guide to mechanical pencils

The first pencils were more like modern clutch pencils than what we now think of as 'normal' wooden pencils. Graphite was first used in lumps, with perhaps a bit of cloth wrapped around to hold it. When things started to progress towards the pencil, the first attempts involved wooden holders to grip sticks of graphite, so they could be used more easily and cleanly. The first description of a leadholder was by Conrad Gessner, back in 1565.

If you want to be really traditional, Cleo Scribent make a replica, called Der Gessner. It's rather fiddly to adjust, because there's no spring mechanism, but the basic elements of a clutch pencil are all there.

For many years, push-fit lead around 1.18mm in width was most common, with a twist mechanism that wound the lead down like a screw as it was used, and pencils were often decorated with ornate designs in sterling silver.

The need to write intricate characters meant Japan had a greater incentive to make thinner leads, which lead to the birth of the modern mechanical pencil there.

Tokuji Hayakawa made the 'Ever-Ready Sharp Pencil', which was a huge success, and his company took the name of the pencil, and became 'Sharp' - the electronics company we know today.

Thinner lead wasn't possible with the traditional mix of graphite and clay, as it was too brittle. Modern thin leads are based on high-polymer organic materials that can take much more force without breaking, and they're getting better all the time.

For the most part, mechanical pencils are quite simple to use - with most of them, you just click the button on the end to feed out more lead whenever you need to. Retract the lead by holding the button in and gently pushing the lead in. When one stick of lead is used up, keep clicking until the next appears. When you're all out, just add more leads of the right size, usually through a hole under the button, often hidden under the eraser.

There are some variations and oddities, though…

This mechanism is most common in pencils that are designed to go with a matching ballpoint pen. You twist the top part of the barrel, and the lead clicks forward. Release, and the top part springs back, but the lead stays put. Twist and hold, and you can push the lead back in. It's just like the clicky mechanisms, but twisting takes the place of pushing. These usually pull open in the middle to add more leads.

Inside, this type of pencil often uses an adapter, similar in shape to the refill for the matching ballpoint, which contains the whole pencil mechanism and lead tube. Essentially, the pencil is a ballpoint pen with an adapter fitted to turn it into a pencil. There's usually a cap at the top of the adapter which you remove to add more leads.

Click here to view all our twist-action pencils (Some of the pencils at that link will be of the other twist type, but we'll mention those specifically in the next section.)

These aren't so common these days, but there are a few around, like Faber-Castell's e-motion. The inside is a kind of screw-mechanism, where you wind the lead down as it's used. When you finish a lead, you remove the little stub, and push a new lead into the mechanism, and wind it back up to the top. Sometimes these only hold one lead, but they often have somewhere to store spares. The e-motion, for example, has space for six extra leads hidden behind the nose-cone.

Click here to view all our continuous-twist pencils

Another solution to the problem of stopping to click out more lead is the shake mechanism - give the pencil a firm shake up and down, and a weight hidden inside does the job of hitting the button for you. These normally have a button in the usual place too, but a quick flick of the wrist takes less time away from scribbling down your notes.

Click here to view all our shaker pencils

Some pencils don't make you stop at all to extend more lead, at least until you reach the end of a stick of lead and have to click the next one through. The way these work can be a little unexpected, as you need to write with almost no lead visible at all.

There is a (usually) plastic cone around the lead. Normally, you'd have to make sure you clicked out more lead before it wore down enough to reach the supporting tube or cone, but not with an auto-feed pencil. Just keep writing or drawing. When the lead wears down enough that the cone touches the paper, the cone is pushed back up a little way. A spring inside pushes it back, feeding some lead back down with it. The result is that the lead will wear down until it reaches this cone, but then won't go further.

It sounds as though it would be uncomfortable and scratchy to write with, but the cone is smooth and rounded so it doesn't catch the paper. You may still find it more comfortable to click lead out the usual way when you have time, but if inspiration strikes, just keep scribbling!

Click here to view all our auto-feed pencils

It's a bit subtle, but we're going to make a distinction here between pencils where the sleeve that surrounds the lead can slide up if pushed; and pencils where the sleeve is designed to slide up easily while writing. A few pencils now have sleeves with edges that are smoothly rounded, so they won't catch on the paper, and made to slide up really easily. The result is that you can keep writing in the same way you can with an auto feed pencil. The difference is that these pencils won't actually feed out any more lead, so you'll have to stop and click eventually. By that point, though, there's bound to have been enough of a pause in proceedings for you to give the button a click.

Examples: Kuru Toga Slide Pipe, Pentel Orenz

Probably the biggest innovation in mechanical pencil technology in the last few years, the Kuru Toga is, quite literally, revolutionary! As you write or draw with it, the up and down movement is used to rotate the lead.

Because a pencil is usually held at an angle to the page, the lead wears down at an angle, and forms a chisel-shaped tip with a sharp point. This shape makes for a thicker line, and the sharp point can catch on the paper. Some people naturally work around this by turning the pencil as they go, wearing the lead down more evenly. The Kuru Toga does this for you. The result is a finer line, and less lead breakage.

