Going Back to Pencils
A little glimpse into my personal life here. Some of you are aware that I am a highly mobile person. As such I bounce between offices, cities and conference rooms from Cincinnati to DC and beyond.
This past winter, I had issues develop with multiple mechanical pencils. Complete failures thus unrecoverable on the road. After some back and forth with the maker (Rotring), I decided it was better to go back to traditional pencils for daily use.
My logic being no matter how bad the damage, I can fix a real pencil. It’s called sharpening it. Hell! Snap a pencil in two and viola, I have 2 pencils!
The main issue is protecting the points while mobile. So after some research I landed on the Ferrule by Maker’s Cabinet and took a chance on the Perfect Pencil by Faber Castell as an experiment for a later purchase.
As for home based sharpeners, I landed on a Caran d’Ache grinder sharpener for The Armory and a cheaper Carl Angel-5 sharpener for the office.
Finally, I went out and found a nice, American made, mechanical pencil to use as a backup to the backups. It comes with 3 standard lead inserts (05,07,09mm), extra springs, bushings, erasers and all the parts necessary to repair it should something fail.
No more RMA’s or warranty nonsense.
Sincerely,
Marky
www.John1911.com
“Shooting Guns & Having Fun”
Areas of focus: Defense and National Security, Modern Light Weapons, Small Arms, Weapons Training.
- Going Back to Pencils - July 15, 2026
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