Welcome To My Thoughts On Pens And Pencils

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The Old Geezer
Please Excuse My Absence

I have not blogged since July of 2015 due to the fact that my Lovely Wife was diagnosed with 2 types of cancer. A new case of breast cancer which has metastasized and gone to her bones, mainly her back. She had a mastectomy of her left breast which showed the type of cancer that was in her bones. She has been taking an oral med. every day and she has a port under her skin to receive a liquid med. She has gone through one round of radiation treatments to stop some pain in her back. That gave her GERD and the med for that was nasty tasting. The bone cancer has caused the vertebra in her lower back to pinch her left sciatic nerve causing her pain, numbness and foot drag. She also has skin cancer that has only been partly addressed.

I have been busy taking care of her as the treatments have left her weak and sickly. She can not drive so I have to drive her to her appointments and treatments. I also have to do all the cooking and most of what cleaning we do. So I do not have a lot of time for blogging. However the installment of the review of the Schaeffer Ultrafine 0.3mm pencil marks what I hope will be a new review every month. However some of my future reviews may seem familiar as they may be a review of a pencil or pen that I have reviewed before just in another size due to my limited collection of writing instruments and the economic state of our nation.

I am grateful to George Fox for wanting me to do a review of another one of his pencils. I think that as a reader of my humble blog, may fine of interest as the Schaeffer Ultra Fine is a very unusual pencil.

So please excuse my absence and as a reader of my humble blog I hope that you enjoy the review of this unique pencil.

Coming Soon...

Thank you,

The Old Geezer.




Thursday, July 2, 2009

Staedtler Maxum Gel Pens

While visiting a dollar type store one day I ran across these Staedtler Maxum Gel Pens. I'm not a fan of 0.8 mm pems but I wasn't expecting to see a Staedtler product in a dollar store so I was intrigued. Steadtler is a name that I have come to associate with fine drafting and drawing instruments, not gliter gel pens, so I bought a set.

Once I got them home I tried them out. Right off the bat I had trouble getting the Green pen to write! I was finally able to get it to write but when I looked at the refill I noticed that the ink had run up the refill and the refill was about 1/3 used up!


Not a condition that one wishes to find ones new pens in! Well, on the back of the package it states,"Guarantee: If your STAEDTLER product fails to perform to your satisfaction simply send it for replacement to:" and gives a mailing address. Well I didn't want to sent it to Staedtler so I just went on the Staedtler USA web site and contacted Customer Service and requested a Green refill. What I received were 3 Green pens! Five stars for Staedtler USA's Customer Service!

Once I had the replacement pen I did some sample writing to get a feel of the pens. The first thing I noticed was that the pens were very smooth! They flowed quite well leaving a bold line of glittering color! The rubber grip is soft without being squishy and is quite comfortable. The colors are bold and dry with a metallic glimmer to them. The ink did not appear to blob up at anytime not even in the tops and bottoms of loops! The pens are light weight and are quite comfortable to write with being slightly bottom heavy. The pens are made of transparent plastic in the color of the ink. The caps snap on as well as snapping onto the back of the pen when posted. I did find that 2 of the pens had problems with staying capped. Investigation showed that this was due to the cap being slightly oversized. I heated up the caps at the mouth and deformed them slightly and they snapped on just fine thereafter. Minus a star for fit but add back a 1/2 star for looks.

Now for the stats! The pens average 17 grams in weight. They are 150.6 mm long and have a balance point 86 mm from the rear of the pen, making them slightly bottom heavy, which is better in this reviewers mind than the opposite. The buldge in the grip is 11.3 mm in diameter with the flare being slightly greater. The pen body is 9.1 mm in diameter. Over all a nice size for a gel pen. The pens are refillable via access from the tip, which is chromed metal. The colors are bold and metallic and come in Green, Blue, Purple, Red, Pink, Bronze, Gold and Silver. My personal faves are the Blue and Red. The stated point size is 0.8 mm "Medium". Measuring a straight drawn line with my Peak 10x scale loup showed the written line to be 0.5 mm.



The writing test consisted of writing a line with each pen, a smear test and a waterproof teat. No bleed test was done as gels do not normally bleed due to the nature of the ink. The results were that altough the claim is that the ink is "smear-proof" and "quick drying", if I was quick I could smear the ink before it dried. After the ink dried it was pemanent, as claimed. The waterproof test confirmed this, but as the ink may be waterproof the glitter is not! When sprayed from a spray bottle to wet the paper, the glitter floated away! Minus a 1/2 star for the flighty glitter.

After all is said (written) and done the Staedtler USA Maxum Gel Pens are a very nice set of metallic gel pens that would be quite useful for any craft or design project. They would be perfect of use in greeting card making or simply signing greeting cards. They would also be great for leaving colorful notes for family and friends. They also make a great gift for the youngster who loves to draw in nice shimmering glitter colors. I'll give the Staedtler Maxum Gel Pens 4 out of 5 stars. Way to go Staedtler USA!

8 comments:

Passion said...

Nice review and cool looking pens.

The Old Geezer said...

Thanks, Passion! Glad you liked it!

Sam said...

Great review and fantastic customer service. I wonder if those pens are available this side of the pond?

The Old Geezer said...

Sam,

If not maybe we can work out some kind of deal and I could get them for you here!

nicci said...

Someone gave me a 1.6 Maxum pen, and I love it!!! It's my new favorite pen. On my quest to find more, I stumbled across your blog. Thanks for the review! I'll keep my eyes open at the dollar store.

Unknown said...

Neat. I have never seen those before. I tried the ball point, but I didn't like it very much. Glad to see the gel glitter pens work well!

Speck said...

Found a set of these at Walgreens drugstore yesterday (Jan. 18, 2010) for $3.99 USD. I've never had great success with gel pens, but since they had the Staedtler name I thought I'd give them a try.

Luckily I didn't have any of the problems you encountered. They write like a dream! Love, love, love them! Wow what great pens!

Looked on the Staedtler website for specs but didn't find them listed. I wonder if they have been discontinued? If so, I need to go back and buy more today.

Jaime-Alice said...

have you tried writing on fabric with this pen? I'm an artist who is trying to draw my art on t-shirt I'm looking for coloured pens that won't wash away.... I've done 3 tops with micron pens however in the town i live in there's only one place that sells them so there 4 dollars a pen and that's on sale.... let me know please