Uni-ball Shift Pipe Lock Drafting Pencil - 0.9 mm - Silver Body with Red Accent

After receipt and use of the Pipe Lock pencil for several days, I believe that Uni-ball has a solid winner! The pencil is very well balanced and the knurling on the grip is just about perfect - not too course, not too fine, making it very comfortable for long periods of use. The shift lock mechanism is smooth and flawless, and is extremely useful for those of us that must stick the pencil in our pocket on a regular basis. Very well made!..

Don't waste your money. The body of this pencil is plastic. I was expecting the body to be all metal for the price I paid. For my money the OTHO Promecha in any style is a better deal. The pencils are all metal and built to last.

An excellent pencil. I am a high school senior planning on using this pencil all throughout college, if i can keep it from being stolen that is.

Pros:

- Metal, but somewhat soft grip: It's odd, but the knurled grip, though metal, feels almost soft to the touch. It's less fatiguing too, because it does not give like other soft rubber grips.
- No lead wiggle: The lead sleeve perfectly holds the lead, so I feel no wobbling of the led, making writing to feel much smoother overall.
- Distance between grip and lead: I prefer to hold my pencil lower, where most other pencils' grips end. This pencil gives you this option with a shorter head than most.
- Sleek design: Just look at it, it's so sleek.
- Plastic body, metal grip: This gives a nice weight to the pencil and shifts the weight toward the tip, which feels solid while writing. Though plastic, it doesn't feel cheap either.

Cons:

- Lead sleeve retracting mechanism: If you like to write with a lot of lead advanced, then you should push the lead back in after use, because the point of the lead might stick out after retracting the lead sleeve. This isn't a huge problem though, but a problem nonetheless.
- Price: This could be a con if you tend to lose pencils often, but if not, this pencil will last for many years. I believe that it is an excellent investment to buy a comfortable pencil or pen.

I LOVE THIS PENCIL!!!
I am a sketch artist and an amateur aerospace designer and I have never come across a drafting pencil that is even half as good as these. I know that the price tag on it might seem like a bit much, to any beginning artists out there, but if I had a choice between this pencil and its weight in gold, I would be tempted to choose the pencil. More so than the gold.
I bought this model, the Shift 0.9mm Silver barrel with Red Accent, 0.5mm grade-B Uni-ball NanoDia and 0.9mm grade-B Uni-ball Shu Leads, and the E-Knock eraser. I would be more than happy to buy them all again.
The pencils are great, they might seem a bit heavy when you hold them in your hand, but when you start writing/drawing/sketching/drafting you will start noticing a key difference that makes this pencil unique (besides, of course, the Shift locking mechanism, which has yet to fail me, and its aesthetically pleasing design). The single most helpful aspect, as I believe it to be, is the weight distribution of this pencil. If I were to hold this and an X-acto knife in my hands, without looking, I couldn't tell you which one was was so precise, that it could be used to perform open-heart surgery, and which one was the X-acto knife! The majority of this pencil's weight, like a scalpel, is centered around the grip. This means that when you use it, controlling the tip of the pencil will seem like an effortless task because your fingers will naturally support the weight of the grip (where most of the weight is). If this does not make enough sense, please just take my word for it, buy one of these wonderful pencils, and see for your self just how great they are.
Now when it comes to pencil leads, I like to stick with the same brands. So it seemed only fitting for me to buy Uni-ball leads. Out of all the pencil lead brands that I have used [Foray(6/10), Pentel(8/10), Sharp(7.5/10), Ticonderoga(8/10), etc.] no brand has kept its promises as well as Uni-ball has, thus far. The 0.9mm grade-B Shu leads will only break if you intentionally overload them (or if you write like you're trying to kill the page and the desk beneath it!). The 0.5mm grade-B NanoDia leads are also pretty strong, for their size. Both lead types are extremely low wear (each lead lasts a long time before needing to be replaced) and erase very cleanly with the E-Knock, which I will get to next...
When I was looking for a good eraser I wanted to stay with the Uni-ball brand because, in the past, I learned that using one brand of lead and a different brand of eraser had a tendency to make erasing more like smudging. With the E-Knock eraser I never have that problem so long as I am erasing a mark from a Uni-ball lead. I am not currently sure how well the E-Knock erases most other brands (it doesn't erase Ticonderoga lead quite as well as it erases Uni-ball lead, I have not yet experimented with any brands other than those two), but I am fairly sure it can handle at least one or two other mainstream brand names. It erases with wonderful precision, I would recommend buying it with the Shift drafting pencil, because the eraser on the pencil doesn't look like it would last very long.

I really, really like this pencil. As an English teacher I write a lot (not "allot") of comments to my students. I only write my comments in graphite. I have had this pencil for one and a half years, but it feels as if I purchased it yesterday. This was a great buy, and I highly recomend it for other teachers, students, etc.