Wooden. Especially Staples brand. Those are some kickass pencils.
I use 2B. Have since my professor told me that my writing was too light to read properly.
Another vote for the Koh-I-Noor Rapidomatic. I have several in different sizes and loaded with different hardness lead. I like the balance, the feeling of heft and and the metal grip area.
I don’t have any wood pencils right now. I do have some prismacolor woodless graphite pencils, though. They’re more for sketching than writing, though.
In addition: Pentel Clic Erasers rock.
Oh, wait, I do have wood pencils, Fridgemagnet just reminded me. I recently bought a tube of carpenter’s pencils at Home Despot. I haven’t tried drawing or writing with those yet, though. Perhaps I should, they do have some nice soft lead.
The Pentel P205 has been my standard for many years. Either 0.5mm or 0.7mm. Wooden pencils drive me nuts: if the lead if fine enough, the writing is too light. The point is never sharp enough for me.
Oddly enough, I collect pencil sharpeners. I have hundreds.
Avery Doubleclick.
I get mine at Staples, although I’m sure that most office supply stores carry them. It’s a pen AND a mechanical pencil in one – twist it one way for pen, the other way for pencil.
And they come in purple. (And green, and blue, and – ugh – orange.)
I recently discovered the Mriado Black Warrior pencils. My sis bought my son a pack. They are great. And the erasers are the best pencil-top erasers I’ve used. (Nothing beats Pink Pearl eraser, though!)
I love sharpening wooden pencils. But not with those new fangled electric sharpeners, or even the manual ones with the handle. I have a great hand help sharpener, the kind you hold and turn and it goes “scritch, scritch, scritch”…I love that sound.
Woodcase all the way!
And The Pencil by Henry Petroski is a must-read for all you pencil fans.
My favorite pencil ever was the now-defunct Mongol. Pretty thing, that Mongol.
I agree that Staples brand pencils are pretty damn good.
My preferred commonly available type is the Dixon Ticonderoga #2. It is an excellent quality and consistent pencil for a reasonable price. And it’s good looking.
I also like Staedtler 4Bs for crossword puzzles. They make good lines on the New York Times Sunday Magazine paper.
But my current favorite pencils are the ones my mom steals from her bridge club. They are just cheapo imprinted pencils, but they are so great! They make a nice dark line, and they have the most wonderful soft erasers. I’m thinking of finding out where they are ordered from so I can get some for myself. (I wonder what I would have printed on 'em?)
My favorite pencil is the American Natural , which used to be made by Faber Castell but now is PaperMate. Unpainted. Good eraser that doesn’t streak. Nice wood and lead when sharpened. Love it.
But… I work with pencils all day, and I can’t be bothered to carry a pencil sharpener (and when I carry wooden pencils in my pocket, the points always break). So I also buy lots of cheapo mechanicals: PaperMate SharpWriters. I tend to misplace pens and pencils, so for me quantity and cheapness is more important than super quality.
Bingo. I adamantly refuse to use any pencil without a side lead advance, and after using this pencil, I am a convert to the ways of the retractable eraser. However, I would prefer to have the lead advance closer to the tip of the pencil, and have a metal clip (the plastic ones break too easily). Looking at the Papermate website, the Syncro (sorry, but I can’t seem to get a direct link to work, so click Syncro on the left side of the page to see the pencil) doesn’t look to bad either.
[QUOTE=Green Bean]
Woodcase all the way!
[quote]
I’ll second that. I also miss the Mongol. My next fave is the Ticonderoga, but can you even get ‘em in hard leads anymore? (I’m a southpaw, and after a few minutes’ scribbling with a #2 I could lubricate light machinery with the blade of my hand.)
Or for anyone who enjoys the history of technology. It’s a classic! When I read how Eberhard Faber Jr. signed every business letter with a Mongol, I got warm fuzzies like you wouldn’t believe.
I’ll second that. I also miss the Mongol, as you do.
My next fave is the Ticonderoga, but can you even get ‘em in hard leads anymore? I’m a southpaw, and after a few minutes’ scribbling with a #2 I could lubricate light machinery with the blade of my hand.
Or for anyone who enjoys the history of technology. It’s a classic! When I read how Eberhard Faber Jr. signed every business letter with a Mongol, I got warm fuzzies like you wouldn’t believe.
Another thing. I press like crazy. Every mechanical I ever used, I broke the lead. Every g/d time. Solutions?
Pentel Quicker Clicker, 0.5mm, smoke barrel, product # 3D45TA, with HB lead. This is the pencil that took me through college, med school, and residency. Never broken, only lost or stolen. The grand-daddy of all side-clicking pencils.
When I was looking on the Pentel site for a photo link, for a moment I couldn’t find the Quicker Clicker among all their new fancy G-Force XtrEME! and ErgoTech RazzleDazzle pencils, and I actually broke a sweat thinking that they might not make this pencil any more.
