Last 24 Hours of the A3 Grid Pad Kickstarter

There's just 1 day left to grab some of our premium grid pads at special Kickstarter prices. The campaign closes tomorrow (Thursday) at 8pm GMT.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1730454032/a3-7mm-grid-pad/description

A3 Grid Pad Kickstarter 1 Week Only!

A lighning-fast, pre-Christmas campaign to reprint an improved version of our A3 grid pads. Here's a link to the project page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1730454032/a3-7mm-grid-pad

Pen Wars Round 2

Following on from Tuesday's post which compared Unipin and Micron pens, here's a follow-up test.

This time I've drawn the same boxes, but I first drew pencil outlines. I then went over the pencil lines with the pens, let the ink dry for an hour and erased the pencil. The test was suggested by Del Teigler in the Google+ comments for the post. It makes quite a lot of sense as many maps will be drawn in ink over a pencil outline.

The results were similar to the first test, but I think the Micron pens have done a better job of covering the pencil. On some of the boxes drawn with the Unipin pens there seems to be some shine coming though from the pencil (probably made worse by the scanner).

I think overall the Microns are the better pens. In the UK they are slightly more expensive than the Unipins, which may be an issue if you're a heavy user. I hope to review some more pens and pencils in the future, and possibly some other stationery items too.

Pen Wars UniPin v Micron

Like many old school mappers I do like my pens. I'm not overly fussy about them though, and at the £1-£2 each price range I'll happily try anything that comes along.

For the last year or so I've mostly been using UniPins, but recently I picked up a full set of Microns and decided to see how they compare in a crude test.

Here's a 600dpi scan of some text (more to show which pen is which) and some boxes. All the pens have been used for a while, but the Microns slightly less than the UniPins. The Staedtler Triplus is included as a sort of control as I think it is a good all round choice that is not only cheap and widely available, but also comes in 30 different colours.

My initial thoughts are that the UniPins give smoother lines,but the Microns produce better black levels.