This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
Greetings. Welcome to episode two of Erasable, the world's first and only pencil podcast. Today we're going to do the pencil glossary episode, which we've titled A Ferrule to Arms. Since I think we're all Hemingway fans, tonight, we're going to give you everything you need to know about pencils, everything you've wanted to know about pencils, the anatomy of pencils. So when we talk about terms like ferrules and erasers and cores, you know what we're talking about. Plus, I always say lead, and that can get confusing. This is Johnny from Pencil Revolution. I'm joined by the man that puts the muscle in wood clinched, Andy Welfle, and the quartermaster of the writing arsenal, Tim Wilson.
Oh, that was nice.
Hello, guys.
That's a really good job. You're going to be rivaling Imike pretty soon on the pen edict.
I'm going to talk like this.
You'll be our Brit.
I thought we could start with the tweet.
Yeah.
Tweet on Twitter.
Yeah, we. We got it. We got. I mean. Oh, man, so much feedback.
I.
This is. This is Andy from Woodclinch, by the way, just in case you don't know our voices. We got a lot of feedback after the first episode. We had a bunch of subscribers, a bunch of people tweeting us their pencil purchases. That was pretty awesome. I like it when we can affect people's wallets.
We're officially enablers. Yes.
Yes, we are. Although, as I pointed out, I think that Brad Dowdy is a much worse enabler because there are no such thing as $24,000 pencils. Although I don't know if anybody has bought any of those fountain pens. So anyhow, we got a tweet from Luke Lee Urden, 20, who said that he enjoyed the first episode. I have a question for the next episode, which is this one. What tool should I use to turn a wooden pencil into a replacement for a space pen? I always write in pencil, but carry space pens with my field notes because it's smaller, doesn't discolor shirts, etc. And kind of similar to that, we just had a little bit before we started recording a tweet from Mary Collis, who I think she does. She has a blog. It's from the Pen cup is her blog at WordPress. And she said, do you carry wooden pencils or just leave them at home? And some. Some at home and some at work. Aside from bullet pencils, they're kind of tricky to carry advice. So I guess. And I'll I think we should all kind of weigh in here, but I think that that Mary kind of hit it. I. That's why I really like my Midori bullet pencil. That's kind of the one that I carry in my pocket. I do have a. An old. Well, a new black wing that's been kind of worn down to about three or four inches that I put a cap on and sometimes carry that with me. But yeah, for both of those, I think that the Midori bullet pencil is kind of the pencil version of the space pen. So I. Yeah, I think that's a super portable, super portable thing. Yeah. Tim, what about you?
I do basically the same thing. I don't have a. Or I don't carry a bullet pencil usually. I actually just got some for the first time. And I guess I can just talk about this now, but it was part of my follow up, what I wanted to bring up something cool that I found. But as far as bullet pencils go, you can buy them on ebay. You can get these old advertising bullet pencils, which Andy, you've written about a lot and you've posted about a lot. I know you're a big fan of those.
Oh, yeah, they're so cool.
I picked up a pack of, I think it was seven. Seven bullet pencils. These old ones off VBAE. It was like 12 bucks. They showed up in a box that smelled like cigarettes, which went away thankfully. But anyway, so I have these vintage ones which are just really cool, they really functional, they're cheap. But the erasers are dead on them. I know there's some ways to revive those, but I actually found a guy through. Actually, I think it was through Mary Collis. She posted a picture. She had. I believe it was Mary Collis. I hope I got that right. But she posted a picture on Instagram of a restored bullet pencil from a guy. It's a store on Etsy called Huckleberry Woodchuck. And it's really cool what he does. And he'll take these old bullet pencils, he'll put a brand new functional eraser, he'll clean them up, kind of polish them up, and he outfits each one with a Palomino Blackwing 602. Oh, wow. Which is really awesome. And you can actually buy refill packs from him too, where he takes. It looks like he takes 1 602, uses a nice saw and cuts it in half. And so you get two inserts plus two erasers. It's really cool. So everybody should check him out. I emailed with Him a little bit. He's actually from around here, from East Tennessee, which is kind of cool, but that's a great option. And I'm sure we'll talk about him more when we actually have our Bullet Pencil episode. Because I'm sure we'll talk about that for a while down the road.
Oh, yeah. Everybody listening. We will have links to this in
the show notes too, definitely. And the thing I do 90% of the time when I'm carrying a pencil around is just like you, Andy. Whenever I work a pencil down to about three or four inches, I put a cap on and then carry it in my pocket. And I use the General Save A point caps a lot. You can get them at Michael's. That's where I got mine. It comes in a pack of like 10. And then I also sometimes use these Tombow caps that you can get on Jetpens. And if you actually carry more than one, you can use them to clip the pencils together, which is kind of neat. But that's usually what I do. And most of the time it is either Palomino classic or the 602. So what about you, Johnny?
I go through General Point save at points like once a week that'll split. And I have to get a new one. But that was sort of my major thing. And for a while I was carrying that. That big fat comb thing that looks like a Faber Castell Perfect pencil.
Oh, yeah.
It's just so fat, it's like poking me in the leg. So lately I've been so lazy, I've been walking around with one pencil on me stuck in the Faber Castell Perfect pencil, the cheap green plastic one. It's been working out lately, except that I only have one pencil on me. And sometimes you're like, no, I want something different. But if I put a number 2B Castell 9000 in there, that usually works out. And the sharper in there is really nice. Has a nice angle. The Kuma is a little blunt.
Yeah. I have just an old, like, you know, stainless steel just cap that you put on it that I got when I wrote for pencil things.
Nice.
And I've had like three of them and I've lost all but one of them. And actually that one left is currently lost. So I'm looking around for it.
I think they sell them at Dick Blick, but the shipping is like, astronomical.
Yeah, here.
$1 for your thing, $9 for shipping.
Next time I'm in Chicago, I'll try to hit up a Blick store, see if they have Them there. I love those. That place.
What's the similar store? It's like kind of a sister store.
Utrecht. Yeah. They have sort of a partnership.
Yeah.
I'm gonna get to go to one of those for the first time next week. I'll be down in Atlanta. I found out that I'll be with him like, two miles of one, so
I'm gonna hit that up.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
They have nice Faber castanel stuff.
Cool.
So both Mary and Luke, I hope that that answers your question a little bit more. And if anybody else has a question, feel free to just tweet at us. We are erasablepodcast on Twitter or leave a comment on the website, which is erasable us. Erasable us.
I actually thought of something else that I'm actually gonna ask Johnny to talk about it, but it's that the clip that you. Oh, yeah, that would.
Oh, that's a faultless clip.
Yeah. You can get those on pencil things, I think, but those would be cool. You should talk about pencil clips because that paired with a cap would be pretty cool. Yeah.
I have a shortened black wing with a clip and a cap, but, like, whenever I pull it out, people are like, what is that? I've been talking about it for too long, so I just kind of, like, use it on the sly. Like, don't look at. But the faultless clips. Nice. It has a really nice friction to it, so you don't have to actually squeeze the round part around the barrel like you do on those ones that just look like a pen clip. The actual clip is on a little hinge, and that holds it on the pencil so it actually works. It's great.
Those are cool.
Yeah. But they're kind of sharp, so they do poke you in the leg. But it's a nice trade off. You could always clip it to your pocket.
I actually own a pencil holster as well.
For your belt for.
Yep. You put on your belt and there's like two little places where you just stick in a pen or a pencil. It is. Where did you get. It's sort of like your belt version of a. Like a pocket protector. It looks so. So geeky. I honestly don't remember where I got it. I think it may have belonged to my grandfather.
Someone needs a Kickstarter. These.
Yeah.
Maybe do some, like, pencil specific fanny packs or something.
It reminds me of, you know, how, like, you know, your dad will, you know, wear his cell phone on his belt.
My dad does.
My dad does that, too. It kind of reminds me of that. Only, like, way, way Geekier. I'll see if I can model it and post a picture of it.
Yes. All right, well, should we move on to our random points?
We probably should.
Want to go first, Tim.
Yeah, sure. First off, just a second. Wanted to thank the guys over the Pentac podcast again, because I think a lot of our success on that first episode was thanks to their kind words and their encouragement. So I think just take a second
to
yay, send some praise to Caesar, as Johnny put it. But that just meant a lot, so that's helped out a lot. I think we've gotten a lot of listeners and followers thanks to them. So thanks, guys. Thanks, Mike and Brad.
Absolutely.
