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Transcript
Hello, this is Tim Wasem, and welcome to episode nine of the Erasable podcast. I'm joined by two gentlemen that are practical, efficient, durable, forgiving, and amazingly portable. Mr. Johnny Gamber, Mr. Andy Welfle. Hello. Hey guys.
You can put us in your pocket.
Yep, we can carry you anywhere.
We're also very safe.
Yes,
you cause very little injuries when you're put into a pocket.
My crumple zones are capped.
Yeah. It just so happens that these adjectives I use to describe my co hosts also correspond with today's subject, which we are very excited about is our first episode on the Bullet Pencil.
Woohoo.
Yes. So first of all, how are you guys doing? You doing all right?
I'm pretty good.
First question, we want to get out of the way, of course. Right off the bat, Johnny, if you'd start us out, let us know what you were writing with, what you were writing on, and what beverage is in front of you.
Well, the one I'm writing on is probably going to make you jealous because it's a write notepads, pocket notebook that has pencil revolution stamped on the front that I got to do with 19th century letters. That's what I'm running on. So. So pause for drool. My pencil is musgrave My pal 2020, like halfway sharpened. And I'm drinking something we were joking about on Twitter called the Podcaster, which consists of Wild Turkey 101, a splash of soda, and some maraschino cherry juice and ice. And it's served in a pint glass. Yeah, so that's close to old Fashioned. They were left over from Old Fashioned. They had a jar of like, juice.
Gotcha.
Put this in there. Excellent.
Delicious. Well, Andy, how about you?
Dirty cherry soda.
Oh, sorry.
So I am very boringly drinking water right now. I call this the early riser. No, I don't know. I should be drinking something that will
put me to sleep, but I call this the hydrator.
Yeah, I should have said what I was drinking yesterday, which was. What was it? It was tequila and a little bit of agave syrup and Lacroix lime sparkling water and little muddled up pineapples. But unfortunately today it is just hydrogen and oxygen together. Two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen.
They are a perfect combination.
So. And what I'm writing with, actually, I. I have in front of me both a white gel pen that they sent me from Jetpens, because I use this to write on some dark paper, because I was labeling some of my cigar boxes with these dark labels that I have that I keep pencils in. And then I also have a pencil I just bought at Target called a UBI Y O O B I. And I feel like I heard somebody talking about them not too long ago, maybe on our erasable Facebook group, which we'll talk about here in a few minutes. But I. Yeah, It's. It's. It's three bucks for 36 of them at Target, and they're surprisingly not bad for that price. And I'm writing on this gray paper that's called mind paper from a company called X17, which is German, which I'm eventually will review.
Well, I'm surprised I was the only person that has this answer. Maybe I'm just too into this episode, but I'm writing with a bullet pencil, man.
That's the right answer.
It's a vintage bullet pencil that I got in a. It was actually one of the first interactions I had with you, Andy, which is over Twitter, before we really knew each other. But I asked you, like a million pen million questions about bullet pencils, and I ended up ordering a pack of, like, six old bullet pencils, and they showed up in a box in my P.O. box, and I opened it up, it was like a cloud of cigarette smell.
Enjoy your bullet pencils.
This is my favorite one. It is really. It's a really slender one. It's really long and slender. I'd say it's close to 4 inches long when it's capped. And then it has printed on the side the 23rd Psalm in King James English. It just looks really cool. It's like a kind of an olive green, faded olive green with this ornate text on it. So it looks cool.
That's cool.
And it has a palomino golden bear on the inside.
Cool.
So that's what I'm writing with. And I'm writing in a field notes, which. It's my podcast, my dedicated podcast, field notes, which is the Red Blooded edition.
Ooh, very apt.
Yes.
I actually wrote with a bullet pencil five pages in my word notebook today. I was taking notes kind of in the field. Yes. So I was using bullet pencils. Anything you can do, I can do better.
And I am drinking a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, which is kind of my standard. And the gas station down the street from my house Dangerously started selling tall boys of it recently.
You know, I love Sierra Nevada, but I can no longer drink it. I had a problem with it once, and I can't handle the taste anymore.
I hope it never happens to me because I love it. Yeah.
Moderation, sir. Moderation.
Full of ink alright, well, let's get right into our fresh points for the week and we will start with Comrade
Johnny awesome on our Facebook group. Was it this weekend somebody mentioned the neon wopex which sort of made me like spit coffee out of my nose
to jump up and down a little bit.
I have to admit. I ordered seven dozen of them immediately.
Did you really? Yeah.
Gunther from Lexicalker sent me some of the European ones and I know Matthias likes them so I was like, I gotta get them for them and my daughter wanted some and I put some away for Henry. So I think I get like one dozen.
I have to order some more only what, $2?
It's so cheap.
Yeah, and Staples gives you free delivery if you spend 20 bucks. But if you ordered seven packs it was 21. But you got a discount down to 14. But they still give you free shipping.
What was the discount?
Hey, they're not here yet. But if they're the same color as the European ones, they're so pretty.
Yeah, I am. I'm thinking about getting ink a purple. It's cool. I'm thinking about getting a few dozen and then adding some of those ampad gold fiber notebooks to it to kind of bring it up in price a little bit because those are my favorite notepads to write on at work.
They have a little bit of tooth on them, don't they?
They do, they do. And that's good for the book decks. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, they're. They're great to write on and they as far as I can tell, only sell them at Staples and Amazon. So. Yeah. Now is there a minimum if you have it shipped to a store?
I have no idea. I didn't have the patience for that.
I'll have to go.
Look, they need to come to my house this week but I ordered them this weekend and they haven't shipped yet
so I don't know when they're coming.
Since before 4th of July. I'm happy. I don't know why that's the cutoff, but that's the cutoff to Staples. Better be here.
This is America.
