Pencils

I have a mechanical pencil that uses 0.9mm diameter lead. It works well enough, but it is not the perfect writing instrument. It has a couple of problems. The first is that the only ones I have found use a button on the side to advance the lead. This means I tend to hold the pencil in the same position, which means the tip does not get rotated, so it does not get worn evenly, which means you don't get a nicely rounded tip and the correspondingly fine control, like I do with a wooden pencil. These 0.9 mm mechanical pencils are also the really cheap ones, they do not feel like "fine writing instruments", they feel like throw aways. I think they only cost a dollar or two. On the other hand they are light weight. I have lost several (or some criminal stole them), but I have never had one break.

I have thought about using a draftsman's mechanical pencil. It has some of the advantages of both wooden and standard mechanical pencils. Like a wooden pencil, the lead is firmly gripped in place, and it is large enough not to easily break. On the downside it also needs to be sharpened, which means you also need a sharpener. Like a mechanical pencil, there is no wood going to waste, and a larger percentage of the lead can be used. Also it would require going to the store and spending ten dollars or so to buy a pencil, leads and a sharpener. And then there is the last disadvantage: there is no eraser on the other end, and that is a serious drawback.

So until someone starts selling mechanical pencils that are radially symmetrical, use a 0.9 mm lead, and have an eraser, I suppose I will be sticking with wooden pencils. And it must be readily available. I am not going to go out of my way to buy one. It will have to be at Office Depot or Fred Meyer, two big retail stores here. I do not want to spend four dollars shipping a one dollar item. I might do it for a book, but not for a pencil.