The only one other thing I was going to talk about is last week we talked about our current number one, number two pencil, and I have a new number one number two as far as something that I'm using every single day. And I just got my first set of the Palomino hb, the ones with the eraser, the orange ones with the white eraser, and I was blown away. These are so nice. And I just. And they're not. For some reason. It might just be a totally psychological thing that I don't fear losing them as much, which. I don't remember the last time I lost a pencil, but then, like a 602. Yeah, I just use it all day long. I used it this week. Used it about halfway down. Use it at school every day. There's actually a funny side note, but every single day. When I came into my third and fourth period class, we had, like, double periods at my school. There is some kid who every day goes to my desk, picks up my Palomino hb, sharpens it in my classroom. Friendly sharpener. And then puts it back on my desk. And I can't figure out who the phantom sharpener is.
Somebody is scoring brownie points.
Yeah, he's sharpening my pencils. So.
But.
But yeah, it's a fantastic pencil. I had the B. I have the B in the same one, but in the new color without the eraser. I really liked that. But this, the HB really is a nice pencil. It holds a point really well. And I know Johnny's a big fan of. You talked about the blue, which is, I guess, the same pencil.
Yeah.
And that blue is one of my very favorite colors of blue. And actually the blue one with the eraser is kind of the first pencil that I kind of fell in love with that made me interested in pencils again. Like, you know, after I got my sampler pack from Pencil things. It was that one that I was like, holy crap, this is a really nice pencil.
Yeah, that was my wife's favorite pencil.
Yeah.
Cool. One thing, one other thing I noticed about it that kind of goes into my next follow up point. Or not really, I guess, follow up, but just kind of random point. I got some original Blackwing 602s. I got two on Etsy. And this pencil, the Palomino HP, feels exactly the same, like, Right. As far as writing. It just feels like as far as anything I have in my possession, it's the closest writing experience to the original 602, which I thought was just kind of, kind of cool that it just happened to be very close. And I, I think on the Blackwing pages, the post for one of a Blackwing where they're looking at what are the kind of replacements now the black wings aren't available as far as the original one. And he, I think he does mention this one on that post. So, yes, he sort of feels the same way. He mentions it along with like 10 other pencils.
But your review, by the way, Tim, is really fantastic, guys. If you haven't seen it, go to the writer, thewritingarsinal.com and check it out. But it's interesting because, you know, I hear a lot of people when they compare, you know, the new black wings, the Palomino black wings with the original black wings, they talk about how, you know, it's kind of a close riding experience or maybe it doesn't quite match, you know, the older traditional ones. But, Tim, you actually liked the newer ones better than the older ones.
I do, yeah.
And I just, I just think that was an interesting thing to talk to you about, just because it's not, I think, a very common opinion and not, I mean, I definitely, I sort of agree with you. I think they're kind of different writing experiences. And my trouble is I'm just so much of a hoarder and a collector that I barely ever use those original ones.
Yeah. So, yeah, that was when I noticed it right off the bat when I got these in the mail. They showed up, I sharpened them, started writing. And of course, it's an awesome pencil. The original 602. I mean, I loved it and it was really nice. But then I got to thinking, of course, I thought, you know, I really want to try it alongside of the new one, just to see how they compare, if it's just a name, whatever. And as I wrote, I wrote like a full page with each of them and it was just undeniable like in my opinion, that I just preferred the new one, which kind of got my mind rolling. Got me thinking about, you know, what does that mean? Does that mean that they didn't recreate the 602 correctly? Like, is that a fault in it that it's actually different no matter if it's better or worse? But then I just got to thinking about even more and just. I thought it was kind of a natural progression. One thing that kept popping into my head is, I mean, I know there's not the different. Well, I guess the Camaro popped into my head like this car that was made for a long time and then they stopped making it. And then I believe they started making it again. But if they hadn't improved on it over time, they'd still be getting six miles to the gallon. There's something said for keeping a very iconic name. And maybe, I don't know if it was intentional or not, but making it even better. And a lot of this, the whole write up revolves around my opinions on what I like in a pencil, of course. And The Palomino Blackwing 602 is. Draws a darker line. And so that's just a big thing for me. And so I loved that. So, yeah, I enjoyed writing it and it just felt like it was good to just get it out there because I hadn't heard anybody. If anybody has those opinions, they've never actually said it.
And I don't know. I'm sorry.
No, go ahead.
Most of the people that have compared them were like already die hard fans of the old one. So you kind of knew where it
was going to go.
Yeah.
Whereas like, you obviously like them both. So I don't know, I felt like yours was a lot more fair. Not that others were unfair, yours was just more fair. Yeah.
And I was, I was being sensitive to that because I put a little addendum in the middle of the write up because I said something that I was just saying lightheartedly, kind of making it like a story or like people were reacting to me as I was writing, which I kind of noticed after the fact. It might have been a little insensitive. Like I wasn't trying to say that people who prefer the old one and only the old one are wrong because it's not as good as the new one. That's not what I was saying. I didn't want it to sound like that. I definitely wanted it to just be one guy's view. There's something in the name. One big point I came to in writing about this is that the world with a pencil called the Blackwing 602 is better than one without.
That's a great point.
Just like we wouldn't want to have. I don't think anybody would be opposed to somebody bringing back the name Mustang if that company went out of business, you know, or that line of the company went out of business. But I just, I just think it's, it's. I appreciate that they took on the name and then have done it such a good service. Maybe it's not identical, but I just love that they still exist. You can still be part of history in that sense. Of all these great artists and writers that have used these pencils, it can keep going.
Cool.
I think I'll just pause here and want to talk about the giveaway. Yeah, a little bit. We were so thankful for this awesome response that we got from the first episode that we decided we wanted to give back a little bit and do a giveaway and try to make it a big giveaway. And that we're going to have several winners. And so I was just going to explain how that's going to work if that's all right with you guys.
Please do.
And then we can get to Andy's points before we get to our main topic and Johnny's too. But here's. It's a pretty simple giveaway. What we're asking of you all are awesome audience. A very gracious and encouraging audience. We're asking that you in the context or sorry, in the commentsraceable us erasables that you leave a comment and in that comment, what we want you to do is to make a pencil related pun on either a book title or a movie title. The quality of your pun doesn't mean you're going to win or lose. We're not going to say no, that was dumb. So you're not going to win. It's all going to be random. We're going to use a random.org random number generator and once everybody has commented, we will pick six winners and we'll have six winners. And what the prize is, which is we're pretty excited about, is there will be three packs of pencils or I guess there'll be three different packs of pencils, two of each. And each one of the packs will be chosen by. By each of us. So there will be a Tim's picks and Andy's picks and a Johnny's picks
and specifically that comment will. That thread that you want to comment on will be erasable us two. So that's for episode two.
Yeah. So do you guys want to give a little hint as to what your pack's going to be if. You know, I don't know if anybody's.
You know, for me, I haven't even. I mean, I've thought about it, but I haven't really figured it out. I definitely want to have, like, you know, at least a nice pencil in there and maybe just some. Some interesting, you know, some. Some interesting older pencils or just like, you know, funny, like novelty pencils or something as well. So I definitely want to have something that's a little bit of a variety.
Yeah.
You're definitely getting carpenter pencils for me. I love them.
Yeah.
Cool.
I think I've got my list. I can just run through kind of. This is what I'm thinking for mine. If you get the Tim's picks, you'll get a Golden bear Musgrave. Testing 100. A Blackwing classic, the black one, a Forest Choice, a Mirado Black Warrior round pencil, and a general semi hex. That's what I'm thinking at this point.
Nice. I'm going to win yours.
Yeah,
that's what I'll be thinking. And then, I mean, you know, maybe if I'm feeling generous, I may throw in a Home Depot pencil or two.
One of those little Ikea golf pencils.
Yeah. So that I think, what we were planning on doing as far as deadline for the giveaway. You've got all week from when this posts to put your comment at. It's erasable us, toot.
Is that correct?
Yep. You got it.
Okay. And then on the next episode, which will actually be next weekend, because we want to do a special episode for National Pencil Day, we will choose our winners. So we'll have six winners announced, and then they will. You'll receive your pencils via post, I guess, as opposed to email. Right. From wherever we are. So.
And by the way, pandering to us on Twitter doesn't hurt either.
Yeah, bring it on. Yeah, we can handle it.
Cool.
Jump into your random points.
Yeah. So the first thing I kind of wanted, and actually I only have. I only have one on this list because I did talk to you a little bit about your Blackwing review, which I was interested in. So I think we're all. We're all field notes fans here. Yeah, we've all used them. We've all talked about them a lot. And the collection that was just. Just announced this week, I think if you love wooden pencils, this thing is amazing because it is a wood Cased field notebook.
It's the unofficial erasable podcast edition.
Yes.
