Lifestyle » Pencil Revolution

Pencil Dust Finger Painting.

(This post is from Comrade Logan, in Kentucky.)

For several months, whenever I’ve been too lazy to use my wall mounted sharpener, I’ve been sharpening my drawing and list-making pencils into a small glass on the coffee table. I’ve used grades from H to 9B, as well as Ebony, Layout, carpenter’s and water soluble pencils.

Over that time I developed a habit of rapping the glass against the table a time or two to send the graphite dust down through the shavings before leaving my sharpener and eraser on top. It started as a way to keep things clean, but as the layer of graphite grew at the bottom of the glass, I started thinking there had to be something I could do with it.

Eventually I scooped out the wood shavings and ended up with more than a 1/4″ layer of gritty black shards, fine dust and larger lead pieces. While pure graphite powder makes a great dry lubricant for things like sticky door locks, this was anything but pure. It contained all manner of fine wood shavings, paint chips, and who knows what else. I could have tried filtering it somehow, but it still would have enough clay, wax and other additives mixed in that I wouldn’t want to use it as a lubricant.

In the end I decided I would try reusing the mix for its original intended purpose, marking on paper. That translated into an experiment in graphite fingerpainting, the results of which you can see below.

Some tips if you try this yourself:

1 – Use loose leaf paper. I didn’t and it was very difficult to funnel the leftover graphite dust back into the cup without making a mess.

2 – Be sure there aren’t any unwanted indentations in the paper…because they’ll be highlighted by the graphite rub. I’d drawn a stick figure on the previous page of my sketchbook and its head was clearly visible on this page.

3 – Try making a shaded field and using an eraser to subtract an image from it. Tell people you did this on purpose, not that you made a big gray mess with an accidental circle in it and the eraser was the only way to make it look like anything recognizable.

4 – Think about how you’re going to clean your fingers off before you start. This way you won’t end up with black marks all over the bathroom door knob and light switch.

(Text and images, L.L. Used with kind permission.)

Drill Bit Pencil Sharpener.

[Today's post comes from Comrade Logan. Thanks to Logan for a great post about an....interesting product.]

When I first saw the drill powered pencil sharpener on Notcot I was vaguely disturbed by it, but I wasn’t sure why. On the practical side, if you regularly find yourself with an unsharpened round or hex pencil in one hand and a drill in the other, this gizmo will effectively sharpen your pencil in about 5 seconds.

Lets look at the pro’s and con’s:

Pro – low effort; makes big cool shavings; you get to use a drill; bright color so it won’t get lost easily; cheap ($4 for 1 sharpener & 15 pencils at Lowe’s); useable without the drill for resharpening; could sharpen a dozens of pencils in no time without the overheating problems most inexpensive electric sharpeners have.

Con – doesn’t work with carpenter’s pencils; round so it would roll off a table or roof easily; could be awkward to use with larger drills; construction site folks don’t usually need a finely pointed round pencil.

Upon further reflection, I think my issue with the drill sharpener is that I really enjoy using a hand crank sharpener for initial sharpening, and a blade sharpener for resharpening. But what do I know? I’m not the target market for the product.

That in mind, I asked two friends about it. One is a former construction worker; the other restores furniture professionally. Thumbs down from both. The construction worker only used carpenter’s pencils, and only sharpened with a utility knife: “I bought a square pencil sharpener once, used it one time and never bothered again. Finding it in my tool box and using it was slower than just carving a point with my utility knife, which I always had on me. It would take even longer to find this thing, take out the bit that was in the drill, put it in the chuck, use it, then replace the other bit. Besides, you don’t need a sharp pencil for marking boards.” The furniture restorer wasn’t any hotter on the idea. He uses finely pointed pencils for his detailed woodworking, but always works in a shop, so he has an electric sharpener on his workbench.

Not that it isn’t an interesting sharpener. In fact, I’d probably pick one up next time I was at Lowe’s if it didn’t come bundled with 15 generic HB pencils that would just take up space in my already overflowing pencil drawer. Hopefully there’s some other application it is perfect for that I haven’t thought of.

Suggestions?