I don't know if you guys are also fans of soft lead usually, but usually lately I'm finding a lot of pleasure in like a harder German HB leads and even. I just picked up some f statlers today after Matthias's recommendations. I don't know why, it's just they feel really good. They feel really good in the shelter wood and I don't know if you guys do morning pages, but they're really Good for morning pages because you don't have to stop and sharpen your pencil and they all smear. But if you have bad eyesight, they're hard to read. Sorry.
I would say I've never used a pencil consistently that's harder than hb. Really?
Some of the German ones are still nice and smooth. That hardness.
You sent me that Norris, the Staehler Norris, which I just used. And so I think I just experienced what you're talking about, but I just never, never got into it. But the one thing I thought of when I tried out the Norris because I noticed that it was harder, it's like, well, a pencil like this would be perfect for a bullet pencil because you would have. You wouldn't have to sharpen it as often. Maybe I should even go as far as using like a. Yeah, like an F or something.
Plus those. Those colors would look pretty cool coming out of a vintage pencil barrel.
That's true. Yeah, that is true.
Would really clash. And I really like John Waters kind of way.
I like that.
But for our listeners, if you're usually a soft pencil fan, it's kind of fun to go German. You get some different kinds of HB every once in a while. I actually picked up The Faber Castell Castell 9000 jumbo today in HB, which is going to be a fun experience. It weighs like three pounds.
Where did you get it?
$3?
Oh, I got it at Utrecht.
I love Utrecht, man.
I didn't pay $3. They have a discount card there now. Score.
Show off. I'll be saying that a lot in this episode, I think so. Jealous.
I wish I had a Utrecht.
Yeah.
Or a Blick or something like that.
Very small Uhtrecht. And now they've changed the sign to say Dick Blick, which is cheating because it's very small. Yeah, I love a giant one. They're so fun. Spend an hour in there.
Spend five bucks. You love a giant Dick Blick?
I didn't say
I do.
Oh, good. Satisfying.
And another thing that just came through today was questions over what constitutes a US made pencil. Because Brian from Field Notes and I talked, I guess about a year and a half ago about whether or not that pencil was still made in the usa. If the slats were made in China, because I think most of the manufacturers that buy cedar buy them from Cal Cedar. And the logs are sent to China, made into slats, and then sent back over here.
Well, and the incense cedar is grown here. And then once the slats are slatted, is it shipped back here? To like be rounded and wood clinched.
Yeah.
Okay.
So my favorite American pencil company generals, their slats are made in China, but the pencils are made here. So I mean, there. I don't know where the aluminum in the ferrule came from. It didn't necessarily come from the United
States or the rubber. I guess that's a really hard call because like, I would like to think that most, since most of it is made here, you can call it American pencil, but it still has the same carbon footprint as if you were, you know, if it was made overseas and shipped here. Yeah, because it's shipped and then shipped back.
Even the graphite in a lot of General's pencils comes from, well, Sri Lanka. They keep call, they still call it Cylon, but that's already imported. So I mean, I'm comfortable calling them an American made pencil, but I confirmed with field notes today that they're still made in America, just the slats aren't. Yeah, but I think they're nervous about saying USA made because I know Brian had mentioned once they even use like American staples because they're like really serious about this.
Yeah, well, I know Drapolone is super,
super serious about it, but so there's not going to be like a mysterious decline in quality or anything like that. They're still beautiful and fragrant and round.
Do we know where they're made or are they keeping that close to their chest?
All I know is not Generals and not Musgrave.
Okay.
A few people postulated maybe generals because they sort of have the same or a similar feel to the Cedar Point, but no dice. So it's still a mystery. Yeah, I'd like to know where because I want to go visit and steal all the fieldboats pencils.
Exactly.
I wonder if it's the same place that does their carpenter pencils or if they're just painted somewhere else, because those are pretty nice for carpet pencils.
Yeah. Wonder if we can have a collection
of all of them. I'm very happy about.
Wonder if we can, you know, like waterboard some Kudal people until they talk.
Yeah, that's a good, sensible solution.
Yeah, obviously.
Well, it's the bullet pencil episode.
We can lapse into a little bit of violence.
We have ways of making you talk.
Awesome. Another or my last fresh point is about a radio show that was on, I think last week or two weeks ago on wnpr, which is a Connecticut public radio station. And they were talking about pencils and they had as a guest Henry Petroski, who we know Wrote. Literally wrote the book on pencils. Kristen Barrett or Bray, who is the marketing director of General Pencil company and David Rees, who is like, probably a hero for all of us. And Mr. Petroski and Mr. Reese talked on the air and it was like, this is what happens when worlds collide. It was great.
That's cool.
I listened to it like three times.
You have to put that link and I'd like to get that link.
Yeah, it's in the show notes and they still have up the link for you to be able to listen to it.
I met Kristen. She's really cool.
Pencils and why pencils are awesome. Why should always use pencils and why people that use pens are actually evil and they're all going to hell.
Dorks. Things like that.
It's really cool.
Sounds very. Sounds delightful. Is it. How long is it?
Less than an hour. More than a half hour, I think. Something like that here.
49 minutes. I was afraid it was going to be like two minutes or something.
No, no. It was satisfyingly long.
It was very good.
I met Kristen when I was in. Out in the coast one time. She was. She's very cool. I had breakfast with her and Charles Berlzheimer.
Is she the one that's doing their social media stuff lately?
You know, back back then there was. They were doing zero social media, like in 2011.
They've got an Instagram account.
I know. Yeah. I think it's either her or there's somebody named Katie who works there too. I think Katie is one of the. Oh, I can't remember the family's name but from General Pencil, but I think she's one of them. So, yeah, I think it's her. Or lit up by her. Cool. Yeah.
This is their 120th anniversary, which is very exciting.
Wow, that's really cool.
Should celebrate by making an erasable pencil.
They should. They should. I think our specifications. I think you could argue that all of their pencils are erasable except some of the indelible ones. Maybe.
