Steadtler Noris Eco
This is an interesting pencil. Most definitely not made of Cedar!
It has got to be one of the stranger pencils in my collection. There seems to be a range of these ‘plastic’ pencils, so a few more should turn up in later reviews. Some of them are under the name Wopex, and it seems Wopex is now used to relate to the process used to make the pencils (Woden Pencil eXtrusion).
Why strange? Because the casement is not wood. Well, OK, maybe that is not 100% true. Apparently they are mainly wood, but mixed with plastic, and then extruded at temperature.
The company
I’ve discussed Staedtler in some previous posts.
The pencil itself
The pencil is surprisingly heavy, and has a slightly plasticky rubbery feel. It seems that the pencil is made up of two or three layers. One of these is the outer layer, the outer colouring. It seems that this can be peeled off with some mild effort, leaving the pencil looking somewhat more like a naked wooden pencil. No, I’ve not done this yet. Maybe one day.
The pencil itself, or this invocation at least, is quite attractive. The colours are bold and I quite like them.
When sharpening this pencil seemed to get drawn into my helical cranked sharpener. Wood/graphite pencils come to a natural ‘stop’ when they are sharp, but this felt like it would just keep getting drawn in until there was nothing left. Be warned.
How does it write
The pencil does not write quite like a normal graphite pencil, but I quite like it. It is very smooth, and writes a reasonably strong line. What I really noticed was that the tip barely wore down at all - normally when I’d be sharpening a couple of times a day, I seem to remember maybe I only sharpened this once in the week. Doing a little research, it seems that the graphite core of the pencil is extruded at the same time as the wooden body. I have to wonder if therefore the graphite core is more a mix of graphite and plastic rather than the more usual mix of graphite and clay. I have to wonder if this plastic/grahite mix is more like the fabled Pentel polymer leads that are now so hard to get hold of in wood cased pencil form?
Reviews
Sourcing
Wopex and Eco pencils are pretty common in the shops here. Most big shed or highstreet stationery shops are likely to be stocking these.