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Transcript
Hello, we are your hosts from Erasable, the world's first only and best pencil podcast. We are happy to present. Sorry. Our much awaited fifth episode in which we discuss some environmental issues of Pencil Dom and some of our favorite eco pencils. This is Johnny Gamber and I am joined by the magical glue which holds together a dovetail joint and a reclaimed cedar pencil. Fellow Eraser Erasable hosts and pencil bloggers, Tim Wasem and. And Andy Welfle.
Hey, guys.
Hello.
Hello. Very good.
That was. That was. That was amazing.
Johnny, tearing up a little bit over here.
For a second there at the beginning, I was expecting a. Something like. It's a very special edition of the Erasable podcast. Very special episode.
Faster Growing our own Patchouli. Which I do.
Do you smoke pencils?
I'm sorry?
Do you smoke pencils?
Your smoke pencils?
I will now.
Well, this time around we thought we'd talk about pencils and the environment because I guess that the whole like, buy the screen product phase is kind of going over or passed a little bit. So it's not something people think about a lot, but people have brought it up to me a lot. Like, you know, you don't drive a car and you're a filthy hippie, but you have all these pencils. But as I hope will come out later, I think pencils are one of the greenest things you could possibly write with. Unless you have one fountain pen that you use forever and ever. And I don't know anyone that uses fountain pens that has one. So I think a lot of it. I'll talk about this later. Kind of boils down to the, like, when you go to Starbucks, do you bring your steel cup with you? This is like tree hugger. They did a analysis of that. And you'd have to use that cup like so many thousands of times for it to equal the energy of just all the paper cups. So I think something similar is going to wind up being true of pencils.
Yeah, you need to get some kind of exotic bird that you can use their feathers as a quill and have one inkwell. And then you'd be even better than the mythical one fountain pen user.
You could cut those reed pens from bamboo.
I don't know about you guys, but I just. I just cut my finger and use my own blood. That's. That's the best eco way I can think of.
Marquis de Sade. Well, you're out of blood. What does he use? Never mind. So I thought before we get into our topic, we'd do our usual fresh Points. Absolutely. And on our little agenda, Mr. Tim is first. Hi.
The first thing I want to bring out, and I just saw this on Twitter maybe a week ago, a week ago, Elaine from JetPens, Somebody, I forget who, has now sent me or us maybe a message saying, hey, did you know that JetPens is now selling Tombow mono one hundreds by the pencil? Yeah. Which is really exciting. So we'll put the link in the show notes, but they have every denomination of them, so all of them are available. They're 235 a piece, which is really cool. They're doing that. And then Elaine actually responded and said they're soon. They don't have these right now, but soon they're going to be selling the Black Wings by the pencil.
That's awesome.
You know, for. For me, even though it's not really that useful, especially with the Black wings, because I have all of them and I buy them by the dozen anyways. It's cheaper. But for people who are trying stuff out, it'll be great. For the Mono one hundreds, it'll be amazing because, like, for me, I kind of have a certain. The ones I have are HBs, but there's some I want to try Bs and two Bs and some of those other ones. So I can just get one first and then go back and pick up a dozen. Which I just thought that was really, really exciting. Kind of a cool innovation of sorts in the pencil world just to be able to get those pencils.
Oh, yeah. And it makes the barrier to entry of pencils a lot less too. Like, if you're trying tell somebody about really, really nice pencils, you know, they may not want to buy a, you know, a dozen. Just make a $20 commitment or what is it for tombows? Is it 20.
28.
$28?
Yeah, 28 full price. And then the ones I got on, on Amazon, you can sometimes get them for like 22.
Yeah, yeah. Still just if people are really kind of skeptical. But, like, that's why I just recommend that sampler packet, pencils.com a lot, because
that's such a. Yeah, it's on sale right now.
Yeah.
Yep.
That's a great idea. Yeah. So I actually mentioned to Elaine, I was like, it'd be really cool if Jetpens had some kind of a, you know, just a simple sample pack of some of the various kind of tracks that you can get, like, you know, Japanese pencils. And I mean, honestly, same thing goes for pens too, I think. But I think that's a really, really neat idea.