Well played.
Maybe they'll make one with a clip just for us.
That would be cool.
Include a cap. Yes.
We should have one of them on the show sometime.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah.
So that's all I have. I don't know. Who wants to go next?
I can go. So first thing I was going to mention is we started a Facebook group and it is so much fun. This is like one of my favorite things in the morning is to go and just see what people have posted on there. So we kind of got the inspiration from the Field Nuts Facebook group, which I think we've all mentioned before, is one of our kind of favorite things. And yeah, we're up to 63 members in our erasable group. It is if you want to go and become a member, I can tell you that is on Facebook. So you are giving them all of your information and you are taking part in whatever social experiment they're running. But if you want to, if you go to facebook.com groups erasable, you can request to join there. And it's a request for an invite just because. Well, A, to make it seem more exclusive that we'll let you in regardless. But. But B, just because it's private so other people can't just kind of hone in on what we're talking about. It's a safe space to talk about your pencil questions.
Yeah. So if you post something, it's not gonna show up on your timeline.
Yep. But yeah, we've had some great photos so far. We've had some great kind of like post, podcast discussion, things like that.
Even like people sharing some pretty great stories.
Absolutely.
Like what's going on and what pencils are using and they're going on trips.
Yeah.
Posting pictures of their field notes to show how they use them. Oh, and by the way, make sure that you put groups into that address.
Yes. Yep.
Because if you don't, you get some like 15 year old kid.
We'll get him. We'll get him.
Make sure facebook.com groups erasable and then request to join and we will think about it for about a split second and then allow you in.
And. And thank you, Johnny, for inviting to my father. Oh, somebody named Rick wellfully asked to join and I, I guess I didn't see it in time. And it said added by Johnny. I was like, thanks. No, no, I'm not saying anything there. I wouldn't say to my. My dad's face. All right, so I also this week I wrote a guest post on the cramped, which we've talked about before, and that's that. That blog by Patrick Roan from the Minimal Mac, who started kind of an Analog. Analog blog. And it was just kind of my usual apologetics for why you should use pencils instead of pens or just why you should use pencils in general, by the way. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's a. It was a lot of fun to write and I borrowed from our first episode and also from a post I wrote on a fountain pen blog, but it was a lot of fun to write for. And yeah, Patrick's a great editor and I had some interesting discussions resulting from that. So check that out. The link is in show notes. And by the way, if you want to see show notes or listen to this episode on the website, go to Erasable Us nine and that will be the ninth episode. So I think I talked about this before, but July is going to be paver month on Woodclinched. I just have a whole bunch of paper samples that I need to. Need to sit down and review. So I'm going to do that. My. The first post that's going up tomorrow or if you're listening to this on Tuesday, the first today. And it's going to be for the gallery leather Oporto journal, which is great. And somebody stole my thunder. And that would be. I think. I think we must all be on the same review circuit.
But.
Tim, did you get an email from the gallery leather guy?
I didn't.
Okay.
Thanks for rubbing it in. No problem. No, I didn't.
I wonder how he. Okay.
I'm not a big time blogger like you guys. Well, just riding some coattails.
That's right. Well, it's funny that we. We must have picked out the same. The same thing. Johnny. Mine is orange and yours is that cream color. But yeah, that appealed to me right away. So anyway, and what's interesting is you arrived at some different conclusions than I did. So that'll be fun to see.
Oh, good.
Yeah, I don't know what I'm gonna
do with mine because I don't use leather notebook.
Yeah, I wondered about that before I did that. I was thinking about when I was writing about how nice the weather was. I was like, yeah, Johnny's not a leather guy. But I saw that you got that. I was scandalized.
It smells good.
Yeah.
Yeah, I hate that it smells good.
I definitely. I have a past with gallery leather. I used to. Before I used my iPhone as my calendar. I had all sorts of like, cool gallery leather planners. They had the kind of. The best one you could. I could find. And I had this whole, like, kind of painstaking ritual when it came to picking one out every year. So I talk about that in the post a little bit. We have links to both Johnny's and my reviews in show notes. We. I also got an interesting product which will definitely be part of my review. A listener from Germany. What is his name? It is Thorsten von Plutho Keffler, Something like that. I'm super, super butchering it, I'm sure. But it's. It's from a company called X17 and is a. It's a little. It's something called the Sloop S L O O P. And it's an alligator clip that has a, like a leather strap around it. And you put it on the outside of your. Of your notebook, and the leather strap is just a little bit longer than the. The alligator clip. And you can slip a pencil in there. And then when you kind of pinch. You pinch this, the clip out, you can slip the pencil in and then it kind of tightens a little bit. Tightens the pencil in there when you, when you release the tension. And it came with this very strange little notebook that I am kind of digging that has something called mind paper in it, which is just like little loose leaf, A7 like heavy note cards. And they are in a, like a medium gray color. So you can. Hence why I was writing with that white gel pen. You can write with a pencil on it and they show up just fine. But it really, really stands out if you use that white pencil or white gel pen. So I'm not quite sure what one does with this yet, but I'll be playing around with it to see if I can figure that out.
This is a pretty funny thing just happened right in the last 10 seconds as you're talking about that. I was checking something on the computer and saw that an email had popped up on my writing arsenal email address. And it's from someone named Thorsten. And I was like, oh, yeah. And I open it up and it says, greetings, dear. I apologize if my message do not suit your current status. My name is Thorsten Haas and it is a total scam. I write to seek your indulgence and assistance in transferring this fund to your country through legal means, as
in order to get this notebook, I had to like, give my bank account number $5 million. Yeah, I think it's legit.
I promise to give. Did he promise to give you 30% of the total amount he did of the notebook?