If I, hey, if I could figure out how to go up to them and be like, hey, let's, let's print this with the erasable logo on it. So basically what they did, which seems kind of insane to me, is they've taken a big like American cherry wood tree log and they've shaved it down so it's like literally paper thin. And they've mounted that onto a piece of craft paper and made a field notes out of it. And so like all of the wood grain is intact. And of course, like, you know, no, because wood grain is different. No two additions are the same. So it's insane to me how they did this. And they even say in the blog post, their post about it, that they don't think that this is anything that's ever been done to this scale before. It's just insane. It's called Shelterwood and they're selling it for the same price as their just usual stuff, which is $15 for a pack of three.
$10.
What did I say? 15? Yeah. $10. 9.95.
And I would pay 15.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And if you, if you go onto their site, which we'll have a link to in show notes, they post a little video with it that's always, you know, a lot of fun, but they kind of show the process and it's, it's amazing. So I'll read this to you. Yeah, I'm sorry.
I watched a video with my 10 month old and he was totally fascinated by it.
Oh, yeah.
You just stared at it for four minutes and was just.
Yeah. When that paper thin wood is just like, you know, just kind of wrapping up into just a, you know, just a, just a bundle, it's just, it's just incredible how that works.
Yeah.
So, yeah, it's a, it's American cherry wood sliced ever so thin and bonded to a substrate of cracked paper for durability. The covers are left uncoated. Uncoated with text printed in a triple hit of Ghost Flower white, which remains slightly opaque. The wood texture showing through like a faded whitewash fence, which is pretty amazing.
So. Tom Sawyer.
Yeah, I, I hate to say it. I'm really like, you know, drawn in by, you know, whenever anybody has a product that's. They just put a lot of craftsmanship into. It's, it's kind of a, kind of a hipster thing, but it's just like really interesting to see how people do it. And it's just, I Watched that video twice, just a row because it's so amazing. So mine are ordered and on their way. For some silly reason I don't have the color subscription, which I really should, should do. But yeah, this is definitely. I don't know if this is something that I want to put in my back pocket like my other field notes. I think this may be like a front shirt pocket type of a thing. And actually Ed Jelly, if anybody follows him on his blog, he had a review of it. I think he had the first one that I've seen. And yeah. And so I asked him a question and what he thinks about kind of the durability of those field notes and haven't heard back from him yet.
But it should be interesting.
So, yeah, that's. That's kind of all I wanted to talk about this, this time around just because it has occupied most of my. My thinking for the last, the last several days.
Hey, can I jump in for a second?
Yeah.
I forgot to mention something about the giveaway. Yeah. We have come up with a new convention for how we're going to name our episodes. And that is why we're having you do these puns. I didn't mention that.
We're going to steal from you.
Yes, you're going to contribute to the show because we started putting together a pool of pencil puns, then they're all on books and movies and it was just a lot of fun coming up with those. We thought it would be cool that if you came up with a title or you put some in there and then it ended up becoming a title. We'll keep note of your name and then if we use your title for an episode, we'll mention it. We'll say this title came from one of our awesome listeners, Listener X. And so it'll be a way that you all can contribute to the progression of the show.
Absolutely.
That would be pretty cool.
And if you want us to plug a website or Twitter account or something like that, just put that in the comment.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
Cool. So, yeah, that was kind of my only point of follow up, so take it away, Johnny.
I am going to keep talking about these field nuts. It's the same paper they had last year in the America the Beautiful.
Oh yeah.
Everybody hate it.
Oh really?
It was like the best paper for pencil. It had a nice tooth. I mentioned it on the Field Nuts website and somebody was like, what's the big deal?
What do you mean?
That's great. But I was watching the video with my daughter, like Tim. She's like mesmerized because I ordered her a pack and she's like, I want to share them with mommy. I don't know. These are going to disappear. You might not want to share this set.
Yeah. I like that paper because it has that sort of double line at the top. It reminds me of like old ledgers or something like that.
Yeah.
And some friends of mine used to. Or their father ran a wood company that was called. Or their logo was more wood. So I have a more wood pencil. I feel like. Get some pictures of them together.
Heck yeah.
We used to play shows when we were teenagers wearing green shirts that said More wood on the back, which is not our band name or related. It was just kind of cool.
Yeah.
So I have a Tinkerbell pencil in my hand that I've been using all week. And it's something my daughter gave me. We found at Party City, that party supply place. And I think they're retiring this one because this pack was all Tinkerbell and you guys don't have daughters, so there's all these Tinkerbell. A Tinkerbell is one of many fairies in the Disney universe and there are these movies and it's this whole like God awful thing you get sucked into. But the new ones all have all the different characters. So like, this is my life outside pencil blogging. But the one I have is like, it's orange, it's got a purple eraser. It's kind of hideous. It's one of those pencils Andy was talking about where the paper comes off whenever you sharpen it.
The foil wrapped ones.
Yeah. But it's like the nicest pencil. It's smooth, it retains a point. Well, so. Just reminded of sometimes the crap. Pencils are really, really fun.
Yeah.
Fuzzy. Reminds me of my daughter. And that's always nice.
Yeah.
That should come first.
Yeah. I have four little sisters, so I understand. The four sisters. Yeah, four. Four younger sisters. So we played a lot of Barbies. We watched a lot of movies with Tinkerbell in them. So.
Yeah, there's a new one coming out next month. We're counting down. This one's going to have a young James Hook. I shouldn't know all this stuff. The one more thing I wanted to mention was yellow Rhodia paper, which I just discovered recently. It's like the best yellow paper I've ever used for anything. It's like perfect.
So I don't use. I don't really use yellow paper, but I use kind of tan manila paper. I have a Lot of which I think is a future episode. We should talk about some of our favorite paper, but I use these gold fiber ampads, they're called, and they have kind of that kraft paper, like, press board cover, and that's kind of like a tan beige paper, which I really love. But tell me about why you like a yellow paper.
Well, I just kind of like yellow paper, but legal pads are always. So I mentioned all this on my website, so excuse me if I'm repeating myself, but they're always either too dark and you can't use a light pencil, or they're so toothy, you know, use a black wing, and it's dead halfway through the page. It's frustrating. It's a smeary mess. But also, I noticed with this particular paper, the last field notes, while they were really gorgeous, and I used all six right away, and I loved them. They flood coated the paper with a dye, and it sort of repelled the graphite. And I heard other folks talk about it repelling liquid inks. So mine are full of, like, gel pens and space pen things I don't admit to using.
Are you talking about the Cold Horizon?
Yeah, the Cold Horizon, yeah. But this paper, like, I tried it out for a long time. It's, like, absolutely identical to the white paper and its performance.
Cool.
And then it has, like, the subtle purple lines.
It's perfect.
I love it.
That reminds me. Yeah. Somebody just really blogged about the. The new silver Rhodia notepads.
They have silver.
Yeah, I'll try to find that link. I can't remember. It may have been on. Oh, the We. The People website. I can't remember. I'll find the link and post it.
But it's pen, paper, ink, letter.
Yeah, it's a. It's a white cover with silver letters.
Wow.
And it's the white paper, but, yeah. Yeah. Road is expanding. Is this yellow rodeo paper new?
I thought it was new, but it's not that new, apparently. But it's new enough that I think they only have it in a number 19 paddle, which is a really nice size.
Yeah.
But it kind of clashed with the orange cover a lot. I was thinking a white cover would look nice, but I didn't know they made white covers that would be, like, perfect.
Yeah. Or even probably the black cover.
Yeah, yeah, that's. I'm a big fan of yellow legal pads. I'm using one right now, actually. I've always been a fan of yellow paper, and so when I. When I heard that was a thing and that you can get them. I think you can get them on Amazon now. Like 10 bucks for a pad. I definitely want to try it out. It's funny, every time I think of yellow legal pads, I think of the movie Slackers. Have you ever seen that movie? There's a scene and I don't know why I've always remembered this. Maybe it's because of my neurotic obsession with paper and pencils and things. But I watched it several, a lot when I was in, you know, maybe middle school or high school, something like that. And there's a scene where Jason Schwartzman looks back at somebody, he's holding a yellow legal pad and he said, I only used like yellow legal pads. It's easier on the eyes or something like that. So every time I pick up a yellow legal pad, I think of that Jason Schwarzman quote, that goofy movie.
But I love Rhodia. I discovered it at just a little college bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana. And there's nowhere around Fort Wayne like within a two hour distance can you really buy Rhodia? So I sort of just bought a bunch of them and just hoarded them and I've been buying more as I've seen them, you know, throughout the years. But they're a little five by nine. I can't remember which number it is, but the little half page one is just one of the best notepads that I use.
Nice.
Yeah, my daughter has a few she likes to identify. That's Rhodiapad.
