Faber Grip
The company
I discuss Faber over in the Perfect Pencil poat.
The pencil itself
I’ve had these pencils some time. They are quite interesting in their design - pimpled surface (hence the Grip naming), and their bodies are triangular!
On a simple level these pencils appeal to me. Something I think about their fairly unique shape and colour, and they are finished well - they feel well made. One oddity is that these are incredibly light. I don’t know what wood they are made of (but it is not cedar), but they could almost be made of balsa! It might be something like Lime or Poplar. For me, the lightness detracts from the quality of the pencil somewhat. They sharpen OK, but not quite as nice as a cedar pencil. I did have one not so great experience sharpening one of these - I don’t remember quite which sharpener it was with (but I think it was an older model somewhat blunt hand cranked one) - where the pencil sharpened very very off center. I suspect the triangular body shape had something to do with this.
Speaking of the triangular shape - I quite like it. I don’t find it detracts from the pencil use at all, and I find myself twirling the pencil in my fingers more than I do with the standard hexagonal pencils.
How does it write
Much like the Faber 9000, for an HB pencil, this is a very hard lead. If anything, maybe even harder than the 9000. Somewhat too hard for me to want to use as my every-day pencil, but boy did this have some point retention.
I do like these pencils. I like the quailty of the finish, I like the little pimples, and somehow I like the lightness of the wood - but, I don’t think I’d want to use them as my daily pencils. Some of this is probablydown to te hard lead. At some point I’d like to try a B grade Grip and see how I got on with that.
Sourcing
These are easy to find. They are available in many shops here. They are relatively cheap as decent quality pencils go.
Reviews
And some links to some other reviews - where I will note it says the wood is Jelutong!