Yeah. This guy's a real life guy. This guy is. I really love his Twitter name. It's 3.5x5/5. So it's like 3 and a half by 5 and a half is his Twitter name. Yeah, he's. He's pretty cool. But that's. That's funny. We have our own Thorstens.
Yeah, right.
My.
Yours gave you that. Mine's gonna give me like a million and a half dollars or something like that. That's funny.
Yeah. So I also. We could probably save this for another day, but I. I had somebody Send me a nano dia. Those Mitsubishi pens that have like, whatever, like gimmicky diamond stuff in the lead or whatever. Have you guys used these? You can get them on Jetpens.
I have not.
No.
I'll put a link in. Show notes to the Jetpens.
They look fun.
Product page. Yeah, it's a nano dia and it allegedly has little pieces of like diamond dust or something kind of embedded into the graphite to make it harder yet be blacker because this is a 2B and it's super black but it's like maybe a little bit harder than another 2B but it's, it's. Yeah, I, I'm not a huge fan of it, but it's cool looking.
Oh, cool looking.
Yeah. I'll have to do a review, but I think. Oh man, I just read one not too long ago. Somebody reviewed it. I'll have to check that out.
Last but not least, it was posted on our Facebook group.
That's right. That's right. That's cool. I don't know how to link to a Facebook group post. Well, obviously I can't because it's, it's private, so never mind.
It's all secret, baby. Secret.
Yeah. What next? Oh yeah. So the last thing I was going to mention before we, we get off to, to Tim's Fresh Points is I have a new secret source of old pencils. And it's, it's. I guess it's not so much a secret because I'm gonna tell you about her now, but a friend of my mother's is a realtor and she does estate sales and I was talking to her not too long ago and we were talking about pencils as inevitably comes up and she goes, you know, you know, whenever we go through somebody's drawer, like a little lady who lived in the house for 50 years and there's some pencils, usually we just throw those away because they don't have any monetary value. Just like no. So she saved a whole bunch for me and brought, brought them, brought them over and they're super cool. There's. I have a box of general pencil company pencils called Mercedes pencils and I'm gonna do a whole post on these. I don't really know how old they are. Brand name pencils doesn't have a year on it. But so I have, I have these really cool Mercedes pencils and I also have a, a box of a dozen Eberhard Faber Mongol pencils from. Man, this thing has got to be from the 50s or 60s or even like the 40s. I have to figure this out. But what's interesting about them are they are custom engraved. It's from the general millwork supply company in Binghamton. Wherever the heck.
What number are they?
They are actually. I don't know. It does not say.
Oh, it just says Mongol.
Yeah, well, it doesn't even say that. There they come. They came in a Mongol box. So I guess maybe I shouldn't assume they're Mongol. But they look like they could be. And they're in really rough shape. Like the. I'll send some to you guys. But they're like the paint is kind of gross and like maybe it's been a little bit wet, but I guess they're probably not that old. When did they start doing the 10 digit phone numbers? Was that probably like the 60s or the 70s?
Oh goodness. I have no idea.
I have no idea.
Okay. I guess they have 10 digit phone numbers on there. So whenever that happened, it's from then. But they. Yeah, they're really cool looking and they would be the worst thing ever to write with because they're just kind of banged up. But they're neat. And then she included like some oval carpenter pencils, like ovular ones. And then she brought this really ghastly but so much fun turtle pencil holder which I think I.
This thing's fantastic.
Yeah, I'll post a picture in the show notes, but it's like I think that somewhere Mike Dudek is crying right now because this is what I'm using as a pencil holder.
It's sort of nightmare inducing. Like if you look at it too long, you look him in the. Look them in the eyes. It's not like Mike, if you, if
you send me one of your fancy pencil holders, I will send you this turtle. It's totally not worth it.
But
yeah, so it's, it's a lot of fun. So right now I have a bunch of just pencils sticking out of it. It looks like somebody just stabbed this poor turtle.
Exactly. It's really morbid.
Kill me.
Kill me. It's like making one of a human head.
Yeah, just sticking, sticking pencils up. So that's my fresh notes. How about you, Tim?
I just got a couple or just a few. First off, I got some really great emails this week from some listeners, Facebook group members. That was really, really nice because they just writing just to relate about pencils and about my interest and they also some people have offered to send me some really neat stuff.
See, you're a big time blogger.
No. Yeah, whatever. See it's because I'm on this, that's why. An illusion. But I got emails, several emails, especially the ones I wanted to point out was John and Hans. Who? Hans, we talked about last week.
Dr. Hans. Yeah, yeah.
And he is, he was telling me an email that he. He uses a small piece of brass tubing and he actually would like cut it and then he has a cork fitted to it and he uses that to carry a pencil in his pocket.
That's cool.
Which is pretty cool. Kind of like makes it himself. But he's. He had offered to send me one of those. And then John, he actually wrote to me to say I am also a huge John Steinbeck fan. Which that was first off, if that would have been the whole email, I would have been like, oh, that's really cool that he kind of wanted to mention that and talk about it. But then he went on, sort of told the story. He said, I'm also a fan of John Steinbeck. In the early 90s, I was curious about the Mongols written about in Journal of a Novel, which is the book that I mentioned in the last issue or last episode. Said they were not sold in stationery stores for some reason, but back then they could order them. I was put in touch with the Faber Castell rep and he sent me a bunch gratis. I'll send you some as I have more than I will use. Round and hex. And he said that for some reason the hex says Eberhard Faber and the round ones say Faber Castell. Which is really interesting. Yeah. So that was just really, really cool to hear from him and know that we share this interest in John Steinbeck. And then he's really just doing an awesome thing by letting me try this because I. I had mentioned on the podcast that I couldn't find those pencils. I really just wanted to try out, you know, one or two just to be in solidarity with Mr. Steinbeck.
That's cool.
