Review by Tina Koyama
My daily-carry bag contains many pencils, both colored and graphite. To prevent broken points and inadvertent stabs, I keep them and myself protected with pencil caps. Although I’ve tried some fancy ones made of leather or metal, my favorites are inexpensive, lightweight, colorful plastic ones. Kutsuwa makes several, including round ones with roll-prevention nobbies (12/$2.25) and triangular ones with bonus sparkles (12/$2.50).
The round set includes four transparent pastel colors. Tiny nobs near the base keep the caps from rolling off your desk (or down the sidewalk).
The triangular set is a candy palette of six glittery colors.
Both sets come with name labels so that you can identify your caps.
Although the triangular caps are designed for triangular pencils, they also fit onto standard-barrel pencils. All caps fit securely on the standard barrels I tried. The triangular ones feel a bit more snug than the round. Unfortunately, neither style fits on slightly larger barrels such as many Caran d’Ache pencils.
Interestingly, I learned about minute barrel-size differences among some pencils I thought were the same size by capping them. In the photos below, I pushed each cap down as far as it would go. While the triangular caps fit about the same on all the pencils shown, the round caps indicated that the two Staedtler pencils (blue Mars Lumograph and striped black/red Tradition) are a hair narrower than the Mitsubishi Hi-Uni and Blackwing, as I was able to push the caps down further.
I like having both styles on hand so I can use the one that fits a particular pencil best.
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by Notegeist for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
Tina Koyama is an urban sketcher in Seattle. Her blog is Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, and you can follow her on Instagram as Miatagrrl.
