The Tombow 8900 B
Another Japanese reasonable quality pencil. This one is grade ‘B’ - not my normal choice, gut it is what turned up - I think I didn’t realise I was ordering a ‘B’ grade, and would normally have gone for an ‘HB’.
The company
Tombow are a Japanese pencil (well, stationary) company formed in 1913. Tombow are prett well known in the pencil world, particularly for their Mono 100 - we’ll get to review one of those at some point, but not this week.
The pencil itself
The 8900 is apparently Japans best selling pencil (according to the Tombow web site). It a nice straight forward cedar pencil. Decent paint finish, no eraser (I’m not a huge fan of eraser capped pencils, I do prefer them without them).
I like the medium green paint. The pencil to me feels fairly light in the hand, but not too light - it still feels like a quality pencil.
Let’s fling up some other reviews:
How does it write
Well, it is pretty smooth and has a nice dark line - but, that could be because this is a ‘B’ grade. It didn’t wear noticly much worse than an HB, but it was definitely no better. If anything, sure, it wears down a little faster than the Mitsubishi 9800.
Sourcing
Again, maybe not something you are going to find in your local store, but they are sourceable via the internet. Mine came by import by way of Amazon.