Regrets (volume 1)

Now, you can't go around picking up discarded pencils without ending up with some bad pencils, how you can make a pencil that you cannot sharpen with out it ripping the wood apart is beyond me. The first of this volume is the Rowney "Victoria" No.804 2B, I don't actually want to put this pencil in with these other so called pencils, as the Victoria is beautiful and is a good draughting pencil, nice dark lead which flows nicely staying sharp for quite a while, but that's where the pencil becomes pointless (excuse the pun)  They stay in my collection as I wrongly assume pencils are like wine and will age well, changing there composition over time. The other two aren't worth talking about except to say I often don't get on with pencils that are below 2B, so being made of shody wood is probably least of there worries.