I went through 3 Delguard pencils before I gave up on them. In each case the clip for hanging the pencil in your pocket broke off. They didn’t offer any with metal clips.
Since then I have switched to Staedtler Riptide pencils. These are excellent, if not flashy nor having quite the tactile feel of my all aluminum Staedtler pencils. It enjoys two advantages over the others.
First a thin metal tube extends to support the lead (most have this tube). When you retract the lead, you also retract the thin metal tube. I have the 7mm version.
Second, they sell for $6.27 for a package of 8 pencils along with extra erasers and leads.
I used it with the Delguard leads and with other leads that are break resistant, and they are all about the same.
THE MAJOR DISCOVERY I made was that I was holding the pencil all wrong. Since grade school we are told to hold the pen or pencil at an angle. For mechanical pencils, holding them at or nearly 90 degrees from the paper is all that is needed to keep the lead from breaking.
It takes some discipline and effort to change pencil angle, but after a while it becomes second nature.
The most useful accessory I have found is the MARS eraser-pen. Once you have used this you will never want to use the included eraser again.
In my jacket pocket is a Zebra 701 pen with a Space Pen refill (required a slight modification to work), the RipTide pencil, and the Staedtler/Mars eraser pen.
The Space Pen refill works smoother than others I have tried, and is pressurized so that it will never leak, and it will write on vertical surfaces without skipping. It also seems to work on oily paper.
My recommendation is that you learn to hold your pencil nearly vertically, and replace your Delguard pencil with a RipTide pencil when the pocket clip snaps off. The Delguard leads are very good and are break-resistant. But there are others that are just as good and just as break-resistant.
And do yourself a favor and get the retractable eraser.
Note: Pentel also makes a “ClicEraser” that works well. It has as smaller barrel and a smaller diamter eraser. It also costs more (but not prohibitively). I prefer the Staedtler/Mars version, but either one works well (and far better than the one in your pencil).
NOTE: Even with the Delguard pencils, which basically have a built-in shock absorber to mitigate agains breakage, you will have fewer broken leads if you modify the angle in which you hold the pencil.
