Overengineered Japanese Mechanical Pencils [video] (opens in new tab)

It might feel "overengineered" to people outside the Japanese society, but it actually just solves common issues here and it's not overengineering. The rotating mechanism is the easiest to see this.

First, Kanji signs are more detailed than the alphabet and uneven lines can make it really ugly/hard to read. Same issue with breaking lead, causes ugliness.

Second, traditionally handwriting in Japan have been seen as a way to measure one's upbringing; you can fake looks and style but if your handwriting is bad, that signals that your parents didn't raise you well. This was(and still is in some places) the reason resumes have to be handwritten.

So tools that helps your handwriting had uses beyond just utility.

(my handwriting is garbage and I'm happy IT and tech jobs doesn't check this)

Cool! I just bought one of these (the shake one) and while checking out I accidentally didn't un-check the "sign me up for your newsletter box". Instead of automatically starting to spam me– they actually sent me a confirmation email asking if I really wanted to sign up for their newsletter– how considerate! Bravo Jet Pens for avoiding that dark pattern.

JetPens’ marketing is amazing. Their online storefront is very well put together, and above all their buyer team ensures they have mountains of imported variety in every category.

It’s so nice to see someone doing something well. Really well.

I have no connection to them other than I spent $500 with them last Christmas on gifts for my entire family.

My first try to post in HackerNews, hoping this fits the spirit. I was amazed to see the features of these pencil pens.

Are these pencils common where you live? Here in Germany, they are known, but rather seldomly used...

When I was younger I lived in Japan for a year when my dad was stationed on a navy ship in Yokosuka.

Most people I can remember then using "mechanical pencils" had those where there was a stack of maybe 8 pencil tips (lead + plastic casing around it) going down the hollow plastic body, and when the piece broke or wore down too far, you would remove it from the stack and push it back in the top of the pencil to make the next tip available. I hated using them, they always broke, felt bad to use, and if you put it in your pocket the wrong direction you'd stab your hand when you went to grab something.

While exploring downtown on Blue Street (which had a mosaic of blue pebbles mixed into the road itself) we found a huge stationary store where the entire second floor was devoted to writing utensils. I went straight for the pencils section, more specifically, because I'm the kind of person who now uses hackernews, for the mechanical pencils section.

It blew my mind.

This store had everything. Metal pencils, plastic pencils, cheap pencils, expensive pencils, auto rotating lead, shake lead, with grips made of all kinds of materials. I don't remember if I even bought anything then, but what stuck with me was the fact they existed at all.

Later in high school I pissed off my parents by doubling my school supplies cost by making a JetPens account, the online embodiment of that stationary store on Blue St.

I tried a few different brands at first, but eventually the Tombow Zoom 505 Mechanical Pencil (0.5 mm) took the crown as my favorite. There's still one on my desk today.

I almost felt like a different person writing with that pencil. I also started only buying 8.5x11 lined paper because my calc teacher required it, but that added to the experience. I was no longer handing in crumpled pages from a spiral notebook with broken pencil marks all over it, but professional products on crisp full size paper with perfect text.

This started something for me, because ever since I've put a higher priority on what tools I use to make work. I have an happy hacker keyboard, a color graded BenQ photography monitor, and soon planning on upgrading to a stupidly expensive mirrorless camera.

Maybe I'm just making "buying expensive high quality things" into more than it really is, but at least for me it makes a noticeable mental difference when I'm making things and can feel the engineering that went into the tools I'm using.

Thanks for posting this! Brought up a lot of memories obviously lol

There's over engineered mechanical pencils and then there's the Wingback[0]. A £140 mechanical pencil made from stainless steel, featuring bespoke internals made in Japan and finished with a tungsten carbide coating.

It may be over engineered and overpriced, but damn if it's not one beautiful item of stationary.

[0] https://wingback.co.uk/collections/mechanical-pencil/product...

Alright, I went in thinking "come on, how 'overengineered' can a mechanical pencil be?", and by about halfway through I wanted to buy one, and at the end I readily admit that they've managed to find exactly the problems with these things and fix them, way beyond what I would have thought practical. Remarkable:)

Here in China I realised if you want more than 4 colors or so, multicolour pens are also Japanese imports only. But they're too fat to be useful, IMHO. It's also hard to source ballpoint pens in non red-blue-black colours, for no apparent reason. I guess I'm oddball for liking colour contrast in my notes. The nicest pen I ever bought was machined out of Laotian tropical hardwood but it was a traditional calligraphic pen with the nib and ink management issues. For modern writing implements... you can't beat a fullscreen terminal, vim and a Cherry (German design, China fabrication I guess). https://www.cherry-world.com/

I agree that these pencils are "overengineered" in that they are multiple times more complex and expensive than their simpler counterparts while offering relatively little improvement in function, but if you use a pencil every day I think that increase in cost is more than worth it.

I, for one, have loved my Kuru Toga pencil (the rotating lead one) since the day I got it a few years ago.

