The Yak Shack Forum

Hey guys,

I think most of you know that I'm a little on the weird side. I like cards, I like pens, I like pencils, I like hi fi, I like cinema, I like inline skating, I like swimming, I like snow... I could go on  >:D

Recently I've developed a liking for the humble drafting pencil - remember I now work in Engineering so it was bound to happen sooner or later, you know, you ALL had one probably EXACTLY like this in your pencil case at school (I know I did!)

(http://www.leadholder.com/assets/lh-thin/pentel/pentel-p203.jpg)
(http://www.leadholder.com/assets/lh-thin/pentel/pentel-p205.jpg)
(http://www.leadholder.com/assets/lh-thin/pentel/pentel-p207.jpg)
(http://www.leadholder.com/assets/lh-thin/pentel/pentel-p209.jpg)

What I didn't realise until now is that you guys in America have been holding out on me... apparently you have burgundy and green 0.5mm ones which we don't have here.

(http://www.leadholder.com/assets/lh-thin/pentel/pentel-p205-green.jpg)

Are they available everywhere?

What other 'variants' of this magnificent workhorse pencil have you guys been hiding from me?  8)?

P.S. I've heard that the 0.3mm P203 has been discontinued in the States... if there are any fellow pencil mad folk I'd be very interested in trades if you can track any of the other variants... :D

Available through Amazon UK (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pentel-Automatic-Pencil-Plastic-Steel-lined/dp/B000SHUSVQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1235861432&sr=8-1)

Cheers Raj but that's the P205 which is in black!

So far I have the top 4, but it's the red barreled 0.5mm and the green barrelled 0.5mm. I'm getting hints that there are others too...

Don't worry, we noticed.

I have to admit that I don't have hugely fond memories of the hours spent building a dent in my middle finger using these. I went on to ones that were a little bit thicker or were padded.

Here's a picture of most of the variants. Apparently there is a "vintage" version of the P205, and most recently, variants with a different clip style are available, P215-P217-P219.

http://pencils11.blogspot.com/2008/07/more-storage.html

From the lettering I found for the original model numbers, I don't think there were enduring other variants of the P20's, though I couldn't find anything to go with the "F":

PENP205A - black
PENP205B - burgandy
PENP207C - light blue
PENP205D - green
PENP203E - brown
PENP F ?
PENP209G - mustard yellow

The letters don't seem to be maintained with the "new" series:

P215 - black or grey
P217 - light blue or dark blue
P219 - mustard yellow or red

I think you need one each of the dark blue, grey, and red to fill out your collection. One of the "gotta have 'em all" collectors shows the two P219s here, with some links to other fanatics:

http://pencils11.blogspot.com/2008/10/hello-boys-and-girls.html

Yay - thanks Jeff.

There are so many things that make them great... from the annoying clicking sound you can make when rotating the silver eraser cover at the end in the wrong direction, the loveliness of a slim pencil not to mention that you can spend hours taking the clip on and off the pencil whilst solving a particularly tricky mathematical problem....

I think I first started to like them because they have a nice strong pencil feeder at the 'nib' (if you like) - I had a really posh propelling pencil which though expensive, didn't have that so the lead kept breaking the whole time  *sigh*

You have found so many Jeff - your googling beats my googling to a pulp!

An interest in pencils - your winter nights must just fly by  :rofl:

Aye Cap'n... it's amazin' what occupies your mind when the best part of your day is tramping out to the frozen outside for a 'breath' of fresh air.

It's so weird what you miss from home. The people you'll miss are easy to identify ... 'no brainers' as our Yank chums would say, but in a country where believe it or not writing instruments are in short supply, you really do miss the weirdest of things :)

Well, I have a six-foot long slide rule, one of the ones the teachers had hanging on the wall in the secondary-school classrooms ... I can withstand computer outages, and nobody has written a virus for it. As a backup, I have a small desktop abacus. I wonder if I can remember how to find square roots with pencil and paper.

I think I saw several boxes of the Pentel P207 in the supply cabinet at work, long abandoned. I was startled to find out that there was a whole discussion board dedicated to mechanical pencils.  :o

:o

Several boxes of the P207 that are uncared for? Please don't show me a picture of such a horrendous sight...

We have a slide rule framed on the wall in the office back home, below it is a paper reminding us that leaving 'first principles' behind is a dangerous game... I suppose I ought to sneak inside one night and put a post it note above that 'in emergency, break glass' or even something rather ruder?

A six foot slide rule is certainly impressive sounding, have you now got it on the wall at home? Once when I was on site in a faraway land, and far from my computer I was forced to use a set of log tables provided by a kind villager who didn't speak a word of English but outstripped my mathematical ability tenfold :D (I've only been INFORMED about using these tables before... I feel archaic even using a calculator for obtaining logs :)


Ha! I bet they'd be even more horrified that there were discussion boards for paper, card, material, scrawling signatures and sketches ;)

Should I rename this thread Engineers Anonymous. Jeff, you and I could re sign up under new and non-descript user names :D

The slide rule is disconnected at the time being, pending house renovations that will allow it to have a place of honour. I've got to find wall space also for the 6-foot 1960s-vintage maps of the world and the U.S.

When we were undergoing a very rigorous outside computer-security audit at work, I offered to let our experts hang the slide rule on their wall with a "certified virus-free" plaque. We discussed something similar to the 'break glass in an emergency" gag.

I remember when pocket calculators that did more than +/-/*/÷ started showing up at less than US$100. Twenty years before Algore invented the internet.

My memory had failed me; I seem to have remembered the blue P207 from my youth. The supply cabinet at work disgorged 13 unopened boxes, each holding a dozen black P205s. But not a single pocket protector was to be found.

A pocket protector? What the deuce is that?

Now I'm back in Blighty there are writing instruments everywhere - at banks they want you take them away with you, at smiths they want to give you hundreds for no money, but in many countries in the world these are cherished items! I'm still just as geekily pleased with my green and red P205s though - thanks Yanks :P