The last time I went shopping for a mechanical pencil was with my mom, back in 7th grade. I was looking for a state-of-the-art pencil, which, in the early 90s, meant the transparent body 0.7mm Bic. It had exactly one function; press the back to advance the lead. “What more could you ask for in a mechanical pencil?” my child-brain thought.
If you know at least two things about me, you know I like to make scale models. In that hobby, you have to pretty regularly make layout marks on a model when you’re glueing or cutting things and I was having a lot of trouble getting my classic Bic to accurately make those marks. The “sheath” (not that it really has a sheath to speak of) was just too short and fat. It got in the way when I tried to run it up the side of a rule such that the line would be a few millimeters off. So I went searching for a better solution.
Well, It turns out that companies like Uni-ball, Pentel, and others have been innovating with new features over the past thirty years including: finer lead, metal bodies, longer retractable sheaths, auto-retracting sheaths, and even auto-rotating lead. There was so much more I could have been asking for!
The YouTube reviews I watched opened my eyes to how good mechanical pencils have gotten. But I was afraid of what these new features might cost. I’m passively familiar with the fountain pen world and how much those high-end writing implements can cost so I figured I’d be able to save up for one of the best pencils and splurge, maybe as a Christmas gift to myself. To my surprise, most of the best pencils cost less than $10!
So I picked up a few:
Pentel GraphGear 1000
Pentel GraphGear 1000 0.3mm
My workshop can get a little messy during an involved project so I was looking for something that was durable. All of the pencils that I picked up have metal bodies and some kind of knurling (and you’ll see I have a clear style / color preference as well) but the Pentel GraphGear 1000 is the only one with a sheath that fully retracts with a single click.
It pulls the lead and the sheath back inside the pencil to protect both from bending or breaking. That, plus the fact that it’s a 0.3mm lead and has a few grippy nubs in the knurling, was the clincher for me and of the three pencils I bought, it’s the one that I use exclusively in my workshop. Honestly, I would have preferred the black version but that color only comes in 0.5mm.
Rotring 600
Rotring 600 0.5mm
The Rotring 600 has apparently been the go-to for mechanical pencil enthusiasts for a while now. It’s a product of German engineering so you know it’s well-made. There aren’t too many fancy features on this one but one of the things I like about it is the hexagonal shape of the barrel, which prevents it from rolling off your desk if you set it down in a hurry. Aside from that it’s just a solid pencil with a good sheath length for accurate marking, drawing, and writing.
Uniball Kuru Toga
Uniball Kuru Toga 0.5mm
The final pencil I picked up is the most interesting of the bunch and probably the coolest mechanism I’ve seen when it comes to extended writing sessions. To keep the lead from wearing too much on one side, you usually have to turn the pencil in your hand while you write. It’s a minor annoyance but one you no longer have to live with thanks to the Uniball Kuru Toga.
Window indicates the rotation of the lead.
The notable feature here is that the pencil auto-rotates the lead every time you lift the pencil off the paper! Don’t ask me how it’s done. I really don’t know and it honestly feels like magic, but it works. You can write as long as you’d like and your lead will wear evenly the entire time, right down to its last millimeter.
There are other pencils I’d like to own, such as the Pentel Orenz with an auto-retracting sheath that protects your 0.2mm lead as you write, but I didn’t want to spend too much before I figured out if they’d be useful. For now, I’m completely happy with my purchases. And I only put about $40 into the experiment.
I’m a little sad that I only discovered the world of high-end mechanical pencils just weeks after returning from Japan because the Japanese care a great deal about their writing implements. On the upside, I’m now looking forward to my next Japan trip for pencil reasons.