I though of this, in part, because I hear a lot about pencils getting dropped and sleeves getting bent – and I’ve dropped pencils lots of times as well. I like the tidy cylindrical sleeves, often in favor of the more conical ones (not a fan of the Ohto auto-advance conical sleeves.) We have two main sleeve lengths: the 4mm, the 2mm, and then the option for no sleeve.

4mm Sleeve: These sleeves have the highest risk of getting bent when they get dropped. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a retractable model-Murphy’s law says the sleeve is going to be out when it drops. Aside from the drop issue, the 4mm offers a level of precision at the tip that is superb, and allows you to see more details on the paper as you are writing.

2mm Sleeve: Less bending risk when it’s dropped-the shorter tube is thus stronger. Can the tip still get dented? Sure. The 2mm sleeve doesn’t have quite the needlepoint precision of the 4mm, but is quite suitable for writing, and is a solid all around.

No Sleeve: This one is an interesting one, because pencils without sleeves are less common. There are tons of old twist pencils like this and note-a lot of these old pencils still work, after 50+ years of getting beat up. Anyway, I found an 0.5 sleeveless pencil and tried it out. The only risk is that the tip gets dented from a drop, and you won’t be able to click the lead out. I could see this happening on concrete-possibly tile… Line of vision is less than the 4mm and the 2mm-so, the least precise of the three, but still sharp.

That’s it from the Lab.

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