And the, and the price of them. It's great. When you think I think if I notice this in the notes from what we're going to talk about as far as how long a pencil lasts, it's about the same price as I think like a Jetstream or maybe even a high tech C like some of those other pens. For one of those it's about the same, maybe a little less for the pencil. So just I got a feeling that I've never tested this empirically but one HP mono 100 would probably last just as long as if you were writing only with a gel pen. So it's really great, great, great deal. The other point, I only had two this week and I actually forgot one and I just saw Andy, you wrote it in the show notes but we'll talk about it when you get to it. The other one is I got a very exciting package in the mail from Ana Reinert from well appointed desk. It was there's nothing, nothing better in this. I don't know if you want to call it a business in this hobby or whatever. And it's what we do writing about pencils when you go to the mailbox, not expecting anything to be in there. Just showing up on a whim to even look to check to make sure your mailbox is empty and it's full of pencils. That was really exciting. She sent me of course get mail from her. She uses looks like some kind of fancy brush pen or something in the package which is beautiful. I didn't want to throw out the package once I opened it up. It looks so awesome on the inside. I had a Justice League postcard and she sent me five pencils. And I don't know if this is directly because I talked about how I didn't have any vintage pencils but she sent me. So here's what I got. The first one is an Alton and Southern Railroad pencil which is silver. The blue print made in USA made by Eberhard Faber USA Number two is really beautiful silver pencil. She sent me a pencil made by the National Pencil Company from Shelbyville, Tennessee which I didn't wasn't aware of. And it's actually a yellow colored pencil. She sent me that she sent me General Cedar Point and this is by the another USA made pencil by the Richard Best Pencil Company and it's called the Lafayette 477. It's a really sharp looking pencil and I noticed, I couldn't help but notice with all the ones I mentioned so far when I Look directly at the top. The graphite is centered perfectly, which is really exciting because you can tell these were just very basic pencils when they came out, but they're really, really good quality. And then the last one is another Richard Best pencil USA made, called the Press 260. And it reminds me a lot. I haven't sharpened yet, but by the looks and the diameter of the graphite, it looks a lot like General's layout pencil.
That's cool.
Yeah. So that was just really a really cool thing. I was not expecting that. And it made it all, all the better.
It's funny because I was going to, I was going to put that in my, in my notes too. I got a package from her as well. And then I saw that you had it and I figured we can just discuss it. But yeah, I had the, the same thing with the, the silver railroad pencil and then the two Richard Best pencils. And then I had a. She had a bullet pencil from the Union Stockyards of Indianapolis that she sent me just kind of for Indiana connection. So I wonder if that's, you know, kind of through which you got your dishevel Tennessee pencil was just a state connection. Yeah.
Yeah.
This, this packaging set was amazing. Like with the, the stamps on it. I have a 22 cent stamp collecting stamp that she put on the front of this, which is just really. It kind of rekindled an old hobby that I had. I used to collect stamps and I loved them and I just kind of. They just kind of got away from me. Yeah. But I just love looking at, you know, this, this envelope that she put together.
I also got one from Anna this week.
Cool.
She included that, a really cool hello Kitty pencil box for my daughter, which made her very, very, very happy.
Oh yeah. That's awesome.
That's awesome.
Man is taking care of us.
Yeah, she is.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I have some, a couple things that I put together that I'm going to send back to her, I think.
Have you all heard of Lee Valley Pencils?
Yeah.
No, I have not.
This is.
I wrote to them a couple times asking them to send some to Pencil Revolution hq and they were like, no,
I feel really bad about this. Shows how hastily I prepared and showed up here to record. Another listener reader sent me another surprise package and with this really, really nice note about the website saying I enjoyed everything. And he said this pencil sounds like something I would like. And he has a surplus of them. And it's a Lee Valley B pencil.
Cool.
Yeah. So it's an eraser pencil with it's like a forest green. And he came in a B and he said that apparently his family and from what I was able to tell, they are. I guess they have woodworkers in the family. And I'm really kind of embarrassed that I didn't write down his name to have it ready to mention it. But I'll find it. I'll mention it next time. But he sent me these and said that they. These are a standard in stockings at Christmas in their family. So everybody gets these. And so he said he had this mass of these pencils and so he said that B sounded like something I would like, which he is exactly right. And he sent me a half dozen and I was really, really surprised and really thankful.
So look at their website. They look really nice. Is yours of the dark green variety?
Yes.
Yes.
So just all it says on it is made in GT Britain, Lee Valley B. Very simple, very nice pencil. So, yeah, good mail week or I guess couple weeks.
Yeah.
And I'd like to apologize to everyone. We. We've had some delays. That's why we're a week late. It's. I don't know what, you know, what Johnny's doing out there in Maryland, but he's brought on some weather, some weather
events he's actually recording from a boat.
Right.
Yeah. On a skiff right now.
Yeah. That's why I keep cutting out.
Am I cutting out?
No, you're not. No. Not again. Cool.
That's all I got.
Okay, next, Mr. Andy.
Yeah, I'll approach some of mine. So, yeah, I just wanted to thank. I've heard from all. Well, from both of my winners of the giveaway that we had in the second episode. And Sebastian Morissette from, from Canada kind of weighed in. He talked about some of the things I sent him about. You know, the Blackwing is a very smooth and quote almost sexy writing experience, which is pretty. A pretty good, good description of it. He said that his perfect pencil he thinks would be a mixture of the Helix Oxford premium grade pencil with the lead from the golden. With the. Oh, for the lead with the helix with the barrel from the Golden Bear. So that would indeed be a really cool pencil. So I was just thinking about that. He emailed me a couple weeks ago about that. So thank you. Say again.
