Fifty Shades of Gray

Let's talk lead. Well, actually graphite, but everybody still calls it pencil lead. In a previous post I talked about using mechanical pencils with Wild Gears and touched briefly on the variety of leads available.

If you're not familiar with grading of pencil leads, take a look at this excellent primer from Jet Pens. (TLDR: B is softer/darker, H is harder/lighter, larger numbers indicate greater hardness or softness. 10B is incredibly soft and dark, 10H is so light it's basically invisible. HB is "normal", between H and B, about like a standard #2 pencil. F is an oddball, sitting between H and HB.)

Aside from 2mm drafting leads used a lifetime ago when I took drafting class (and we actually drew things on paper), my experience with mechanical pencil lead has been limited to the Pentel brand. There are others. Some of them are probably quite good. Pentel is readily available and hasn't disappointed me so I've stuck with it. 

Gears Noir

I know that most people using Wild Gears probably got their start with Spirograph, even if that was more than a couple decades ago. Spirograph came with pens so that's what everyone used. When I got my first set of Wild Gears I also bought a set of Stabilo Point 88 pens. And less than a week later I bought a set of Staedtler Triplus Fineliner pens. I'm fairly confident these are the go-to pens for most people using Wild Gears.

In addition to the pens, though, I also bought a cheap set of mechanical pencils. It had been a long time since I'd used a mechanical pencil and couldn't remember what size I preferred so a pack with three different sizes, 0.5mm, 0.7mm, and 0.9mm, made a lot of sense. For reasons that now elude me I mostly used the 0.7mm pencil.