February 2024 in Pens and Paper

I started the month ready to spend the first half of it in hospital, with my dad. So the fountain pens I chose were all expendable pocketable pens that I was willing to have stolen (apart from the Schon Design Pocket 6 which was a leftover from January and never left my desk). So that meant I inked 4 Kaweco Sport fountain pens using various ink cartridges that I had on hand.

The portable lineup:

Once my dad got out of hospital and back home, I decided to celebrate by “shopping” from my collection. I inked up a Parker 51 Plum (use the good china!), a Parker Vacumatic, a Franklin Christoph 45L Turqish (spelled like that on their site) Crush that I had purchased but hadn’t inked before, and a vintage Radius Comet (because I heard that the brand was being revived).

The Franklin Christoph EF nib isn’t the best companion to the Eau de Nil as the ink tends to dry in the nib, causing hard start issues. The Radius is a flexible nib of the vintage kind, which means it’s really flexible and not just springy. It also rattles, which makes me not carry it around with me — it stays at home at my desk. The Leonardo is a beautiful pen with a beautiful ink that I refilled immediately — the only Inkvent 2023 ink I did that with. The two vintage Parkers are phenomenal, as usual. The extra fine nib on the vacumatic somehow really well with Diamine Ash, though I was worried at first that the combination would be too light to be readable. The Parker 51 Aeromatic is a treat to use. It’s the rare Plum colour, and it’s got a fantastic nib (as all 51’s have) which pairs very nicely with the Monteblanc The Beatles Psychedelic Purple.

In terms of paper I’ve been using Kokuyo A4 KB paper which I cut to half size (so A5) to manage my daily to do list. The paper is relatively cheap and very fountain pen friendly. I’m also able to use both sides of the page despite there being some show through.

Kokuyo A4 KB paper cut in half to A5 size. This is why standards are great.

I’ve got a Field Notes Heavy duty on my desk at home and at work, and I just bought a new stock of them. These are where I jot down quick notes, phone call details, doodles during boring meetings. When they’re filled up they get tossed out as nothing in them is permanent — everything important in them moves to somewhere else as I work my way through them.

Field Notes Heavy Duty pocket spiral bound reporter notebooks

I have finally found a use for my Dingbats notebooks (beyond giving them away as gifts, as I have in the past): this lined purple hippo one is my blog notebook. I discovered that I have a much easier, much quicker time writing blog posts if I first draft them on paper, and this is where I do it in. I’ll likely write a dedicated post to this notebook soon.

Apart from them I still use the notebooks I used last month.

Pencils

I’ve been using the Drehgriffel Nr. 2 as my daily driver. I use pencils extensively to plan, as my plans tend to change, and there’s something about this solid little mechanical pencil that makes me want to use it.

Apart from that I brought two pencils into the rotation, to try to use. One is from my last purchase from the late and great C.W. Pencils Enterprise, and it’s the “Big Dipper” J.R. Moon Pencil Co 600. It’s an oversized pencil, the kind of pencil that kids who are learning to write are expected to use. I’ve been having pretty significant neuropathy in my hands lately and I thought that this would be nice and easy to use, as after all it’s designed for kids just learning to develop their fine motor skills. So far it’s been a disappointment – the eraser and ferrule make it very top heavy, and I’ve been having a hard time manipulating it. I can’t imagine kids using this pencil and having an easy time with it. I like the over the top red foil with gold writing look though, so I haven’t given up on it yet.

The second pencil is a Blackwing Volumes 56, the baseball themed one. The core is soft and dark, and I’ve been using it for quick and loose sketches. I’m trying to ease into one week 100 people by training myself to work faster than I normally would.

What did you use in February? Any planner changes? Pencil revelations? Pen preferences?

Leuchtturm1917 A5 dot grid comparison: standard, 120 gsm, Bullet Journal

A few months ago I started using the Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal – at first as it was intended, but very quickly it turned into a general weekly and quarterly planner for me. As I neared the halfway mark of the notebook I decided to purchase a replacement, but instead of buying another Bullet Journal I purchased a 120gsm dot grid Leuchtturm A5 notebook. The paper was the same in both notebooks, and as I didn’t use any of the Bullet Journal features and the 120gsm notebooks are slightly cheaper, I thought that it would be a good replacement.