I've never used the Oxford. I've never used an Oxford product.
I am so bad at procrastinating. I still have pencils to send you, Tim, and I will send you one of those along with it. Okay.
That's what I was Fishing for. Anyway, so.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah.
I knew it. My envelope will not look nearly as cool as Anna's envelope because she is a much, much, much craftier person than I am. She. What is. She works at a greeting card company? Is that correct?
Just Hallmark, I think.
Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So I will. I'll try to pretty it up a little bit because I know you're. You're big into that.
Yeah, that would mean a lot to me.
I also wanted to mention something that. I don't know, I guess we can't have an episode where we don't mention something to do with field notes. So I will bring that in. But if you don't follow field nuts on Facebook or on their message boards on their website, you definitely should. There's all sorts of interesting things that come through. There's a guy named Rob, and. Oh, man. What is Rob's last name? I cannot find it right now. But Rob is a graphic designer, I believe he has a website. It's s14rob.com, and he actually made something really, really cool. It's called Beer Notes. And it's basically a little rubber stamp that has. It's about the size of a third of a page of field notes. It has the full width of a page, and then it just goes about a third of the height. And it's basically, you can stamp your field notes with a little template to give you a standard way to review beers. It has stuff from, like, the beer name, the brewery, the style, if it's an IPA or what have you, the alcohol volume, a star rating, then what kind of glass you serve it in. And I was looking at this, and it's just so fascinating because you just. You can take a field notes notebook and you can just, you know, stamp it with several pages of this. There's plenty of room underneath to write notes. And I honestly don't know why this is so thrilling to me. I love it for just a few different reasons. And I think a few other people in that thread did, too, because, you know, they had ideas for, you know, making a coffee notes, one a bourbon notes, one a wine notes.
Pencil notes.
Pencil notes. Actually, hey, that's actually a really good idea. You can just have, like, a standard way of reviewing pencils. And he just, you know, just for the cost of a $30 rubber stamp and the cost of a field notebook or even, you know, a scout book or some other notebook if you wanted to. I just think that was so cool. So the. The link is in the show Notes, which By the way, is at erasable US5, if you're looking. So yeah, just, just go there and check out the, the site. And he can basically for 30 bucks, he'll. He'll mail you one of the, one of the rubber stamps that it comes with. But it was, it was a lot of fun because he was kind of thinking out loud and just kind of creating this via that Facebook thread, taking feedback from everybody. So actually work at a web development company. One of our clients is a winery, a local winery, and we do some branding and graphic design work. But I actually kind of pitched the idea to them of having a, like a little wine notes journal that they would sell in the shop just because I think, I think people would love to buy it and not only can they take it and review their wines with it, but they can take it elsewhere as well. So I'm just super fascinated by that beer notes thing. Something else I wanted to mention. There's a really great writer and podcaster blogger named Patrick Roan. Have either of you guys ever listened to one of any of his podcasts?
No, I have and Little Bits.
Okay. He used to have a podcast called Enough that was on 70 decibels, which is the old network that Pen Addict was on. And he had a show with Mike Hurley there. And he just talked a lot about writing and just about tech stuff. And he actually started a new blog called the Cramped. I just kind of noticed this. The tagline is the unique pleasures of analog writing. And he, he basically just talks about, you know, nice notebooks, pencils, handwritten correspondence, etc. Typewriters. He has a thing about handwriting. It's interesting because this is the first time I've really noticed a kind of an already well established blogger get into the kind of analog writing world. You know, we've had like Brad Dowdy who you know, kind of started off with a pen blog and, you know, kind of became a well established blogger and podcaster. But, you know, Patrick is coming from the tech world to the kind of the analog world. And I'm definitely interested in this because I think he has a lot of, you know, a lot of people to bring with him who all of a sudden will be interested in pencils. So yeah, he's a, he's a really cool guy. Check out TheCrampedCramped.com that's his very nice blog. And it's kind of a good, good part link blog and a good, you know, part reviews and opinion pieces too. So, yeah, it's just really well done.
I Think.
I guess the last thing I had is a follow up from the to be or not to be T shirts. I finally got mine. Did you, did you get yours, Tim?
Oh, yeah, I got mine like a couple days later after I ordered it.
That's cool. Really quickly.
I was actually wearing it when we were going to record the episode last time.
I was going to ask you if you were wearing it now.
I was wearing it last time and then I think I ended up mowing the grass in it the next day. So it's in the wash.