While it probably works best with Japanese characters (yes, no surprise, it was invented in Japan!) where the pencil is lifted from the paper several times for each character, it still works well with English writing, and even helps a bit with cursive script.

View our Uni Kuru Toga range

With most mechanical pencils, the eraser is there for emergency use only. If you needed to erase much, you'd probably want a separate eraser. A few pencils, though, have larger erasers, with twisting mechanisms to extend them, so they can last a long time. If you erase often, it's a great feature.

Examples: Pentel Twist-Erase, Faber-Castell Grip 2011, Staedtler Triplus Micro.

If you use mechanical pencils, at some point you're likely to have a lead jam. It happens. A tiny bit of lead gets stuck somewhere in the mechanism, and stops it from working. Lead might not click forward, or it might click forward but slide back in when you try to use the pencil.

Most mechanical pencils can be dismantled to some extent to clear a jam. Usually, the part near the tip unscrews, which lets you see the mechanism. If you then push the button down against your desk, the clutch mechanism pushes up. There's a brass ring around the clutch jaws, holding them shut - push it down, and it will release the jaws. Once they've sprung open a bit of sideways tapping should dislodge any tiny bits of lead.

If the mechanism can't be opened up, blockages can usually be cleared by holding the pencil tip-up, with the button held down against your desk, and feeding a cleaning pin in through the tip to push any little bits of lead out from where they're stuck. Some pencils include a cleaning pin, attached to the eraser, but many don't. If you don't have one to hand, another piece of thin wire or a pin may fit, but don't force anything too wide into the tip. At a push, a spare piece of lead can do the job, but it takes a steady hand to feed it in without snapping it!

A lot of multipens have pencils as one of their functions. These are most commonly either twist-action or gravity select models, and the pencil mechanism and lead chamber are all fitted into the space of one of the tiny ballpoint refills. They normally operate like most pencils do, by just clicking a button on the top to extend more lead. Adding more lead is a bit more fiddly, and generally involves pulling the little pencil mechanism off its mounting, just like you would to change the ballpoint refills. There's space for a few leads in the tube it fits onto, but don't put too many in there - two or three spares is all there's space for.

These aren't the best pencils for heavy users, but if you only need a pencil occasionally, they can be ideal - a couple of different ballpoint colours in one pen is quite useful, and a pencil thrown in so it's always handy!

View our range of multipens - most include a pencil.

It's not a bad idea to start with thinking about what you're likely to use the pencil for. If it's mostly going to be for writing, you're probably going to look for different features to someone who will use their pencil for sketching.

If you're going to be writing with your pencil, you'll want lead thick enough that it won't break too easily. With modern leads, 0.5mm is quite strong enough for most people, but more heavy-handed people do sometimes find they snap such thin leads, and 0.7mm or even 0.9mm leads are better for them. Some have cushioned lead, where an internal spring cushions the lead against rough treatment.

If your writing includes the sort of notes where you sometimes just can't stop scribbling, like taking down lecture notes or meeting minutes, you might want to consider pencils that make it easier to feed more lead in a rush, with shaker mechanisms or side buttons. Auto-feed pencils can work well, too, keeping the lead usable at as you keep going.

Some good pencils for writing: shaker pencils, auto-feed pencils, Uni Kuru-Toga, Faber-Castell Grip Plus, Pentel Energize.

Drawing or sketching can have quite different requirements to writing, and can require a bit of experimenting to see what suits you, and what feels right for your style.

Lead thickness is very important for drawing. Rough sketching can benefit from thick leads, for bold lines, usually using softer grades of lead. For this style, you may well want to consider clutch pencils too, as there are more of them available with thicker lead. 0.5mm is the classic size for more technical styles, but the humble 0.5mm mechanical pencil is a very versatile tool, and is used by many artists for all sorts of styles. For detailed drawing, you might want to consider 0.3mm leads.

If the pencil is going to live in a pencil pot on your desk, it won't matter much to you if it isn't pocket safe. If you're going to be sketching out and about, though, it can be very important. Conical tips aren't usually too risky anyway, but tubular tips can be a bit too sharp to want them in your pocket if they don't retract. For quick and easy retracting, a 'double-knock' mechanism helps - the mechanism is retracted with either a side button or a firmer push of the end button. Others may need you to push the tip in against something while holding the button down.

If the eraser is important to you, you'll need to make sure it's a good size, probably of the extendable type. These usually twist up and down to expose more eraser as needed, usually with the added bonus that you can twist it back down out of the way when pocketing the pencil. For drawing, though, you may already have a preferred eraser that you'll carry separately, in which case, any eraser would be for emergency use only.

• Mechanical Pencils: 0.3mm, 0.5mm, 0.7mm, 0.9mm, 2mm.
• Clutch Pencils: 2mm, 5.6mm
• Pencils shaped like wooden pencils: OHTO Sharp Pencil, Fixpencil 22 (clutch), Caran d'Ache 844, Cleo Skribent SilverSign.
• Chunky sketching pencils: Lamy Scribble, Kaweco Sketch Up, e+m Sketch Pencil.

