Tag: mechanical pencil

My Favorite Pencils

I love pencils. Pencils with soft, creamy leads. The kind that flow across the paper as though they were ink: 3B to 6B work best for me.

It’s a bit difficult to find such in the sea of No. 2 (HB) pencils.

Why did the HB pencil become the standard? I have no idea. It’s a hard lead and leaves a faint, light line; unless you press the heck out of it. And who wants to do that? Tendonitis and carpel tunnel, you know.

So if one doesn’t use the old No. 2, what does one use? Good question, that. And I have a few answers.

Woodcased Pencils

The woodcased pencil dates back to the middle of the 1500s. But the pencil as we know it today was simultaneously invented in the 1790s by Joseph Hardtmuth in Austria and Nicolas-Jacques Conté in France.

There are dozens of pencil brands available, but only two are made in the USA. The companies are General Pencil Company and Musgrave Pencil Company.

Both companies make excellent pencils that are very easy on the wallet and whose quality matches or surpasses most of the foreign competition. They are the pencils I use almost exclusively.

Of the two companies, I prefer the pencils from Musgrave because I find their lead has a softer and creamier feel to it. It flows onto the paper like ink.

The 600 News and the Test Scoring 100 are my favorite Musgrave pencils. The lead in those two is soft and dark. Easy on the hands. No writer’s cramp. And I find them to be superior to the newly reintroduced and highly talked about Blackwing pencils, which are Japanese made. And run $2.50 per pencil compared to the 600 News at $1.17 and the Test Scoring at 85¢.

You can buy Musgrave pencils direct from the company: https://musgravepencil.com

Mechanical Pencils

I’m a big fan of mechanical pencils. They are very economical. Much more so than woodcased pencils. And their length never changes, so the feel is consistent in the hand. Plus, the pencil will last several lifetimes when given reasonable care. And the lead sticks are dirt cheap.

My go to pencils are a vintage Sheaffer and a vintage Mabie Todd “Fyne Poynt”.

They use .046 inch/1.1mm leads. The same size found in woodcased pencils.

Both pencils twist to push the lead forward. To load the pencil, simply retract the pusher a bit, insert the stick of lead, then retract all the way. 

The Sheaffer and Mabie Todd are my favorites out of the small collection I have. The Sheaffer has a beige-yellow base with red, gray, and black swirls; a black end cap; and silver-colored clip and front cone. The Mabie Todd is black, with gold-colored clip, mid-ring, and front cone. Both are very stunning pencils.

Occasionally I’ll use a lead holder. My interest in them goes back to high school drafting class.

To load a lead holder, you press a button at the back of the pencil body which extends the “claw” from the front. You then insert the lead and let go of the button. The “claw” holds the lead in place.

What’s especially nice about lead holders is that they are about the same length as a new woodcased pencil — and they never get shorter!

The Joy of Pencils

Pencils are a cheap alternative to pens. They produce a fairly consistent line, won’t skip or blob on the paper, won’t dry up, will write at any angle, will always start (I hate when a pen won’t write), and they don’t leak (making them great to use on airplanes, and safe to put in your shirt pocket).

I love pencils and find that I reach for them more often than a pen these days.

Find yourself a good vintage mechanical pencil on eBay and you’ll have a companion for life.

Or visit the Musgrave website and pick up the best woodcase pencils available today.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

 

 

 

CW Hawes is a playwright; award-winning poet; and a fictioneer, with two bestselling novels. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a cup of tea. Thanks! PayPal.me/CWHawes 

 

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The Fabulous Mechanical Pencil

A while back, I wrote about my love of the woodcased pencil. Today, I wish to share my love of a wonderful little machine: the mechanical pencil. Or as my friends across the pond might call it, the propelling pencil.

The earliest extant example we have of a mechanical pencil was found on board the wreck of the H.M.S. Pandora, which sank in 1791. And we thought Pandora was only about music.

There are two basic types of mechanical pencils: those that hold and propel the lead forward and those that merely hold the lead.

The simpler of the two is the lead holder or clutch pencil. It is basically a tube that holds a length of lead. The leads for these pencils range from 2mm (which is standard woodcase pencil lead thickness) up to 5.6mm. When I was in high school drafting class, I used a lead holder. We sharpened the lead on a sandpaper pad. One can buy lead pointers, which are like pencil sharpeners. I prefer the sandpaper pad.

I have only one lead holder, but I use it fairly frequently. It’s an old Faber-Castell Locktite 9800 SG. It uses 2mm lead. My favorite lead is the Staedtler 4B Mars Carbon Lead. It puts down a nice black line without a lot of pressure. My second favorite are the Koh-i-Noor 3B or 4B leads.

Next to a woodcased pencil, I like a lead holder. It is ultra simple and one doesn’t have the wood shaving mess.

The propelling lead mechanical pencil is what most folks are familiar with. Their advantage is line uniformity and choice of fine line widths. You can get mechanical pencils in widths from 1mm all the way down to .2mm.

My favorite mechanical pencil is a Reform .5mm, which, sadly to say, is no longer made. I picked up 3 from Pendemonium when they had a bunch of new old stock available for sale some time ago. I’m glad I did. This is what it looks like:

ReformPencil600

The pencil is fairly wide. A small hand probably wouldn’t feel comfortable holding it. My hands aren’t large, yet the pencil just feels right when I hold it. The weight though is not heavy at all. It has the same feel as any other mechanical pencil.

Running a very close second to the Reform is the Pentel Orenz .2mm pencil. To protect the ultra-fine lead from breaking, Pentel created a special lead support system. The lead stays within the extended tube, which has a rounded end. One writes with no lead showing and it works wonderfully. The size is the same as any other standard mechanical pencil on the market. I love the super fine line it produces. I use the B grade lead to get a darker looking line.

When writing my initial draft, I prefer a pencil. I feel when I use a pencil, maybe because the line can be erased, I’m not locked in to what I’ve written. I’m free to change what’s on the page. Using ink, I get the feeling what I wrote is more permanent. Of course nothing is permanent. However, that slight psychological shift either nudges my creativity or hinders it.

For me, composing at the keyboard doesn’t produce my best work. I’m not a fast typist and my fingers can’t keep up with the flow of my thoughts. I’m also not the most accurate and making mistakes disrupts the creative flow. I get too hung up on how it looks on the virtually typed page instead of getting the thoughts on the virtual paper.

Using a pencil, allows my hand to keep up with my thoughts and knowing I’m using a pencil allows me to be messy if I have to in order to get the creative flow on paper. Nothing is set in stone with a pencil. I can change it, improve it, perfect it.

If you have a favorite mechanical pencil, share it with us.

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