Pentech Liquaphite Mechanical Pencil: 2 pencils, plus a bonus refill cartridge and 2 eraser refills.

Not many people ask themselves where to find liquid graphite pencils. Strange, indeed, a ballpoint pen whose ink is liquid graphite! It belongs to the same subspecies of writing instruments as the Papermate Erasermate erasable ink pen. And like the Erasermate, it tends to skip if one writes in a small script, and it occasionally leaves a small blob of graphite on a letter's loop.

But, my guinea pig friends tried it and they found it satisfies and wanted more! The teachers among them really like it for their classrooms. They cite no broken leads, no noisy pencil sharpeners, and no shavings mess.

The eraser works well, and the pressurized cartridge holds a lot of ink. . . oops! . . . lead.

The lead is a No.2 equivalent, and writes with about a 0.8mm width line.

Refills are not commonly available, although we stock a few. It is better, ecomomically, to buy another package of the pencils -- in which you receive, effectively, three cartridges and four erasers.