[Text, L.L. Used with kind permission.]

Interview with Mr. Aaron Draplin, Draplin Design Co. and Field Notes Brand (Part 2).

(Continued from Part 1.)

4) I’ve read about your extensive bullet pencil collection, with considerable jealousy. What attracts you to this type of pencil, and how did you build your collection?

First off, it’s the compact quality. I love having a tight little drawing tool in the front pocket at all times, and I’m here to tell ya, these little sonofabitches have saved my butt many a time…on airplanes, in meetings, in a pinch, wherever. I always keep one in the front, left pocket of my 501s.

I’ve kind of given up on erasers of any sort in these little guys, as the kind you’d score from a junk store or estate sale are old, old relics and the erasers are dried way up and dead. Rock hard, usually. So, there’s this certain model that didn’t come with an eraser, and just had a plastic tipped end. I collect these ferociously, with a good 20 or so hoarded away. Now, the classic type with the erasers, shit, I’ve got a couple hundred of those bad boys.

What I love about them the most, is how banal they were back in the day. Simple, cheap advertising tools given away at local businesses. Feed-n-seed joints, car lots, insurance agents, what have you. Just crappy little promo items that packed a real wallop. I’ve got a couple old salesman sample sets. Old and beat up, and a look into what it was like to have a guy sit down and say, “Here’s what we can do for your company.” So good.

I’ve built my collection junkin’ across America—scouring the dirtiest of estate sales, garage sales, junk stores, antique malls and the occasional eBay lot. You can score them in the Midwest pretty regularly, across the rustbelt and great plains. Farmers used these things. I guess a lot of them are collector’s items. I could care less. I use the things, and never pay more than eight bucks or so for them.

5) Despite the return of the famous Blackwing, pencils in America seem to be on the decline today. Models are canceled, and most companies have moved their production out of the USA. Can you comment on the current pencil offerings available in the United States in 2011?

I’m no authority on this stuff, so I’ll tread lightly here. I know this much, it’s harder and harder to make an American Made promo pencil. And, with good imprint applications that aren’t stock type crap. I was lucky enough to get a monster order in just before Christmas and man, love these things. Hex pencils, people!

6) The Field Notes pencil is downright gorgeous. With its round shape, lack of paint and green eraser, it’s obvious that a lot of thought went into it. Can you tell us a little about the design process and what made you choose its current form?

Like all Field Notes products, we started with the direction that the thing had to be natural at all costs. Finding the source with the green eraser was a happy accident. Plus, the cedar wood just smells so nice. Those things take a beating, just like our memo books! I have a pile of them all beat to shit, still kickin’ after a couple years on the scene. Those pencils WILL NOT disappoint.

7) Are there any upcoming pencil accouterments from DDC and/or Field Notes to which Comrades might look forward? Pencil clips? Bullet pencils? Brown sharpeners with black Futura print on them?

After an exhaustive search for the perfect pencil sharpener from existing sources, we gave up on that shit and started drawing up plans with a couple Midwestern Tool & Die manufacturers to craft the ultimate hand held sharpener unit. We’re still at the point of initial CAD drawings, blade strength options and ballistic grade metal sourcing. If we can pull these little buggers off, man, they are going to rule. Just you wait. They’ll be something to marvel at. And, get the job done for the ages!

We’ve got some leather stuff coming down the pipe for Field Notes made right here in Portland by our friends at Tanner Goods. Very, very excited about this project. And yes, there’s Futura Bold on these new items. You can take that one to the bank.

MANY MANY thanks to Aaron for helping to spread writing/noting/drawing joy, the world over!

[Images, A.D. Used with permission.]

Iowa Farmers’ Gear Collectors.

This was in my bookmarks (for, ahem, lunchtime reading) on my office computer. As my contract is up at the end of the month, I’m cleaning it all out. This is an interesting article, though I can’t remember where/how I found it. If you sent it to me and I’ve forgotten, thank you!

“Who would have guessed the huge old stockyards that once dotted the Midwest would best be remembered in something as small and simple as a pencil?…

….Twedt also collects the bullet pencils, so-named because of their shape. Each came with a metal cover over the leaded end of the pencil, making the pencil look a bit like a bullet.