While I was still waiting for my 120gsm notebook to arrive, I happened to find a light grey standard (or 80gsm) dot grid A5 Leuchtturm notebook at a local store at a decent price. I purchased it and decided to compare the three notebooks.

The Bullet Journal is the most expensive of the three, but also comes with the most “stuff”. There’s a booklet that explains how to bullet journal, stickers for bullet journaling, a specially formatted front endpaper, a key for bullet journaling, three ribbon bookmarks instead of two, and several pages with dedicated bullet journal appropriate titles (intentions, index, future log). It has the fewest colour options (just three) and features Bullet Journal branding on the front cover and the spine.

The Leuchtturm 120g notebook has a few more colour options, and is basically a stripped down Bullet Journal edition. In terms of thickness the two notebooks are the same (i.e. very thick notebooks, about twice the thickness of a Moleskine), but the 120g notebook has just two ribbon bookmarks (instead of three), no special endpapers, stickers (beyond the regular ones that come with each Leuchtturm notebook), titled pages, key or booklet. It’s cheaper than the Bullet Journal and has the same paper that the Bullet Journal has.

120gsm on the left, Bullet Journal on the right

Same thickness and form factor:

The regular Leuchttuem dot grid (which I’ll refer to as the standard from now on) is 20% thinner than the other two, features 80gsm paper and not 120gsm and like the 120g has two ribbon bookmarks, label stickers for the notebook, and a pocket on the back. It’s also a bit lighter than the two other notebooks.

Standard on the left, Bullet Journal on the right

Where the standard notebook wins in a knockout is page count. The standard has 251 pages, the 120gsm has 203 pages and the Bullet Journal has 205 pages, but several of those pages feature dedicated Bullet Journal titles (Index, Future Log, etc).

All three notebooks open flat, feature an off white paper, and the last 20 pages are perforated so you can tear them out. The standard and 120gsm contain two lined table of content pages, which the Bullet Journal does not. The Bullet Journal is also the only one to contain special divisions on the paper, which are notated on the front endpaper:

The front endpaper on the standard and the 120gsm look very similar, but the 120gsm has a bit of additional branding:

The stickers on the standard and 120gsm are the same, and are meant to be used on the cover and spine, to label the notebook:

The pockets on all three notebooks look and function pretty much the same.

Back endpapers and pocket in the Standard and 120gsm

The table of contents pages on the standard and 120gsm is useful if you use your notebook for project management or meeting notes, for instance, and want to be able to quickly reference a certain page. The pages are already numbered, so it’s just a matter of building the reference pages in a way that makes sense to you. This doesn’t exist in the Bullet Journal because Leuchtturm is assuming that you’ll be using the official Bullet Journal way of referencing and finding pages.

What Leuchtturm confusingly calls Bookmarks – two index pages in the Standard and 120gsm

Now for the paper. The dot grid is the same on all three, but the paper in the standard is by far the inferior of the three. The page is practically transparent (you can see the Leuchtturm1917 logo on the back pocket on the bottom of the page) and you will have show through with all kinds of inks, pens and nib sizes, and bleed through with most pens and inks (including wider gel ink pens!):

This is a notebook that you either need to use with a very specific kind of pen, or be willing to write on only one side of the page (therefore giving up on the price and page number advantage of the notebook):

Show through and bleed through on the Standard. Even the gel inks faired poorly.

Here’s a close up of the way the ink behaved. This is fountain pen friendly paper in terms of it not spreading or feathering, but the bleed through and show through will limit you to fine and extra fine nibs and less saturated inks:

No feathering, some spread with the Retro 51 refill

The 120gsm paper on both the Bullet Journal and the 120gsm notebook fair much better:

You can definitely use both sides of the page with this notebook, and feel free to toss every kind of nib width and ink at it — I haven’t found one that it can’t handle.

Back of the 120gsm (Bullet Journal was the same)

I’ve been using the Bullet Journal for a while now and I have had no problems using even broad and flexible nibs on it, with wet inks. Inks take time to dry on it, but they don’t bleed through.

