Tag Archives: pencils

09/30/10

Review of Rhodia Pencil.


Exaclair sent us a box of Rhodia goodies to review recently, and one (two, rather) of the goodies is the orange and black Rhodia pencil.  This pencil matches the standard orange Rhodia pad in much the same way as the Field Notes pencils and notebooks match.  The quality more than meets the standards of the Rhodia pad.

Vitals:
Material: Linden wood.
Shape: Triangular.
Finish: Matte orange with all black details.
Ferrule: Aluminum, glossy black and round.
Eraser: Black and soft.
Core: Ceramic/graphite composite. Available in #2/HB.
Markings: The Rhodia fir tree logo on all three sides, near the eraser end.
Origin: France.
Availability: From RhodiaPads.Com and select online retailers.

Like it’s cousin, the Rhodia pad, the Rhodia pencil is a pale orange with black details, made in France and just finely made.  The designers of this pencil went so far as to dye the wood black, so that the pencil is absolutely and completely black and orange.  I was disappointed to learn that the wood is Linden wood and not Cedar, especially given the cost and excellent design of the Rhodia pencil.  I wonder if Cedar might be more difficult to dye black?  Either way, sharpening is easy and neat with this treated Linden wood.  The factory sharpening does not leave the zig-zag pattern that your sharpener at home (or work) will leave, and it looked oddly that way to me.  I’d have liked them unsharpened, but this isn’t a big deal to me.  My pencils are either in my stash or sharpened for use.  I remember some triangular pencils being tough to sharpen the first time, if the shape is extreme.  The shape of this pencil is just plain comfortable.  The angles of the triangular cross-section  are nicely rounded, but the sides are flatter than, say, a Grip 2001.

The finish is very fine.  The orange matte is smooth and feels thick and easy to grip.  There’s a layer of white paint (primer?) under the orange that shows up at the sharpened end, but it’s not a huge deal.  The Rhodia logo is stamped in black on all three sides, near the eraser, leaving the rest of the pencil bare.  This also means that very short pencils (pocket-sized!) will have the same logo and not any unsightly cut-off lettering.  The stamping is crisp and nearly flawless.  Following in the vein of carefulness the ferrule is crimped on perfectly.  Unlike the Grip 2001 and Tri-Conderoga, the ferrule is round, despite the pencil being triangular.  This can lead to poorly-fitted ferrules, as in the Dixon Tri-Write (at least all the ones I own), but the Rhodia pencil’s ferrule is tight, straight, flush with the barrel and doesn’t smash and flake off the paint like so many pencils I’m seeing for sale in the US have these days, even round ones.  The eraser is also round.  I like the triangular erasers of other pencils for detailed erasering, but the quality and length of the Rhodia eraser make up for it.  The eraser is slightly longer than most pencils, but not so much that it feels like it’s going to pop out of the ferrule.

The core is very nice.  It’s not as smooth as a Palomino or soft German pencil, but it’s not scratchy, either.  It has a nice feedback, without being rough on the paper.  Darkness on this HB runs darker than a Dixon, just a shade or two lighter than a Forest Choice.  This tone is very nice on Rhodia’s white paper and also in other applications.  The cores in both test units are nearly perfectly-centered, with no grit or crumbling.  Smearability is minimal, and it honestly took some effort to produce.  Bizarrely enough, HB pencils that are this dark are usually smoother writers, but this pencil’s smoothness is certainly satisfactory enough for me.

