My fixed sleeve has never had an issue. It’s a 0.5. I carry it in a satchel along with the rest of these daily. I don’t necessarily USE them, but they travel.
My favorites of these are duplicates: The Protti is amongst my favorites. The Rhodia 0.5, the Fix Pencil(my new favorite EDC[ who knew?]), Boston 0.5, Alvin 0.3 (original) and TWSBI. The M3-1052 is in fact a Muji cap and I forget the clip(?) hybrid. I love them all…. The two Tombows and Kokuyo were worth buying extras in order to not worry about damage.
I have the original TWSBI Precisions in 0.5. Silver with fixed tip and Black and Brown in sliding sleeve. Aside from losing a lead retainer (little rubber piece), I have never had any issue with any of them breaking lead.
I’ve been putting off getting one but I really like the design.
So many people mentioned a “glitch” in the making of the pencil in reviews, that I thought the TWSBI could have a design fault, like some mis-alignment of the clutch and the sleeve, judging by what people were reporting.
But obviously more people will tend to leave feedback if there is a problem than when there’s no problem at all, so perceptions of online feedback are definitely misleading…
Finally found a pen that could at least partly match the raw power of the spring coil on the PILOT SPRINTER. This unnamed design from Senator features a short yet beefy spring for its button in shiny metal. Otherwise unremarkable and fitted with a Parker style refill. Both having an ‘S’ monogram on their respective clips is a bonus. Finds like this Senator are why I still use eBay once in a while…
Conceptually, I think the pen design that comes closest to the Sprinter might be the Porsche Design P3115 ‘Laser Flex’ - where the entire body compresses to deploy the tip. I guess the P3110 Tec Flex also qualifies but the metal mesh body feels less interesting to me… If I had the funds for a PD Laser Flex, I’d probably blow it on a proper 5050 FF set first.
Clear dark green combo at work:
• Sheaffer Javelin rollerball
• Inoxcrom Marina BP>Schmidt 0.7mm
• Jetstream 3 x Zoff limited
• Dr Grip CL Play Balance
• Acroball M 0.7mm
Addendum: I wrote about this leadholder (which was recently discontinued after 73 years) in my weblog at “Faber-Castell TK 9500” (in German). – I hope this self-promotion is allowed here.
The PSD5 is my all-time favorite mechanical pencil, and I always have one at my desk and in my backpack. It’s not the perfect pencil, but it’s pretty close and I have a special fondness for it since I bought one for college in the 80s and used it almost exclusively for many years after, and still use it often.
Having bought and used one of these in college is almost impossible for me to imagine. I got a Sanford Pro•Touch (first gen with rubber grip) in college and proceeded to wear that thing out. The grip just spins in place now
But a PSD5 is a crazy step up in class. I didn’t even know such pencils existed until about 2010.
MUJI fountain pen. Some vintage pens I bought had partly used cartridges that still had ink, so I transferred one to this. It writes pretty well for a $16 pen!
Platinum Pro-Use 171, 0.7mm. Strangely I don’t like the 0.5mm version as much, but the 0.7 is just right.
The ever-present PSD5.
Ohto Conception 0.5. It’s fun to twiddle with and more compact than the promecha/ms01 series.
Pilot Birdie Switch, a pen/pencil combo. I mostly use that one for writing on small sticky labels.