Ink test page with example of wet and wide nibs on the Bullet Journal

The paper in all three journals is off white. That may bother you. Here’s the page with a sample of a white page next to it:

Paper colour sample – Leuchtturm vs white paper

At the bottom and the left side of the page you can see the special Bullet Journal divisions, meant to help you create various BuJo formats of things. They’re very unobtrusive, so you can easily ignore them if you don’t need them:

Bullet Journal markings on the bottom and on the left margin

So, basically:

Standard — cheapest one, thinnest and lightest with the most pages. Works only if you use fine gel ink pens or fine and extra-fine nibs with unsaturated or light coloured inks. If you write with a heavy hand, or prefer to use ballpoints this paper will likely note work for you, as you’ll carve your way through several pages without really intending to. If you’re willing and able to work around its limitations, it’s worth getting. It’s also more widely available and comes with a much larger range of cover colours than the other two.

120gsm – when in doubt, get this notebook. It’s got the best paper for the least amount of money of the three. If two ribbon bookmarks aren’t enough for you, it’s likely that you’ll need more than three anyway — get post it tabs. If you don’t have to have the Bullet Journal addons and formatting, save a few bucks and get this notebook. You’ll also have a few more cover colour options.

Bullet Journal — get this if you want to use the Bullet Journal method or you want to try it. If you end up deciding not to use the method, you’re still left with a great notebook, and you can buy the 120gsm next time.

I hope this helps clarify things a bit. Personally I’m currently using the Bullet Journal as a regular notebook (my quarterly planning, weekly planner and long term lists are in it) after failing to find value in the Bullet Journal system, and the standard notebook for work projects. The 120gsm will replace the Bullet Journal once I’ve filled it.

How I Use My Notebooks: My Kindle Unread Book List

One of the things that I set up in my Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal is a list of the unread books on my Kindle. It’s supremely easy to buy books on a Kindle, as the whole system is set up a way to make book purchasing as fast and frictionless as possible.

This is a problem for me.

I love books, I adore reading, and I have pretty large group of friends that love reading too. This means that I’m inundated with great recommendations that run the gamut from light hearted fantasy and sci-fi to contemporary and classic literary fiction, with a whole host of fiction and non-fiction books in the middle (I don’t read horror and I don’t read romances and I rarely read poetry but that’s about the only limits I have in terms of my reading tastes). I get several such book recommendations a month, and with my initial impulse to rush out and buy them, and with the ease of purchasing books on a Kindle, things could get out of hand very quickly. This was one of the reasons why for years I was so resistant to buying a Kindle.

You see, it’s very easy to lose track of just how many unread books you have on your device. Even if you sort by unread books, you just don’t get a real feel for how many of them are actually waiting to be read. There’s no bookshelf groaning with the weight of unread books, and I was feeling the lack of that.

Enter my list of unread books on my Kindle:

It’s a simple numbered list of books that I haven’t read and are on my device. As I read a book, I cross it out. As I purchase more books I add them to the end of the list. As I’ve gotten into the habit of downloading samples, I’ve started to write them down too so they don’t get out of hand. It’s super simple, as bare-bones as it can be, and as practical as possible. The point is just to give my brain an idea of the scale of unread books on my device, and it works.

It works.

I’ve stopped compulsively buying books in the fear of “running out of something to read” or “forgetting what I was recommended”. Recommendations go into my GoodReads “Want to Read” list. And my brain can now see that there’s just no chance that I’ll run out of things to read any time soon. If I buy something I have to go over the list and convince myself that what I’m buying deserves precedence over the lovely books waiting patiently in line, some of them for years. I also photograph this list and keep it on my phone for reference, to prevent me from accidentally buying the same book in physical format (unless I purposefully intend to, which is rare).

What about the physical books stacked on shelves, some of them two books deep? I would love to have such a list for them as well, but that task is too daunting for me now. I remember where my books are visually, and moving them all just to catalogue them not only seems like an awful lot of backbreaking work, it will destroy my “memory catalogue of books”. So it seems that my physical books will remain uncatalogued for years to come.