The design, quality and attention to detail we see in the Rhodia pencil are definitely in keeping with Rhodia’s other products.  However, there is one small thing that I find out-of-step with the pencil: the price.  Rhodia pads, for the quality of paper, French origin and sheer quality, are really a steal.  Last time I bought a No. 11 pad, I paid $1.80 for it, about the same as the junky pads they sell at my grocery store.  The Rhodia pencil runs about $1.90-$2.00 a piece.  Most quality eraser-tipped pencils are a quarter of that price (or less), while premium pencils run about $1.00 each (Faber-Castell 9000s, Palominos, Mars 100s, etc.).  I could definitely appreciate the Rhodia pencil as a premium piece on par with the pencils mentioned above, but at about $2 each, they seem to aspire to “luxury” status a bit.  Rhodia pads are certainly nice, but they are more in the line of premium paper (Moleskines, Doane, etc.) than luxury (Italian leather and parchment, etc.).  Still, maybe I’m working under false assumptions.  These pencils really are of the highest quality, especially when you look at the junk paint jobs and crooked ferrules on a lot of recently-outsourced, formerly-American pencils these days.  My other small qualm (which is actually even smaller) is that the Rhodia pencil is very hard to find!  Considering that Rhodia pads are often stocked by art supply shops and that these venues contain and sell any number of premium pencils, I would think there would be some for sale with the pads in at least one of the four art supply shops near my office (you have to love Midtown Baltimore!).  It will just prompt me to take extra care of the two I have.

In the end, though, this is really just a fantastic pencil.  The design and execution are stellar, and it’s a pleasure to write with.  That’s what pencils are for!  I’ve been wearing my review pencil down quickly, writing on some of the other goodies from Rhodia, which we hope to review in the very near future.  (Thanks again to Karen for the lovely package!)

09/29/10

The Letter Writers Alliance.


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!

09/28/10

The Frugal Gal, on pencils.


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.

09/23/10

Field Notes Review, Part II: The Notebook.


Earlier this week, we reviewed the fragrant pencils that Field Notes sent us for review. Today, we will review the ubiquitous brown notebook. Field Notes thoughtfully send us a Mixed Pack, with one lined, one graphed and one just naked. We’ve put one through a good number of pencil tests and offer this pencil-specific review.  (And thanks for Field Notes for the great mention on their site!)

Vitals:
Cover Material: French Dur-O-Tone 80#C “Packing Brown Wrap.”
Paper: Boise Offset Smooth 50#T “White.”
Binding: Three-staple saddle stitch.
Size: 3-1/2” X 5-1/2”.
Page Count: 48 pages.
Unique Characteristics: Witty information printed in front and back of cover, including reward/address blank; possibly also being made in the USA.
Origin: United States.
Availability: From FieldNotesBrand.Com and select online and brick-and-mortar retailers.

When you first open a three-pack of Field Notes, you might notice that the package resembles a certain “Cahier” produced by a company whose products and historical claims are not without controversy. There are three identical, soft-covered notebooks held together by a central, horizontal band. However, the notebooks diverge there.

For starters, let’s compare the claims. One notebook claims to be the favorite of Hemingway, Chatwin, et al., although the company was founded in the 1990s and produces its notebooks in China. While I don’t have a problem with Asian production in itself, and while the company in question has revised its statement to call their notebooks the “heir” to the classic used by some of my literary heroes, lots of people have felt intentionally duped. For myself, I have a softspot for Moleskines that I can’t seem to quit. The claim made by Field Notes is that they are inspired by classic pocket ledgers and farm notebooks. No one is claiming that Field Notes will boost anyone’s creativity. Field Notes claim to be useful. The premium price ($10 + shipping for three thin notebooks, unless you’re lucky enough to live where you can get them in person) seems to run contrary to the simple and down-home heritage. However, I honestly have no idea how much old farmers’ notebooks used to cost, let alone with taking inflation into consideration.

So, Field Notes are useful pocket tools for writing down information on the go. Their size and weight definitely lend themselves to this purpose, and their solid construction continues in the same vein. There are myriad other reviews on the net (see Field Notes’ site for a list) which call them durable, practical, attractive and a pleasure to use. I found all of these claims to be more than true.

First, the cover is stiff, with clean printing. Even after rolling around with graphite pencils, in a vintage Army bag and being stuck in piles of other books and notebooks, my Field Notes book actually looks barely used. The book tends to stay open as a result of the stiffness of the cover. This doesn’t bother me, but I can imagine it bugging the heck out of some Comrades. There is no bookmark, which did bother me a bit, but a tiny binder clip did the trick nicely and actually looked very good doing it. (A Field Notes binder clip one day?)