You know, I love the just things you post about your daughter. I think you're brainwashing her. I think she's going to turn into a pencil blogger someday.
Yeah, she, she brought me something today and I asked her if she wanted a pencil as a reward and she wanted to go into the archives. I want one from in here. And she picked a really good one. She's very proud. She said she wanted another Wopex, but she has like a whole pile of them. So she picked a USA Gold Naturals. Just a nice pencil.
Yeah, you're just indoctrinating the children early.
Yeah.
Cool.
Well, shall we get into our main topic for the day?
Let's do it.
Somebody want to introduce it? So while I get my notes together.
Well, we were going to do a glossary episode. Well, we are doing a glossary episode because when we talk about pencils and you say ferrule, I don't think your average person knows what a ferrule is. I didn't before I was into pencils. And you know, it answers the Question. How do you make a pencil? And what is pencil lead made of if it's not made of lead? So this is our stab at that. I think we're going to start with the eraser, end with Tim, start on the back end. Eraser cap. All right.
Well, yeah, the ferrule knee eraser is an interesting part of the pencil because like Johnny said, people don't really know what to call that piece, that little metal piece. And I think it's actually kind of interesting because it's one of those few things that you'll come across in your daily life that you'll see all the time that if somebody was to walk up to you and say, what is that thing called? You would just draw a total blank. Most people would just say, I have no idea. The little metal band. You just don't know what it's called because it's not a term that we even use very much. But the genesis of the eraser and the ferrule on a pencil is actually a very important part of pencil history for lots of reasons. They've been around since about 1858, as far back as I could find in any history documents, pages that I could find online from my research. And the first patent for actually attaching an eraser to a pencil was by a guy named hyman Lippmann in 1858. And he got this patent on a day, March 30, 1858. Which actually is why we have chosen not we as in erasable podcast, but why March 30 is set as National Pencil Day.
Because Zeitgeist.
Yeah, because that first pencil eraser meeting that when that patent was set, that's why we do March 30th. So I learned that that's why we have National Pencil day. But in 1862, Hyman Lippmann actually sold that patent for $100,000, which is nuts when you think about it being 1862. That's a lot of money to a guy named Joseph Reckendorfer. And that patent was used by Reckendorfer. He was going to try to make a lot of money off of it. But then apparently within a couple years, Faber Castell started to make pencils with erasers attached to the end of it. And they didn't have this patent that he had bought for an insane amount of money from Hyman Lippmann. And so he sued Faber Castell, which. Correct am I, was it called Faber Castell at that point? It was that that Faber line changes so much. I don't Know, if that was, we
really need to get Sean from the Blackwing pages and Contrapuntalism on here to talk about the history that. Because he's kind of the best historian of Faber Castell that I've talked to. But I think, I think it was. I think it was part of that sort of whole, like Graff von Castel, you know, Castle and Empire. So I think maybe it was.
Yeah, I'm probably 85% sure that that's right. But. So he sued Rechendorfer, sued Faber Castell for copyright infringement and was this big deal, made it all the way to the supreme court. And in 1875, the Supreme Court upheld Faber Castell's case and ruled the patent totally invalid. And so when they ruled that invalid, then it was just kind of open game for all companies to use this idea and attach erasers to a pencil using any means you saw worked the best. It was kind of an interesting little start to the whole eraser history. So that's the history part. That's as far back as I'll go with history. But I was going to get into more of the details of what they're made of. They're called maybe some famous ferrules that are different than just the general one you'll see on a standard pencil. But the eraser itself, it's usually made of synthetic rubber, compound of some kind. They will add things to the rubber at times to make them stronger. They can last longer. And sometimes it's also made from vinyl, which I can't. I don't know off the top of my head, I don't know a specific pencil that uses vinyl as an eraser. But I'm looking at a field notes pencil right now because it has some good info on the back and oh, it just says enviro green degradable eraser. So I'm not sure what they added to it to make it actually degradable. I don't know if rubber is degradable on its own.
I think most of the vinyl erasers are like those. It's almost like you're holding a piece of plastic. It's those kind of. They're like usually pure white and they kind of, you know, rub off one
pill when you hold them.
But I can't think of one off the top of my head that's on a. On the end of a pencil.
They're moving away from vinyl these days because of the environmental and health concerns.
Yeah.
So now like all of the new Mars, say PVC free, they still work really well, yeah, even moleskins sort of gotten rid of that. Totally off topic.
Yeah. So, yeah, it's usually made of rubber or vinyl, I guess, mostly rubber, more and more rubber. But the way the process actually works, which is really interesting, is they take this rubber, they mix it, they form it into these long strips, and from what I've seen, they'll cut it into a strip that's about three feet long or so. And there's this process that's called vulcanization, which they use chemicals. They treat rubber with chemicals in order to make it more durable so that they'll last longer. So they both.
So they will live long and prosper.
Yes, exactly. That was well done.
Thank you.
Cheers.
Thank you.
And raise my coffee to you. So they treat it, make it stronger, and then they'll actually cut it to its final size, which is the little size that you see on the end of an eraser or on the end of a pencil. And they'll put into large. Looks basically like a dryer, like a clothing dryer. And it just tumbles them around and knocks them down. So they have nice rounded edges. They'll put them in that machine for a while, and that's how that happens. It's kind of one of those processes that seems way more simple than you think it would be or that you might not even thought they have to do. But they do that, and that knocks them down to a nice rounded area. You notice that they. They always are. You know, there's rarely. Does a pencil have a sharp corner on a race or. Sometimes they do. Usually they don't, but. So they'll knock them down this round edge, and then that's when they are attached to the pencil. They take them from that stage and they will place them into an aluminum ferrule. The ferrule is usually made of aluminum. And there'll be a little bit of glue inside of the ferrule, which is then pushed down onto the top of a pencil. Some pencils, the ferrule is attached to the barrel with glue. And then sometimes it's actually clinched on, like they pinch the sides so the ferrule holds on nicely and doesn't wear off eventually. I think last week we talked about the Triconderoga and how that one was glued. And so sometimes it'll fall off because it's not clinched on really tightly. But definitely some pencils, the nicer pencils will be pinched on at some point. I'm looking at a golden bear right now. And if you look at the sides of a golden Bear. There's these little notches where they've clipped it on. I don't know if I just made that word up, but clipped it.
I like it. I think you should start a blog called Wood Climbed.
Yeah, Wood Climbed. And the end of the pencil, which. Like on the barrel. The end of the barrel is actually. There's a little recess cut where they kind of grind off a little bit to make it a little thinner so that the. The ferrule can actually fit over the top. And that's how it's added on. The recessed end of the barrel is fit with the ferrule and they're clinched together or glued or sometimes both. But erasers on pencils actually are an American thing. Mostly. Something I had not noticed directly, but through research noticed that that really is the case. That erasers on European pencils is not really a prevalent thing. There's not a lot of pencils out of Europe that have those. And have you noticed that? Have you guys noticed that? Is that the case? I mean, I want to make sure I wasn't just a complete oversight because I have mostly American or Japanese pencils.
I think the eraser is mostly. Or the kind of un. Eraser ends that are kind of capped are a lot of times like artist pencils, people who draw things like that. So I think that people who use them a lot more for, you know, writing or adding or something like that is generally. Generally be eraser'd.
Yeah. And when you buy pencils from companies like Faber Castell, they don't have an eraser on the end, but they'll usually sell them with an eraser or not usual. But a lot of the times they will. And a sharpener sometimes, which is nice. When I bought the Grip 2 Grip 2000s or 2001, they had both with it. Other I just found out some sort of fun, random facts about the ferrule eraser. Things that I stumbled across or things I had heard a long time ago. The actual eraser in manufacturing is called a plug, which I thought was kind of interesting. They'll actually call. They don't call it an eraser. They call it a plug. That's the name because they plug it into the ferrule, which is then attached to the barrel. And in Britain they actually call the eraser or from what I understand, a rubber, which. Which takes on a whole new meaning in America just protects your pencil. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I actually knew somebody in high school who was a German exchange student and her. I guess you call it her exchange mother or Whatever the person she was staying with was telling me the story of when she first got there. They asked her what kind of school supplies she needed. And the first thing she said, she asked her exchange parents, she said, can you buy me some rubbers? Which of course had some raised eyebrows from that story. But she immediately I think realized that there was something lost in translation because she obviously learns British, English and German. So In Germany. So yeah, it's kind of a funny story, but there's all kinds of different ferrules. Famous ones Obviously the Blackwing 602 is a very famous one. The flattened ferrule that can be. The eraser can actually be pulled out and extended. Makes it so the eraser actually lives until the end of the pencil. Which is. Was a really big deal when it happened. And I'm sort of shocked that that's not just always the case now. Yeah, it just seems like that is the type of thing that quality pencils should have just all adopted. But yeah. Oh well, it's just something is just a really cool convention, really great idea. You see it a lot with mechanical pencils, I guess, which we know we're not gonna talk about. And then the Van Dyke, the Eberhard Faber Van Dyke is a similar, similar Ferrell to the. Or is it exactly the same as the 602? I think it's. I think it's the same. Essentially the same idea. And I was on a really cool website called Brand Name Pencils.