Do you keep a list of all the books you own but haven’t read yet? Do you just keep a list of the books you intend to read next? Do you track your physical books in some way?

Leuchtturm1917 Drehgriffle Nr. 2 Mechanical Pencil Review

The Leuchtturm1917 Drehgriffel Nr.1 is a charming little pen that comes with either a gel refill or a ballpoint refill. The Drehgriffel Nr. 2 is its pencil counterpart: a short but hefty mechanical pencil with a twist mechanism that comes in a variety of colours. My pencil is a bright red and dark grey one, and it has quickly become my most used pencil by far.

The pencil is shorter than other mechanical pencils, but as it’s an aluminium bodied pencil with a steel tip it has some weight and heft to it. It’s lighter than the Rotring 800, and the weight is balanced towards the tip so it’s very comfortable to use.

Drehgriffel Nr. 2 on top, Rotring 800 on the bottom

The pencil mechanism is proprietary to Leuchtturm, and it’s a pretty unique affair. You give the nob on the top a quarter twist and then you hear a satisfying click and the lead advances. The pencil mechanism looks like a gel ink or ballpoint refill, but the little pole on the top pulls out and you can add more pencil leads to the pencil that way. You get to the mechanism through unscrewing the front cone tip of the pencil.

Here’s a closeup of the mechanism (my camera had issues focusing on the lettering):

Here you can see where the leads go in:

The Drehgriffel Nr. 2 is a 0.7 mechanical pencil and it comes with HB leads inside. It’s a great pencil with a classic, sleek design, and a very solid and unique mechanism. The size is plus as it makes it ideal for everyday carry, and it doesn’t have the silly little eraser that certain mechanical pencils have and is always terrible. The only minus to this design is that to add more leads to it you basically have to take the pencil apart. That’s no big chore, but the end bit (the little pole thing) is very small and would be easy to misplace. I’d suggest doing the refilling in batches of a few leads at a time, and being careful to not lose sight of the mechanism end bit.

Otherwise this is an excellent mechanical pencil, a solid and handsome little workhorse that’s a joy to use and would make for a great gift even for people who are not great pencil lovers.

Ghosts of Planner’s Past: Bullet Journalling

I’ve been putting off writing this post because of all the planning systems I discussed, this Bullet Journalling (BuJo) is such a big topic and the system that I’ve used the most and the longest, apart from GTD. This will be the last post in this series as I’m planning on starting another series of posts on a different “how I use my notebooks” kind of topic. The previous posts are here: Chronodex, Weekly Planners, Daily Planners, Filofax, GTD and Friends.

So, Bullet Journalling was started by Ryder Carroll as a very utilitarian, relatively simple, glorified to do list combined with a calendar and some forward planning. At first glance it looked like another GTD system, and it’s clear that they share a common ancestry. This is the first video that Ryder Carroll published on the topic. He’s using a Moleskine squared large notebook here (he’ll switch to a Leuchtturm once he hears about the brand from the Pen Addict podcast, and he’ll land a collaboration deal with them later on), and there are no Instagram worthy spreads, metaphysical musings on how BuJo can transform you into a more enlightened human being, or attempts to upsell anything. It’s like the early days of Moleskinerie and 43folders posts – a guy finds a way to manage his to do list that works for him, and may work for others and so he shares it. Ryder Carroll knows how to explain complex things succinctly and clearly, and the video is beautifully made. It gained a lot of traction at the time, although it’s clear that Carroll prefers that you don’t watch that version of the BuJo explanation.

This is version of bullet journalling is what I started using, and what I still sort of use to this day. Why sort of use? Well, because the basis of the system is a daily to do list with a monthly calendar (and a monthly review), an index and a set of “collections” which are basically project to do lists. I still use the daily to do list and “collection” lists, so I sort of bullet journal. But I also sort of don’t – because none of this is new or unique. To do lists with checkboxes written out on notebooks, with project lists alongside them? There’s a monster list of those. You can’t get a book deal and a stationery collaboration based on that, right?

