Inside the Little Plastic Castle

What's your preferred style and hardness?

I still use a leadholder (aka clutch pencil) from my days as an "analog" civil engineering drafter. That tool comes with extensive supporting technology: the pointer gadget to sharpen the 2mm lead, complete with a cotton plug resembling a cigarette filter to wipe off the tiny lead fragments once it's pointed. What goes down must come off: the complementary eraser holder. My employer paid for the corded electric version—which wiki tells me was A J Dremel’s first rotary tool! I could erase a hole in my drafting paper quite readily, so I deployed a quick hand and an erasing shield.

I miss all the elegant technology and manual skills supplanted by computerized graphics. I'll admit that I eagerly embrace modern technical pens — I had to use the brass-and-steel pen points where the line thickness was set by a tiny screw. The straight lines came out of old-fashioned refillable technical pens, an endlessly fussy tool.