Mechanical pencils can have a surprising variety of features. If you think the number of possible features to consider is a bit much when you're trying to choose which pencil to buy, just imagine how it is for someone who has to write an article all about them!

Here are some of the features you may want to consider when buying a mechanical pencil:

The classic mechanism for feeding lead is a button on the opposite end to the tip that pushes lead forward one 'click' at a time. There's quite a complicated set of parts inside to make it all work, but it's all so tried and tested that they work very reliably, and you can usually get years of use out of even the most basic mechanical pencil.

So why might you consider other mechanisms? Well, side-mounted buttons, shaker mechanisms and auto-feed mechanisms can all feed lead a bit quicker. For most people's use, it's not that critical, but if you have to keep up with lecture notes or take minutes in meetings, the time taken to click out more lead might be enough to put you behind.

They're all based on a mechanism very similar to the push-button clutch, so they're all usually very reliable.

• Shaker pencils have a weight inside that will knock the lead forward by one 'click' when you give the pencil a quick up-down shake. It's quicker to do than pressing a button, so these can be quite popular for students. They normally have a button too, so you can ignore the shaker part when you don't need it.

• Auto-feed mechanisms can work really well. Just keep writing, even after the visible lead has all been used. You won't see more lead feeding, but it won't ever disappear back into the lead cone/tube. What actually happens is that the cone or tube that surrounds the lead is smooth so it doesn't catch on the paper, and when the lead wears down far enough that it touches the paper, it slides back in a little. A spring pushes it back out again, and pushes the lead forward at the same time.

Most mechanical pencils have an eraser. They're very important to some people, and completely irrelevant to others. If you rarely erase, you probably don't care much about the eraser. Oddly, though, people who erase a lot may not care much either, because they have their favourite eraser, and they're happy to carry it separately. Those in the mid-ground, who do care about the eraser, need to consider the size and replaceability of the built-in eraser. They can almost always be replaced, but make sure you can actually get the replacements. There are very few cases where spare erasers exist and we don't stock them, and we do have spares for most of the pencils we stock, but it's best to check if it's important to you.

In most pencils, the erasers won't last long, because they're so small. If you expect to use the eraser enough that this is a problem, look for pencils with large extendable erasers. Several different brands have pencils with long erasers that can be extended by twisting.

You probably have some idea how much you want to spend, or at least how much you're willing to spend! There are plenty of perfectly good mechanical pencils around for less than £5, but you might need to spend more to get what you want.

• Tougher build. While even the cheapest plastic-barrelled pencils should last well, something with a metal body is likely to be tougher.
• Features. You may have to pay a little bit more if you want a big extending eraser, say, or a quicker way of advancing the lead.
• Looks. A cheap plastic pencil will be perfectly functional, but might not look the part in a meeting. If you're wearing a nice suit, it would be a shame to have the cheapest pencil poking out of your pocket. Your tastes might be more towards the technical or machined-metal look, but again, you'll need to invest a little more for the right look.
• Feel. In some ways, this can be the most important thing. If your pencil feels right in your hand, it can make a big difference to how much you use it. The most critical part is the grip - you might love knurled metal for the grip, or find it too rough; rubber is best for some people, while others like a smooth surface to touch. The rest of the pencil is probably less important to the feel of it, but it can still make a difference. More expensive pencils will usually feel more solid than the cheaper ones.
• All our mechanical pencils

While this article is all about mechanical pencils, there are other types of pencils to consider - a mechanical pencil isn't the right answer to all problems for all people!

We're all perfectly familiar with wooden pencils - a stick of wood with a 'lead' core, sometimes with an eraser on the end. They don't have the predictable line width of a mechanical pencil, and they get awkward to use when you've worn them down with sharpening. There's a simplicity about them, though, that's impossible to beat. That simplicity means you always know it's going to write, and you can pass one to anyone without having to explain anything.

• Our selection of wooden pencils

Clutch pencils are closely related to mechanical pencils. They use a very similar clutch mechanism to grip the lead, but they lack the extra complexity required to push the lead forward with a click or twist. Then usually have a button on the end, and when you press the button, the lead is released. You manually move the lead to where you need it, then let go of the button.

They are only normally available for 2mm lead and thicker, and there are plenty of clutch pencils available in sizes up to 5.6mm.

To many people, they combine the best features of mechanical pencils with the best features of woodcase pencils. They don't vary in length as you use them, and while they can be sharpened to get a good point on them, sharpening isn't vital if you really need to keep scribbling. They keep much of the simplicity of a wooden pencil, though, with big, simple clutch jaws gripping the lead, and just a spring to make them close and grip.

The thick lead makes them less practical for many, though, as you do need to keep sharpening if you need a reasonably thin line.

• Our selection of clutch pencils - we have lots!

If you've read all that and you still want to know more about mechanical pencils, you might have a bit of an obsession developing! We do know a few great places to send you, though, if you want more:

• Dave's Mechanical Pencils - while Dave has now stopped updating this blog, it's still a treasure-trove of well-written reveiws and articles.
• Our own selection of mechanical pencils - don't just read about them, buy one!