The official Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal

Wrong. About a year passes from the original video, and Carroll signs a deal with Leuchtturm1917 and suddenly there’s an official Bullet Journal and a new video. Stuff gets added to the system. A future log. A whole set of new symbols instead of checkboxes. There’s an added aura of importance and self improvement sprinkled on top. This system will help you be a better person, not just a more productive one.

The included pamphlet – with a poem about BuJo no less – and sticker sheet

This is where the Bullet Journal system starts taking a problematic turn for me (and others, gathering by the comments to the videos). It starts becoming an Instagram thing. People spend hours making gorgeous, Instagram worthy monthly spreads. They spend money on templates, markers, stickers, and notebook bling for this. There’s an army of BuJo influencers. It’s no longer a “getting things done” system, it’s a “make pretty planner pages” system. Carroll inflates the system’s importance and “holistic” approach more and more. Out of curiosity I bought the second edition of the official Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal. My PTSD makes planning a real struggle now, and I was at the point where I was willing to try anything. Well, for quite a bit of money you get an overly thick notebook full of Leuchtturm paper, which is tolerably useful with fountain pens. Don’t expect Tomoe River levels of fountain pen friendliness, as there is spreading, and it doesn’t show off the full properties of all your cool inks. Then again, it’s not really meant for that. There’s also an added 12 (!) page manual about the system and a large sheet of planner stickers (and three ribbon bookmarks). There’s also stuff printed on the end papers that shows you how you can divide the dot grid page using the supplied markings. If you create tables often, I guess it’s useful. What I mostly feel using it is that it’s a lot.

Have you ever tried to write an essay using Microsoft Word? Have you ever been able to do that without futzing with the formatting, the alignment, the spacing, etc? Word is a program created with printing in mind, and it shows. Writing applications like Scrivener supply you with full screen blank canvases that contain zero formatting prompts because that’s how you get the actual writing done. What the Leuchtturm1917 Bullet Journal does is give you all the tools you need to distract yourself from actually planning your stuff as quickly and efficiently as possible so you can move on to get them done. It’s full of calls to design pages, and I had a hard time at first training my brain to ignore the noise that the notebook came with. Ignore the wide margins, the little division markings, the pages with titles, the stickers and the pamphlet.

But back to the Bullet Journal system itself: stripped of its self-importance and its need to preen for Likes and Favs, is it still useful as a planning system?

Let’s take a look at it part by part:

Index – I didn’t keep one. I think I might have tried this during the first month, but I gave up quickly on this. It’s too much hassle for very little gain. How many times a month do you actually need to find something in your notebook, and when do you not just flip through it? There were many GTD systems with indexes and indexing systems, and I never found the indexes useful.
Monthly log – I keep a version of this separately on a small “Rebel Plans” pad from the Well Appointed Desk. It contains a monthly calendar that’s shaped like a calendar (and not a list of days), with important days in the month circled in a different colour, with basic monthly goals and big monthly milestones/events marked on it. I keep it before my eyes constantly as I work, and so having it tucked away in a notebook doesn’t work for me. I also find listing on paper the events of the day for the entire month a waste of time. That’s what digital calendars are for, and they’re much better than paper ones for it.
Future log – a new invention made for the official bullet journal notebook. I tried using it and found it to be useless for me. If you want true long term goal tracking, I suggest you try the theme system journal or something of the kind.
Daily log – this is the heart of the system, and it works because it’s a to do list. See also my post about GTD. I fluctuate between using the dash-plus annotation system and simple checkboxes, but you can use whatever works for you, of course. The important part is, of course, defining your tasks properly – actionable, doable in a short amount of time, and something that you can and should be doing.
Reflections – these are just a rebranding of GTD reviews. These work well if you do them, but it’s been my experience that it’s very easy to stop doing them because who wants to review what you didn’t get to complete as planned?

So there’s good stuff in Bullet Journal if you are able to strip it down from its anxiety inducing beauty contest trends. The question is, will you be able to ignore all the Bullet Journal page design noise and make use of this as a pragmatic planning system, or will you get carried away and start decorating pages and comparing monthly spreads with people who do this for a living, as you buy yet another template and another BuJo perfect pen? I’ll leave you to answer that one for yourself.

