Mitsubishi Hi-Uni 10B premium wooden pencil and Pencil Extenders

100th post, wo-hoo! Just got the latest addition to my stock of boxed Japanese pencils: a dozen of 10B Hi-Uni Pencils. The soft 10B lead is ideal for quick sketches since it glides effortlessly on the paper laying down dark bold lines. The fast coverage naturally wears down the pencil tip rather quickly. Lines are easily smeared and difficult to erase cleanly. This pencil would be a good choice for doodling boldly and making some transfer paper in a hurry. If used for adding the darkest shadows in the final steps of a carefully rendered drawing, a slip sheet under the drawing hand would be a sensible precaution. A coat of a good spray fixative would be advisable to protect the finished piece. Since the tip is fairly delicate and susceptible to breakage, a point protector cap is an essential accessory to make this pencil an effective field sketching tool.
I wonder why only Japanese manufacturers like Mitsubishi and Tombow seem to be the only ones to consider the humble graphite pencil worthy of ingeniously designed re-usable sturdy plastic protective cases while the rest of the world sticks to the same old flat tin box design. Might have something to do with the fact that they arguably produce the finest wooden graphite pencils in the world and are constantly innovating.
When using premium pencils than are somewhat hard to find and each costing more than a dozen of regular no. 2 pencils, there is an increased motivation to use them down to the smallest stub though they might be rather difficult to hold by then. Enter the pencil extenders or lengthener pencil holders to the rescue (click on the picture above to view the tagged Flickr photo with brand names of each holder). Funny how I had missed the protective capability of the Kutsuwa pencil extenders, until I read this Pencil Revolution blog entry. For years, I had simply used them only as pencil extenders while wondering why only the Faber Castell Perfect Pencil seemed to be the only multi-functional pencil accessory in the market that could protect a pencil point from breakage and act as a lengthener holder while featuring a pretty effective built-in sharpener. I prefer the Japanese 2-piece screw-type extenders over the more common sliding-ring type holders. With the Kutsuwa pencil holders, pencil stubs are held firmly in place by tightening the screw grip around them. A design far more effective than the sliding rings of the Koh-I-Noor and Cretacolor pencil lengtheners which tend to come loose rather easily and I find rather uncomfortable for my regular drawing grip.
The hollow barrel of the Kutsuwa pencil extender is big enough to also act as a point protector for a full-length Hi-Uni wooden pencil. It's also a good fit with Tombow Mono Professional Drawing Pencils, California Republic Palomino premium graphite pencils, and Prismacolor colored pencils. The 3 slender holders (starting from the left) are the most comfortable and unobtrusive from this selection, but the RH005 model that replaced them features a slightly wider knurled threaded grip. My searches so far have failed to turn out an online vendor for these pencil holders, but they can be found in 2-packs at Kinokuniya stationery stores.