Most bullet pencils, like most other stockyard memorabilia, were handed out by consigners at the stockyards. The consigners would contract with the farmer to sell the livestock to one of the various area packers around the stockyards.”

[Read the rest at Iowa Farmer Today.]

Letters from Lauren.

I hope that Lauren doesn’t mind us stealing her photo, but I have to share this really cool website, wherein Lauren writes a letter a day in 2011. I was lucky enough to be on the receiving end last week, and, well, it’s just nice to get a letter in the mail these days — written in pencil, no less — addressed to you as a person and not a prospective client/customer.

What’s more, Lauren features lovely photos and letters on her blog, which we can all enjoy. Thanks very much to Lauren, who shares my affection for the USA version of the Dixon Ticonderoga “Black”!

[Image, LfL.]

KUM Wedge as Survival Tool?

Maybe. Dan and I were at a, ahem, local watering hole in December for his birthday. At the rooftop bar overlooking Baltimore (literally the highest spot in Charm City) on a snowy night, Dan wondering if the magnesium of a KUM wedge was soft enough to cut. Yes, it is, he found. But we dared not light a fire on the newly polished wood on which our dripping Buds rested at the bar. We drank coffee in the snow and forgot about it.

Last week, Dan shaved one down, lit it, and the flame bore straight through the work table. In addition to giving a pencil fine points, a magnesium sharpener, it seems, can work as a fire starter. What’s more: if you have no knife but do (for whatever reason) have a screwdriver, you can shave the magnesium with the sharpener’s own blade, in a bizarre act of pencil-gear-self-destruction.

We need to do a more thorough How-To about pencil sharpener fire starting, and soon. Maybe our first video?

Needless to say, don’t try this at home. Dan and are both old Eagle Scouts with fire experience and, hell, he’s a professional fireman!

Actually Getting to USE Carpenters’ Pencils.

Last week, Mr. PJ gave me a lovely orange carpenter pencil, seen here with Dan’s broken-in yellow model. I have to admit that I had to bum a knife to sharpen mine (I didn’t have one on me) and that the square point you see is the best that I could do. (And please pardon the bad photos — my hands were a little shaky.)

While there are certainly Comrades for whom getting to use a carpenter pencil in its proper context is nothing new or exciting, that’s not the case for me. I seldom ever get to work with my hands, personally, that this exercise was a lovely foray into an activity to which I’d certainly like to devote more time, if possible.

Awesome Old Sharpener at Dan’s Dad’s House.

My friend Dan and I made a trip through the ice to visit his Dad one evening last week. Mr. PJ is a contractor who owns his own business, and he really likes pencils. There’s a cup full of carpenter pencils in the back of the photo below.

This sharpener was quickly spotted by me in his kitchen, where I’d been a hundred times before. I believe he said that it belonged to his grandfather. Mr. PJ is my own father’s age (born in 1949); so that sharpener must be pretty old.

The top has a hinge, and the shavings are collected in a drawer at the bottom. All metal. The knob that would, today, be plastic is wooden.

We actually had a very fantastically pencilicious evening, complete with woodworking, fire and beer buried in snow. We made pencil boxes from reclaimed oak and discovered a survivalist aspect of KUM wedge sharpeners. More posts to come!

Edit: Mr. PJ tells me this:

Hey, John, glad your evening like mine was fun. The photo’s of my grandparents’ hand-cranked, which I first saw in my grandparents’ home in the old sun parlour. It had several bookcases my granddad had built. The sharpener was secured to the top of one case — which sadly fell apart during a move for my grandmother years ago. So I salvaged the sharpener with my grandmother’s permission. Thus the old sharpener enjoys its high place on the files. This oldie was also used by my granddad in his studies while attending drawing classes. I am sure it sharpened many a pencil used in his architectural drawings. I still use it, though it’s not secured. I enjoy the fact that it still works so well. pjkelley

Pencil Revolution on Facebook.

Join us now on Facebook! This is different than the “group.” We’re moving on up to a page, wherein Comrades can receive updates, and there will be a “wall” on which anyone can post.