I definitely think some group selfies are in our future. So if you guys want to send me a selfie of yourself wearing that shirt, I will link them together and then attach it to an episode. So yeah, it's a very nice T shirt. I got a lot of people mentioning it. Just people like, oh, that's so you. That's pretty great. So those are about all the points for follow up that I have. And I guess that leaves you, Johnny.
Awesome. Last week you guys were talking about your giveaway winners and I had some sort of brain fart I forgot to mention. Mine were both very nice and sent very nice thank yous.
So.
So I'm very sorry, but I mention it now. Other cool stuff Dixon is blogging now. They have a website called dixon colorfulpoints.com. i don't know why it's called that. It's kind of weird. And they don't have Ticonderoga in it. They're sort of like branding stuff on Ticonderoga. But they sort of have a slogan they've been playing with since they moved their production out of the US where they call their green and yellow pencil the world's greatest pencil or the world's best pencil. Of course, hard to prove, but they came up with a new eraser called the World's Best Eraser. That looks like a short and really fat Dixon pencil. And the ferrule is plastic and then the pink eraser is an eraser and the pencil itself is an eraser and they're really, really cool. I haven't erased with it yet. So pretty.
This is super cool looking.
Yeah, my daughter stole them. I had to find them. But they're really, really, really cool. And they also came out with a new sharpener, but it's an electric pencil sharpener, so I don't know if that's going to show up in my house. But it's really cool looking. It's their colors and apparently they make another one in black and silver for more like A professional look. But they don't have any pictures of that one up.
Oh, they do, actually.
Oh, do they?
Yeah, it's the second SP post down on dixoncolorfulpoints.com.
oh, mine's showing up as green or the green and yellow one.
Oh, no, no, no, the. I'm sorry, I thought you meant they didn't have a picture of any of it. Of just the black and white ones.
You sent a picture of the black and silver ones.
Yeah, yeah. No, they don't have a picture of that that I can find.
Alright. I like their green and yellow. It's a cool motif for John Deere. Another speaking of sharpeners, my daughter opened her deli sharpener that's shaped like a bell pepper and we decided it's a very good sharpener in some ways. In other ways it's bad because it produces a seriously long point which is kind of frightening for kids. So I sort of hit it and instead of being square, it's shaped like an unnatural bell pepper that's very thin at the bottom. So it just wobbles everywhere when you try to use it. And the clamp doesn't work. So it's kind of been a pain in my butt. But it makes a nice point if you're a grown up. And it was pretty inexpensive. They're on Amazon. Another thing I want to talk about, gonna make me sound like an old fart, is that USA Gold has sort of rebranded their pencils and now they're called America's Pencil, which is kind of a lame slogan, but it's a slogan which I think is awesome. Like the black wings, half the pressure, twice the speed. And of course, my favorite one ever, no Blatt, a bottle of ink and a pencil and Dixon has one, but they don't put it on the pencil, which is like key. So they took off that ugly URL like they said they would and it just says America's pencil. USA Gold 2 HB. I found these at Walmart a week or two ago and I think they're made a little nicer than they used to be. At least the pack I got was the leads are nice and centered and the paint looks a little better. So if you're out and about and you see a big box store and you want a really cool pencil with some cool blue foil that says America's Pencil, pick up some of those and write to all of your favorite pencil companies and demand they bring slogans.
Well, I like some just slogans of everything. I want some just really cool slogans. Like the Black Wing and the Noblot. America's pencil is kind of. I don't know, it's just kind of seems a little generic to me.
Yeah. Doesn't seem like it would be good for Dixon. But they're not made here.
Yeah.
Poor guys.
But our US USA Golds aren't made here, are they?
Yeah, they're made in. Where are they made? Louisville, Tennessee, Lewisburg, something like that.
I wasn't aware of that.
I think they're one of. If I understand right, and I'm probably totally wrong about this, I think they're one of the few cedar pencil manufacturers who don't buy their slats from Cal Cedar. I think maybe they didn't used to woodchuck. Totally would correct me on that. But they're nice. I like them if you, you know, you're doing your back to school shopping. It's your one American made option in the big box stores and staples and things like that. So we've been a few school visits and seen them all over the place, and it kind of makes my heart happy.
Yay.
But I think that's it for my fresh points. And I'm probably rambling.
I have to take it back for a second to the Dixon website. Dixon colorfulpoints.com I don't know if this bugs you all, but when you pull the page, there's that kind of header. It's sort of a header, but it's in the middle of the page and has all the crayons and pencils and several of them are really poorly sharpened.
That's true.
That's not a very good carpenter.
It looks like it's the.
And then there's that one, the pencil that's like four. The fourth one over from the left is very, like, off center.
Oh, yeah.
Graphite. And so it's starting to canoe on the side. I don't know. I just thought it was really pointy out. That's all I could see when I was trying to look at the website. Kept just like coming back to it being like, oh, that's wrong. Throw that one out.
