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:
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.
[Originally published 10 March 2015 on www.cwhawes.com]
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