Poll 3 – Preferred Lead Grade

Poll 3 has closed. The poll was:

Question: “What is your preferred mech pencil lead grade?”

The 268 votes were cast as follows:
2H or Harder x 18 (6%)
H x 9 (3%)
F x 9 (3%)
HB x 96 (35%)
B x 62 (23%)
2B or Darker x 74 (27%)

Another poll, another 268 votes?! Astonishing. 268 votes cast in this poll, exactly the same number as cast in the preceding lead diameter poll. With 35 % of the vote, HB is the preferred lead grade of readers of this blog. I can’t imagine that surprising anyone. I did expect B and 2B to score rather well, but perhaps not quite as well as they did - I expected a fairly good tail, but it was more substantial than I thought. I guess this reflects use by artists and many general writers wanting a good dark solid line. The hard grades did better than I thought too, even though they remain far less popular choices.

Combining the results of the lead diameter and grade polls together in a completely unscientific way, winner with winner, second with second, etc produces this – the most popular lead is 0.5mm HB, second most popular is 0.7mm 2B, and third is 0.9mm B. That’s actually not that crazy a result.