You guys ever go to that site?
Oh yeah, but I was. I was flipping through there the other day and stumbled across the Mongol 492. Have you ever seen this? Yeah, the racer actually looks like a wheel that's on a spoke.
Yeah, I think, I think I'm looking that up right now.
Yeah, it's, it's. It. What it looks like is instead of along the end of the ferrule there's a bar that comes out and sort of loops over and then the eraser is wrapped around that. And so from what it looks like you can actually turn it. Yeah, it's kind of a cool looking thing. Doesn't seem like it'd be too practical because if you use down one side of it then it would just fall off. But yeah, it looks crazy.
There's an old Dixon Ticonderoga that has kind of a. It's. It's set. It's not a wheel like that but it's. It's kind of disc shaped so you can erase in very fine points. I think that contrapuntalism has an article about that which I'll try to track down. But yeah, it's super cool.
Looking nice. Yeah, I'd love to read that. When I saw that, that's really unusual looking pencil. I'd never seen anything like that. But yeah, I think that's pretty much it. The last little fun fact I was going to share. I'm a big fan of Jimmy Fallon. I love Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. I used to watch that. And now he's the new host of the Tonight show and a former host of the Tonight Show. Johnny Carson was famous for sitting at his desk and he would play with a pencil all the time, kind of hit it against the desk, let it run through his fingers. And he was always holding a pencil. You would never see him write with it. And the reason you never saw him write with it is on air or not very much was because he had special pencils made that had erasers on both ends where an eraser was clipped onto both ends so that he wouldn't have any accidents, wouldn't stab his hand or wouldn't do anything like that. So he could hit it against the desk and he could throw it around. He could throw it at the. Throw it at the camera or whatever and there wouldn't be any issues because there was erasers on both ends. So it was a safety, safety precaution. So it's kind of a fun place to end with the ultimate ferruled pencil.
That's awesome.
That sounds like a feral.
Yeah. Wonder if you can get any of those Johnny Carson pencils on ebay or anything.
Yeah, I'm gonna look for that in a second.
Yeah.
Do you have access to the IM feature of Skype? Tim? I have a really. Actually, you know what? I'm just gonna put this in show notes for you to see because it's super cool. You said link I just posted where? In the Google Doc.
I'm sorry.
Sorry, everybody. This is Inside Baseball right here. I just posted a link actually, right up beneath where you put your random points. I'm sorry. There's a link to that Ticonderoga that had the rounded edges.
So. Yes, you should check that out. It's pretty cool. I am in the process of. Here it comes. Live action. Yeah, that's even different. That one makes more sense to me than the other one. The other one looked like it actually turned that one. It's cool. It's a disc. It's almost like a UFO on the
end of the pencil.
Yeah, that's really cool.
I love brand name Pencils. I actually had a bunch of old black wings that I just had and I wasn't probably going to use and I had enough for my collection and I traded Bob Truby, who runs Brand Name Pencils. I traded him those for just a big pack of other really cool, unusual pencils. And I hope eventually we'll do an episode where we can just talk about some really cool, unusual pencils. And when that happens, I definitely have some shows in tow.
That's cool. That's actually the only place on the Internet I could find to buy that round. Dixon, Ticonderoga 13882 soft. The one that I couldn't find anywhere. That's the only place I found. He actually apparently has some to sell.
That's cool.
So I was considering ordering some. I think he just charges a couple bucks per pencil, but that's the only place I could find him.
He's a really interesting guy. Awesome. So, yeah. Is that the, Is that the feral?
That's all I got. That's the feral of the feral.
Okay.
Farewell to the feral.
Yep. Cool. Well, I guess I'm next. I'm talking about the barrel of the pencil before we really get to kind of the meat of the, the meat of the, the pencil, which is of course the graphite, which, which Johnny will talk about. But so my, my portion kind of goes back a little bit further. So I've been watching a lot of, you know, of the cosmos, the new, the new cosmos. And you know, Neil Degrasse Tyson gets in his, his spaceship, his spaceship of the imagination. So get in your pencil spaceship of the imagination everybody. And let's go back to 1560. There is an Italian couple named Simeono and Liliana Bernacotti, which is my horrible, horrible Italian accent. They are likely the first producers of the modern wood encased carpentry pencil. So if ever you've seen like a. Oh like one of those old fashioned pencils from like the 1700s. I think I'm trying to think. Johnny, maybe you can refresh my memory. I think maybe Faber Castell sent out like a make your own pencil kit.
Oh, it was Staedtler Statler.
That's right. Why I couldn't find it. So. And basically you just had like two kind of broad pieces of wood. You had kind of a flat long piece of graphite in the middle. And essentially what you would do is you would put those wood pieces kind of over the graphite and there's maybe a little bit of a rudimentary groove carved out of there. And you take a piece of twine or string and you wax it to one end of it and you wrap it around the pencil until you reach the kind of the point end and then you kind of wax seal that, that as well. And that is kind of what people think is the modern. The first kind of wood encased pencil. It's a flat, overall compact pencil is probably, nobody knows exactly for sure, but everybody thinks it was probably four and a half, five inches long. Their particular concept involved hollowing out a stick of juniper, which is interesting. And then shortly after that is kind of when what I described the technique they came up with. You get two wooden halves, you put in the graphite stick and then, you know, you kind of wax seal it shut with the twine wrapped around it. So that, that's kind of where it started. I know that kind of fast forwarding to. They kind of stayed like that through, you know, the 16th, 17th, 18th century. And in 1812 there's, there's a couple, couple rival methods that were kind of introduced. And a lot of that involved just being able to make a more cylindrical pencil. So William Monroe, who was a cabinet maker in Massachusetts, made the first American wooden pencil in 1812. And his process was really slow and kind of arduous. But he found a pencil mill owner named Ebenezer Wood who tried to automate it. Ebenezer Wood, isn't that a great name? He used a circular saw to do it and he basically constructed the first of the hexagon and octagon shape wooden casings. By the way, I really want to find an octagonal pencil. So Ebenezer did not patent his invention and he really, he shared his techniques with anyone. So one of those was Eberhard Faber of New York, which was a relative of Faber Castell, who kind of became the leader in that production. So what was really close to that was kind of the modern day practice, which is where you take a, like a wooden plank. It's a slat that's, that's about 0.2 inches thick. And you get them at about 7 inches by 2 1/2 inches, which makes I believe six or eight pencils. I can't remember exactly what. Interestingly this is what California cedar. Who makes the new black wings? Who makes, who owns pencils.com this is their core business. They supply those cedar slats to other pencil companies, which is cool. But essentially what they do is they take one of these slats and they cut some grooves in it and then they lay down these core of graphite, which you know, Johnny will talk about. But then they take another cedar slat, and by the way, they've laid some glue into these. These. These slots before they put the graphite in. Then they take another slat and put some glue in the slots, and they put that over on the top of it. And then they take those and they kind of compress them together. And this is what, as far as I can tell, is. And I probably should know this definitively, this is what's known as wood clinching. And the word wood clinched itself is a trademark term just kind of to describe that process. They basically take a bunch of these and they use a big vise to compress it up to a ton of pressure for, I think they said, a day until the. Until the wood, or, excuse me, until the glue dries. And what's cool about this glue is that it's really in there not only to keep the lead in place, but it also kind of cushions it from pressure. So, you know, when you write really hard or you kind of bend a pencil, it kind of keeps the fragile lead core from breaking. So that is wood clinching, which is interesting and from which I was inspired from my. I was inspired from my blog title. It was. That's a trademark that was actually introduced in 1940. The technique is much older, but in the 1940s, Mungle and Eberhard Faber kind of started putting the words wood clinched on their pencils. And that's what I saw when I started a blog. I think a lot of black wings that I've had, say, wood clinched on it. So that's kind of where that term comes from. And really, that's about your traditional round and hexagonal pencils. That's where that term comes from. By the way, the hexagonal pencils are cut into that shape because once those slats are clinched together and formed, some blades go down the top and some blades go down the bottom to kind of carve out the middle parts of these pencils. And once that happens, they sort of just break apart, which is really cool. I have yet to actually see this in operation, but there's a really, really great. Oh, I lost my train of thought here. There's a really great. How it's made video about how they make wooden pencils at the Statler factory. I don't know if you guys. Yeah, I don't know if you guys have ever seen how it's made a hundred times. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But it's.
