So you finally got that ticket to the Moon, and on your way over, you crack open that new 50th anniversary limited edition Pentel P205. There’s one problem – in zero gravity, you can’t just click the lead out, because the clutch feed is aided by gravity. With that scenario in mind, we looked at some different pencils to see if they could work in such weird circumstances. How? Just do this:

We have some different advance mechanisms we’re looking at in this line-up: Uni Kuru toga Pipe Slide, The Tombow Olno, the Pilot Fure Fure Shaker, and the Pentel p205. Here’s how they did: None of them worked. You just can’t get the lead in the clutch in that position, not by clicking, not by shaking and praying. You’ve got to go to manual overide, by loading a piece of lead right into the clutch, then clicking:

The Pilot and Pentel were easiest to load manually-the Tombow Olno was difficult to load. Ok, we’re down to clicking the pencils pointed up to see if they work. The Pilot shakes out and clicks the lead out fine. The weird Tombow Olno clicks and “breaks” fine, and the Pentel p205 works fine. Interestingly, the Uni Pipe Slide just can’t click the lead out from that position-once the Pipe Slide clicks, the sliding sleeve falls back down and gets stuck-so it relies on gravity more than the other pencils. Something to consider, I suppose, when you pack for your trip.



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