4B challenge

I thought I might just do a quick comparison of the 5 or so pencils I found in the attic the other day. I was really pleased to find the Wolff's Carbon as I had recently been talking to Tom Barwick about this pencil, so it was quite a pleasant surprise that I still had one floating about. Technically these are all my pencils but technically I did just find them whilst looking for something else.

What struck me first was the fact that the Faber-Castel 9000 was darker and richer and nicer to use than both the Crayola 4B and the Graphitone 4B. And even though the Faber is hexagonal I much preferred it over the round bodied Crayola. The Wolff's Carbon came out the overall winner using my sliding scale of bias-o-meter but you can't really compare the wolff's to the others as really they are in different categories (so another post just on the wolff's carbon coming up). The Faber though did take some punishment from me and handled it with efficiency we come to expect of German manufacturing. I like the design and colour of the Castell, the green and the gold in classy and you feel like your holding a decent pencil, the lead appears to be pretty central but there is a slight warp on the body as it lifts every so slightly toward the tip, which doesn't really effect the overall performance. The Crayola gets points for being of a round bodied disposition but the graphite stick on the other hand was wholly disappointing.

So hurray for the Castell, it comes out winner of the found 4B challenge.