Clearing A Jammed Mechanical Pencil

I guess this is a bit of a public service announcement. Quite a few people end up at this blog after searching on terms like

How to clear a lead jam.
Lead jammed in mechanical pencil.
How to fix a jammed mechanical pencil.
Mechanical pencil lead stopped advancing.
Fix jammed pencil mechanism.

Of course the pencil mechanism might be broken, but the first thing to try with many pencils is to unscrew the tip and check there isn’t a piece of broken lead jamming the tip itself.

After that, the next thing to check is for a small piece of lead jamming the mechanism and you might clear it out by sticking a rod up the through the tip. Some mechanical pencils come with a clean out rod (usually it’s a thin metal rod attached to the eraser holder) but with a little care you can generally use anything that will fit up through the tip – another stick of lead, a pin, a straightened out paper-clip, etc. Push the button or whatever you do to advance the lead but then don’t release it, hold the button down so the mechanism stays open and put the rod up through to try and clear any jams. Do it a couple of times operating the mechanism in-between and keep your fingers crossed.

For more detailed instructions and pretty pictures and other things to try, check these links.

From Pentel - Clearing Jammed Automatic Pencils

From Associated Content – How to Clear a Lead Jam (From an Automatic Drafting Pencil)

From Pens and Pencils blog – use the “Clean out Rods” label to bring up plenty of good stuff, particularly on how to deal with jammed Ohto Super Promecha’s.