And we should be here talking about the notebooks that Cal Cedar sent us, the beautiful new Field Notes (in the mail!) or publishing a few reviews we’ve had in the works for months. I’d promise that it will happen this weekend. But, well, the weather in Baltimore is too nice for that.
But stay tuned. There aren’t enough Paperblanks reviews out there, and we’ve got a great one coming up.
(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.)
Things have just gotten a little nuts. We’re moving next week (still in Baltimore, Maryland). For folks who would like to update their addressbook (or add us!), message us for the new mailing address.
With the Blackwing 602 out (thanks Charles and Andy for the dozen!), some cool samples arrived from Daycraft in Hong Kong, we’ll be back soon with more pencil adventures.
[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.]
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.”
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.]
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.
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.]
Dave’s Mechanical Pencils is five years old this weekend (it’s sill the 29th in this part of the globe)! Many Congrats to Dave, with whom I share a distant connection to Southern Illinois (and especially SIUC). Dave’s almost tempted me into mechanical pencils more than once, and that says a lot.
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.)
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.
A nice Quorum of Comrades got the answer correct and had their names written on little papers (with a Faber-Castell 9000, as it were). The names were drawn from a black Jansport this morning by my better half, and we have a winner!
The show ran during the previous decade on a national American network, possibly in other countries. It’s set in a small town. The character in question is usually found with flannel, a ball cap and a pencil. He will give you coffee if you ask for it. He is curmudgeonly and enjoys stick-shifts. He is a good guy and seems to hate razors.
Who is the character (his name)?
Luke Danes from “Gilmore Girls” (played by Scott Patterson)! Also, on a personal note, I’m glad I’m not the only one who knows so much about Stars Hallow or, ahem, owns all seven seasons on DVD.
Our winner has been contacted: Mimi Ng!
R. Buckminster Fuller is famous the world over for his geodesic dome designs and for his unrelenting questioning that makes him sound more like a philosopher than anything else. When he summed up his search for what one might call “truth,” he uses the metaphor of the pencil.
“Buckminster Fuller never gave up his searh to find ‘Nature’s pencil.’ Like so many geniuses, he was constantly searching for the essence of how things worked best. And when he found such solutions in Nature, he applied them to his projects. Thus, we have his most famous invention – the geodesic dome – modeled after structures found in Nature.
Still, the question continues to be in the quest. Fuller and many others constantly seek the next evolution of ideas, and the really cleaver people always look to Nature first. Were all humans to do that, we would realize that there are enough resources to go around, and what we need to do is be very careful in using exactly enough. Not too much and not too little.
Nature’s pencil is such a sustainable model. She writes and draws with a precision and exactness that humans have difficulty understanding or modeling. Still, people like Bucky and many of today’s great minds continue to search because they know that the search is as important as reaching the goal.” (More.)
This resonates with me, personally, since one of my grad schools was where Professor Fuller taught and worked from 1959 to 1970. He’s still a legend around those parts.
As promised, here is the pencil trivia question for the RAD & HUNGRY Colombia pack give away. This contest is open to anyone with a mailing address, the world over (with thanks to R&H). I was very tempted to include something from literature as the trivia question. But. Well. I can’t resist a good television character with a love of pencils and flannel.
Clues:
The show ran during the previous decade on a national American network, possibly in other countries. It’s set in a small town. The character in question is usually found with flannel, a ball cap and a pencil. He will give you coffee if you ask for it. He is curmudgeonly and enjoys stick-shifts. He is a good guy and seems to hate razors.
Who is the character (his name)?
The contest will close at 11:59pm Eastern US Standard Time on this Wednesday, December 8th. To enter, please use the CONTACT FORM (CLICK) to send your name, email address and your one guess. All correct Comrades will have their names written down and put into a black backpack. One person who is not me will draw one paper, and the winner will be announced Thursday. Hen at RAD & HUNGRY is kind enough to handle the shipping of this awesome and exciting pack!
Good luck!
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.)
It’s that time of the NaNoWriMo cycle: half-way! That means that we’re all either:
1) Bored.
2) Quit.
3) Stressed.
4) Happy.
5) Blocked.
6) Cramped.
7) Other.
I missed a few days this weekend due to just being plain tired. My daughter turned seven months old yesterday(!). While babies are cute and plain joy, they’re not advantageous for your sleep. Plus, well, my hand hurts! Writing this by hand has been both refreshing and painful. It’s been refreshing because I can type several times faster than I can write by hand, no matter what kind of pencil I use. Slowing down helps me stay in control and not let everything go too much on autopilot. I’m a little over 18,000 words as of last night, which is a little behind. One of my writing buddies and blog pals (Gary!) is kicking my butt!
How are other folks faring? I thought I’d do a post about pencils (which ones I’ve been enjoying the most, etc.) and all that, but that might have to wait for later in the week, so that I can do some catching up. If you wanna be writing “buddies” on NaNo, search for me under jfgphd (so many consonants)!
Write on!
Pencil art from Paul Gabor, Hungarian graphic designer. (More, in French.)
(Via The Well-Appointed Desk.)
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.?
