You may have noticed in our bass build series of articles that when drawing is required, a mechanical pencil is used.
But why? Why bother spending extra money on mechanical pencils when regular wood pencils are cheap and readily available?
There are actually a few good reasons why the mechanical pencil is a requirement.
1. No need to sharpen.
This is the first immediate advantage. You never have to guess as to whether the pencil tip will need sharpening because it’s not required.
2. You do need a pencil that draws clean, consistent lines every time.
“Clean” means drawn lines that are dark, legible and not faded. “Consistent” means your drawn lines always have relatively the same thickness so you can better keep track of what you’re doing.
3. Better choice of thicknesses.
Mechanical pencils have sizes that start at 0.2mm and end at 5.6mm, so you can get very specific with which thickness you like. With regular wood pencils, you are more often than not just taking your best guess. Sometimes guessing is necessary when bass building, but shouldn’t be where pencil choice is concerned.
4. Much easier to see the tip.
See photo above for an example of this. You can very easily see where the lead meets the wood. Much more so than a wood pencil. For times when high precision marking is necessary, you will very much appreciate this.
5. Feels better in the hand (especially after using power tools).
Mechanical pencils are notably heavier than wood pencils, and this is something you will very much appreciate. Not only does it make drawing lines easier, but if you’ve just used a power tool and your hands are slightly numb from the vibration, physically feeling more weight in the hand with your pencil is a welcome thing.
Which thicknesses to use?
Generally speaking, the two lead thicknesses you will find most useful are 0.5mm and 2.0mm. The 2.0mm is very good when in the “roughing it out” stage, and then later on you switch to the 0.5mm for more precision work.
no truer words have been written – a mechanical pencil is a must (or a few w/different leads)
Agreed, I use my .5mm for any and all work requiring precision. I do still have a ton of wood pencils all over the place that I use for the “rough” work. That being the major advantage of a wood pencil, leaving a million laying around and not having to worry about “where did I put that…..”