Product Description

Striker Mechanical Carpenter Pencil and Dura Lead combo pack. Pack includes one Striker and 5 pieces of Dura Lead replacement lead in a rugged storage tube. No more sharpening! Throw away those worthless carpenter pencil sharpeners, toss your old and broken two inch long tradtitional pencil and step into the 21st century. The STRIKER is rugged, efficient and revolutionary. Dura Lead is thicker than traditional lead and works on most construction materials. Quickly shape the lead and get closer to a speed square than any other pencil and still have a strong, razor sharp tip. Never sharpen a pencil again!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3486 in Home Improvement
• Brand: Striker
• Model: 77-579
• Dimensions: .30" h x .65" w x 5.75" l, .3 pounds

Features

• NO MORE SHARPENING!!! RED AND WHITE DURA LEAD AVAILABLE NOW!
• Extremely durable, efficient and rugged
• DuraLead is 18% Thicker than average lead
• Professional marking tool for all trades of construction
• Visit www.strikerpencil.com for more info and video demo

Customer Reviews

not a rave review, but not all that bad
OK this isn't an acuasation, but when there are 4 rave reviews for an item that as soon as you use it, you see the drawbacks, you have to check out the reviewers. Each of those four reviewers had only ONE review and it was of course of this product. Here's a review by a woodworker who reviews items all the time, some good, some bad... and the average ones get little attention from me other than in circumstances like this.

First, the good parts. The red case is easy to find. I have not yet broken the case, and since I drop things a lot, that's good. The colored leads make it possible to make a visible line on almost anything... if you happen to be carrying the appropriate lead with you. It's easy to load and easy to advance the lead when needed.

Next, the problems. The biggest one is, when you drop the pencil, the lead shatters into multiple short strips. Since it takes a strip of at least an inch or more to clasp properly, it definitely shortens the usefulness of each lead if it's in three or more pieces. Also once the lead is short, it tends to skew in the holder, so it's sometimes hard to see where it's going to mark if you're, say, trying to mark to the 16th of an inch on a framing square. If you don't work within a 16th of an inch that's fine, then...but it's a bit disconcerting to find you've marked a tight fit wrong and you have to redo it because it's too short or too long to fit.

Another small thing, it doesn't stay in my T-shirt pocket very well. It's too long for the clip to grab very much pocket and oops, you bend over and there's the lead shattered yet again.

Oh, and one more tiny problem is that the point is too blunt to be able to see the lead if you're marking something right in front of you. So you turn the pencil sideways so you can see the lead, but now you've got it on the flat side marking and you have to tilt it to get the corner of the lead (unless you sharpened it, which was the whole idea of getting this pencil in the first place, because you're not supposed to have to sharpen it.

I'll keep working with it because I bought 4 sets of refills and if I find some workarounds or ways to make it work better I'll update. I find dropping it into my jeans pocket is a good idea because it's safer there.

not good for someone in construction
I had puchased these for my crew and myself thinking it would save time from sharpening the standard carpenter pencil but in reallity they are a waste of time because the lead snaps off by the grooves used to hold it in the pencil and after some wear the lead will get stuck ing the pencil wasting my valuble time trying to get the leadout so save your money and just buy a regular carpenter pencil

Excellent lead, some loss of precision
Good points:
- lead is very durable and does not wear down quickly
- grips securely without slipping
- easy to move lead down a notch as it is used

Bad point:
- the stepped plastic tip makes it more difficult to draw a line along a straightedge than if using a wooden pencil

Overall, I like the nice thick line and the durable lead. So far I haven't had the lead break! This will definitely have a place in my pocket for drawing long offset lines along a sheet of plywood and writing sizing info and instructions on cut lumber. But for short distances where a precise line is required, a well-sharpened pencil still wins out.