The paper is white, with lines that match the cover (in this case, brown). They are well-spaced and even throughout the notebook. The last time I bought a pack of pocket “Cahiers” with graph paper, two entire books were off-center, one so much that it was difficulty to use. The Field Notes’ paper feels both thicker and stiffer than a “Cahier,” and it has a better tooth and more consistent texture. That bodes well for pencil lead being able to make nice and dark marks. I noticed that lighter and harder pencils are difficult to use on this paper. Anything lighter than an HB Mirado or Grip 2001 didn’t leave a mark that I could read. The paper works very well with soft pencils and exceedingly well with pencils with a bit of a scratch factor. As you might remember, I said that the Field Notes pencil had a little scratch to it and that I thought it made sense, so that Comrades could write on the run and know they were leaving a mark. I think something similar can be said about the paper. Pencil doesn’t glide across it the way that it glides across Rhodia paper, but that’s not what Field Notes are made to do. They are made to travel in your pocket and help you to remember things, solve problems, etc. A durable pencil and durable paper, especially when the “feedback” indicates that you are, in fact, writing down legibly the name of that author your Comrade mentioned on a hike or the contact information of someone you met on a trip. Besides — overly creamy paper in a rough and stiff brown cover seems like a bizarre contradiction somehow. One problem I found with using pencils in these notebooks is ghosting. “Ghosting” is what I call the transfer of graphite from one page onto another by means of the pressure from writing on the backs of pages. This happens with soft pencils all the time in notebooks. But it feels like Field Notes are especially prone to this messy graphite shadowing. However, I’m sticking with my idea of these as practical notebooks, not pieces of art. As such, ghosting is only a moderate issue, when writing is still perfectly legible. Unless you actually pet your notebooks and re-read them often, it’s not likely to bother you.

Not only that, but the notebook and pencil make a great pair, with their matching aesthetic (not just the print), durable and practical design, and slight edge.  I like to think of Field Notes products as akin to bags made of Army canvas.  Their roughness amounts to, as I said, an edge.  They are hardy and do seem to sacrifice delicacy for practicality.  That’s what I personally like about my vintage Army map case (shown above) and, often, about pencils in general.  They always just work.

09/21/10

Pencils from Zack.


The pleasures of running a pencil blog are many.  One of them is that you receive gifts of pencils, not only from manufacturers/dealers, but also from individuals.  We have been lucky enough to be on the receiving end of many such generous gifts.  Some of these come from off-line and long-time friends of mine, running in the same vein as most of the pencil gifts I personally make to other people.  My good Comrade Zack, a cabinet maker in Baltimore, found these very old and very interesting pencils at a steamshow this weekend.  They smell strongly of cedar, despite their age, and I am trying very hard to resist the urge to sharpen one and try it.

What sorts of pencil gifts do other folks get?

09/17/10

The Machine In the Wetland.

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!

09/16/10

Pencil Revolution Flickr Group.


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.

Contribute your own images!

09/15/10

The Art of Manliness and notebooks and pencils.


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.

09/3/10

September 2010 Pencil Wallpaper.


September is here already!  While you’re (hopefully) enjoying the smell of cedar during a restful long weekend (especially our comrades in the United States, where Monday is Labor Day) we thought you might enjoy a desktop wallpaper for the month, featuring an image of a Palomino from the original review.

Happy Labor Day to America’s working men and women!  And to all workers the world over!

Download the full-sized image here, or click the image above.

09/1/10

The art of sharpening a pencil, from M.J. Taylor.


There’s a great page from artists and designer Matthew James Taylor, on different methods of pencil sharpening that’s particularly enjoyable.

“Welcome to the world of pencil sharpening – this may sound like a dull topic but there is actually a lot more to it than you think. There are a number of different sharpening styles and methods; all good artists should know them. The trick is using the right one at the right time.”

Includes such variations as “The Chisel Point” and “The Needle Point” — and information on using short pencils:

“I find shorter pencils so much better that I have even started chopping my new pencils in half after buying them. You get two-for-one that way! One word of advice however, after the chop make sure you make a note of the hardness on the other end, otherwise you will have all these mystery grade pencils!”

Very excellent piece, with photos to boot.  Read more at Matthew James Taylor’s website.