Zebra Tect 2way… you either love its sci-fi techno styling that has been around since 2007 (20th anniversary coming up!), or you hate the feel of its embedded silicone grip rings and how it distracts from serious drafting use. Me? I love its ability to stand apart from the ‘black tie’ ‘pro use’ crowd.
Aside from the popular black x clear colored accent variants made for Coach & Four, I had been looking for a relatively unknown series of limiteds from 2014. These had standard-looking silver bodies and grips, BUT sported intense shades of blue, emerald green and pink, that were matched by the text markings.
The idea I had was to create a harmonious silver themed drafting set of 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7mm pencils. Since 0.7 was the limiting factor, I anchored the set with the standard 0.7 model in silver / green accents.
After a couple of years, I managed to track down the 2014 limited colors in pink, emerald and just the 0.3 for blue. After fiddling around with the possibilities, I decided on this combo.
I guess the only thing I wished was better would be for the 0.7mm model to have its button also sporting a clear green accent instead bstead of just clear uncolored. If I get tired of this combo, I might swap out the emerald 0.5 for a pink 0.5.
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Are the rubber rings swappable?
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Yes, it’s quite easy to squeeze the rings off. And they are pretty durable – I haven’t had any crack or tear all these years. If the bodies are the same color, I would just swap the entire grip. The tricky part of swapping the color rings (to me anyway), is that the text markings should be either neutral, like silver or black. If the text is colored, a swapped ring might clash.
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How many versions are there all together since initial release? 30? 40?
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I’d no idea that there were so many color variations to the Tect 2Way. The only one I have is the Karakaze, with clear o-ring grips (which I find a great choice given the transparent theme).
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I’ve been on the lookout for this one. The most recent one that went up was for way too much though. Guess I’ll just have to settle for the Muji one.
Ohhhh! This is a different can of worms! Tect 2way is the original metal grip model. The clear and all-plastic ones are the Tect 2way Light 
The craziest thing, IMO? Sellers seem to prefer spelling out the product name in katakana instead of English. So… look out for “ゼブラ テクト ツーウェイ” heh
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From my own collection:
Tect 2way ~28 color combos and counting, excluding 0.3/0.5
Tect 2way Light ~13 color combos although there are probably a lot more
Oh, so the ones above with the colored rings are Tect 2Way Light?