Some of these definitely look like it was a, you know, just the factory kind of that drum sharpener job.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I want to see some stuff about crayons. They have these. Hopefully they'll blog about crayons.
Yeah, they're nice.
I do. I do like this. They have an infographic down on the page about handwriting statistics.
I was just looking at that.
Yeah. You know, this is something that I've been seeing a lot of lately. Harry Marks from curiousrat.com who's kind of an Internet friend of mine and, and blogs a lot about like, you know, Mac stuff and tech stuff and self publishing or regular publishing. I guess. He actually wrote a thing for the cramped about handwriting and about his dad's handwriting and trying to prove his own. That's something that I've definitely been trying to do and think a lot about because I have atrocious handwriting and it's definitely like a cross between cursive and. We talked about having a handwriting episode, didn't we?
Mm.
Yeah, I would definitely like to do that in the future.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. Cool. So should we move on to our big environmental topic wherein people get offended politically?
Let's do it.
If they don't believe in climate change. So I have, I have laid out a couple issues that I think one might consider when you're, you know, entering the world of pencil. Dom. I'm going to ramble them off really quickly so we can get into discussing how pencils are pretty green. First, of course there's wood, which is in our favorite pencils, incense cedar, which is farmed in Northern California and Oregon. On the downside, Cal cedar ships the boards to China and then in China they're made into pencil slats. So if you buy like General's Pencil, who I love very much, their pencils are made in America, but the slats were made in China of American wood. So, you know, all of that transportation obviously cuts back a lot on the greenness of the pencil. There was an issue I remember when I was a kid where pencils were made of rainforest wood. And as recently as, I guess 10 years ago, Papermate was bragging on their pencils not made of rainforest wood, even though they were made of Gilleton, which is a rainforest wood. But I guess they weren't illegal rainforest wood. There's also in the environmental impact of pencils, graphite, which has been mined just like any other mineral. Only a really small percentage of graphite that's mined in the world makes it into pencils. I think it's something like 11%, but that's still something to think about. They don't mine ink. The finish is probably one of the least green parts of a pencil, especially on like a really high gloss oil based lacquer. It's, you know, everything's painted but still, you know, that that adds up the layers of lacquer, the gas releases from the lacquer, the gold and aluminum stamping, because aluminum is not a renewable resource. And you can't exactly, you know, pull it off your pencil and recycle it. A couple companies. I'm sorry, that's the trouble with me.
I really love the high, high gloss kind of super lacquered pencils and I know that that's you know, a little less environmentally friendly than like a, you know, natural finish.
And a couple companies are doing like an eco finish. Like Faber Castell started doing it like in the early 2000s and it looked, you know, it looked really thin. You could see the grain of the wood. All of the ones I've bought recently have the same sort of water based finish, but it looks really, really nice. It's so far with a good Japanese pencil.
So it's just a water based paint.
Yeah. I'm wondering, I think Derwent might use water based paint but they don't use a water based sealer. I think that way they can use a lot less lacquer but the paint won't come off on your hands. I've had old ones where the paint came off when I pulled off the barcode sticker. Lame. This pencil was $2. The ferrules and erasers are obviously something to think about with environmental issues for pencils. But ferrules are almost 100% across the board made of aluminum which is completely recyclable. And if I'm not mistaken, aluminum is unique among other recyclables in that it can be recycled infinitely without losing its the properties that make it aluminum. Like you only erase or recycle paper a few times before it's junk, but you can recycle aluminum forever. Oh, there was, I'm sorry, we need
to, we need to come up with a Kickstarter for some like little tool that strips the aluminum ferrule pencil and the paint. You can just like clip them into your recycling bin and then recycle the ferrule.
Get a little crusher like those can crushers.
Yes,
there was. There was, I guess 10 years ago, even five years ago, a lot of our favorite erasers like the Mars, the Staedtler Mars white plastic eraser had PVC in them, which of course is like one of the worst things you can make something out of environmentally. But they've phased that out. And all of the erasers I bought recently, they all say PVC free. PVC free. And they work. They still work really well.
Did the PVC work better?
No, not that I can tell.
Oh,
the pvc, like they used it in moleskins. It's some sort of plastic Softener. And I know moleskin got rid of it, but you know, moleskins. And the last thing I can think of is the accoutrements, like the things that we use with our pencils. Not just erasers, but like sharpeners. Those are all obviously made of non renewable resources. Even if you replace the blades on your sharpener, that steel comes at a cost to the environment and you gotta put it somewhere. And I don't know if you can recycle something that small. But here's my argument that pencils are actually green. But I don't want to just sit here and read this. So I was hoping you guys would jump in.
I have an initial thought about wood before we get started. Are either of you farmers or gardeners or anything like that? Like do you grow things?