Yeah. I also got a new pencil this week thanks to a gift card allowed me to get these. I got a dozen Mitsubishi Hyuni pencils. The first time I've ever written with them. Held them, used them. I ordered a pack of HB and as tends to happen with these higher end pencils with certain ones, I just totally was smitten with it and fell in love with it. And I've been using it all week. And just like I remember Johnny's post when he reviewed them because I'd read that long time ago he had mentioned how fragrant they were and How. How amazing they smelled. And I sent Johnny a text and said, hey, I got some hyunies. They just came in and then first thing you said was and fragrant. They're fragrant. It is so true. These pencils, if I. If I sharpened all 12 of them and sat them on my desk, my whole office would probably smell like cedar. Which now that I say that, I'm going to do it as soon as this episode's over, because I want to smell that there's an amazing pencil. Makes me want to get more. Makes me want to try some different grades.
These are the $28 a dozen ones that you can get on Jetpens.
Yes. Well, yes. Yeah. I got mine on Amazon because I was at. My gift card was for. And they're a little cheaper on Amazon, but they don't have as many grades. Jetpens has a lot more options, which is because I almost ordered single ones from there for a while. And I probably will for some of those other grades. But I got mine on Amazon. One thing sort of reminded me because I couldn't help compare it to some of the other pencils I use that don't have ferrules or erasers, especially the drawing type pencils. And as much as I love how it writes, I think I tend to have a little trouble writing with pencils that don't have the eraser. I don't know if it's a weight thing or something.
I definitely have that. I definitely think it feels a lot lighter weight and not quite as balanced. Just because I'm used to writing with eraser pencils.
Yeah. So this is a total nitpicky thing. And I'm still going to use these all the time and I still love it. But the, like the mono. Mono 100, the high uni, even the palomino. I've got some palomino bees that don't have the eraser on the end. I love them to death. I'll use them all the time, but there's just something that I don't pick them up as quickly as I'll pick up a 602. You know, just because something just feels. Yeah, I'm all about the. The weight of it. And if it just feels off, then I tend not to grab it as quickly.
And honestly, doesn't that erase in the end just kind of make it a little bit more friendly and approachable?
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
You want to, like, take it out for a drink and just chat with
it, show it a good time
so that I'm excited about. That will be one of my next reviews which I'm kind of getting back on the. On a roll with posting and reviewing. And I just posted a review of the Monteverde One Touch Tool, which both of you I know have. Have also posted reviews of this pencil. And I had a good time writing that. And that was sent to me and all of us by Pen Chalet, which is a great site and is really generous of them and really can't thank them enough for sending this pencil because it was just really, really nice. I can't remember I should have talked to you about this before we started recording. But I can't remember how much you all talked about it on the show or if you were waiting. I didn't know how much you had said.
But we, I talked about it maybe a tiny bit, I think maybe. Yeah, we were kind of waiting till we all. We all discussed it. I haven't read your review yet, but.
And that's right.
Yeah.
Because I remember talking about what we had used some of the other features for. And yeah, one other thing that I thought of, I think I mentioned on the show, now that I think about it, that I fixed my screen door using the screwdriver on the end of it. One other thing that this is awesome for is changing the blades on sharpeners. It's the perfect size.
It's ironic because you can't. You don't use the pencil with the sharpener. Exactly. Actually, I have my little kum wedge in front of me and I'm doing that right now. And it. Yeah, yeah, it works. It works great for that.
Yeah. But I. I really love this thing as far as mechanical pencils go. And one thing I really like about it, and I read about this in the review, is that it's kind of. Kind of heavy, which you both know, it's a heavy pencil. I haven't read either of yours yet because I was waiting until I finished mine. So I'll read those. And you might have written about this, but it's heavy. So when you pick it up, it's kind of off putting initially, but then you realize that it's actually perfect. At least it was for me because I was tempted to go out and buy B or 2B lead to put in.
Definitely feels like a piece of hardware.
Yeah. But so the one great thing is that I stuck with HB and because of that weight. Yeah, it feels like a tool, something you have in your toolbox. You don't actually have to do a lot of the pressing down and so an HB ends up writing a nice dark line and you're not wearing on your wrist because you have to push down the weight. Kind of works with you. It's almost like a fountain pen where you just kind of hold on and write, which is really nice. And it has the really sharp hexagonal shape that you can rotate. So I just. Yeah, I really like it. And I've been keeping it in my. My Brass Town. Notco Brasstown, which we should make a shout out to our friends over at Knotco. Brad and Jeff opening their store. Their web store.
Absolutely.
It.
It's a huge accomplishment.
Yeah, they're really amazing products. I couldn't be happier with ours. My. My wife uses. Now I'm gonna. Of course, I'm gonna forget the name, but the one that has the 3.3pen holster on the left, and then it holds the field.
High Tower. Hightower.
So she uses the Hightower and I use the Brass Town. And it is insane how much stuff I fit into that Brass Town.
I love my. My Hightower.
Yeah, My Brass Town. I carry it everywhere I go in my bag, and I. I can fit. Right now I have, I think, like 12. Yeah, it's like 11 or 12 pencils in the base of it with a sharpener and a long pentel click eraser and some extra caps and stuff. And then in the actual rollout, I have, I think, nine pens, because some of them skinnier pens, you can both. You can fit in next to each other. It's just unbelievable how much stuff I can fit into that. And then it rolls up so nicely, and it slides right into my bag. Just incredible. So everybody should go check out Knotco.com and see some of their new products, which are really, really neat, really tempting. I really want to get one of the. Yeah, they're new to hold their dot dash note cards they're selling. So it holds note cards, then has a sheath for. You know, you probably fit a couple pencils in there or a pen. That's the next thing I'm going for.
They've really done it upright.
Like.
They have that. You know, that special kind of knock partnership with the clicky post with Mike Dudek's really cool thing. Yeah, that thing is. Told those idea cards.
The idea doc.