I'm sad that I didn't discover the Kuru Toga pencil until after I left school. I put them in gift baskets for friends who are students.

That was fun. I don't use anything except mechanical pencils but none of those really grabbed me and I generally love gadgets. For some reason I don't like the bouncy feel of the spring-protected tips and the only time I break leads is when I drop the pencil on the floor.

If, like me, you're reading this from India and want to get your hands on one of these beauties, a few of them (zebra delguard, tombow graph) are available at scooboo.in.

Wow these are amazing. I bought my daughter a mechanical drafting pencil with 0.9 mm lead because 0.5 tends ti break on her. These might be the better solution

These are super cool, but I have to admit I’ve sworn by BIC 0.5mm mechanical pencils for years. Part of it is that they are so cheap and commonplace, I like that at least for one aspect of my life I don’t rely on some super custom, boutique version of an everyday product.

In middle school, a buddy of mine drew a beautiful picture of a Bugatti Veyron with a silver Pilot Dr. Grip Ltd. shaker pencil and I was so enamored by his drawing and his pencil. He spent weeks getting the details just right during downtime in math class.

It got me interested in stationary ever since then, and I've always loved JetPens. I've gone through phases where I really like mechanical pencils, although I mostly write with Uni Signo UM-151 0.38mm gel pens. Super smooth with a crisp, fine line.

JetPens is a great site with a very cool niche. Check out Kinokuniya too. There's one in Little Tokyo in LA. Lots of pens, pencils, notebooks, and all sorts of books and manga.

I looked hard for a nice pen about 5 years ago. I ended up going with a Zebra Sharbo X LT3. I use them so much that the matte finish comes to a shine in about 3 months and the plastic mechanism inside loosens up in about 1 year. They probably would last much longer if I did not flip them all day everyday. I happily buy new ones when it's time from JetPens. I've tried a few other models but nothing compares to the Sharbo X LT3.

Unfortunately, the pretty colors have been discontinued, but if you're looking for a multipen and don't mind putting up some money, they're great.

I love Jet Pens. I actually found my way into it from the pen side, rather than the pencil side, getting very into Japanese made inks and fountain pens (and nib replacements for non-Japanese fountain pens). My first entry into this world was a quaint little stationary store in Kansas City where I found and bought a pen specifically designed to fit in the spine of a checkbook (this dates me, I'm sure). After that I began to realize the world of pens was larger than cheap bics and the occasional logoed click pen given away for free at a conference.

Since that experience I've become a devoted fan of Zebra's line of pens, and I always carry an F-301 or F-402 in my pocket, have huge stacks of them in my pen drawer, and discovered the entire world of Japanese stationary. I now buy almost all of my stationary products from Japanese companies, except ironically mechanical pencils. My favorite mechanical pencil is the Rotring 800, which is made by a German company. For a fit of double-irony, they no longer manufacturer them in Germany and they are instead made in Japan under license by Holbein (who also makes amazing pencils for art use).

Between Jet Pens and Goulet Pens, I've spent a small fortune on stationary products over the years, but it creates a visceral experience that can't be replicated electronically (I've tried). My writing has improved, I take more notes, I write with more eloquence, and I've found using good stationary and writing well is so rare now that it becomes a nice symbolic touch that gets remembered.

I’ve been a huge JetPens fan for years. Something about the over-engineering makes it almost hobby-like to collect these pens and pencils.

On the downside, I probably own 500 or so pens and pencils of all variety, plus a requisite number of over-engineered pencil cases.

The habit extends beyond JetPens into somewhat exotic materials, like the pens from Tactile Turn out of Texas. It’s easy to spend $400+ on a pen there. It makes a fun conversation piece but very few understand the “cool pen” impulse some have.

I've used a Pilot shaker mechanical pencil [1] over 20 years ago, and I'm quite surprised that the shaking mechanism, and many other quality-of-life improvements, still aren't that ubiquitous.

[1] https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/pilot-id-shaker-mecha...

I've used the Kuru Toga for years. The mechanism is so good that I don't see the argument for any other pencil. Which is actually a shame, as I can't get excited for other pencils anymore.

During my school years we had all kinds of discussions and comparisons for best pencils, best pens, best erasers.

How does the automatic lead extender know by how much to extend the lead? If I were to write lots of dots, the lead would wear off less than when I wrote lots of dashes, but I would touch the paper and lift the pen an equal amount of times. Guess: is it weight controlled?

What are a few goto pens that people use for note taking that involves some diagrams (think napkin system designs).

I currently use a pilot G2 and it's decent but I feel like a weighted pen body could feel better.

I adore this kind of precise and incrementally improved solution.

To me this exhibits the very best of the engineering craft: small, measurable improvements anchored in real issues faced by the consumer/client.

This is crazy cool! I wonder how these miniscule and thin lead sleeves are produced and how they manage to stay within tolerance and even get a rounded edge.

Haven't watched the video yet, but I did just the last couple of weeks buy 2 Uni Kuru Toga pencils from JetPens and am enjoying them immensely.

