h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Have they all gone off to pencil heaven? Is it still possible to buy a clutch pencil at all?
I have a rather nifty lead sharpener but, alas, my pencil has given up the ghost.

Maybe they've gone to pencil world, like unattended biros.

What is a clutch pencil anyway?

A clutch pencil is like a propelling pencil, except that the led is quite thick, like a real pencil, only thicker! There is (or used to be before they became extinct) a button at one end, which wen depressed caused a claw to come out of the other end. The claw "clutches" (hence the rather clever name!) the lead. You could have a long or short lead, according to what was required, and they (as far as I remember) came in the usual 2H-2B varieties.
There is (was) also a rather nifty lead sharpener, which was about the size of what a Barbie or Action Man pencil sharpener would be. If you see what I mean.

Strange. Not heard of those before. Do they have any particular advantages over other types of pencils?

I do wish you'd come along when this was still in Peer Review...

Hey! I also used one of those clutch pencils bach in school, but I didnt like it at all. I didnt have an "Action Man"-sharpener, so I had to use sand paper for sharpening; or in fact, I should have done, but I didnt...

My dad has an eraser which works in the same way u described for the clutch pencil. i wonder if they make clutch pens as well.......

My dad had one with red lead which I thought was quite fascinating when I was younger. The claws clutching the bright red lead...which if not in the pencil could be used alone, on its side, like a crayon...much more useful than a mechanical pencil, except for the mechanical pencil's ability to be used as a buzzer for a quiz game. You ask questions, and the "contestants" click in for the answer.
Only bad part about this was when you clicked to much and soon accumulated a pile of lead at your feet, or lap if you were sitting at the time...

Those nice Staedtler people produce a clutch pencil called 'Clutch 'Mars-Technico'(tm) -780C (which just *trips* off the tongue). It has a 2mm lead, a push button on the end which has a lead sharpener in, and replacement leads in H and HB, In the days of my youth, you could also get coloured leads for this pencil - I used to use red and blue for designing circuit boards. They hadn't invented CAD layout then

If you can't find one anywhere else, Farnell's will sell it to you for the princely sum of £4.65 (probably plus VAT).

Barnacle

Oh I'm sorry about that. I don't go there much, and to be frank, haven't been around here much at all since h2g2 went to the Beeb. Sorry sorry.

My mum used the clutch pencils - draughstman (how do you spell that, is there a female version?) - and I used to nick them because they were cool. I don't remember coloured leads though.

And don't kick me but I've just remembered the groovy coloured chinagraph pencils we used to use for map-marking in the Army. They had thick chinagraph leads which you made longer/shorter by twisting the cap at the end. They were also very cool. Sorry.

That's the one. I have found my clutch pencil (I de-gunged the cellar after reading the article) and it's a Staedtler Mars.

My mum (who now uses CAD too) bemoans the lack of clutch pencils: she used to give them to her colleagues to stop them chewing the ends of her pencils!

Being very sad I know that the clitch pencil is still in use by many archeological illustrators. They now seem to sharpen them with mechanical sharpeners. They hold a point better and don't snap as easily as regular pencils.9H pencils and similar hard leads are used by the same people for drawing on drafting film which is much more tightly woven fibre than paper. It you use them on paper they cut it. Similarly if you used a 2H pencil on film it would be more like a 4B on paper.

We stil use chino graph pencils at work (highstreet clothes shop) for writting on plastic rotas and things. They're really annoying because there's a sharpener famine in our shop so the pencils are always blunt.

Cool artical MaW. So glad I taught you the alpahabet when you were littler than me

FABT

Why thankyou FABT. Your praise is all I live for.

Not.

9H? That's seriously high clay content... definitely wouldn't want to try writing on a tissue with one of those!

So now you're going to tell us why you would want to write on tissues at all..... right?

I like the noise chinagraph pencils make when you lift them of the plastic. Sad life I have, eh?

Hey, what about those pencils where you had about ten little tiny ones inside the one pencil-sized plastic case, and when the first one ran out you lifted it out and pushed it into the bottom, thereby pushing a new bit up to the top? You used to get multicoloured ones as well, which went (generally) red, red, pink, pink, yellow, green, blue, brown, peach, black. And you would bite the end off and tip them all out to put them in descending rainbow colour order... or was that just me...

I always thought they were more like crayons than pencils...

The coloured ones were I suppose but you get get proper lead (ok, graphite) pencil ones. I know cos I used to love them, but found them really annoying after a while cos I'd chewed all the ends off, and they're still hanging around in the dark recesses of my desk drawers.

i used 2 change the colour order in mine as well. i had a normal set of colours & one wiv flouresent colours as well...i think ive lost them both now tho

Ah, I saw some at the weekend whilst looking for (and finding, to my amazement) clutch pencils! Now, if I could only remember what they were called, "pop-" something I think. The ones i saw at the weekend were all yukky and glittery, not like the ones of my youth. Sigh.

They don't make 'em like they used to.

And you'll be glad to know that in the middle of the night I remembered that they are/were called:

Pop-a-point pencils.

Phew thank goodness for that.