Faber Castell 1112 HB pencil

The Faber Castell 1112 HB is a classic looking wooden pencil perfect for taking notes and writing. It is what most people would expect from an affordable wooden pencil. 

It is 18.5 cm in length, the body is hexagonal, painted black and at the end it has a white eraser hold in place by a yellow faded gold trim that gives it some contrast.

On the black body with silver letters it is written the model number followed by the lead hardness which are printed along with the Faber Castell logo and name.

The first thing I noticed when picking this particular pencil in my hand was the warped body, which I don't think is supposed to be a feature. I do not know how common this is, but it makes me feel that the quality of the pencil is not quite top of the market. It does not affect the writing, in any way, though.

 The lead of this model is HB. I would say it is a softer/darker lead than I had expected from it. Being a lower cost model, I expected the lead to be harder, and more scratchy, but it is a decent writer. I would say in comparison with Faber Castell Grip it is not as smooth, and possibly it is a fraction darker. Over all, I would say it writes good enough for most.

The writing doesn't smudge when you drag your hand or fingers over the page. It also erases well from the page, the first test is a light single pass over the hatching. The last test row is testing the residue left on the page after a firmer pass of the eraser. Compared with the Faber Castell Grip it is just as good.

The wood is soft and can be easily sharpened.

Parker Jotter in Matrix Resurection

One of the most famous and loved movie franchise, The Matrix offered us at the end of December 2021, after a long break the latest movie in the series Matrix Resurrection.

In a picturesque scene, Neo (Keanu Reeves) and The Analyst (Neil Patrick) seem to have a therapy session where Neo tells his dreams to The Analyst.

During the discussion, The Analyst takes notes using a Parker Jotter ball point with gold top and black or very dark blue barrel.

Metal mechanical pencil AMP37202 from Aliexpres

Recently I tested a few fountain pens that I bought on AliExpress, and now I went for an all-metal mechanical pencil. The pencil I am testing doesn't seem to have a name beside AMP37202. It isn't the catchiest name out there, for sure. On AliExpress, you can find it if you search for metal mechanical pencil. The pencil cost me $3.65 including shipping, and I chose the metal gray color 0.7 mm lead thickness. You can also find it in black, green, ivory, salmon, white in all sizes from 0.3 mm to 0.9 mm.

The appearance

The pencil has quite a nice look, and it has an all-metal body, which I think is made out of aluminum. At first glance, the pencil punches way above its price level, having a clean design, solid construction, knurled grip and nice colors.

The pencil has quite a pointy tip that would make it good for drafting. It has a sliding sleeve that works. The grip of the pencil is knurled, but not too deeply. It isn’t extra grippy. But it looks very nice with the 5 parallel rings that offer the pen a premium look.

The barrel is hexagonal and on the side it has a big sticker with a bar code lead thickness and model number. The clip is metal and very sturdy. On the part that connects to the body, it has a cutout that shows lead size, 0.7 mm.

The barrel seems to be made from one piece of metal and the tip is screwed on the mechanism. Even though the pencil looks nice, I have the feeling that the proportions of the parts are a bit off. The grip seems very long and in comparison, the body seems a bit short. So does the clip, which can be annoying in hand. If you grip the pencil close to the tip, the clip rubs on my hand quite a bit.

The cap is flared to the connecting and seems to be a bit loose. It doesn’t go over the mechanism too deeply, and I believe there is a high chance that it will get lost sooner rather than later. Under the cap there is an eraser.

The lead advance clutch mechanism is made out of brass, while the internal barrel that holds the leads is just plastic.

How does it perform?

 The pencil sits very well in the hand as it has a long knurled grip section. Having such a long grip section gives you a lot of hand positions, allowing to have a close to the tip grip or a further back one.

The lead advancing mechanism feels snappy and secure, but also has a faint feel of friction.
10 clicks will give just over 8 mm of lead.

End to end, the pencil measures 146, and the diameter is 9 mm.

How many leads should you keep in a mechanical pencil

How many leads should I store in my mechanical pencil, is a question that I ask myself regularly. Well maybe not as often, or not at all, but why not find out.

Depending, from where you get your information, you will find out that you can store as many leads as you want or there is a strict number that you should put in two or three pieces at most.

The main worry with keeping more leads inside the pencil is that the leads will break and produce fine dust which will clog the pencil eventually, the mechanism will jam, or the leads will be unusable due to breakage.

Rotring in the product care states that you should refill with two or three leads. "We recommend refilling your pencil with 3 fine leads. It’s the best balance for longer use without creating too much dust inside the tube due to an overload of refills."

Staedtler for example, doesn't mention the number of leads that you should keep inside your pencil, but the refill is designed to dump the entire content in one go. "Simple “12-a-go" refilling for many Staedtler mechanical pencils such as Mars micro 775 and graphite 779"

I do believe that the producers of pencils are taking all the needed precautions in advising you to keep just a few leads inside.

At the same time, I have a feeling that the leads have improved a lot over the years. The resistance is a lot better, while the quality of the writing (line darkness and smoothness) remained the same if not improved over time. A good argument for my opinion is the lack of the needle that used to be present in all mechanical pencil erasers, used to clear clogs in the advance mechanism,. Nowadays, the needle is missing basically from all modern mechanical pencils. Some producers still keep it around, but it is more and more a rarity.

To see if the recommendations are still valid today, I will do a test for a 4 week with two Rotring Tikky III 0.5. One of them will be loaded with 3 leads (1 in the chamber ready to write and 2 loose in the barrel), while the second one will carry an entire refill,12 leads. I will carry around both pencils and use them in rotation, trying to keep it as impartial as possible.

From the beginning I can feel the mass of leads slushing around in the pencil which holds an entire refill pack, and defiantly they create more noise and commotion compared with the 3 leads pencil.

I feel like I am a master of the mechanical pencil, like badass movie characters that know the difference between an empty gun and a fully loaded gun (Lian Neeson Taken reference)

Ant the results are in...

So from what you can see, the leads came out just fine from both pencils. None of them broke, and no dust came out of the barrel (white paper test). In conclusion, I wouldn't care too much of how many leads there are in a pencil, as this non-scientific tests seems to point that even a big number of leads will do just fine in day to day scenario, stored inside your favorite pencil. Generally, it is a good idea to keep a few extra leads on hand, or in this case in the pencil, so that you don't have to worry about longer writing sessions.