I have a little 4 by 8 garden in my backyard, so I'm learning.
Yeah. Well, my initial thought when I was thinking about this subject is I know I have a friend who owns a, and runs a woodworking shop about two miles from the house. And his wood shavings from his shop are really great compost. Like you can compost wood shavings if they sit for a long time. And then if you look, my landlord who lives behind me Gardens about 100 times more than I do. And he actually knows somebody who owns a wood shop that's not functioning anymore. But there were just these mountains of wood shavings that were still in his shop, like basically sawdust. And he went and this is maybe four years since it's closed down. And he'll go every once in a while and pick up these. He'll basically break open these big piles of sawdust and it's composted and he'll bring it home and he'll put it in his garden. And so I just had that initial thought that if you were really devoted, it definitely has a footprint getting to you. But like classroom friendly sharpener, those small shavings. Oh yeah, definitely you could compost. But if you try to throw a Pilot G2 refill in your compost, it might not go as well.
But thousand years.
And even when cal cedar still made their planks here in the US they would just, you know, form, they would have mountains and mountains and mountains of sawdust kind of left over. And they, you know, they would just kind of burn it to get rid of it. And then one day somebody just decided to compress them together with wax. And that's how Duraflame got started, those kind of fire starting logs. So yeah, That's a product of Cal Cedar's recycling efforts, at least initially.
Yeah. Interesting.
The greenest thing I do with my shavings is save them for tinder boxes when we go camping. Probably not that green, but smells good.
Yeah, it's a good idea.
And I accumulate so many of them. I don't want to throw them in the trash, but I don't think I garden enough to compost them.
Yeah.
Like my chili peppers.
I also get into my classroom and get my things before my January is through and dumps them into the trash. So I have this little box that I keep them in my classroom. So I'll go in in the morning and hopefully she hasn't gotten to them yet and they'll dump them into the box and put it back. She's probably kind of baffled. She's like, they're not in the trash can. They're not in the sharpener. Where did they go?
The kids are smoking them.
Hey, there's an idea.
Burt's Bees stuff the kids do these days. The other thing about wood is that, you know, so much of the pencil wood in the world comes from Cal Cedar. And, you know, it's in their interest to stay alive as a business to keep replanting the trees.
Yeah.
They used to have a thing called the Incense Theater Institute, but I couldn't find the website. I think it might have gone away.
It's still out there. I think it may be a subdomain of pencils.com now. I think that you can. I'll have to try to find it. But I remember reviewing it when I worked there briefly and finding materials and downloads and some videos and stuff.
Yeah, they had a lot of really good information on there about.
I'll see if I could track it down.
Forestry practices and stuff. That was cool.
Yeah, I'll see if I could track it down and put it in the show.
Notes and Faber Castell. I don't know if they still do this. They used to have a forest in Brazil that they grew just to have wood for their own pencils, which was really cool. They were making the Grip and the Castell 9000 out of that sort of pine for a long time. So that's pretty cool. There was apparently, like cleared land and they did something nice with it. It wasn't like they cut down the forest and planted a new one for pencils. And I used to have my own blog. It wasn't a pencil blog a long time, but someone wrote to me and they were like, well, the greenest thing you can do is just write with a fountain pen because you know, you don't throw it away and you just buy bottles of ink. But like I mentioned before, I think that that runs into the steel mug dilemma. I think, you know, one fountain pen has to have the carbon footprint of like all the pencils I have probably so there's a lot of metal involved and smelting and things like that. And I mean, I don't even know what's in this ink. Another cool thing about pencils, they don't degrade over time the way that pens do. I think the shelf life of a ballpoint pen is three years. Gel pens are a little less. I don't know about liquid inks, but I know, you know, if you leave ink in your fountain pen for a couple years, you might ruin it. At least require some maintenance.
I have an old bottle of Waterman ink that's probably about 10 years old and it still kind of works. I have to give it a little shake, you know, before I use it. But I use it so rarely.
Yeah, I've picked up like pencils from the 60s and they look kind of gross and you sharpen them, they smell wonderful. Yeah, they write nicely. Obviously you can't use the erasers, but I've noticed modern pencils with the synthetic rubber, the erasers last a good while. I've got 10 year old Dixons I can erase with.
Yeah. And really like I have a, I have a dremel that I just put a really fine kind of sander on and I can, I can shave off the very top layer of some of those. Those pencils. Cool pencil erasers. And they work just great.
Excellent.
Yeah.
Treehunker used to be really, really big on this. Like don't buy stuff, don't buy recycled plastic junk. Use the one you have or go to a thrift store and buy one or borrow one from your friend so, you know, make less pencils. That's probably much greener than any sort of recycled pencils we can come up with. Even wopexes that are so beautiful. And I think now we can talk about our favorite eco pencils. So, Mr. Andy, do you want to go first?
