Refilling your
Vintage Mechanical Pencils

Most mechanical pencils made before the late 1960s and some even after that are refilled by feeding lead in from the Point End. Those that feed from the barrel (below the eraser) are a fairly modern invention! Don't be fooled by leads in the barrel, in older pencils, that was simply a space to store a few extra leads, but that's it - just storage. As always with vintage writing instruments, exceptions will crop up!

The instruction below are from a Sheaffer package insert, but apply to most older mechanical pencils.

We carry a variety of pencil leads - click here.

Wood pencils may very well be the most user friendly writing instrument in the world!

Generally non-toxic, wood pencils are leak-proof, can delete your errors and are not subject to electronic snafus. Not to mention they are inexpensive and easy to acquire. A wood pencil can write on average a line abut 35 miles long - about 45,000 words. A sharpened pencil point can withstand writing pressure of about 3700 pounds of pressure per square inch before breaking off.

Early references to graphite date back to around 1564 when plumbago was discovered by shepherds and used to mark their flocks. In 1779 K.W. Scheele in Sweden discovered that plumbago was a form of carbon and named it graphite. In 1662, Friedrich Staedtler opened a pencil shop in Nurnberg, Germany. Kaspar Faber first commercially produced pencils in 1765 in Stein, Germany by binding graphite with Bavarian clay. Faber Castell continues to make pencils and other writing instruments today. Other early pencil inventors were Corte of France and Hardtmuth of Austria who worked on perfecting the graphite composition. Today, many of the early formulas for graphite are still in use by pencil makers.

Sign up for INKY GREETINGS
Pendemonium's direct email list featuring special offers, new items and pen community news exclusively for subscribers.