Surprisingly not available on jetpens !

Fun tidbit, the Japenese word for a mechanical pencil is two english loan words, Sharp Pencil ( シャープペンシル )

And apparently the creator of the "Ever-Ready Sharp Pencil" in Japan went on to found the electonics company "Sharp", whose name is derived from the pencil:

> The mechanical pencil became successful in Japan with some improvements in 1915 by Tokuji Hayakawa, a metalworker who had just finished his apprenticeship. It was introduced as the "Ever-Ready Sharp Pencil". Success was not immediate since the metal shaft—essential for the pencil's long life—was unfamiliar to users. The Ever-Ready Sharp began selling in huge numbers after a company from Tokyo and Osaka made large orders. Later, Tokuji Hayakawa's company got its name from that pencil: Sharp.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_pencil

Lead holders are quite common if you venture into an art supply store. I prefer them to normal pencils because you have the full length pencil even when the lead is tiny.

These ones look very nice though.

They also were once common for manual drafting.

I have several and in my engineering and drafting education were referred to as drafting pencils. They have that cool whirly sharpener too.

One of fmy favorite holdovers from the old world is that you can still buy them, along with a few other basic hand drafting tools from office supply stores like office depot. Stadler is one of the big brands.

Mom and dad were architect and engineer in the transitioning period to CAD software and still remember my days spent sharpening drafting pencils by hand on Stadler sand paper holders. Koh-i-noor is another brand I remember.

There's this great YT channel of a guy who inherited his grandfather's metal shop, including a drafting table. He likes precision and proper drawings.

https://youtube.com/@InheritanceMachining

That channel is great, but as with many I suspect that there is some sort of "shadow industry" that creates great YouTube channels "from scratch".

If you compare inheritance machining to e.g. this old tony, the later has years of growth with the videos getting better of the years as he refines his formula. In comparison inheritance machining just popped up with perfect content, script and video editing.

There are other examples of channels that just popped up that start at a very high quality level that I suspect some third party involved in that process.

I'm not quite as cynical about Inheritance Machining. Yes the quality is superb, both in video production values and subjects, but I think we're at a point where it's not that hard to create quality visual content if one cares to. High quality cameras are relatively cheap, editing software is excellent, and in many ways, a new YouTuber is standing on the shoulders of giants who created the path. Look at Marques Brownlee, arguably one of the best YTubers. He had to define what a review YTuber looks like. The next big YTuber will simply follow the same paradigm.

Compare this to someone ten years ago who was trying to do this with Super-VHS etc, with software that was very expensive, and forget about doing anything multi-camera. So the tools are just far more accessible.

Then combine that with a creator who has seen what works and doesn't work on YT/Insta. You need a good thumbnail, you need less talking heads etc etc.

And I think that Brandon at Inheritance Machining is very detail oriented, as you would expect from someone doing machining. This probably translates well into producing a quality video.

Or NileRed. The guy isolated fucking bromine in a barely ventilated and cramped with clutter garage when he started, and now he's running his own legit laboratory together with (IIRC) his brother and a friend who's running the camera.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIfIZqXaR0g

Now I know they are called drafting tables! Still got two in the old office of my parents.

"Staedtler", and their products are typically excellent - I have a compass from them that's about thirty years old and still going strong, along with sundry pencils, erasers, and a leadholder or two of more recent vintage. Not that I've ever been very much of a draftsman, but at least when I screw up I know it's not my tools to blame...