What mm (0.3 or 0.5mm) and what grade of pencil lead (HB, B, 2B etc)?

Hello

I am just about to buy a good quality propelling pencil. But what is:

A) the best grade of lead (graphite) to write with / mark up wood, plastic (styrene/ABS), metal.

B) the best thickness of lead in mm?

The model I am working on is about 60mm in size and I am needed to work in small scale (accurate to 0.25-0.5mm). I was thinking of a 0.3mm lead in 2B - or is that too soft?? (Other choices 2H - H - HB - B - 2B)

Thanks

P.S. As a bonus I will also be wanted to some free-hand sketching occasionally

John,

It's a long time since I bought any, but I think you will find that Staedtler does special "plastic leads" for tracing film ... these would probably be better than Graphite for marking-out.

MichaelG.

Edit: Just found a Geeky page, here

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 09/11/2015 14:33:46

John, perhaps you should buy self propelling pencils for each task? I have bought pencils and the lead/graphite refills are hard and if too much pressure is applied they will breaks, whereas a refill of say HB or softer will give good rendition for sketching freehand. That is why i say buy a pencil for each purpose., in fact i have a pot with about 10 self propelling pencils and select for each drawing task i need to do. Again diameters of the leads will mean a different pencil anyway !

Clive

I would stick with 0.3 lead in 2b, even 3b, as any harder will easily indent the wood / styrene. You could always cover your material with light duty masking tape & mark / cut on that so once peeled off will leave the material surface clean.

George.

p.s. Don't press too hard on 0.3 mm 2b/3b lead it snaps very easily.

> Don't press too hard on 0.3 mm 2b/3b lead it snaps very easily.

Or press harder with a B or HB lead??
Which works best in practice?

If you want accuracy I would use one of the disposable technical Pens with 0.1 or 0.05 mm tip. The UNI branded ones are very good, you can get them at Hobbycraft amongst other places.

The plastic leads are designed for polyester drafting film which has quite a hard adrasive surface but they are not much good on a smooth plastic as they skid over the surface so stick with about HB for the plastic and a little softer for the wood.

I'm a cabinet maker so mark out quite a bit of wood, for fine work I use 0.5mm HB. Also spent a lot of time in a drawing office supplies so know my leads.

As an ex draughtsman I have always favoured proper wooden pencils. Sharpening them is relaxing and gives you time to think about the next part of the drawing. I could never get on with propelling pencils.

I would have thought you might be better of with a carpenters pencil. The leads in them aren't round so that they can be sharpened to a chisel point. The extra width gives them some extra strength when used that way as well and they can also draw sharp lines. Or ordinary but good quality pencils sharpened that way.

As I did work as a draughtsman for a while I can tell you there are some terrible quality propelling pencils about and leads for them as well. The dearer Staedtler's might be your best bet.

John

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Thanks, Jason

Duly noted

[ I did wonder ]

MichaelG.

You may actually be better off marking with a scalple, just a small indent with the tip of a 10A blade will be a lot finer than any pencil mark. The added bonus is that when you then come to use the laminate blade you will feel it locate in the indent and you can then bring your straight edge upto the blade.

J

Drafting offices closed Donkey's years ago Jason. Modern Technical type pens are designed to work on today's materials and work very well on styrene and ABS.

You can even put a line on a piece of Glass with a UNI, try that with a pencil ...

Vic does anyone still use technical pens? When I started we would sell maybe 20 pens/nibs a day, by the time I left and we were mostly selling art supplies we were lucky to sell one pen/nib a month. Yes my film nibs with the right ink will also work on most surfaces.

Chinagraph pencil works very well on glass

Stopped using them when i bought a computer to draw on

I have a couple of nice Alvin (Japanese) retractable mechanical pencils I bought in the States which were available in a range of sizes. Being retractable, they may be less prone to damage to the fine tip when I carry them in my backpack on business. I find that the cheap and nasty ones make it very difficult to adjust the length of the lead, which in turn tends to mean too much protrusion and more breakage. Worth getting a few decent ones. I like to do a fair bit of pencil CAD before finally modelling stuff up in 3D CAD, so a mechanical pencil and a plastic eraser are the tools for the job.

I like proper drafting pens for drawing - and writing. Mine are Pentel I think. I can't do detailed ink drawings with ballpoints or fountain pens. Wouldn't use them for writing on wood, mind....

I also love the Staedtler fine Lumocolour pens. They are excellent for marking out metals and plastics. If you need finer resolution than the 0.6mm tip allows, you use a scriber, with the ink acting like marking blue (red, orange, black...)

A small technical point - how to you get rid of the lines of ink with a technical pen afterwards.
That's the advantage lead - very easy to remove using a rubber.

Modern technical pens are nice and high contrast, but they make quite a mess when mixing in with styrene cement, no?

2B pencil works fine on plastic IME, rubs off easily though. used to use one for plastic card when I was a scratchbuilding teenager.

Neil

Have you considered F grade leads (between H and HB)? For all round work I prefer them.

I would get clutch pencils with a 2mm dia. lead. As Clive says best to have different ones for different leads. Would suggest HB and 2B to start with. These clutch pencils are available on ebay, most have a point sharpener and eraser built in. For drawing a chisel point can be put on with a file.

I was a draftsman in the plastic lead era and the technique required when using plastic leads on polyester film was to lean the pencil backwards and push it forwards so that the lead was always in compression. This way enabled dark lines without breaking the weak lead. I preferred a 0.7 pencil for virtually every line type. To create a fine thin line you rotated the pencil as you pushed it forward. The saying then was "You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be led".

Alan