Logan’s Pencil Box.

After the discussion of graphite dust in pencil boxes from earlier this week, we are happy to present Logan’s pencil box.

“It measures approx 4.25 x 5 x 0.5 inches. The pencils are Prismacolor Turquoise H, B and 6B, and general 6B charcoal, cut in half to fit.”

I really like this set-up. I have a few pencil extenders sitting around, but it never occurred to me to use them to carry shortened pencils in a box. Usually, there’s just a very short Palomino in my Kutsuwa pencil holder, turned around backward to protect the point — and my leg. Keeping an extender in a small sketch or writing kit can allow Comrades to carry really short pencils and even use them comfortably, no matter how big one’s hands are.

Thanks to Logan for sending us these images and sharing! See more of Logan’s images on Flickr.

“Leave the Libaries Alone.”

Being of the last generation to need to visit a library while in school in order to get information and to do research, I have a serious soft-spot for libraries. I retain very fine memories of studying Edmund Husserl, Thomistic metaphysics and William James during December 2002 (when I probably no longer needed to actually be in the library) in Bapst Library at Boston College and truly being invigorated as much by the stacks and smells and architecture of the large study hall as I was by the copious amounts of coffee I’d been consuming. Not to mention that the public nature of the library and the enforced silence was very good for keeping me undistracted. I took notes in a Space Pen, in hardcover notebooks, using paper books written by and about what I was studying. I didn’t think that such a method of work would be so seriously endangered only 8 years later. I can’t decide if physical libraries are a case of holding fast to something we know and love for it’s own sake or if there’s really something about them that can justify us keeping them around longer. For what it’s worth, my local library just received an expensive and extensive remodeling, in a city that’s so strapped for cash that fire houses close on a rolling basis.

Best-selling author Philip Pullman spoke to a packed meeting on 20 January 2011, called to defend Oxfordshire libraries. He gave this inspirational speech…

“In the world I know about, the world of books and publishing and bookselling, it used to be the case that a publisher would read a book and like it and publish it. They’d back their judgement on the quality of the book and their feeling about whether the author had more books in him or in her, and sometimes the book would sell lots of copies and sometimes it wouldn’t, but that didn’t much matter because they knew it took three or four books before an author really found his or her voice and got the attention of the public…
Not any more, because the greedy ghost of market madness has got into the controlling heights of publishing. Publishers are run by money people now, not book people. The greedy ghost whispers into their ears: Why are you publishing that man? He doesn’t sell enough. Stop publishing him…
So decisions are made for the wrong reasons. The human joy and pleasure goes out of it; books are published not because they’re good books but because they’re just like the books that are in the bestseller lists now, because the only measure is profit…

The greedy ghost understands profit all right. But that’s all he understands. What he doesn’t understand is enterprises that don’t make a profit, because they’re not set up to do that but to do something different. He doesn’t understand libraries at all, for instance. That branch – how much money did it make last year? Why aren’t you charging higher fines? Why don’t you charge for library cards? Why don’t you charge for every catalogue search? Reserving books – you should charge a lot more for that. Those bookshelves over there – what’s on them? Philosophy? And how many people looked at them last week? Three? Empty those shelves and fill them up with celebrity memoirs…

That’s all the greedy ghost thinks libraries are for.” (More.)

There are some interesting comments on Boing Boing, where I found this link, including the suggestion (for better or worse) that libraries get replaced by something else or nothing.

[Image of Morris Library at SIUC, summer 2005, before complete renovations.]

Graphite Dust: On the Avoidance Thereof.

A few weeks ago, Ana Claudia from Brazil wrote in to Pencil Revolution asking about graphite dust solutions. I was in the process of cleaning out my pencil box that week myself, faced with the same issue, and I suggested that we pose the problem to all Comrades:

“I found this site about two months ago, and it was a pleasure to know that there are more crazy people like me that love pencils and discuss them!!!! At that moment I was hoping that someone could help me to solve the biggest problem I face using wood pencils and that even causes me to avoid using them more often: the dust! I don’t know about you guys, but I always have all my pens and pencils and everything else in the pencil case completely dirty from graphite dust. Actually it’s become a bit better after I’ve begun to use a vertical case, but even then the stuff becomes dark. And it’s hard to clean everything, especially because I know they won’t last clean for so long…So, I ask for help!!!!!! Please! I don’t want to move again to mechanical pencils! How can I avoid this?”