Yeah, you can watch it on Hulu.
Yeah. I'll post a link to this specific thing on the Science Network, but yeah,
where they dip the ends. That's it.
Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I actually, I had a big video dump on my blog several years ago of just like all of the pencil and paper related things on there. And I'll post a link to that too. But it's, it's really fun. So, yeah, that how it's made video is pretty fantastic. And then once, you know, once the pencils form, they put a lacquer around it, they paint it whatever colors it is. And by the way, you know, in the US the majority of the pencils that you see are painted yellow. So according to Henry Petroski, who wrote the book about pencils, this tradition began in 1890 when the L&C. Hardmooth Company of Austria, Hungary introduced the Koh I Noor brand. Does anybody know if I'm saying that right?
Koh I Noor, that sounds right?
Sure. I have no idea. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong. So that brand, it was named after a famous diamond. It was intended to be the world's best and most expensive pencil. And it kind of came at a time when most other pencils were painted in dark colors or not at all. The Koh I Noor was yellow, so nobody exactly knows why. Some people think it was inspired by the Austro Hungarian flag which had yellow on was also, I found a Wikipedia article that says it was also suggested of the Orient, which may be a little racist.
Yeah, I've heard that.
Yeah. At a time when the best quality graphite came from Siberia, other companies copied the yellow color so their pencils would be associated with that brand and chose brand names with explicit oriental references, like the Mikado, which was later renamed the Murado, and Mongol, which was, you know, after like, you know, Attila the Hun. So, so yeah, that, that's, that's kind of where that the yellow color came from. And, and really, if you look outside of the US there's a lot of other colors. There's, you know, there's blue and there's, there's, you know, kind of black together with that Mars Lumograph. In a lot of Asian countries, you see red and black together. There's a Chunghua pencil, which I'm a really big fan of, that has, that's, it's kind of, it's red and black. So that's kind of where the colors came from. So that, that's kind of painted on the barrel and then after that it's either dipped Tipped or else it goes to the Ferrule machine and. Which is where Tim picks up.
So.
So let's talk about the wood of the pencils. I think most of the pencils that we use are probably made of cedar, California incense cedar. I guess they used to be made of wood of red cedar. But red cedar is, you know, they kind of harvested to. To be an endangered. It was. It was not sustainably harvested and it would. It would just not grow back fast enough. And also it splintered a lot easier. So if you remember, we talked a little bit about the Helix Oxford pencil on the Penatic podcast, and I mentioned that that wood is pink. And that is actually, from what I understand is California cedar that's been dyed pink to kind of emulate the red cedar, which a lot of people were, you know, trying to get used to. People were used to the pink color, the red cedar. And when the incense cedar came along, they were disappointed and you know, they kind of. They faked it. They faked it till they made it, basically.
Dedication.
Yeah, so. So California incense cedar is kind of. Is the. Kind of the standard among. Among good pencils.
I heard somewhere that something amazing about California incenseder. But doesn't it reproduce faster than we can use it or something like that? As far as, like, how much it reproduces if seed is just really prolific?
Yeah, I think it's been partially kind of bred to do what it is doing. And I know that it grows a lot faster than the others. And I think you still have to be very responsible and sustainable with your reforestation. But yeah, it's. It's interesting because it definitely. It grows a lot faster and it doesn't splinter as badly, which is why it's kind of perfect for that, for the pencil. And I know that that's really what, you know, California cedar makes, for example. And a lot of their competitors, you know, they actually grow it. Grow it in California. They send it off, I think overseas. I don't remember where to get. To get cut up into China. Yeah, to get cut up into slats, which is where it comes back and they grade it and they, you know, you know, they have it there and then they send it out to all the various pencil companies.
I'd like to know how many pencils are inside of one tree.
I would like to know that too.
There's actually a hundred thousand something like that.
There's actually a website that is a production of the. Of Cal cedar. It's called the Incense Cedar Institute. I'll post a link to it. But it's basically just a. It may actually be linked to. From calcedar.com but if you look back in there you can find, you can find a link to the Incenseder Institute which has a lot of. Yeah. Which has a lot of kind of that information. But so you know, you can also use. You'll see it in a lot of cheaper pencils. You'll see basswood. That is the wood that's. It doesn't exactly because only fabric kind of pills up. But you know what I mean when I say like a pencil kind of pills up on the base. It gets really rough and if you put it into like a dull burr grinder, it's just super rough. Oh yeah, yeah. Typically that's probably basswood. There are a couple other just kind of Southeast Asia woods that are used. There's one called Jelly. I'm gonna butcher this name Jellutong. That is something that is used. I couldn't find an example of a pencil that specifically uses that. But that use is controversial because of rainforest deforestation. But there's another native wood around Southeast Asia called Pulai, which is about the same and it's native but it's not quite as endangered. And then there are a lot of other different kind of composites that are made for it. Johnny talks a lot about Wolpex. There's actually, if you go look on, back in the archives on Pencil Talk, you'll find the kind of. The first mention of it in 2010 he talks about the Statler Wolpex. And then actually just this month on Pencil Revolution, Johnny had kind of a follow up review on that. But it's interesting, WOPEX stands for Wood Pencil Extrusion. Am I getting this right, Johnny? Yeah, wood pencil extrusion. Okay. And it's essentially what, when I would talk to Charles Berolzeimer from Cal Cedar, what he would call a plastic pencil. You know, it's not obviously made of exact plastic, but it's made from just kind of a, like a composite of various, you know, proprietary elements. Do you know what's, what's in that, Johnny?
Apparently it's pretty secret.
Yeah, yeah.
That has a lot of wood flour.
Yeah, that's really what I gathered. It's a lot of like, you know, sawdust that's much, much, much finer than sawdust and just compressed at extremely high pressures. And what you get is you get a, you get a pencil that is much heavier than a typical pencil, a little bit more solid and just in performance. And I have not used a Wilpex pencil. So I'm relying on Johnny and Steven from Penciltalks reviews. And apparently you can't put it in a burr grinder. Did you put yours in a burr grinder, Johnny?
You can on some like Matthias from Bleichdift. He sort of experimented with all the different ways you can sharpen a Wopex. And there's this pencil sharpener. I think it was marketed in the States by Kikkerlund, if I'm saying that right.
Yeah.
It looks like a dual lens camera. Oh yeah, yeah. The later models of it. Like the problem with the burr grinder is the auto shut off doesn't get triggered because there's so much friction.
Yeah.
So the first time I did this I lost half a Wopex when they were really, really precious. No, but this one, like the later models, it'll. It'll shut itself off. It's like the perfect point on a Wopex.
That's crazy.
It kind of takes all the fun out of it. But yeah, yeah, it looks nice.
So I see a lot of close ups where people have done it with a knife or with a blade grinder.
Yeah, Matthias is really good at it.
Yeah, I'm the worst at sharpening with a knife. So. So yeah, there's, there's Woolpex, there's a few other different kind of composites that's, that's kind of one of the newest and kind of, I guess, sexier ones. I know that Empire pencil back in the 70s had an EPCON plastic pencil. In 1993, Conte had something called a Conte Evolution, which is an extruded plastic pencil.
Yeah.
They still make this, do they? Yeah, they're made under BIC now.
Okay.
They're really nice.
Yeah. I actually have a pencil that's. That's a, it's a giveaway of like a trash and sanitary recycling place that has like big plastic dumpsters and they have a plastic pencil that's pretty solidly plastic. You can also make some pencils out of recycled newspaper. You see that? A lot of some of them I actually kind of like. I have a couple reviews of some of my favorites up on the blog, which I'll provide a link to. But there's Aubann, which is a French company that has a newspaper pencil and you know, a couple other little ones. So there's. And the one I guess I should mention, which is probably not for public consumption usually, but Cran d' Ache has three collections of exotic wood pencils. Johnny, do you have any of these?
No.
They're really pretty.
Yeah. Do you, Tim, do you know what we're talking about?
I do, yeah. I've seen those.
They're.
Oh, man, they're so gorgeous. Collection number two had this blue zebra wood that was just fantastic. And it's just a little bit generally too salty for my. My price. It's. It's 30 bucks for, I think, six of them. And they're just pencils that are made out of like, really cool, exotic wood. And I don't think that they deforest things, you know, to get it, but it's. They're just gorgeous. If you can find it. Collection three is now for sale. I think they're selling it through pencils.com and maybe through. Oh, not Jetpens, but that other. That other one in Japan. What is it called? Oh, I'll find the link and post it. But yeah, they're. They're pretty fantastic. It's a little bit harder to sharpen. You know, they're much harder woods. That's why pencils aren't made out of like mahogany.
