Two. My experience with mechanical pencils is that they’re often unreliable and a waste of time. I hate having to reload my pencil, I hate when it breaks if you accidentally make the tip longer than it should be, I hate when you accidentally put one more in the pencil and it gets clogged, I hate having to carry refills all the time, I hate buying an expensive pencil and worrying about losing it (as opposed to just buying a dozen regular pencils for backup)…
Just hand over the regular pencil and a decent sharpener.
Bonus points for #2 being #2
If you feel they are unreliable, it may just be that you aren’t using good ones. I use 3 on a regular basis (for Japanese) and never have issues with feeding or lead breaking; I also only have to refill it every few weeks.
I’ve had the same mechanical pencil for ten years. It’s comfortable, reliable, easy to reload, but if I had to choose one for the rest of my life, I’d still go with the traditional wood/graphite pencil. It’s cheap, it’s everywhere, it’s durable, and not a great loss if you lose it.
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I got one because I was intrigued by its lead rotation, but I found that it really didn’t rotate the lead enough while I wrote. I kept having to rotate the barrel manually to keep a thin line like I do for every other mechanical pencil, and then would get annoyed every time the clip came around to brush my hand. I’ve been wondering if I’m doing something wrong, or if Japanese just uses more shorter strokes. Do you also like it when writing English?
I only use my kuru toga when writing in Japanese, I normally just use a pen for english. Japanese does have significantly more strokes.
Plus a good ol Dixon Ticonderoga can write on stuff other than paper. About the only time I use a pencil is when doing carpentry and mechanical ones just snap.
When I was doing roofing the pica dry mechanical pencils made things so much better. Sure a pencil works good on wood, but what about when I have to mark gray sheet metal? You need something that comes with different colors.
That’s what sharpies are for
Those get clogged up on pre patinad copper unfortunately, and a sharpie does not work well on black prefa unless you are trying to hide a scratch. sharpie also doesn’t always wipe off well.
“Decent sharpener” aka box cutters.
Back at my school in the 90’s you just bought a 10 pack of the cheap black Bic mechanical pencils for like $3 (pic #5) and you were set for the year if you didn’t lose too many. They never really broke and you didn’t have to refill them if you didn’t want to. They also never clogged and if you weren’t an idiot you didn’t try to use too much lead length to where it would break off.
They were simple and easy and always sharp.
It also always ends mid-word/stroke, and you start etching the paper with the metal end. Very annoying.
Why do I feel like I’m participating in market research
Got em guys. I took down Mr. Bic
If that were the case, I would imagine that they would have picked a website with a much larger user base.
Why
For more accurate/representative research data.
But Reddit is saturated with others already doing market research. Lemmy is young and fertile, ready for a creepy old ad man to prey on.
I never said anything about reddit
I heard you whisper it
Yes you did. Indirectly. It’s the ultimate market researcher aggregate. There’s no other place
Gimme one of these bad boys and utility razor.
Reminds me of when I had to write a physics exam in university and it required a pencil for the Scantron cards. I basically never carried pencils so when my pencil tip broke I had to grab my utility knife out of my backpack and sharpen it to continue writing my exam.
That’s vietnam level shit going on there lmao.
This image perfectly stretches in the thread display. Incredibly satisfying.
Except they have no eraser. What good is the black tip??
You use a click eraser or a normal block eraser.
Only filthy casuals suffer one at the end of the pencil.
I am a casual haha. The once or twice I write by hand with a pencil in a year I’d like to not have to track down an eraser as well.
#8 all the way.
If I had to do sketch design drafting in college with a pen or wooden pencil and not a 0.5 mechanical, I would have probably become a school shooter.
Yeah, #8 and it’s not even close for me.
I’ve been using Zebra pens and pencils almost exclusively for the last 20 years. My only complaint with the pencil is its eraser. If you need to erase something small it’s fantastic, but I always keep a separate eraser handy.
Honestly that’s a complaint I have about nearly every pencil, not just the zebra. They’re almost always hard and smudgy because the pencil has been sitting out either in a warehouse or on an office supply shelf for like 5 years.
I’d rather bring my own hi-poly brick eraser, or even better, a hi-poly retractable eraser that is a lot easier to control and keep a fresh, smudge-free surface on.Twist-erase 3 is bae
Agreed, I like both their mechanical pencils and pens, even if visually they are a bit too close.
2
Same. I press too hard to use mechanical pencils
I just like being able to use a duller point sometimes when I’m drawing.
i also enjoy being able to do some shading if i wanted to draw something
You missed an option.
Blocky and stacky BOIS gang united
#2
My handwriting is awful. #2 for me.
2
Screw #8. Everyone here including OP missed out on the actual best Zebra mechanical pencil. The Zebra DelGuard.
It has this crazy mechanism that resists lead breakage by dropping a shield down if you press too hard.
https://www.zebrapen.com/products/delguard-mechanical-pencil?variant=40738814951630
They even made limited edition Hello Kitty ones years ago I imported. Best 0.3mm mechanical pencil I’ve ever used.
#2
We’ve taken way too many things that don’t need to be plastic and made them plastic
+1
never fails
Yeah but with mechanical pencils you can buy one and have it for years, only just buying the occasional pack of leads… Saves the trees ¯_(ツ)_/¯
- A good engineering pencil can be used for anything.
Number 2 is the only one that can write effectively on wood. I may not build a lot, but when I have tried to use a mechanical pencil for marking wood, it was a total fail.
- By a country mile
I have 3 of them, one of which is metal and cost me more than I’d like for a pencil but holy hell is it nice to write with.