Sure. Yeah. I actually wrote a thing on wood clinched a few years ago. Actually, I think I originally wrote it for pencil things. Just comparing a couple of those recycled newspaper pencils. I'm a really big fan of those. I went to school for journalism and I worked at a newspaper for a while and that was kind of my life dream. So I do love me a newspaper Pencil. The ones that I really like. There's an Oban one, which we've definitely talked about before. That's really cool. I have a few left, even though I can't really find them right now on their website.
If you go to ebay, there are a couple sellers or there's one seller in particular that has them for $8 a box with free shipping.
Which obons is that?
I bought a pack of the ones with the solid colors. But I've seen the. I don't know if they put a clear lacquer on. On the ones that just look like newspaper. I've seen those on there too.
Yeah, those are the ones I've been looking for. I have those. Oh, the ones with the endangered animals on them.
Oh, I really like those.
Yeah, I do like those. And I have one that I actually don't like very much that's has kind of this weird rainbow clown color on them. Just this very strange pattern. But you'll have to check out the natural ones. Yeah, that's what I liked about the. The other ones that I reviewed then. It was by Tree Smart. It was a. Just a. Kind of a. Another brand. And they were made out of, like, Chinese newspapers. And those are really cool. Yeah, I also. I can't find them right now. I have some somewhere in the depths of my basement. But they're pencils made out of recycled denim from kind of from old jeans that have been.
I have one of those somewhere.
Yeah, they're really cool. I think they work great. They're kind of compressed and processed a little bit, so they're. You know, the threads have just been, you know, just processed into oblivion. They sharpen really well, and they work pretty well. And the other one that I like. And again, I should have been better prepared for this show because I know it's somewhere A local. The local sanitation company has pencils that are made out of recycled plastic, like trash cans, like with their logo on it. And they kind of feel like the Woolpex when you use them and sharpen them. Yeah, they're really nice, except it doesn't have any sort of differentiation between, you know, the. The outside of the barrel and like the inside of the barrel. So if I can track that guy down, I will take a picture and put it in my show notes. But yeah, it's a. It's not a great pencil to use. It's not a very good quality pencil. But it's a really effective kind of promotion of what they do.
I think it's cool. But they have them? Yeah.
Where do they have it done?
That's a good question. I'll find that and give them a call and see if they can answer that question. But over the years, there's all sorts of promo pencil vendors that have things that they come up with and go away, et cetera. But Tim, what are some of your favorite eco pencils?
Favorite? The first one that came to mind, that I wouldn't call it a favorite just because I don't use it a lot, but I think it's kind of a cool idea. And I think we've talked about it before along the lines of the denim pencil. I have a pencil made of old recycled money, like recycled dollar bills, kind of in the same way as the newspaper pencil, I guess. Like old bills that are out of circulation get reduced, down, compressed and turned into a pencil. And I actually got a denim. The denim pencil and the money pencil together. I think it was at the local college. They were having this fair or something and there was a. Someone was giving them out at some. Some booth. So I got them. I just thought they were really cool. I didn't really. It was. It was pretty pencil obsession as far as. I don't know. They're here somewhere. I'm not really sure where. But my actual. My real favorites three come to mind. I really. I've started to love the Wopex more and more over time. I still can't really explain what it is, what it's made of, which I know we've talked about before. Johnny knows that a lot better than I do as far as how that process is done. But it's just a pencil. It feels so dense, you know, it's so like whatever that material is, it's so firmly packed in. Like, I'm always kind of shocked at how smooth the graphite is.
Pencil means business.
Yeah, for sure.
It kind of stops being a novelty, like, oh, it's a recycled newspaper pencil or something. And it's actually a solid performer.
Yeah, for sure. So I'm glad I picked up two dozen pack of those a while back, and I'm really glad I did that. The other two that come to mind to talk about are actually pretty similar in my mind. The Forest Choice pencil and the field notes pencil. Now these aren't recycled, made from other things, sort of eco pencils, but they are both, I guess you would say, responsibly made.
Yeah.
Neither of them have any sort of lacquer finish. They're both made with renewable cal cedar wood casing. And I think they are Both actually made out of. They have a recyclable aluminum ferrule and then some. I don't know if either of you know what the material is that the eraser is made of but I think it is also degradable. Both are biodegradable erasers. I know. I'm actually looking at the field notes pencil right now and it says that it is made of recycled aluminum ferrule enviro green degradable eraser and certified non toxic imprint inks.
Okay.
So of course they both have a footprint of actually being made. But they're two pencils that I think there is some effort done to do them right.
And I do love that green eraser on the field notes pencil. I think that's a great color. Yeah.
Yeah. It's a good looking, good looking pencil.
Yeah.
