The whole set-up!
Last week I wrote about my favorite drawing pencils the Pentel P207 .7mm mechanical pencil. I guess that got me all excited about pencils and that one specifically so I started looking at them on the internet. Just to see if they have some new versions of it. Instead of finding those I found some .7mm colored pencil leads. A batch of ten different .7mm colors. That seemed pretty cool.
First of all I have to mention that I’m not much of a colored pencil guy. Last year I gave away three sets of colored pencils to my students. It seems that every few years I’d see a set of them go on sale (usually for around $20-$30) and I’d buy one to try them out. I’d try them out and never do anything with them. You think I’d learn a lesson but somehow I’m always up for another set. That brings us to last weekend.
Though the set of ten sets of colored lead was only about $10 I knew that wouldn’t be enough. There was no way that I was going to have one pencil and switch out the lead everything that I wanted to use a new color. That would be too inconvenient and as a result I would never use them. So I decided to see how much ten new Pentel P207s would cost me.
Buying them new in a two pack was $10 for the two. That’s $5 a pencil and it would cost me $50 for ten of them. Then I saw a dozen of them new for $40. That was still a little too much for me so I decided to check eBay to see what people had for sale over there.
Often I find cheap stuff over on eBay but this time it was a little weird. A lot of people were selling the same Pentel P207 that I could buy new for $5 as a “Vintage” mechanical pencil for more than that. Not a ton more but often for $7-$10. I wasn’t sure what they were smoking but there is nothing vintage about a mechanical pencil that they still make and it’s made the exact same way. It’s not like the new ones are somehow inferior.
After some looking I did find a good deal. Four two packs of the Pentel P207 for $20. It also had a “Make an offer” so I decided to offer them $15. Why not? The button is there. They came back with a counter offer of $16 and took it. With shipping and tax the set of eight pens cost me about $20.
With ten new color leads on the way and eight pencils I was two pencils short. I figured I might have two extra from art supply go bags but I only had one. I have a few of them in my starting rotation and I thought I would take one from there. But then that started to annoy me. Why break up other sets I have set up? So I went back online and ordered a new two pack for $10. That brought my total of new pencils up to ten.
After ordering that two pack I felt a little buyer’s remorse. Why didn’t I just go back to eBay and spend another $10 and get eight pencils for $20 instead of two pencils for $10? The answer was that I didn’t need the extra six pencils so why spend the extra $10? I still felt a little foolish though.
When I finally get all the colored leads and mechanical pencils I set aside a morning to set them all up. I knew that I had to mark each pencil to show what color lead it was holding. I colored a ring around the back of the pencil with one of my acrylic paint pens to correspond with the color in the pencil. Red for red and so on. I was very satisfied with myself after I got this done. Then the frustration started.
I went to put the first color lead, it was pink, into the pencil and it wouldn’t fit. Usually to load one of these pencils you remove the metal erasure cover and the eraser from the back of the pencil, drop in a few leads, replace the eraser, and then the eraser becomes a button you push on to advance the lead. I pushed the button and nothing happened.
When this happens it usually means that there is a blockage in the tiny little cylinder that is in the front of the pencil. The lead is supposed to come out of the cylinder. I put a thin wire through the cylinder tip but nothing came out. It wasn’t blocked. Then I went to thread the lead through the tip by hand. I’ve done this before and it’s not hard. But this time the lead wouldn’t go through. It was too big for the opening.
This is where the frustration set in I got all these new pens and all these new leads and they don’t fit together despite them being made to. After not getting the pink loaded I decided to switch to a different color. That one went through. I was happy about that but still upset about the pink one.
All told eight out of the ten leads fit and I loaded the up fine. Dark blue and pink would not load at all. Despite that I decided to make the best of it and try them out. They are rock hard leads.
I’m guessing that the leads have to be rock hard since they are so thin but I like my pencil leads a little softer. Colored pencil leads specifically are better soft so that you can get a lot of color onto the paper. With wooden colored pencils usually the cheaper ones are hard and waxy and the expensive ones are soft and smooth. These ones felt hard and waxy.
The leads also broke easily. I had to use them at a certain angle and with a certain amount of pressure or the tip would snap off. I usually don’t have to do that when drawing with this pencil so it will take some getting used to. I probably will never spend the time to get used to them.
I spent $20 on the first eight pencils, $10 on the next two, $10 on the pencil leads, and $7 on a pencil case to keep them in. So that’s $47 on a set of colored pencils that I’ll now probably never use. I could have spent that money on a nice set of wooden colored pencils. You can’t win them all. I can always use the mechanical pencils with the regular lead that I like. I could put together a whole set of different softnesses of lead! Hmmmmm…