How time flies! Back around 2014 or 2015(?) I came across one of the first of the ‘handcrafted mechanical pencil’ genre on the now defunct pencils.jp website. It was a Craft-A design, an MP201 with a wood body and a shiny slightly tapered metal grip with evenly spaced grooves. The price? A princely 6000 yen or so, which my adolescent collector’s mind couldn’t quite wrap itself around.
Through the 10 plus years since then the design has stayed fresh in my mind. The MP201 was, to me, essentially the reverse of a Pilot H-2085. Whether it’s better to have wood under your fingertips or next to your palm is up for debate.
With the release of the Luddite Techdraw Wooden Model and more recently, the Everdraw, I’d finally crossed the line and gotten used to these premium priced pencils. So when I spotted a MP201 going for a fair price, I decided to scratch that old itch.
Now, the thing about the MP201 is that Craft-A chose to base it around the Pentel STEIN P315 internals. I guess back then they didn’t have enough clout to order their own custom mechanisms.
And so, the other big appeal of the MP201 to me was the ease of swapping out the default 0.5mm clutch and tip for a 0.3mm set from one of my P313 pencils.
Even better: a friend helped me to order a couple of STEIN P317 that are no longer widely available. This meant I could customize my MP201 as a 0.7mm drafter. Now I can go through my cases and put together a really nice 3/5/7 wooden combo
