Failure!!
This is actually a posting that isn’t; an idea that didn’t work out. Still, it seemed like such a good idea at the time, that I feel compelled to write something, even if it’s basically nothing. Understand?
One day a thought popped into my head, “Just what pencil does Uncle Sam use?” Even better, “What mechanical pencil does the US Army use?” Surely there was a story here.
Well it turns out that as far as I can tell (from a long way away), there isn’t really any story here. From a few US folk I’ve asked, and the little I could find on the web, it appears that these days things have changed, that the Army doesn’t do big national deals on this sort of thing. They pretty much shop where you and I do, but they probably get the big bulk-buyer discount price, although apparently there are some nifty army camouflage pencils. But basically no story here.
So I changed tack a little and searched around for some pencil and local military links. Again not much of a relationship, although I did find a few snippets like this:
Major-General Horatio Gordon Robley, the “Soldier with a Pencil” who served with the British Army here in NZ in the mid-1860’s during the New Zealand Wars. He made many finely detailed drawings of colonial and Maori life which are an important historical archive. This is the front cover of a small publication of some of his drawings - it’s the facial tattoo of a Maori chief.
Another link I liked was of a comic story from the trenches of France / Belgium in World War One. A little light-hearted NZ colonial humour directed at the ‘superior minds’ of the (British) commanders, with their fancy pencils, multiplication tables and ready-reckoners.
“Hush!” said an orderly who entered stealthily. "Do not disturb him yet. He is engaged upon a mathematical calculation.""Good Lord!” I said. “Why does he tax his brains with such difficult work?”
It appeared that he was busy with a report to the Corps Commander. His pencil was working furiously. The problem was this: If two mules can draw two hundredweight of paté de foie gras on a trench tramway two feet wide with a grade of one in a hundred on a curve of one in fifty as laid down by a New Zealand engineer, what will be the weight of the two mules and the name of the muleteer? "Upon the solution of that problem," whispered the orderly, “will depend the feeding and the equipment of this Army for the next three years."
This is actually a posting that isn’t; an idea that didn’t work out. Still, it seemed like such a good idea at the time, that I feel compelled to write something, even if it’s basically nothing. Understand?
One day a thought popped into my head, “Just what pencil does Uncle Sam use?” Even better, “What mechanical pencil does the US Army use?” Surely there was a story here.
Well it turns out that as far as I can tell (from a long way away), there isn’t really any story here. From a few US folk I’ve asked, and the little I could find on the web, it appears that these days things have changed, that the Army doesn’t do big national deals on this sort of thing. They pretty much shop where you and I do, but they probably get the big bulk-buyer discount price, although apparently there are some nifty army camouflage pencils. But basically no story here.
So I changed tack a little and searched around for some pencil and local military links. Again not much of a relationship, although I did find a few snippets like this:
Major-General Horatio Gordon Robley, the “Soldier with a Pencil” who served with the British Army here in NZ in the mid-1860’s during the New Zealand Wars. He made many finely detailed drawings of colonial and Maori life which are an important historical archive. This is the front cover of a small publication of some of his drawings - it’s the facial tattoo of a Maori chief.Another link I liked was of a comic story from the trenches of France / Belgium in World War One. A little light-hearted NZ colonial humour directed at the ‘superior minds’ of the (British) commanders, with their fancy pencils, multiplication tables and ready-reckoners.
“Hush!” said an orderly who entered stealthily. "Do not disturb him yet. He is engaged upon a mathematical calculation.""Good Lord!” I said. “Why does he tax his brains with such difficult work?”
It appeared that he was busy with a report to the Corps Commander. His pencil was working furiously. The problem was this: If two mules can draw two hundredweight of paté de foie gras on a trench tramway two feet wide with a grade of one in a hundred on a curve of one in fifty as laid down by a New Zealand engineer, what will be the weight of the two mules and the name of the muleteer? "Upon the solution of that problem," whispered the orderly, “will depend the feeding and the equipment of this Army for the next three years."
Mars Micro Carbon leads come in clear plastic rectangular container of 12 leads. They have a simple push fit stopper, which once removed allows the leads to pour out. The idea behind this is that many of the Staedtler mechanical pencils have lead refill magazines that will take 12 lead refill sticks at a time and the neck of the tube fits into the top of the pencils refill magazine, making for a quick easy top up. 
The size label is colour coded to match the lead magazine on Staedtlers pencils, e.g. note how the “0.5mm H” part of the label is a reddy-brown colour, and Staedtlers 0.5mm technical pencils all have that same colour lead magazine. For 0.3mm pencils and leads the colour is yellow, blue for 0.7mm, etc. This is all according to an ISO standard for the colour coding of drawing instruments by line widths. 
The refill tubes and their labelling are clean and functional, but nothing “fancy” in comparison to some of their (Asian) competitors. The reverse side has a barcode and some recycling symbology. I note that they all state “Made in Germany”.
As usual, it’s rather hard to tell one grade from the next one on the scale, but you can see a difference over the full spectrum. One thing I did note was that H definitely felt harder than 2H when I was writing with it. HB was the first grade that felt “smooth”. The harder grades all felt “hard”, you could feel the paper grinding lead off the stick. HB was the first grade that felt smooth. So, there was a clear difference in the “feel” of the lead when changing from F to HB. There was also a noticeable change in feel from B to 2B.
Ain 2H is definitely harder than Staedtler 2H, though there is not really any difference in blackness. In HB the two brands are fairly similar in hardness, but Staedtler is slightly darker. The story is the same in 2B.
Here’s an older version of the container of 12 – it’s the same plastic moulding, just made in opaque blue rather than the current clear plastic, and the labelling is different. In particular the leads are called Mars Micrograph rather than Mars Micro carbon. The actual Staedtler part number is still the same, 250 05-Hardness.
The Grip Plus is a 0.7mm “Made in Japan” pencil that Faber-Castell offer worldwide. It comes in four different body colours, but only in 0.7mm lead, presumably as part of Faber-Castells assertion that the general public prefer 0.7mm lead due to breakages with 0.5mm leads. It is arguably Faber-Castells flagship pencil, as it’s the featured pencil on their websites mechanical pencil main page. I have always found the name ‘Grip Plus’ a little confusing as they also have the Grip 2011 pencil.
T
Opened up, with the cap posted and ready for writing it looks equally good. Stylish but purely functional. 
The lead advance mechanism is an ordinary push top ratchet mechanism. 10 clicks advances 7mm of lead. Putting the cap back on the tip to close up for the day generally activates the lead advance mechanism unless you are careful. This always annoys me. Now, I must tell the truth and say that I had a problem with the mechanism of my Tasche. The lead stopped advancing. I have a shockingly poor success rate at disassembling my pencils, they never seem to work as well after I have opened them up for “investigation”. So these days I resist temptation and only pull them apart when absolutely necessary. In this case the “lead retainer” had come loose in the tip and I managed to push it back home into position and everything was once again as it should be, so that made me feel happy. 
Posts