Oh, and all notes must be taken on a particular no-name brand of yellow, matte, rounded-corner, narrow-ruled, heavyweight paper sold (as far as I can tell) only in the UW-Madison bookstore. While in surgery residency in Oregon, during a vacation back to Wisconsin, I actually made a side trip specifically to purchace two reams of this paper. Oh, so velvety and easy on the eyes…
Oddly, I’m not obsessive like this about anything else that I can think of.
I’ve tried a lot of the pencils mentioned in this thread. So far, I must say that I’m liking the wooden pencils better than the mechanicals. But of the mechanicals, the top one, I think, is the Pentel Techniclick T3.
As an aside, I don’t like the look of most mechanical pencils. They seem to kid-oriented, with transparent bodies and flashy logos. I like a more sober-looking instrument. The big fat ones are nice in theory – one would think that they’re better ergonomically, but I haven’t like the feel of the way they write.
Of the ordinary wooden writing pencils (I haven’t tried the ones made specifically for drawing or drafting), I like:
- PaperMate Mirado Black Warrior
- PaperMate American
- Dixon-Ticonderoga Ticonderoga Tri-Write
- Dixon-Ticonderoga Ticonderoga
- Staples
- Sanford EarthWrite
(It seems a lot of the pencil companies have merged over the last couple of decades.)
But of this group, the top are my old FaberCastell Velvet pencils, which aren’t made any more. 
Most of these wooden pencils perform just about the same. Actually, though, I found myself wishing that the standard hardness was softer than the usual No. 2/HB.
The wooden pencils I didn’t like as much:
- PaperMate Mirado Classic
- CVS
- Ecowriter
I found some novelties, too:
- **Buffalo cartridge pencil ** - when the point wears down, you just push the cartridge in the back and another pops out; the whole body of the pencil is an eraser
- **Dixon-Ticonderoga Ticonderoga Sense Matic ** - a mechanical pencil that automatically advances - no twisting or clicking
- **Jakks Pacific Pentech Ultra Sharp ** liquid graphite pencil - yes, it’s a wooden body, but the graphite inside is liquid, not solid, so it works like a ball-point pen.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get my hands on any Blackfeet pencils. I’ve also been very curious about the Graf von Faber-Castell Perfect Pencil, but I haven’t found one in a shop yet.
Mine’s a Papermate PhDMulti. Nice thick barrel, cushy grip and . . . get this . . . it’s three implements in one! It’s a pencil! It’s a pen! It’s a stylus!
Mechanical: Pilot G-2 07
Classic: Conte Mentor 249 HB. They’re red, and they’re awesome.
My favorite wooden pencils are the Dixon Ticonderoga 1388-2/HB Soft. Something about them just sweeps the floor with all other pencils. Alas, they’re really hard to find around here. I’m not a fan of the Sanford brand at all because while the Eagles have the smooth feeling wood, the eraser is utter crap and I mess up a lot when writing. While typing I have almost 100% accuracy but I frequently write the wrong letter or word if I’m printing.
My favorite mechanical pencil the Papermate Xtend HB #2 0.7mm pencil. The lead rarely breaks on me and its “ultra cushy grip right down to the tip” never hurts my ring finger after a long bit of writing.
Umm – my favorite pencil is a wooden mechanical pencil 
. It’s a Graf von Faber-Castell and it has an ebony body with platinum plated metal bits. Very nice but far too expensive - got it as a gift and will treasure it for ever.
When I was in elementary school in the late 1970s, there were only two vending machines to which students had access. One dispensed pads of paper (Mead Corp., I think) – the covers bore whimsical drawings – I remember several sci-fi-oriented cartoons. The other machine dispensed pencils. These pencils were what we called football pencils because each one bore the name of a National Football League club. The colour motif also reflected the colours of the club in question. I don’t know who made these pencils. Anyone have a clue? (Very, very, very occasionally, the football pencils would be replaced by baseball pencils. I tried to amass a complete set, but I don’t know what happened to them.) The only one I have now is the stub of a burgundy and gold Washington Redskins pencil.
Does anyone have Graf von Faber-Castell’s Perfect Pencil? I’ve been coveting one of these (with the black finish!), but they’re astronomically priced ($100 for a pencil set?). If I ever did get one, would I even let myself use the darn things?
A couple of weeks ago I went to an art store and found a handful of Paper Mate Digit mechanical pencils (made in Japan). I note that Paper Mate is now part of the Sanford family of companies, so it’s probable that they just shifted the Digit name to Paper Mate.
However, I noted that they had only 0.7 mm pencils and I believe 0.5 mm is more popular. Perhaps they’ve discontinued the line again.