Tombow Mono 100
A high end Japanese pencil. The question is, is this the most classy, well finished, good looking pencil that I own? Well, it might be, and it is definitely up there.
What with the deep black glossy paint finish, the crisp golden embossing, and the smoothed cap end with the finely pained white stripe over the top - this pencil is a pleasure to look at and hold.
The company
Tombow are a quality Japanese pencil manufacturer - you can find some more details in a previous post on a Tombow pencil.
The pencil itself
As mentioned, this is a classy and quality pencil. The finish is generally excellent, and the embossing very nice. There is an interesting feature at the back of the pencil - the body of the pencil is the usual hexagonal, but the last inch or so of the pencil is rounded:
This is quite a nice touch, but it does lead to one tiny little niggle - it means there are six little pimply edgy sharp transition points where the body goes from round to hexagonal - and I noticed this feature first when my fingers caught on the ridge, and I wondered what was causing it. Hopefully you can get an idea of the little ridges in this picture:
Does that really put me off using the pencil? No, in normal use I didn’t notice, and I do think the rounded end is a nice visual feature.
How does it write
This is a quality pencil, with a good reputation. My expectation was that it would be a nice write, and being a Japanese pencil, that it would be pretty smooth and dark. And, yes, it is a nice write. It is pretty smooth, dark, and the point retention is actually pretty good - possibly above average. Is it as dark and smooth as a Blackwing?, no, maybe not - but, the point retention is much better (something that I do notice and does bug me a little with a Blackwing).
Nice pencil. Very happy to be using one.
Sourcing
I don’t remember where I got mine - I suspect from a speciality supplier online supplier. These are not pencils you are probably going to find in a local shop, but they are pretty easy to source online. At some point when I’m feeling flush one day there is all likelyhood I’ll stump up for a dozen of these…