Drawing Lead

This website is going to kill me, I know it.

As I’ve collected drafting leadholders, my unintended collection of lead has also grown. I had collected for years without giving lead a second thought unless I ran out of the degree I was using. Many times I would buy a group of drafting tools to get a nice pencil and among the extras would be lead for the pencil. Occasionally, I began to be struck by the design of a lead box and the way its design reflected the pencils made by the same manufacturer.

I thought to myself, I thought, “Gee, this lead box is pretty neat.” Another thought would occur, “Maybe there are lots of neat lead boxes around that I just never really looked at.” I was not completely off. There are some interesting ones (the Koh-I-Noor Ejectomatic comes to mind).

Sometimes part of me would think, “Boy, there sure are a lot of different kinds of lead. Wouldn’t it be cool to have one of every degree and color and box style from all the different lead makers?” Then another part of me would say something like, “No.”

But the obsessive part of me would, if not win out entirely, at least influence the whole of me to organize the lead boxes and put them on Leadholder. But that sensible part of me keeps nagging, “Stop it! What the hell are you doing playing with those smelly boxes? Go DO something!” When that happens I stop for a while.

The Thick Lead Problem: Lead Utilization in Thick Lead Pencils

The diagram below demonstrates the inherent inefficiency of lead utilization in thick lead drafting:

a and b The freshly sharpened point of a lead becomes blunt as a line is drawn. c The red area is the portion of the lead that was transferred to the paper, the blue area is the portion of lead removed in the repointing process. d shows in red the portions of the lead transferred to the paper as the process of drawing and pointing is repeated. This is what proponents of thin lead pencils like to point out: Only a thin core of the lead is utilized and most of the lead is simply reduced to powder in the lead pointer.

Well, la-de-frickin-da. I love pointing leads with a good pointer. You just don't get that thrill with thin lead pencils.