Yeah, I need to. We should. We need. I don't know why we haven't had Brad on the show yet. We need to have him come on. Maybe explain some of how this works.
He. He let out a little feel of how much he's loving on pencils on the last episode. Maybe it was a couple episodes ago, or he just said that he's totally on board. It was really made me happy with woodcase pencil.
Absolutely.
But that's it for my fresh points.
Okay.
And I was thinking, I think before we get into our topic today, which is bullet pencils, we'll quickly go through and give the winners to our giveaway, our word notebooks.
Well, and actually, before we do this, I had a. Oh, no problem. We had a question that came in actually, just this morning on Twitter, and I figured I was kind of starting to answer it, and I was like, you know what? Why don't we discuss this on the show? So a guy named Brandon at Uva W A H O O uvahoo01 uva wahoo.
Like University of Virginia, I think. I think that's right.
But okay.
I could be totally wrong, though, because I'm not really, like, I'm a college sports guy.
I'd go with that. So he asks.
I'm correct.
Gotcha.
I looked it up.
He asked a general pencil question. Any advice for preventing graphite transfer between pages when writing a notebook? I find that I never use pencils in notebooks because it ends up a mess. And I asked him kind of what he generally uses to write in, and he says he usually uses the Blackwing 602 or the Musgrave test scoring pencil. And he wants to be clear and say that when he writes on a page notebook, he flips the page over to write on the other side and transfers some graphite from the opposite page. So there's a lot of quote unquote crosstalk on finished pages, which I think is a really good way to describe that. So, yeah, I really couldn't think of a super good answer. But, Johnny, I know you said you had a solution for this. I was actually.
I asked the same question of you guys earlier this week, didn't. I was asking you about Rhodia, about how, like.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Some trouble with that. So I've kind of. I'm eager to hear Johnny's answer, too, because I. I've had some of the same issues.
Yeah, well, it's. It's not an elegant solution, but it works really well. I have some Maryland bicycle maps. They're, you know, basically like a road map, the same type of paper. So I'm really crazy about this in my field notes because there's something about their paper that smears like crazy or. I mean, I call it ghosting, but I think that means something else with Ink. But I cut a piece of the map to fit exactly into the page and then just kind of stick that in there. And I used to use a piece of notebook paper, and every time it had field notes, it would be disgusting. I put it in the recycle bin. But I've been using the same piece of a map for like 10 months. And it's, you know, new field notes every week or 10 days. And it's working really, really well. And I don't know what's in their paper, but it prevents the transfer. You just have to flip it between the two pages that you're using whenever you use it. But in something like a field notes that doesn't have a bookmark, it sort of helps out with that lost feature.
I would really cool idea.
I would love to see a picture of that, Johnny.
Yeah, my wife actually saw it recently. She's like, where'd you get that piece of a map? Like, I cut it.
I made it. Your man made it myself. Yeah, I would love to see a picture of that because I bet it looks super cool.
Yeah, it took a long time to cut it, like, perfectly because if it's off, it slides and it makes me crazy. But it's getting a little worn out. I might need to make a new one. If I do, I'll make you guys one.
This is only semi related, but I finished a box of Blackwing 602s this week. And I had a similar experience with cutting that I cut. I made the best bookmark ever out of the front of a box of 602s.
Oh, cool.
Which took me forever to cut it because I had to have it, of course, perfectly square. It's like all anal about that, but made a killer bookmark. But I like, that was a total change of subject, but I really like that idea and I'm probably gonna steal it. I got some old Indiana maps that I never use anymore, so I can.
Oh, Indiana.
They look cool sticking out of a notebook.
Oh, Indiana.
Yeah. Be sure to make one to center Fort Wayne on one. And you can. You can use that to blot to your heart's content.
Yeah, I'll get. I'll have it spanned from Munster, Indiana to Fort Wayne.
I'm a little, little bit pissed at Indiana right now.
So.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, we. Well, we won't go into politics on the show, but yeah, we got same sex marriage in Indiana. And they just ripped it. Ripped it away in two days. So this is as far as I'll say right now about good old Indiana. Okay, should we talk about giveaway winners?
That sounds great. Woohoo. So we have five winners and each winner is going to get a three pack of Word notebooks, which I am still totally digging.
Mine.
I don't know about you guys, but I love, love it.
I'm loving mine a lot.
It's a really nice, it's just really nice for pencils. I mean we talked about this before but like Johnny said that it's, it's not as smooth, has field notes paper, so you get a little more with that texture. It just really holds on to the graphite really well. I really, really loving it. But we had five winners we picked at random from all of our entries. And to ender, you had to give us some story about your pencil hero because that was what we talked about in the last episode. And our first winner is Brody McDonald. Brody MacDonald. His comment, he said that Stephen Sondheim was his pencil heroes. And I'm pretty sure he's one of the Blackwing 602 people, like original 602 users who's become really well known that he's, he's actually wrote about it in some, I don't know, it was an autobiography or something like that.
But he said something like that.
Yeah, that they were good. He actually mentioned the new one too. Was interesting. He said there's a new one coming out or that's out.
And actually when I worked there, he really like it. He ordered some on the website and we, we sent it to him along with a nice little note. So.
Oh, that's good.
So I have Stevenson Sondheim's address. No, I don't, I don't have access to that anymore. I actually was going to mention him. Yeah, let's do show up. I was actually going to mention him as my. The second time we did pencil heroes as my pencil heroes, so.
Oh yes. Dang it.
Brody is still my guy.
Yeah. Still use it and talk about him.
Yeah, absolutely.
Tell something about him.
Yeah.