So, what do you do when graphite dust covers everything like a layer of shiny grey snow?

[Photos and text, A.C. Used with permission.]

Marking Bone with an IKEA Pencil.

Evidently, our favorite writing/marking tool has a use that might be a little…unsettling to read about. Pencils are very good for marking bone during surgery.

“The use of a pencil to mark osteotomy cuts in craniofacial and maxillofacial surgery is well established, proving superior to methylene, Bonney’s blue, and felt tipped skin markers that struggle to transfer an ink mark to bone, or are washed away by irrigation or tissue fluids.4 5 Sterilisation, originally achieved with 18 hours of dry heat,6 is now performed by autoclaving, making a pocketful of IKEA pencils from one shopping visit last for many months—important in the current financial climate. The only problem is that on repeated sterilisation even the hardiest of pencil splits. Ours proceeded to extrude its graphite core before it was even removed from the protective wrapper. We have solved this problem by wrapping silicon cuffs around the pencil—maybe we could suggest this to the designers at IKEA?

Despite this, pencils remain a safe and reliable method of marking bone, making the Argos pen safe for now, at least.”

(More.)

“Buy one, give one” from EcoJot.

Mark sent us a video of his trip to Africa this fall, on EcoJot’s Kinderkits mission. I really like EcoJot books largely because they’re well-made and a pleasure to use. But you’re also buying something both green and socially conscious. You’re getting a great book, and you’re helping to do, well, Good. You can’t beat that.

View the video here.

Happy Holidays, and Hemingway!

In the spirit of the holidays and of Hemingway (a pencil champion!), we present A Visit from Saint Nicholas, In The Ernest Hemingway Manner, by James Thurber.

“It was the night before Christmas. The house was very quiet. No creatures were stirring in the house. There weren’t even any mice stirring. The stockings had been hung carefully by the chimney. The children hoped that Saint Nicholas would come and fill them.

The children were in their beds. Their beds were in the room next to ours. Mamma and I were in our beds. Mamma wore a kerchief. I had my cap on. I could hear the children moving. We didn’t move. We wanted the children to think we were asleep.”

(Read more.)

Coming up with new versions of this poem of your own is a favorite holiday pastime. I finished my Raven’s Wing Field Notes book yesterday, with my own version in native Baltimorese. But it’s way too foul-mouthed to post here.

Happy Holidays to all!! We’ll be back after the holiday with a look at a pencil-friendly selection of planners/organizers, a review of the Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener and even an interview with the legendary Pencil Hero Aaron Draplin (of Field Notes!) in the New Year.

Best and warmest wishes to you and to yours, for the best holidays yet.

RAD AND HUNGRY.

RAD AND HUNGRY reached out to a number of stationery blogs, and we’re happy to be able to participate in a drawing for a really sweet kit from Colombia, which will ship directly from R&H. Essentially, you get a package of local stationery sourced from the same country, on a monthly basis. How awesome is that? You get:

A – Writing Instrument
B – Paper Goods
C – Mystery Item
D – The Low Down

The office supplies within each kit (A, B, C) are straight up, no fuss exports – everyday items hand picked from a local dealer in the featured country. A random narrative from the trip (D) accompanies the goods. The kit is shipped out to subscribers’ homes on the first Tuesday of each month.

Now. How do we decide who wins this package? Do we randomly select from commenters, from our Facebook group, or subscribers? Do we have a contest? A pencil-themed contest? But, what should it look like? The contest, that is? Any suggestions? (Seriously. I’m only coming up with Hemingway trivia.)

In the meantime, check out RAD AND HUNGRY’s blog. To paraphrase The Dude, I dig their style, man.

In Praise of Thick.

Loose Arrows has a great post about preferring thick pencils and thick leads. Personally, I enjoy them as well and have found a fat ole’ learner’s pencil to be just the thing for days of really sore hands and/or really big notes.