(Low) Tech Writer muses about our favorite writing implement. This is a great post you should really read in its entirety (here).
“I have a mild obsession with pencils, especially the General Pencil Semi-Hex 498 2 2/4. Mmm, ceder. Some years ago, I needed a pencil to mark up a book I was reading for seminary, and went looking for one. I did not find one pencil. I found fourteen scattered through the house. I would have stopped at one, but my curiosity was piqued to see all the different brands and styles that we’d accumulated. I decided that I couldn’t just pick one at random, I would pick the best one. So I sharpened them all and put them to the test. Of course I had to smell each one before writing, just to take note of the “nose” (the winner had that powerful ceder aroma that true pencil aficionados prefer. I think.)….
….Low-tech wonders stand out when compared to their replacements, the products that are manufactured to improve and supplant them. I think of all the ergonomic mechanical pencils and gel-grip disposable pens, none of which impress me or replace my pencil. The pencil has a beautiful simplicity to it, and an efficiency, and 95 percent of it is compostable (versus the landfill that is the fate of plastic writing tools). And there is some mystery to the pencil too. How does rubber (named for it’s ability to “rub” pencil marks away) erase the marks of the graphite without causing it to smudge? It’s the original word processor, complete with backspace.”
Stay tuned for the Pencil Revolution review of General’s Semi-Hex pencils, which we’re hard at work testing and enjoying!
[Image, LTW.]
We like pencils. Might it not be safe to assume we have strong feelings for paper also? For reading perhaps? Even…writing? If, like me, you enjoy writing, sending, receiving and reading letters, you might enjoy the Letter Writers Alliance. You can even join up and score a pin, membership card and access to free downloads of stationery and other cool stuff. And, yes; they have LWA pencils!
This might bring up the question of whether or not one can mail a letter or parcel addressed in pencil. (Or maybe not.) Yes. I assumed it was impossible until I received a rare book in the mail a few years ago in graduate school, addressed with pencil from my hometown, coincidentally. To boot, D from LWA and I exchanged two letters addressed, and composed, in pencil. [The mail and legal papers and pencils might be an excellent post topic, when I get more time for research.]
I’m paranoid enough to use No Blot ink pencils on the envelopes, but these are out of production, and I only have a dozen left. They seem to work, though!
The Frugal Gal writes about her kids’ use of pencils, down to the hilt:
I think my kids are on the “Use it up, wear it out” wagon judging from the pile of almost-used-up pencils we found while cleaning out the bin…Most of these are so short, it’s nigh onto impossible to sharpen them. We’ll use them up to the best of our ability, of course, but a lot of them are about done. Can you compost pencils? (I assume pencil shavings are compostable.)
Read the rest of the post here.
We pencil aficionados are usually at least moderately aware that Henry David Thoreau contributed to American pencil manufacturing in significant ways and that this is somewhat funny, considering how much he often loathed material culture as being too much trouble. But we might not all know about the details. For instance, did you know that Thoreau actually invented a machine to ground graphite finer than other pencil manufacturers? Now you do!
Now 700+ Comrades strong! Over the last five years, the pool has constantly grown and includes oodles of excellent artwork devoted to, and created with, pencils — not to mention great photography featuring the wooden wonder.
Warning: You will get sucked in and lose an hour (or three) of your time going through the group pool and pages of talented Comrades.
Reassuring: It is entirely worth it.
With apologies for what might seem, at first, to be a moderately chauvinistic post about the lost art of being a “man,” I have read two very interesting articles from the companion blog to the book The Art of Manliness (or did the book come first?). First, there is The Manly Tradition of the Pocket Notebook, which features our favorite writing implement. This post has gone around the writing blogosphere for a few weeks now, but this particular passage hits close to home for an Eagle Scout:
The Boy Scout
“In one of the pockets there should be a lot of bachelor buttons, the sort that you do not have to sew on to your clothes, but which fasten with a snap, something like glove buttons. There should be a pocket made in your shirt or vest to fit your notebook, and a part of it stitched up to hold a pencil and a toothbrush….No camper, be he hunter, fisherman, scout, naturalist, explorer, prospector, soldier or lumberman, should go into the woods without a notebook and hard lead pencil. Remember that notes made with a hard pencil will last longer than those made with ink, and be readable as long as the paper lasts.
Every scientist and every surveyor knows this and it is only tenderfeet, who use a soft pencil and fountain pen for making field notes, because an upset canoe will blur all ink marks and the constant rubbing of the pages of the book will smudge all soft pencil marks.
Therefore, have a pocket especially made, so that your notebook, pencil and fountain pen, if you insist upon including it—will fit snugly with no chance of dropping out.” -The American Boys’ Handybook of Camp-lore and Woodcraft, By Daniel Carter Beard, 1920
This week, they published a piece on The Pocket Notebooks of 20 Famous Men. I did not see any mention of Thomas Edison’s custom-made pocket pencils, but I was very happy to learn about Mark Twain’s custom notebooks, about which I knew exactly nothing. We have reviews of two pocket notebooks (Field Notes being one) in the works on Pencil Revolution and wonder what kinds of pocket notebooks work especially well with pencils.