And I am just. I get so frustrated every time I use the field note or the. Sorry, the forest choice that Johnny sent. Sent me because I love it so much. I know that someday it's going to be gone. The unfinished. The round barrel. No ferrule on the end.
I have a couple more of those around. I can send you a couple more.
Oh no, no. I know they're kind of like an oddball. Strange thing that you got so don't know. You don't have to give me your last ones. But I just love it. I mean because it's. It's a little. Because it's. It wasn't finished and cut down. I think it's actually just a touch wider than the field notes pencil. So it just feels really good in my hand. I love. I wish it makes me want to find out what I would have to do to get pencils.com to make this happen for a bulk order or something. Just because I really love it. I don't need the eraser. I actually put some of the Pentel High polymer eraser caps. I just bought a pack of those. So I keep one on the end And I just love that pencil.
So nice. Just order 100,000 of them. I'm sure that they'd be happy to.
Yeah, that's all. Work on that. I'll use my teacher discount, get 10% off 100,000 pencils.
I'll go on it with you. I'll get a couple hundred of that 10,000.
I'll inquire and I'll get back to you on that. Okay. But those are my three, my top three. The Fieldnose, the Forest Choice and the Wopex. As far as the ones that I know at least a little about and use regularly.
I want to steal your Wopex Thunder because that might be my favorite eco pencil right now.
Or at least you actually know about it.
I don't know anything about the pencil. I just like it. I picked a couple new ones recently for the Earth Day giveaway I did on my website, Stabilo greengraph. They're@pencils.com they're really, really nice. They're very pretty. They're green and they have that Stabilo pinstripe but it's white. And then the ferrule is like a copper color and I don't know what kind of it is but the right is really, really nice. I was really surprised the German HB was that dark. I also picked up some Maraudo Earthrites. All the weird stuff that Sanford does with Papermate they keep sort of. They had the Earthrite that was green and then the Earthrite Premium which is a pretty nice pencil. And now they have the Murado Earthrite which is finished better than any Murado I've seen in a long time. And the lead is really nice. It's not made of cedar, but actually I have no idea what it's made of. But it's a really nice, nicely finished pencil. It's nice green. It's kind of like a retro 70s looking thing. Also my last one is Ticonderoga Envirostik which I always stroke is so green they didn't put a C in it. It's just S T I K. It's some sort of like unidentified wood but it's bare. Like a forest choice. But it almost feels like they did like some sort of weird really thin satin varnish to it or something. But it has the really cool ferrule that Ticonderogas have and then has a green eraser. It's really, really, really smooth rider. You know, if you're a sweaty handed person like I am, it's got a nice, a really nice grip and they're really easy to find. You can get them at like Office Depot, Amazon. I sort of have like a couple dozen stashed away because I really like them. I'm afraid they'll stop making them. Another pencil I found recently that I haven't gotten away with it much is the BIC Evolution Ecolution or Ecolution Evolution. It's an extruded pencil like along the lines of a Wopex but it's more flexible like the 80s style ones we're used to. But the finish of it, it's really, really nice. It's got a really nice ferrule, a really nice eraser. It's kind of flexible, which is what I like about the wopex, that it's not flexible. But.
What is this one called?
It's called the. It's called the Evolution, and it's part of their ecolution line. They don't sell it in the US I bought some from Israel. They got really, really good price on them. I think the seller only had one dozen, but I've seen some UK sellers recently with erasers without erasers, but they're definitely worth picking up. They're really pretty. The green is really nice.
This is made by Conte.
No, they're made by Bic Conte. But they marketed the short triangular ones under Conte and they're marketing these under Bic.
Okay, Okay.
I think they started making different colors. Han on Rad and Hungry had some pink ones and I think purple. And I've seen Matthias had some black ones that were really pretty. They're pretty. They're really. And I think those are my favorites so far. But, you know, they change a lot. Extra plug for the Dixon Enviro stick. Go find an Office Depot and get dozen. They're very nice. Yeah. But I think we've. We've hit like our hour or hour plus, something like that. So do you guys want to wrap it up and talk about where you can find us online?
Yeah. Yeah. So I am. I'm Andy. Andy Welfle. I am@woodclinched.com or you can find me on Twitteroodclinched or Wealthley. Whichever. I'll respond to either one. So, yeah, that's me.
My name is Tim Watson. You can read my stuff when I actually get around to writing it at www.thewritingarcenal.com. you can follow me on Twitter writingarcenal and then I am on Instagram thereriting Arsenal.
I'm Johnny Gamber. You can find me@pencilrevolution.com on Twitter pencillution and on Instagram. I'm just JohnnyGamber. But I think I should change that to something cooler. So if you have a suggestion, just drop me a line and I think that wraps it all up. And we will talk to you folks again in two weeks, hopefully, barring any sort of natural disasters and our three ends of the earth. Yes. Stay sharp.