“I’ve become a big fan of jumbo pencils with triangular cross sections. I’m not sure whether it’s because they remind me of wankel rotary engines, or because I have long fingers and do a lot of writing. I’m particularly impressed with the Staedtler Norris Triplus Jumbo in bumblebee plumage. It has great balance, nice grip, and best of all, the 4mm HB lead puts down a line as dark and dense as antimatter.”

Read more at Loose Arrows, “A blog about sharp things” that features a lot of good stuff about pencils. Also, see previous mentions of the Ergosoft, from Scruss.

(Images, Loose Arrows.)

Clean Pencil Sharpener.

(Click to enlarge.)

Comrade Brian sent this very cool dispatch from Portland (OR):

“I checked a book out from the Library called The Boy Mechanic: 200 Classic Things to Build, which is a neat little book that collects a bunch of old D.I.Y. projects from old Popular Mechanics articles, and this little blurb about a sharpener that collects the its own debris made me think of you, and your recent posting on Pencil Revolution. I made a scan of the article for you. I don’t know how practical such a device would actually be, but it’s fun to think that someone tried solving your dilemma.”

With some very nice wood (read: red cedar!) and an attractive handle, this could be a great device to keep on your desk, to sharpen the dulled-but-exposed lead in your pencils.

I should really start keeping containers sharpeners at the office.

(Taken with my simple phone.) My desk is becoming covered in wood shavings and graphite dust. My stapler is looking…sooty!

Pencils from Brian.

I’ve mentioned before (from Zack and from Dan) that I have a lot of very nice and generous friends who gift me with pencils — and that I am always happy to receive them (!). My friend (and roommate in college) Brian (also a Pencil Revolution contributor) was in Baltimore yesterday. He came to supper at a local Mexican restaurant bearing a present consisting of a pack of My First Ticonderoga pencils and the iron sculpture you see in the photo.

It turns out that Brian has been taking blacksmith classes and made me this iron pencil, inscribed with the word “REVOLUTION” on it! It’s really incredible to hold, and, well, beautiful. He says he doesn’t have more for sale, but, hey, if enough people ask, perhaps the pencil deities will inspire him to create more?

NaNoWriMo 2010 Gear: Pencils.

With Nation Novel Writing Month beginning Monday and the recent attention that writing by hand has received, I thought we might offer a few short primers on good long-term, long-distance, long-hand writing gear for the intrepid souls embarking on writing a novel (or other 50,000 word text) in a month. This is especially true for the undaunted few who might draft their work by hand. Certainly, this is no easy task. I’m going to give it a shot with a half-time job and a 6-month old at home. If you want to write, however, it’s worth it. I “won” in the only year I tried (2007), and it was great to figure out that I could, literally, write – and something other than a philosophy dissertation. It’s a great exercise if you aspire to be a writer at all or even just want to see what you can do.

I’d also like to encourage folks to sign up for our Facebook group, where we might, perhaps, be able to serve as valuable moral support for one another.

What does a great NaNoWriMo pencil look like?

For me, I consider these aspects:

1) Darkness. Someone (probably you) is going to have to type this thing up before November 30th if you want to be an official “winner.” I don’t have the eyesight or the patience to do this from a 4H pencil. Even if you’re only using paper and pencil for notes, being able to, you know, see what you wrote is a good thing.
2) Point retention. Certainly, sharpening a pencil is one of life’s great pleasures, and all that. But, let’s face it, there’s a crazy deadline. You don’t want to have to sharpen your pencil after every single page.
3) Smoothness. I have hand injuries from a bad bike crash in 2009, and I have to consider that I don’t want to mash graphite onto the paper to get words to appear. This is doubly true for fiction writing.
4) Comfort. A sharp hexagonal pencil or extreme triangular pencil might work for some, but not others. I like rounded hex pencils or round pencils myself.
5) Cost/availability/stock-pile. I’m not going to start on a huge project with a carefully chosen pencil if I only have one or two of them.