Yeah, I have a pencil here that's made out of recycled old currency.
Yeah, yeah, I've seen those too.
Seen those?
Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, I have one of those too. Those are really cool.
Blue jeans ones are cool. It's a really neat color.
So, yeah, I'll about wrap it up for barrels because I think that, you know, the graphite is, you know, what we all came here for. So. So, yeah, that is the barrel of a pencil, which is pretty great. So, yeah, I'll pass it off to Gemini to talk about graphite.
Okay. If I start rambling about Thoreau too much, stop me. It's not that relevant, but these are our core points about the unleaded center of a pencil. It was a dark, stormy night in Borrowdale, England. As Andy mentioned, It was the 1860s. Like Henry Petroski points out, nobody recorded any of this stuff. So, like vaguely 1860s, some people say 1864, a large tree fell over in a storm. And some of the sources say it was an oak or an elder or an alder. When it uprooted, there was this black substance stuck to the roots, which was graphite. But no one knew what it was, and they thought it looked like a black lead, so they started calling it wad, if I'm pronouncing that right, wadd, which I think means black. And then it started to get known by plumbago, which is from the Latin, meaning that, which acts like lead, because from the ancient Romans through. I don't remember when people were using pieces of actual lead to write with, which nice and poisonous. But it produced a really light mark. So when they saw graphite, it was like writing with a carbon Sharpie. And by the end of 16th century, it was pretty well known throughout Europe. And no one called it graphite until, I think, 1779, when they finally figured out what it was made of. And that was a type of carbon and not lead. And it does conduct electricity, but it's not a type of metal. If I have that right. It's somewhere between coal and diamonds. So it'd be like really, really good
coal or on the way to diamonds, really crappy diamonds.
I'd rather have pencils.
Yeah, right.
But because of its molecular structure, it works as a lubricant really well. Like, I don't know if you guys were in Boy Scouts when you were little, but put the powdered graphite into your pinewood derby car wheels.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
It's, like, way better than grease or anything. I always thought it was my dad's, like, magic dust, like pixie dust. But also because it's carbon. Graphite doesn't react with paper because it's carbon and it doesn't fade. It doesn't have any pigments or dyeing agents, which is why pencil is really forever. So if you've ever done any gardening, like, if you try to use a Sharpie for a plant stake, it's gone in a week. But you can use a pencil. It'll last forever as long as you don't erase it. General's Kimberly 9xx be the best one. And early on, graphite, they didn't put them in wood right away. People were using it to mark their sheep just in these big chunks from this mine in Borrowdale, which is in or near Cumberland in England. So folks would sort of, like, saw off a little hunk of it and wrap it up in sheepskin. And then eventually they started sawing it into sticks and they would wrap them in string and because they figured out, like, if you're someone that does fieldwork or an artist, this was better than charcoal because you could ink over it. And if you do field work, you don't really want to carry a quill and a pen, quill and ink with you. Then eventually when they started doing the wood, it was just a big, giant hunk of pure graphite from this mine in England. It's still supposed to be the best and biggest graphite mine on earth. I think we should go prospecting somewhere Go find a better one. We could start our own pencil company. But that's why leads were squared, because they were solved instead of extruded like comes later. But outside of England, the best you could do would be to get sort of little pieces of the borrowed yell graphite or whatever you could get where you lived. So that would have to be pulverized and then sifted to get out the. This sort of impurities. And they would mix it with stuff like sulfur. So they would heat up powdered graphite and sulfur and then sort of put it on a board and knead it like bread into like a weird, probably really stinky dough.
Can you imagine what that must have smelled like?
I'd rather not.
Oh, I would kill myself. Well, the old rumors were that if you put a pencil point into a flame, it would smell like brimstone. How do you know what brimstone smells like? Where have you been? That's a great question. But even this, they would cut it into cakes and then put it into a wooden housing. But it was kind of soft because it wasn't fired like modern leads are. And outside of England, that was the best they could do. And then in England, they started when the mine started running a little dry. They would start trying to not waste things. So other things they would use to bind besides sulfur. Were discussing things like going to pronounce this right. Inconglass. Isinglass. It's from fish bladders. Disgusting. Gum, shellac wax, some sort of like bayberry oil or something. The Thoreaus used that later. But even still, these were like junk pencils. They were scratchy and they weren't very dark. So then in 1793, when England and France were at war, the folks in France couldn't get the Bordeaux pencils. They couldn't get the German pencils that were made of the composite. Even though they were junk, it was still a pencil. So the Minister of War wanted someone to produce pencils in France. So then we had. I'm not going to say his name right. Nicolas Jacques Conte. He was born in Normandy in 1755. He was a portrait painter before the revolution. And then he became an inventor engineer. And he had this really cool pirate eye patch because he promoted the use of balloons and warfare. And there was a hydrogen explosion in his lab. So he lost his eye or lost his sight's eye.
This guy sounds badass.
Yeah, they're really cool. He's got like an enormous head.
He'd have to.
Supposedly, his big head he came up with in a matter of days, they say. So in 1794, he came up with the idea to mix powdered graphite and potter's clay as a binder. These would be put into molds and dried out, and the molds would shape the leads. You didn't have to cut it. And then they would pack it in charcoal and fire it in an oven at, like, insanely high temperatures. So then when they came out, they were brittle, but they wrote a lot more smoothly and a lot darker than the sulfur. And that was still the norm everywhere else. But by the mid 19th century, the Kante method was pretty widespread in Europe. But this is where we get into
Thoreau or eventually Thoreau.
There was a gent named Joseph Dixon like that. Dixon, like Dixon Ticonderoga Dixon. He lived in America, and he made crucibles. So he had a side business where he would make stove polish and pencils from his graphite. But he quit making pencils because when he went to Boston, they're like, well, you can't sell this with an American label. Nobody's gonna buy it. People want German and French pencils. So he just quit. But one of his sort of proteges was John Thoreau, Henry David Thoreau's father. So he learned a little bit at making pencils from Joseph Dixon. And the legend is that Dixon might have known the Kante press process, so John Thoreau might have known it, but neither of them tinkered with it enough to be able to use it effectively. So Mr. John Thoreau married whatever his wife's name is, but his brother was Charles Dunbar, who found this famous deposit of graphite in Bristol, New Hampshire, that was supposed to be, like, the best graphite that wasn't borrowed ale. And he had a partner named Cyrus Stowe in Concord, and they took a lease out on this mine, but they made a mistake and only took it out for seven years. So they had to enlist John Thoreau so they could get all this graphite out. And then they got tired of the business and they weren't making any money, so they left it to him. So Mr. Henry David Thoreau, everybody's favorite hermit. His father owned a pencil company, which most people were surprised to know even that Thoreau could draw mechanical drawings. He was a really smart guy. So Mr. John Thoreau's pencils had glue, Bayberry wax and Spermaceti in them, but he could still sell them in Boston with American labels on them because his graphite was so good. I even got noticed by the Massachusetts agricultural society in 1824, which is really Interesting. But they were still inferior to the Conte processed pencils. But you couldn't get Kante process pencils here very easily. So Henry David Thoreau. There are conflicting sources about this. In his biography, Walter Harding says that Thoreau went to the library at Harvard and an encyclopedia learned about the Kante process. But Henry Petroski says that's impossible because there were no such encyclopedias with that information. And that he probably just kind of. Maybe he read a passage talking about pencils and talking about clay being used in crucibles and made the connection. But the upshot is that our favorite little naturalist sort of independently discovered the Conte process and gave us the modern pencil in America without needing Europe to help us, which was super awesome.
It's interesting how often stuff like that happened, because I think that the vulcanization of rubber process was something that was kind of discovered around the same time in America and the uk. So, yeah, it's. It's interesting how things kind of enter consciousness around the same time.
And Thoroughbo he was famous for. I didn't know this until recently. He used to dream of a seamless pencil. Like, just sit around thinking about how cool it would be to have a pencil with no seam. So the legend is that he invented a machine that would bore a hole through a pencil and you could stick a lead in it. I've never seen this. This sounds really cool, though.
That does.
But he did invent a machine that I don't really understand how it works. It used river rocks to pulverize the graphite. And then the pieces that were super fine would sort of float up on a draft and hit like this little shelf box and stay in there, and whatever was too heavy would just keep grinding. I think generals uses something like that. I know they use river rocks to pulverize their graphite, but they do it when it's wet so it doesn't get airborne. But at the time when Henry David Thoreau improved them, they were the best pencils you could buy in America. And they used to number them one through four for different grades. But in 1853, they stopped making pencils because there was sort of a secret operation where they were making graphite for electrotyping. And then that became so lucrative, they just kind of stopped. So that's the end of the Thoreau story.
