Staedtler 9505 mechanical pencil

[MacTech]

A few days ago, I performed a little "write off" in one of my notebooks, just for the heck of it, I rambled for a bit with each of my user pens, just to get a feel for their extended writing performance, one of the writing tools I tried was a cheapo wood-cased "FauxBlanc"-style mechanical pencil, aside from it's weak lead advance/feed (which had about 1/8" of slack on the lead and could only hold one piece of lead at a time), I actually enjoyed it, it had a similar writing feel to a good fountain pen, requiring almost no pressure to put down a line

 

That little mechanical pencil had put the idea of giving a mechanical pencil a serious try back into my head, I initially wanted to get a Rotring 600 to add to my growing R600 collection, but my main source of them montgomerypens, has been seriously raising their prices recently, which annoyed me

 

So, I stopped off at Staples, to find a decent entry-level MP, better off to try an inexpensive MP and find out that I hate it than to sink some serious coinage into a relatively expensive (expensive to me, that is) R600 MP

 

While in Staples, I was vaguely annoyed at all the "toy-like" Day-Glo plastic cheapies they had, I wanted a serious *tool* pencil, and clear plastic cases weren't doing it for me (says the owner of a clear Waterman Kultur inked up with Blue Ghost Invisible Ink.... ), until I found the twin-pack of Staedtler 9505 0.5MM mechanical pencils

 

Black plastic case with chrome trim; check (I'd prefer metal, but beggars can't be choosers)

click-advance lead advance; check

chrome tip that appears to actually be metal; check

comfortable soft-rubber gripping section; check

 

Sold!

 

When I got them home , and out of the package, I thought I had erred and purchased a ball-point pen, as the tip looked like it had a ball-point tip on it, so I pulled off the clicker button, to verify there are leads in the barrel (there were), I clicked to advance the lead, and saw a short piece of lead appear at the tip, a single click appears to advance the lead out 1/16" or so, a very short amount of lead

 

what I *thought* was a ball-point tip was actually the lead gripping collar, according to the package info, the 9505 actually has *two* lead grippers in it, one at the point of the pencil that you can see operating when you click, and another gripper inside the body of the pencil itself, it grips the lead *very* securely, there's no slack at all, so I believe their claims of a dual gripper, a very cool design if you ask me....

 

I still wasn't able to find the eraser, the pencils were packaged with two inch-long white cylindrical narrow erasers, so they had to go somewhere....

 

I pulled the clicker button out again, noticed that it was a little over an inch long, and seemed to have a white "trim" piece on the top of the button, as well as a knurled arrow icon pointing to the left, I turned the clicker in the direction of the arrow....

 

and a white eraser rose from the inside of the clicker button.....

 

Cool! a retractable eraser, what a great design, they really thought out the details on this mechanical pencil, in the past, the mechanicals I've used had slippy lead advances/grippers, and, if they had an eraser at all, it usually required the removal of the clicker button trim cap, which, once freed from the pencil, invariably tried to make good it's escape, sometimes successfully, the 9505 addresses these two shortcomings admirably

 

Okay, now on to the important part, how does it write?

 

Remarkably well, the combination of just the right length pencil body, and slight tip-heavy balance point, it settles comfortably in a standard 3-point fountain-pen style grip, the rubber grip section has a similar slightly triagonal shape as the Lamy Safari/Al-Star series, a single click is usually all that's needed to expose the right amount of lead for writing, you won't generally need more than two clicks, and that's only if you want to do some doodling or shading

 

the pencil requires a light touch to put graphite to paper, it's very "fountain-pen-esque" in this regard, unlike a ball-point, there's no need to bear down hard, unless you want a darker line, in fact, it still amazes me how much closer a mechanical pencil is in writing feel and comfort to a fountain pen

 

I had written (no pun intended ) mechanical pencils off (and pencils in general) as primitive artifacts of a bygone era, no longer relevant to modern writing, I was wrong, they still have their place, and are a far more comfortable writing alternative then ball-point pens,

 

the more I get involved with fine-writing instruments, the more I dislike the ball-point pen, the ball-point pen, in trying to be a "jack of all trades" type of writing tool and excel in "all" writing conditions, actually turns out to be master of none, it's a compromise tool at best, still useful, yes, but nowhere near as nice as a good fountain pen or even a mechanical pencil

 

it's roughly equivalent of driving a car in the snow on all-season tires, as opposed to driving on snow tires, the snows give you far more grip and control in slippery conditions (why yes, it's snowing outside, how'd you guess )

 

Now if only someone could make a "bulletproof" graphite (that requires a special eraser to erase), the MP would be just as cool as the FP

[dcwaites]

As with fountain pen inks, there are varying qualities of .5 mm pencil leads.

I usually buy good-quality Staedtler or Pentel leads, in their little protective cases, usually in 2B.

I use them in a Parker Vector propelling pencil, and a PaperMate one.

 

I especially like the PaperMate pencil because the sheath holding and protecting the lead retracts as the lead is worn down, meaning that you don't have to click and extend the lead so often.

 

 

[jcwc]

Now if only someone could make a "bulletproof" graphite (that requires a special eraser to erase), the MP would be just as cool as the FP

 

For me the whole point of using a MP is to have something that is erasable.

 

As for ball-point pens, have you tried some of the gel-ink types? I find those very comfortable to write with.

Edited April 24, 2015 by jcwc