While we heartily invite Comrades to add to the conversation with comments about what you’re going to write with, not write with, what you recommend, etc., this is my own short list of contenders:

1) California Republic Palomino (HB). It’s no secret that this is one of my favorite pencils. The darkness and point retention is a good balance, while smoothness is excellent. The shape and thick lacquer make it comfortable to hold, and they’re not prohibitively expensive. I meant to order a dozen new blue non-erasered ones in time, but I lost track of time.
2) General’s Semi-Hex (HB). The shape is smooth and comfortable, and they’re only $4 a dozen. (On the other hand, they can be hard to find.) Darkness and smoothness are, as I might repeat when we review them soon, what you wish your Dixon would give you. Point retention is acceptable.
3) Mirado Black Warrior (HB). I have to admit that the new (Mexican-made) stock is better. The lead is darker, and I like the matte finish (though I think the last few USA runs had that also). If this pencil had its current lead back in 2005-6, it might have been my favorite pencil in the world — or in the top three.
4) Palomino Blackwing (?). While point retention is not the best, the smoothness and darkness are unmatched in a writing pencil (at least any I have ever used). This pencil is just a joy to write with; that’s all there is to it for me.
5) Dixon Ticonderoga “Black” (HB). I have a few left with the matte paint, from when they were made in the USA. These have a finish that resembles the new Blackwing. The newer, glossier Mexican models are nice, too, and you can get them at Walmart (etc.). Everything good (and bad) about the yellow Dixon applies to this pencil, but it’s more attractive and has a better eraser.
6) Field Notes Pencil (HB). I mentioned it being a little gritty. But the point retention, shape, lack of paint, darkness and price make it a great pencil. I don’t mind a little grit. And, dang, I like this pencil.
7) Faber-Castell 9000 (4B). While I find the 9000 disappointingly hard at most grades, the 4B is great for dark notes and actually holds its point very well. The shape is a little sharp, and the wood (non-cedar) is a little too light. And, come to think of it, it’s expensive. But I think it’s worth mentioning a non-HB pencil, in case Comrades loves a certain pencil but want something similar and darker for NaNoWriMo.
8) Whateverthehellpencilihavearound. Sometimes, the best pencil is the one right in front of you.

What sorts of pencils are other Comrades using for notes, for composing, etc.?

Pencil for long-term writing.

Little Flower Petals has an interesting post about the permanence of pencil:

“At one point I was worried about using pencil in notebooks I wanted to keep around for awhile, just because it’s erasable. But I got to thinking…*unless* it’s erased, pencil is more permanent than pretty much anything, and the chances of my notebooks experiencing heat or humidity are a lot higher than the chances of a stranger armed with a Pink Pearl breaking in while I’m out and going to town on my old journals. I’m probably safe to use pencil.”

Back when Pencil Revolution first surfaced in 2005 (and before a 4-year hiatus!), my friend was shocked to hear that I still used pens in my journal. I realized I was probably being silly in my paranoia that my meaningless words would not survive a visit from The Eraser Monster or a few hundred brushes with a dirty hand. Still, I worried and ordered a dozen No Blot “ink pencils” and tried them out in my journal. Aside from them being scratchy, I also assumed, after a while, that the dye was probably not safe for long-term use, concerning both the paper and my own skin. I might have been wrong, but there you go.

I went out late one night back then, listening loudly to Alice in Chains, and bought a new “large” Moleskine to begin my adventures in officially journaling in pencil. Didn’t take long for me to sully my book with ink, however. And, despite some forays into graphite journaling, I didn’t start really really really journaling in graphite until this past August. Now my journal is completely archival safe and, strangely, completely erasable.

And, as it were, the pens I was using in my journaling in 2005, when I was too afraid to journal in graphite, were some of the least archival safe implements with which I have ever written. I shudder when I see what only five years have done to the writing. The black ink made the facing page turn yellow with the writing (strange effect indeed), while the blue just faded, especially within a .5-.75 inch border of the pages’ edges. Everything written back then in pencil: fine, save where I rubbed my hairy mitts on some pages to test smearability, out of said paranoia.

Sure, journaling in pencil means that you have to be pretty careful not to go smearing things around. But, well, who reads their journals everyday? Does anyone pet her/his writing? And, anything but the most waterproof inks require at least some special handling. Gel ink, for the most part, gets messy with even moderately damp hands.