Three ribbon bookmarks and divider markings closeup. You can also see the white margin all around the dot grid page.

London Haul: Carrying Cases and Standard Pens

I’m working on my backlog of posts after about a month of hiatus (work and health related) so here’s a look into more of my haul from my latest London trip.

Muji happened to have a sale on its standard pen sets, so I bought a pouch of these 0.38 gel pens (I think that Zebra makes their refills but I’m not sure) to have around. There are 10 pens in the set, and my plan is to bring them into the office to have them around as occasional highlighters, pens to doodle with or pens to loan with no expectations of seeing them again.

The red Olfa Touch Knife was an impulse buy and is the thing I use most from this bunch. I used it while gift wrapping books, I used it to open packages, and I’m using it now to open Lego bags for my current build (the large Disney Castle). This is a nifty and handy little tool and I’ll probably buy another one at some point as a backup.
The bronze paper clip is just a nicer version of the clip that I use to keep my pocket Stillman and Birn Alphas shut, as they don’t come with any kind of elastic closure.

The gold bics are from Present and Correct and they made me laugh. I plan on giving one away to a designed friend, in the hopes that it will make her laugh too. I used to use them so much when I was a teenager (before gel ink pens became widely available) and I hated them so much that having a gold one is just beyond perfect.

The black and yellow pen is the Bauhaus edition of the Leuchtturm1917 Drehgriffel Nr. 1 ballpoint. It’s a twist mechanism aluminium and brass hexagonal ballpoint pen that comes with a blue refill. I reviewed the gel ink version (identical apart from the refill) here. I purchased this pen in London Graphic Centre near Seven Dials/Covent Garden, and it was completely an impulse buy. Should you buy one yourself? If you’re in need of a pocketable ballpoint that doesn’t use a click mechanism, then maybe. Ergonomically it’s not the best for long writing sessions, and the twist mechanism doesn’t make it great for quick deployment, so there are better options in the market. The design is very fetching, and if you like it you might be willing to overlook the pen’s shortcomings. The Bauhaus edition was created as a companion to Leuchtturm’s Bauhaus notebooks.

I bought the Drehgriffel ballpoint to accompany the Drehgriffel mechanical pencil that I bought at the same time. The pencil is fire engine red and grey with silver trim, and the pen is black and yellow with brass trim, and the pencil is slightly heavier than the pen, though they’re both the same size.

I also got two carrying cases, one a blue Cordura pen case from Midori. The case is called the two way pouch, and it appears very well made.

The pouch is divided into two identical compartments (hence the name) each with a small divider/pocket inside. It also has a prominent and robustly built handle. I am considering using this pen case for my Caran d’Ache neocolors, but we’ll see.

The second case is a heavily discounted net pouch from Muji. This is going into my travel backpack as a way to keep easily lost bits and bobs together and easily found.

The net is just on one side of the case, which is perfect, as it allows you to see what’s inside the pouch and also have this little bag have some sort of body and structure to it due to the solid side.

The solid side of the Muji case next to the Drehgriffel pencil and pen.

I also bought a solid plastic box for the my neocolors at Muji, but I decided not to use if for them in the end. It was too small for them and they rattled around in it and made a racket every time I walked, and I didn’t like that.

All in all this was probably my most “impulse buy” bit of the trip, and I’m OK with that. Compared to previous years I’ve really toned down my “must try all the pens in the world to find just the perfect one!” tendencies. If you’re reading this I assume that you can relate.
Now to just use it all…

Drehgriffel Nr. 1: A Review of the Leuchtturm1917 Gel Ink Pen

London Graphic Centre is one of my favourite stores in London. It’s tucked away in the corner of a street off of Neal street in Covent Garden, and it’s a real haven for artists, designers, architects and anyone who loves stationery and art supplies. I visit it several times whenever I’m in London, and I never fail to find something new and interesting there to try out. This time was no different, and one of the first things that caught my eye while I was there was this:

Rectangular box, Leuchtturm1917 logo, aquamarine colour, unusual pen design – of course I had to check it out.

