant design. Simple collet idea, a bent piece of steel that grabs the eraser. Pull to release, extend/adjust/replace eraser, push to lock back in. Real nice effective feel to the eraser too. I would still really like it to have been a more respectable size, but this is about the best you’ll find anywhere.

Lead advances crisply with the pushbutton mechanism on the back. Once again, basically all brass/steel mechanism internally. No issues there. Also, the finish of the internal tube is way above spec for what I’d expect from a $25 pencil. I do see a minor fit issue here though: there’s some play between the mech tube and body tube. Not a good slip fit and it induces some wobble. Without pouring over the design, it seems like they could have swedged the mech tube a bit more for a better fit and eliminated this. I expect that small change would make the TWSBI feel and write like a $250 pencil. I may be machining a small spacer on the lathe to experiment. Note that you don’t really feel this when writing. But it’s present and certainly so when using the eraser.

INTERNALLS AND FUNCTIONS: 8/10. Two points docked for the wobble.

ERGOS:

Really no complaints here. Good weight but not too heavy. The knurling is PERFECT. It gives some grip, but it’s not at all rough. The hex tube shape encourages it to stay in position in your hand, or gives you a reference when you want to rotate for lead wear. Length is nice. Not much else to say or get in the way.

ERGOS: 10/10

Just for comparison. Here’s a shot of it with a few other writing tools. Not sure it’s 100% fair with the perspective, but I’m no pro photographer and you get the idea.

EXTRAS:

So I did promise to talk about the lead and stuff. There’s two older reviews I have seen of this. One is on FPNetwork, one is a video youtube type review. They both had some cheesy cardboard box. Now it’s a hard plastic clamshell apparently. Nobody really cares about that, but now you know. Either way, I have a replacement for the large altoids type tin in my EDC bag. The included lead is probably the nicest lead I’ve ever used, but I’m no lead snob. I just know it writes way smoother than anything I’ve tried to date. Four erasers included total. Three in some plastic tube, one in the pencil. So that should last awhile.

EXTRAS: 5/5 (only 5 here because seriously, who cares about that)

Total:32/35 on my arbritrary scale. Tru7h approved!

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