What Do You Use To Mark Wood?

[Birdhunter]

I’ve never seen the Sharpie go through the blue tape.

 

[HarveyWildes]

Blood

Me too, not on purpose.

Grease pencils for mounting and planing.
Regular and mechanical pencils for everyday marking.
Blue tape if I really need to be careful.
Knives for cut lines.
Sharpie if I know it won't show.
I have a pica dry lead pencil, haven't figured out why it's special yet.

 

[ChuckM]

Snip.
I have a pica dry lead pencil, haven't figured out why it's special yet.

You can sharpen the lead!

 

[James Biddle]

I discovered General's Charcoal White Pencils for marking on dark woods.  They sharpen like normal pencils.  Amazon carries them.

 

[Frank-Jan]

I bought a 12ct box of .7mm Paper Mate SharpWriter mechanical pencils last November for $3.32.  I still have a few. They've worked well for me.

One downside to them is that they're not refillable.  I keep a bunch spread around because I'm always misplacing my pencil.

I was curious what a non-refillable mechanical pencil looked like. Found this:

 

[Sparktrician]

I use annotated blue tape to indicate parts that are supposed to go together. It’s just too easy to get mixed up. I normally use a Sharpie marker on the tape. When the parts are glued up, I peel off the tape.

Same here.  I go so far as to mark inside, outside, front, back, top, bottom, plus any assembly notes or comments.  Once everything is out of glue-up, I peel off the tape and sand lightly.

Doesnt the Sharpie soak through the tape and mark the wood?

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

I've never had any issues with bleed-through.  Remember, blue tape is designed to prevent paint from getting through to protected surfaces. 

 

[Naildrivingman]

I'm with Micheal K, I keep 5 & 7mm in my carpenter pants/shorts pocket.  The 5mm works great with my new Woodpeckers Delvo squires as the retractable barrel fits perfectly into the holes.  I'm not wild about the pencil Woodpeckers supplied with the set but the Pentals work great.

How do you guys feel about the mechanical durability of these Pentels?  As I stated, I’ve been using the Alvin Draftmatics for years.  In addition to not dropping the pencil tip down (they seem to always land tip down kinda like jelly toast), the internal mechanics wear out in about one year.  I really like the Alvin’s, but at $15 each, they do get spendy.

 

[Birdhunter]

I have a few rOtring pencils that are about 5 or 6 years old and going strong. If you drop them on the tip, they are toast.

 

[rst]

Naildriver...I keep two Pentals in my pockets at all times.  I tried various mechanicals before I settled on these.  I've never had one break.  As noted above the best thing is that the lead tube retracts up into the body even with the lead extended although I usually retract the lead anyway.  I have at least 6-8 and keep them anywhere I might need a pencil.  I've had Fastcaps Big boys, they fell apart still use Picas but the mechanicals do not need sharpening.

 

[demographic]

Lumber crayon, chisel tipped carpenters pencil of a knife, depending on what I'm marking or the level of accuracy I need although the lumber crayon is mostly for writing sizes on framing so I can see that size when I'm back on the ground or writing down what part fits to whatever other part.
Its only used for writing on first fix items that aren't seen when its finished.

 

[Michael Kellough]

I’ve only been using the Pentel Graph Gear for 2 years (probably learned about it here from rst). But I’ve been using mechanical pencils since the mid-‘50s when they started coming home in my dad’s pocket protector from his job at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville Alabama. That job led to him helping design launch pads for the Apollo program (his specialty was swing arms) which eventually took the family to Cape Kennedy.

Of the many many mechanical pencils I’ve bought and used since then the Graph Gear are my favorite.

 

[Birdhunter]

Michael,

My dad worked at Huntsville on the Saturn booster program while an employee of Boeing. This was in the early sixties. He later ran the medical systems program for Skylab. He did work at Cape Canaveral. I wonder if he knew your dad.

 

[Michael Kellough]

[member=15289]Birdhunter[/member] Chrysler had the contract to build the launch pads. Sooo many people worked on the space program. (Fun fact- when I was born about 15k people lived in Huntsville. By the time I was 10 years old the population had increased to 100k)

When we lived on Merritt Island our next door neighbor worked for Boeing. He was really ticked off when the program ended and he was transferred back to Seattle just to be laid off.

My dad was a mechanical designer. He managed to get 4 years of technical education in just 2 years via a program that carried over for a short time from the war effort but wasn’t able to get the full blown degree that would have allowed him to advance further. Sounds like your father was higher up the hierarchy.

 

[cperren]

I worked the last few years of the shuttle program at Kennedy Space Center.  Really enjoyed the shuttle launches.  Now flying to the  west coast ... 

 

[Birdhunter]

We moved my dad to a retirement community toward the end. He loved to talk about the space program. He also loved to kiss the ladies. He was called the kissing astronaut. His really was a great generation.

 

[elm]

I might have gone off the deep end here, but I used pencils for a while and now mostly use a razor blade (utility knife).  With the track system I have it dialed in and get very precise with the razor.

 

[ElectricFeet]

+1 for masking tape. I just use the cheap light-yellow stuff. If it's not there for long, it leave no trace.

 

[UncleJoe]

I gave a lot of thought to this at one time then I watched a video of Sam Maloof making furniture. So I wondered just what did this world famous wood worker use. Much to my surprise in the videos, several of them,  it looks like he use a Bic Ball point pen a lot.  Wow was I surprised [eek]

 

[Cheese]

How do you guys feel about the mechanical durability of these Pentels?  As I stated, I’ve been using the Alvin Draftmatics for years.  In addition to not dropping the pencil tip down (they seem to always land tip down kinda like jelly toast), the internal mechanics wear out in about one year.  I really like the Alvin’s, but at $15 each, they do get spendy.

I’ve used the Pentels for years. Being a designer, they were a huge step up from having to sharpen your common mechanical pencil on a sandpaper strip every 2-3 minutes.  For a typical large diameter, 2-3mm pencil lead, the amount of time spent designing was sometimes equal to the time that was spent sharpening the pencil. And in order to keep the pencil line as thin as possible, for accuracy reasons, the pencil needed to be twriled in between your fingers constantly in order to make sure the pencil line was as thin as possible. Ah....when life was simple before the time of CAD...NOT.

So, having used Pentels for 20+ years, the biggest problem with them is that at some time in their lifetime, they fail to feed the lead and they just give out. Probably about 10 years I stumbled upon Alvin mechanical pencils and they’ve worked extremely well.

I’ve used them ever since and they are my favorite. Rotring is also another great pencil, however they do not have a lot of US exposure.

 

[ChuckM]

Thanks to the post by Naildrivingman, I ordered a 0.3mm DelGuard pencil, and my use confirmed its claim: it is unbreakable even when you press the tip hard on the paper, unlike my other regular 0.3mm pencil (also from Japan).

I also received my order for a 175th Anniversary Stanley measuring tape...made in Thailand, 150g in weight. As far as I know, it is not available in Canada yet.