It sounds like you were very thorough with your research.
That's what he used to say about
his, you're on fire today.
Surveying work.
I'm very thorough.
You can imagine him saying that and, like, waddling away.
I like your voice impression of Thoreau. Now, that's what he's going to sound
like in my head. Leads were still square at this point, but because by the 1870s, they started extruding them through a dye. The Germans claim they did it, and the French claim they did it, but that's where we got round leads, which, of course, required a modification of the slat. Then we have the introduction of wax, where most of our good pencils are boiled in wax and then left in there for different amounts of time so that it impregnates every single little bit of graphite. I've talked to a couple different pencil companies about what's in the wax, and of course, they won't tell you because it's proprietary, but some of the stuff they told me is in there is kind of disgusting, especially if you're a vegetarian, like I am. So I won't say what it is. You can email them yourself if you want to be grossed out. But we have the alternative compositions, like Andy was talking about, the extruded pencils. They also extrude leads with plastic instead of ceramic. That's where we get the sort of flexible, mechanical pencil. Get those leads. And also, like the Wopex, it comes out with the lead already in it,
which is really cool.
Yeah. What else? Colored pencils. We're not really talking about colored pencils, but they're just wax and binders and pigments.
But they don't have to clarify. That wasn't static we just heard. That was Johnny hissing.
I don't want to quote David Rees on our podcast. I don't want to be the first one to cuss, what is it, Channel 11?
I can put an explicit tag on it if we need to for itunes.
I suppose the other thing I should talk about is our pencil grading. In the US we use number one through four like Thoreau did, number one being softest, number four being the hardest. And then a lot of manufacturers sort of have something between 2 and 3, but they're all trademarked, so some are like 2 and 3. 8. Two and a half, 2.5, which I think is just really, really cool. I wish more people did that. Number one is roughly B, HB is 2, H is 3 and 2, H is 4 and 2 and a half is F. So in the big scale, you've got H on one side, which stands for hard, B on the other, black. The higher the number with H, the harder it is. The higher the number with B, the darker it is, and the middle, you've Got hb. And then some manufacturers between H and HB have F, which I think is for fine. Is that correct?
I think so.
So it seems all standard, but, you know, different manufacturers mean different things. By hb, I know a lot of people get, like, Fiber Castell, Castell 9000. They're like, this is way too hard. Because German pencils are usually a lot harder than
Germans.
They're very precise.
They follow a lot of rules.
But they're smooth, which is good, because American pencils usually, if they're that hard, they're a little scratchy. Japanese pencils usually run a little softer, which is what I like about them. But even I've discovered, like, Dickson Ticonderogas, like, the Mexican ones are scratchy and hard. The Chinese ones are smooth and really nice. So the whole, like, you know, use a number two pencil for an exam is total bunk. And your teachers are just messing with you. There's no such thing as a number two pencil, so I'm sure you guys would agree. Get a Musgrave or Generals test scoring pencil.
Heck, yeah.
Much better. Especially the Generals. I guess that's it. I've rambled for a while about that,
but that was impressive.
Also, I keep saying lead. There's no lead in a pencil, obviously, or I'd be dead from the point that's in my wrist. Or at least partially insane.
You know, it's funny. I have a lot of. A lot of people, you know, you know the taxi company, Uber, you know, they have. They have their Uber fax that they tweet out every now and then. Oh, yeah, there was one at one point. They were like, uber fact number whatever. There is no actual lead in a pencil. And I don't know how many times I got tweeted by kind of retweeted at that from people who are like, oh, Andy should know this. And you guys. I don't know if you've seen that as well, but, yeah, I'm just like, no kidding.
No, I didn't know that. I went through graduate school thinking I majored in philosophy because there's something wrong with me. The lead had, like, melted into my bloodstream. Not a lucrative decision. I was very glad to know that. It was something else wrong.
It was something else.
I don't need wrist surgery.
Yeah.
Amputate your hand or anything.
Yeah, we should all get together one day and break off a piece of lead, like in our ankles or something. It's like a mark of solidarity.
Maybe we'll just shove it on her eye and we could look like Nicholas Conte.
Oh, yeah.
Which, by the way, I found a amazing picture, and I'm pretty sure this is going to be the episode art.
Yeah, that would be a really good hipster tattoo.
Okay, what is it with you and tattoos lately, Johnny? Because this is.
Maybe I'm getting bugged to get one, but I don't have any. I'm too hairy. There's nowhere to put one. The hair on the bottom of my arms connects terrible.
As I told you, you know, this body is a temple. So I'm probably not going to get a tattoo, but if I did, I think what I want to do is, you know how on the inside of your index finger, you know, people sometimes, like, tattoo a mustache and then they hold it up to their face. No, no, one. I want to get a pencil put there, and so then I can hold it up to my face and it's a pencil mustache.
I wonder if you could do something like on the inside of your arm where you have, like, a full pencil on your forearm and so that, like, when you close your arm, it shortens. You have, like, a sharpener on your bicep.
Yes.
Put it into the sharpener. Yeah, yeah.
Well, if we get our. If we get our pencil Starburst from the wood clinch vector pack. I think that, by the way, if anybody out there. This is. This is a pronouncement right now. If anybody out there wants to get that tattooed on their arm, I will give you. I will send you a free wood clinch pencil. Pencil pack. Pencil vector pack T shirt. That is my. That is my pronouncement.
I think we should also develop a erasable podcast, official Conte eye patch to give away.
Yes, indeed.
Yeah, we'll start seeing people wearing them around, like, in big cities.
Like, hopefully it comes with that cravat that he's wearing.
Yeah, it has to. In the metal. That's how you see.
Yes, in the big, big metal. All right, well, guys, we've managed to talk for, like, an hour and a half about pencils. Hopefully we still have people listening.
Still.
You. You person out there who's still. Still listening.
So, yeah, we should probably wrap it up and maybe. Maybe tell everybody where they can find us on the interwebs. I guess. I am Andy Welfle. You can get me at awelfley. That's a W E L, F L E On Twitter, andy W. On app.net and woodclinch.com
I'm Tim Wasem. And it's not just a magical coincidence that there's a New Tim Wasem who is doing this podcast. I did change the name of my blog since the last episode we did. It was a very natural change. Just makes more sense to what I actually write about. But it's now you can read my reviews and writings about pens and pencils and such@www.thewritingarsinal.com. you can follow me on Twitter itingarcenal. If you were already following me Aely Carry, then it automatically will switch. I just changed it from the same account. If you want to get in touch with me, you can email me through the contact page on my website or email me directly to thewritingarcenalmail.com I'm Johnny Gamber.
I'm@pencilrevolution.com what am I on Twitter?
Pensolution?
Pencilution? Yeah, it's too hard to say. I should have done something different. I'm on Instagram, I think at Johnnygamber if you want to see pictures of really cute kids and pencils usually mixed or often mixed. And you can email me@editor PenceRevolution.com, just kind of a mouthful or just use the contact page on my website.
Cool.
And if you want to kind of reach the podcast in general, we're on Twitter, it's raceablepodcast and our website is
Erasable Us and our email is erasablepodcastmail.com
and we hope you don't erase us. We hope you keep us around. But if you do, it's definitely there for you.
So don't forget the giveaway.
Oh yeah.
As well. Yes, we'll talk about that one more time. We're really excited about this card Winner Pencils. We're going to pick six winners on our next episode or around our next episode. So if you want to enter, you need to go to Erasable Us two to our episode page and leave a comment. In the comment we want you to make some kind of pencil related pun based on a book name or a movie title, something like that. And we'll pick six winners at random from all of our responses and you'll get a pencil pack from one of the three of us. And then also on top of that, down the road we may end up plagiarizing your genius puns and using them. No, I'm kidding. We'll give you credit for it, I guess. But we will use your puns as episode titles so that our listeners can be involved in a kind of a cool behind the scenes sort of way. Yay.
Next one is Feral to Arms, which Tim came up with, which I love.
Yeah.
So much.
It's pretty great.
I got on a roll.
I want to make a cartoon to go with it.
Or a tattoo.
My kids are watching a movie of the Call of the Wild because we just finished reading that in school, and I was just sitting at my desk and just got on a roll and came up with, like, 30 in a row. Kind of obsessive with all my puns. I think that was the first one I came up with, so that's pretty great. Feral. To arms.
Well, with that, we should bid you all ferule. Ferule.
Thanks, everybody.
Bye. Take care.
See ya.