Are there others who journal in pencil for the fun of it, or for the archival properties, etc.?

Lead Wetters.

This is another post from Shane in Utah, about the phenomenon of pencil licking:

Here is a funny editorial from a November 1906 Popular Mechanics magazine. Apparently, even back then people didn’t know why they licked their pencil points. You still see it once in a while now, but it must have been much more common 104 years ago. The author claims that nearly everyone other than “newspaper men and stenographers” wet their pencils. “It hardens the lead and ruins the pencil,” he laments. He tells the story of a pencil-loving newspaper clerk who was tired of customers licking the pencils they borrowed from him, and the story concludes, “Surely no one who reads this will ever again wet a lead pencil.”

(The article is next to news that a US company had just sold Russia the largest-ever gasoline engine for a submarine and an ad for a DIY wireless telegraph that “will work up to a mile.”)

I read somewhere that pencil licking was to activate the dye in copy/indelible pencils. So I licked a vintage red Dixon Anadel and asked my wife if my tongue was red. Her horror that I’d lick a pencil was only matched by the big red splotch on my tongue! Don’t ask me what it tasted like; I hastened to some strong coffee.

Pencils from Dan.

I’ve mentioned that receiving pencils from friends is a perk of being someone moderately obsessed with pencils. It’s even better than getting big packages of samples from companies (though we certainly appreciate them also!). These are from my friend Dan, a fireman in Baltimore City and, like Zack and myself, an Eagle Scout. The carpenter pencil is my first such pencil. We were chatting online in the summer of 2004, and I mentioned digging pencils. When I visited Baltimore from Illinois that August, we met for coffee, and Dan had this [really nice, actually] carpenter pencil for me as a gift! The blue pencil comes from the Tower Bridge in London, and Dan brought it back for me from his honeymoon a few years ago. It’s actually the nicest souvenir pencil I’ve ever had. The paint job is better than most Dixons and Mirados.

“They” say it’s better to give than to receive. And I like to give pencils away, for sure. But I can’t say I like it better than receiving great gifts from my excellent friends.

The Longpoint Keychain.

Shane from Utah sent an excellent idea along to Pencil Revolution HQ:

I am a fan of the Kum Automatic Long Point sharpener because of the angle it cuts into our Revolutionary tools. But I hate to haul around all the extraneous hardware attached to the sharpener out of the box. With some force, I extracted the core from its housing and used a small drill bit to place a hole right through the word “STOP”. (In previous versions I put the holes along some of the thin edges, but they eventually tore through. You also have to be careful not to block the path of the sharpening leads.) Now the sharpener travels in my pocket with my keys and a minimum of bulk.

As an aside, I had this sharpener in my pocket while I swam in the Gulf of Mexico. The blades got a little rusty, so I changed them out with the spares that come with the sharpener (thank you, Kum), and it works good as new.

[Text and image, S.T. Used with permission.]

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February 2012

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Pencil Dust Finger Painting.

Drill Bit Pencil Sharpener.

Interview with Mr. Aaron Draplin, Draplin Design Co. and Field Notes Brand (Part 2).

Iowa Farmers’ Gear Collectors.

Letters from Lauren.

KUM Wedge as Survival Tool?

Actually Getting to USE Carpenters’ Pencils.

Awesome Old Sharpener at Dan’s Dad’s House.

Pencil Revolution on Facebook.

Logan’s Pencil Box.

“Leave the Libaries Alone.”

Graphite Dust: On the Avoidance Thereof.

Marking Bone with an IKEA Pencil.

“Buy one, give one” from EcoJot.

Happy Holidays, and Hemingway!

RAD AND HUNGRY.

In Praise of Thick.

Clean Pencil Sharpener.

I should really start keeping containers sharpeners at the office.

Pencils from Brian.

NaNoWriMo 2010 Gear: Pencils.

Pencil for long-term writing.

Lead Wetters.

Pencils from Dan.

The Longpoint Keychain.

Revolt!

Comrades At Arms

Pencil World

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