It was just above the Leuchtturm1917 notebook display, and there were just three or four colours available, but it was obvious that this pen was designed to match the colours on offer in the Leuchtturm notebook lineup. I assumed at first that it was a ballpoint, in which case I wasn’t really interested in it, until I saw that it was prominently labeled as a gel ink pen. Now that was intriguing.

Rectangular cardboard box, with Nr. 1 and “Gel” clearly marked on it, plus the aquamarine colour.

The box was a bit confusingly marked as both “Gel” and “Gel ballpoint”. Checking out the Leuchtturm site clarified that this pen (we’ll get to the name in a minute) is indeed a gel ink pen, with a Japanese refill and a “Ceramic Ball” tip. The refill itself looks very much like the Monteverde Capless Ceramic Gel ink refill. My guess would be that this is the same refill, but more on that later.

Several things of interest here: the “Designed in Germany, Made in Taiwan” that is reminiscent of Apple’s packaging. The prominent “Gel” marking and then the confusing “Gel ballpoint” designation. And the “Ceramic Ball” notation.

Somebody really took the time to design this box, but really didn’t consider how illegible the pen’s name is:

I was sure that the pen was called orehgriffel or ovehgriffel.

The pen is called Drehgriffel Nr. 1, a bit of a mouthful. Apparently Drehgriffel means “rotary stylus”, which probably refers to the pen’s twist mechanism.

The pen has an aluminum body, a white twist nob at the end and brass pen tip. It’s well balanced, heavier than a plastic pen but lighter than a Retro 51 or a machined pen. It’s slightly heavier than a metal bodied Caran d’Ache 849, but if they were put in a boxing ring they’d both be in the same weight category.

The Drehgriffel has a very 60’s look, which I happen to like, but other people may find to be dated. Also, the Nr. 1 is a weird designation when you don’t have any other pen on offer. Will there be a Nr. 2? A Nr. 3?

Here’s the pen’s refill and parts. It’s weighted slightly towards the tip because the tip is brass (and, of course, the pen tip will tarnish with time).

Here’s the Drehgriffel refill side by side with a Monteverde Capless Ceramic Gel refill, and they are exactly the same. Good to know if you’re looking to replace refills, although I suspect that it will take a while to write this pen dry.

Monteverde refill on the top, Leuchtturm refill on the bottom.

The Drehgriffel is similar in size and weight (and price) to the Caran d’Ache 849 metal barrelled pens. It’s a smidge wider and heavier than the 849, but they are very much in the same ballpark. Here they are side by side:

Leuchtturm1917 Drehgriffel on the left, Caran d’Ache 849 on the right.

Here’s a writing sample of the Drehgriffel against a few other gel refills. It’s noticeably wider than Japanese 0.5 gel in pens, and is closer to 0.7 gel ink refills. I tested it on a Moleskine squared notebook (and further down you can see it on a Leuchtturm1917 notebook).

Here’s the reverse side of the Moleskine page. The Drehgriffel bled a bit more than its counterparts:

Here’s a writing test on a Leuchtturm1917 80gsm blank notebook:

Here too there was visible show through an some bleed through, although there was less bleed through than the Moleskine.

The reverse side of the Leuchtturm1917 page.

The Drehgriffel writes smoothly, but there’s nothing in the pen’s smoothness that justifies the advertising. It’s a nice pen, that comes in a variety of colours and that has an interesting design and good refill. In my opinion it would have been more popular if it came with a click mechanism and was a little cheaper, but I still appreciate the fact that Leuchtturm chose to come out with a gel ink pen first and not the more obvious choice of a ballpoint. I like the look and feel of my Drehgriffel, although I would have liked it better if it would have been a little bit wider. As it is if I use it for more than a page or so without pause it causes my hand to ache and cramp up.

Now I’m wondering if there’s going to be a Drehgriffel Nr.2 with a click mechanism perhaps?

Inktober 12: Squirrel

Inktober 3: Dior Dresses

From a photo taken during in the Victoria and Albert Dior special exhibition.

Inktober 1: A tree grows in Tel Aviv

Drawn on location, using a Pentel GFKP sepia brush pen and a 0.5 Uni pin sepia fineliner on a Leuchtturm1917 sketchbook.

Writing at Large

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