Impressive, dude. Our second winner is Liz R. And her. She told a story goes like this. My pencil hero is my first grade teacher, Mrs. Crawford. She taught me the value of good handwriting and legible printing. She presented us with brand new yellow pencils with perfect little erasers at the top. She showed us how to hold the pencil and how to gently move the pencil tip across the paper so as not to tear it. I was so proud to be important enough and old enough to be given a brand new pencil. I was sad when I saw how the lead wore down. But then Mrs. Crawford introduced me to the pencil sharpener, the kind that was hand cranked and bolted to the wall. It was like magic. Okay, so I'm getting a little corny, but I was a six year old newly introduced to pencils. All caps pencils. That was an awesome, awesome response.
That's a great story.
No bearing on her winning, we promise, but really good entry. And she is our second winner. Our third winner is Bernadine, which I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Believe I am, but. And Bernadine wrote, my pencil hero would be my grandpa. He always used a mechanical drafting pencil. I don't remember the brand. He used to use one of his in elementary school. Or I. Sorry, I used to use one of his in elementary school, then stopped using pencils and didn't really get into brands until I started listening to the Pen Addict and your podcast. Woot.
Yeah, there was actually a lot of entries where the grandfather was kind of the pencil hero, which I think is really interesting. I bet there's a lot of like drafting pencils and carpenter pencils and bullet pencils and things like that in there.
And Bernadine has actually given me an aha moment that my. My grandfather. My grandfather worked for American Steel in Chicago, and I remember him always having really fancy drafting pencils that I was always really wanting to play with, but I never got to. And I don't know what happened to him, so I need to call him up after the show and find out where those went.
But yeah.
All right. Our fourth winner is Rachel. And Rachel said, you guys are my pencil heroes. Aww.
And I actually responded to her on the. In the comment thread and I was like, aw, shucks. And posted a little gif. And I swear that her answer had no bearing on her winning.
Exactly.
Yeah, same here.
Very flattering, makes me very happy. But it's good to be a hero. Feels good to be a hero.
We're the hero that this podcast deserves, or no needs, but doesn't deserve.
That's what we were expecting all of you to say in your entry.
Good job, everybody.
And our last winner, winner number five is Jim Wiley. He said. My grandfather, another grandfather, David L. Batson, who lost his small town newspaper in the Depression and remained at the paper as a writer, printer, linotype operator, and jack of all trades for the remainder of his working life. As a small boy on visits, Grandpa would reach into the buffet in the dining room whenever I was bored and retrieved pens, pencils, paper, and pads. Mostly that he made up himself and set me to writing and drawing, which is a really cool little vignette about his grandfather. So, again, if you are Brody McDonald, Liz R. Bernadine, Rachel, or Jim Wylie, if those were your entries and you were picked to win, please get in touch with us via our website at Erasable Us. Or if you follow us on Twitter, you can get in touch with us that way. But we need to have your address so that we can send you your
Word notebooks and we'll reach out. We have email addresses from the comments from everybody, so, yeah, we can. And, Johnny, do you have the word notebooks, or are they sending them from Word?
I have them in my dining room.
Okay.
And I have envelopes. And I live a block from the post office, so they're sweet.
Soon.
Cool.
All right, well, let's get to our main topic. We're been talking for a while already. This is. Yeah. Got a lot to talk about still. This week, we are talking about bullet pencils, which I'm really personally surprised that we made it this far without talking about them very much. I figured they would have been an early topic, but I'm really happy to be talking about them because I personally don't know a whole lot about them. I have some. I use them. But I'd like to know more, and I'd like to just talk about them. So first thing we're going to talk about is we want to talk about kind of the roots of bullet pencilry, as it's put in our show notes. The roots of bullet pencilry, where they come from, where they were most commonly found. Andy, you want to get us started on this?
Absolutely.
Because you're kind of our. I feel like you're our resident expert.
Well, I actually wrote a post In September of 2013, something like that, and I. I had sort of been given a gifted. A bunch of bullet pencils from a friend of mine whose grandparents died. And they were cleaning out the farmhouse where they. Where they lived in Illinois. And she just gave me a bunch of these really cool pencils. And I. I've known about them for. For years before. Like, my mother and I used to like to go antique shopping. And I've always seen them, but I've never really. I've always kind of purposely stayed away from them because I knew it was kind of a whole thing unto itself. I just didn't want to just have one more thing to get into. But I finally. I was given these, and I was like, you know what? These are super cool. I'm gonna jump in. So. So I Posted this thing and in my research I just typed in bullet pencils. And one of the very first things that popped up was Johnny's interview with Aaron Draplin. And we have links to both to that in two parts on in show notes. But Draplin has a crapload of bullet pencils. He, he thrifts all around the nation. So he, he's just collected a load of these and they're super neat. So I, so I'll just kind of do this as an intro and then give some background about it. So just a, just a couple months later, Aaron Draplin actually came to Fort Wayne and I talked with him a little bit more about it and I mentioned my blog post and he said he read it, which made me all giggly like a girl, like a, like a little girl. And I was, it was super cool. So we'll talk more about that in a minute. But so when I think of a bullet pencil, mostly I think of those really cool kind of like mid century metal casings that's kind of the size of like a 3006 casing with maybe like the name of a stockyard or an agriculture company or a distributor or something like that around the barrel. And then I got one of those or a monastery. There's also a lot of like really, really neat tourism ones. Like neat little halftone screening of like you know, Niagara Falls or San Francisco or something like that. There's one from Santa Claus, Indiana, which is really, really neat. And I need to figure out how to get my hands on. But anyhow, so essentially what it is is it's, it's a, like a bullet casing. It looks like a bullet casing. There's a ferrule and eraser at one end and then there's a little, there's a small like golf pencil sized pencil stuck in a little metal nub on the other end. And you can actually kind of turn the round and stick it inside and only the little nub and the casing sticks out. Or you can pull that out and pop it in backwards and you have a pencil.
So I was just gonna say for any of our listeners who haven't used a bullet pencil or seen one, but are maybe pen people, if you have seen a Fisher space pen. Yes, the small Fisher space pen. The way that it pulls out and then you kind of, you know, you turn it around and then reattach them together and it makes a full size pen. It's basically the same idea, same theory.
