The pencil

[shea2812]

I have seen the fp in the metal, butt heavy to use posted. The smooth metal section is not to my liking. On the other hand I have a resin bp filled with Faber's own roller parker type refill. The way it glide is almost fplike. Problem is I am not sure where to get a Faber make parker type roller refill. Parker's gel refill is not as smooth.

[RMN]

I heard about the ones with the metal ends recently. I hope to find a pen (or pencil if possible) so that I can check out the weight. The only remaining problem would be the length.

 

Sorry for a late reply.

 

Metal pencil weighs 30 grams.

 

 

D.ick

[Ink Stained Wretch]

I still like my Mongol 482s. I mean the older ones, not some newer thing which I've heard rumored are being made in the Philippines or someplace. I know my Mongol 482s are older because I got them more than 45 years ago.

 

The problem these days is that my fingers are getting pretty arthritic. The wood cased pencils are a bit too thin to be comfortable for me now. I still use them for short jottings on occasion, however. The round cross section pencils are still comfortable enough for me to use, but it's hard to get a bunch of ordinary pencils with a round cross section. Everything is hexagonal. And, yes, I understand that the standard slats yield 9 hexagonal pencils but only 8 found ones. I'm sure that if I found a bunch of round wood cased pencils that had good leads that the cost would be something I wouldn't find appealing. Oh, if only I could go back in time and score some of those round advertising pencils with the soft leads that they used to give away at one paint store .

 

I will also use the older, but not really old, Dixon Ticonderoga 1386s that I bought back when "Made in America" was one of Dixon's advertising points. This is before they moved manufacture to a certain nation state that dominates the eastern end of Asia.

 

I like all kinds of mechanical pencils. They usually have sections that are much wider than a wood cased pencil, so my arthritic fingers can hold them a lot better. I have 0.5 mm, 0.7mm and 1.1mm mechanical pencils. I have a single 0.9mm pencil. It was a give away from the Girl Scouts of America. Unfortunately, the lead is apparently a piece of anthracite. I just haven't gotten around to buying any decent leads for it, and I can't justify another lead purchase, since I bought a lot of 0.5mm and 0.7mm years ago.I have one 1.1mm mechanical pencil from my high school days.

 

I have found that pencils work best for me when one sheet of paper is backed by a hard surface, as in having a table, desk or clip board under one sheet of paper. Pencil on a notebook page that has a number of other pages under it can be not fun for me. It can also lead to a ripped page.

 

I prefer fountain pens for most writing, but there is something to be said for the fact that with a pencil you can sit and think and have the pencil ready to write when you put tip to paper, even if you've spent the past half hour in some sort of reverie. Very useful, that.

 

The pencil realm has received serious academic treatment. The Pencil, A History of of Design and Circumstance, by Henry Petroski, in print for almost twenty years, is a fascinating cultural and engineering history focused on the pencil.

 

Great book . I used to read myself to sleep with it at the end of a day. It was quite interesting and made me want to use pencils even more. Maybe enough time has goner by that I'll try re-reading it, it gave me that much pleasure.

[pyotrkot]

About 30 years ago I bought a Pilot Vanishing Point 0.5 Mechanical pencil for $10 to $15. I used it occasionally, but found it a little heavy so it sat in the pen drawer most of the time. Usually I use cheap light weight pencils by Pentel, etc. My preference has changed over the years and I like 0.3 soft lead best.

 

As for the Pilot VP, I sold it on Ebay for over $100. That should finance my pencil purchases for a long time to come ;-)