I highly recommend getting the kuro toga pipe slide. The pipe slides up to protect the lead as you're writing, but you still get the clutch mechanism that rotates the lead.

They're available on amazon for not a huge amount of money:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=pipe+slide+kuro+toga (no affiliate link)

Gotta admit, the spring inside the tip to prevent stress breakage sounds amazing. It was the #1 reason I stopped using mechanical pencils.

Nice, but when you're actually drawing (technical, not 'artistic') nothing beats a 4H pencil, a B pencil and colored pencils. But they have to be well sharpened.

I had used a combination of 0.35mm, 0.5mm and 0.7mm mechanical pencils, but they had been significantly worse than 'real' pencils.

Thats not overengineering, its good engineering. It solves real problems with great eye for detail.

Beautiful instruments. Personally, I still opt for a faber-castell clutch pencil, alvin lead, and a dahle or staedtler sharpener. In the event it's misplaced, it's not much of a loss (financially).

I have the Orenz Nero, the Kuru Toga and even a Faber-Castell alpha-matic, but my favorite is a Faber-Castell e-motion with its lovely tactile wood barrel and expressive 1.4mm lead.

The pointy metal ends on these bend so easily though. I love the concept but that just makes them a liability for daily driver use

Don't kill me for this - but is there any advantage to using a pencil over a pen for writing, except for erasability?

I really love my staedtler.

I had a smile on my face throughout the whole video, lovely.

“Zebra DelGuard Type-ER”

Sold.

Wow, I'm impressed. I've used mechanical pencils for decades and I'd hate to go back to wooden pencils that one sharpens (although I make exceptions for carpenter's pencils in woodworking - but even then I'll use a mechanical pencil for that purpose if there's one in my shirt pocket at the time).

My writing looks terrible if I use a ballpoint pen so I've always used pencils where possible, if I have to write in permanent ink then I'll use a good nibbed fountain pen (I've a collection including a Waterman, Parker and a Mont Blanc but good pens are outrageously expensive - and all of them are messy so I avoid them whenever possible).

I don't know if others have this problem but the neatness of my handwriting is highly dependent on the type of implement that I'm writing with so I'm quite particular about the type of pen or pencil I use. (I've no idea why the quality of my writing is so variable and so dependent on the type writing implement that I'm using, so I've considerable envy for those who can write with just about any type of pen or pencil and that their writing always remains neat and tidy.)

For years, I've used Cross 0.5mm mechanical propelling pencils and found them good but they too are hellishly expensive especially the gold plated ones, so when one of mine broke I kept my two remaining Crosses for best (as dress pencils for my suit etc.) and I started using the very much cheaper plastic Pentel ORENZ 0.5 and 0.7mm mechanical pencils (fact that they're cheap means I can have many more of them and scatter them around everywhere without the worry of losing one. By now I must have about a dozen or more scattered around the house. The reason I've so many is that I run a selection of leads with different hardnesses, typically HB, B, 2B and 4B.

I selected the Pentel ORENZ type as they were the best of the plastic types available at my local office supplier, and I was unaware until now that there are likely to be better alternatives available in the cheaper class of pencils.

One of the problems I've always had with mechanical pencils, including the high quality Crosses, is that I press hard and write heavily thus I'm forever breaking leads (incidentally, I use Pentel leads with the exception of 4B as over the years I've found them to be the strongest and most consistent).

I can't quite say that about the Pentel ORENZ however, compared with the Cross I found that I'm breaking leads between two and three times more often. Moreover, it was even more frequent with some of these pencils. On careful inspection I found that the protective extension tube was a thou or so larger in diameter than the others and this led to the leads breaking much more frequently. In recent times this has led me to also use the next lead size up - 0.7mm (it's a bit thick but it's OK for quick and rough work).

Whilst 0.7mm leads are definitely more rugged and much less prone to break, I would still much prefer to write with 0.5mm leads (again, my writing looks much tidier when I use them).

The enhancements I've seen in the pencils in this story I've not seen previously anywhere else. Of particular interest to me are the improved lead delivery mechanism and the rotating lead arrangement so I'm particularly interested in purchasing them. (The smearing and broadening effect as the lead wears down is particularly annoying so I hope that feature works well.)

One of the major problems with the sliding sleeve arrangement is that it interferes with one's writing by rubbing on the paper. The problem isn't very noticeable with the Crosses but nevertheless it's still annoying and it's close to being objectionable on the Pentel ORENZ. Moreover, if you drop the pencil it's likely to get a burr on the tip of the sleeve which will make things worse (the sleeve will then scrape across the paper instead of sliding over it). With these new pencils I can avoid that and I should be able overcome the problems I've been having with the Pentel ORENZ.

I'm mindful however of the fact that the Pentel ORENZ is also reviewed in this collection and it was given a glowing writeup, so I'm expecting that some hype has crept into the comments on all pencils.

I now have to figure how to purchase them, for certain there'll be no one near me who stocks them.

Great for drawing too