Yeah.
As a bullet pencil, side by side, they Kind of function in the same way as far as like how they do their little transformer thing.
Yep. So they, you know, they were, they were useful for mostly like farmers in the field, you know, to kind of go along with your, your like legit field notebook. You would just kind of cap that and put it in your pocket to protect against the point. They were super cheap. At some point, from maybe the 30s through the 60s, like, everybody slapped their name of the business on one of these and sold them. You could buy these, get the corner market. You could, you could get them in gift shops. They were all over the place. And sometime, and I'm not quite sure to pinpoint when, they just, they sort of disappeared. A friend of mine who makes her business selling promotional. She puts logos on things, mugs, pencils, pens, etc. I asked her about it and she said she was actually trying to find one a while ago and she could not find a reliable distributor. She sent me some links of things that had since closed down, but they just stopped existing. And we'll talk about some actual current ones. But one of the best, best and kind of, I think that around the same time, not just me, but a lot of people started getting kind of seriously interested in bullet pencils. Not too long after that, a great blog called the Jungle is Neutral posted the best history of bullet pencils that I've ever seen. Like, he, he, he did research that I couldn't or didn't have the time to do. It's. I'll have the link in Show Notes, but the website is the Jungle is Neutral, which is a Rudyard Kipling quote. So I like, rather than just kind of read this out loud, I'll kind of go through it. Bullet pencils kind of originated in the late 1890s with Britain's various colonial adventures in Africa, in Sudan and South Africa. When they were moving in or maybe moving out. I can't remember when they stopped their colonization there, but they were commemorative battle souvenirs. So people would go and they would pick over the battlefield and pick up these bullet casings and then take them back and, you know, kind of fashion a little cap and put a pencil in there. And they would, they would sell these. They would sell these to commemorate the battle and kind of stamp the side of them. So they started off their life as kind of a morbid kind of a thing because these were bullets that were actually shot out of guns. So they came back, they were just really well known. In 1914, Princess Mary of the United Kingdom of Great Britain made One for every man, quote unquote, who wore the king's uniform. So as a Christmas gift she sent, she sent this with some tobacco, some cigarettes, Christmas card and envelope, a photograph of Princess Mary and a bullet pencil. And yeah, so here you go guys.
Here's a picture.
Yeah, and they have a picture of one of these kits. It's really, really neat. So yeah, you can still find these. So kind of. In the 1930s, trinket manufacturers from the US sold hundreds of thousands of bullet style pencils that were made from brass or aluminum, but were no longer actually made from bullet casings. They just kind of took the shape of them. So this kind of came back into fashion. So in the 1950s and 60s they kind of started to die out. He really doesn't have a good attribution for why he thinks it died out. I think he didn't want to make any opinions, but it could have something to do with mechanical pencils kind of becoming a thing and becoming cheaper. The mechanism, you know, that not too long after that is when plastic started becoming more of a thing and you could, you actually started finding like, you know, kind of predecessors to the bicmatic just like old, you know, clicking your BIC kind of kind of pencils so that really, that really came into, into play a little bit more. And, and nowadays I don't know if I should move on and kind of talk about like what you can find nowadays or if I should linger kind of on some of the stuff you could find. Do you guys have any, any thoughts on that?
Well, it would be, it'd be kind of interesting. Just talk about like where you can get the things that are here now.
Yeah, where you can get like currently
made bullet pencils or vintage ones.
Oh, vintage.
Since you talked about kind of the past. The past of them.
Well, ebay is kind of the source where I get mine. If you have a really special one that you want, like I have a saved ebay search for anything that says bullet pencil Indiana. And so probably a couple times a week, every once in a while I get a little notification and generally it's from somewhere that I don't really want something from. But I found a couple Fort Wayne bullet pencils that way, including one that I have a picture of at the link where I compare some of some current bullet pencils. And it's wonderful. I just love this pencil so much. So ebay is a good one. You can expect to pay anywhere from like 10 to $30 for one. I probably wouldn't pay 30, but 20 not too bad.
We should. We should also point out, I mean, which you had mentioned, that these things were everywhere, like.
Oh, yeah.
Really ubiquitous. They were cheap.
Yeah. So.
And this is my experience when I was looking for my first bullet pencils on ebay pretty often, and this is even a good idea is because you don't know, if you buy one bullet pencil from somebody on ebay, like a vintage one, it's gonna. Who knows what kind of shape it's gonna be in. So one good method is that you can go on and buy them in semi bulk.
Yeah.
Buy them in maybe a group of three or up to a dozen or something, and you'll get a deal. Because they'll just want to get rid of all of them.
Yeah. Just search for bullet pencil lot.
Yeah, yeah. I. I ended up ordering and I got seven bullet pencils and I paid, I don't know, nine bucks, ten bucks.
Yeah.
Because it was in this group, because it was obviously from somebody who just wanted to get rid of them. And so when they showed up, I immediately went through, started playing with them, putting other pencils into them. And there were basically, there were three that I could use comfortably that weren't just beat to death. And then the other ones I just sort of set aside.
Yeah, it's much cheaper like that. Also, if you're somebody who really likes estate sales, you can find treasures in, you know, little old ladies who lived in houses for 60 years, like in old desk drawers. And generally, like as I was talking about earlier, they just want to get rid of all that stuff. So you can find stuff there. You can. You can go to antique stores and flea markets and kind of find them among the cases of cuffs, cufflinks, and pocket knives.
Exactly. They'll usually be overpriced at antique stores. Yeah, I've noticed.
Yeah.
There was one at a antique store here in Tennessee that I saw it and just jumped on it. It was a political advertisement for some campaign.
That's cool.
They're trying to get like 12 bucks for it, and it was just a piece of junk. Yeah, we should. Also, we definitely need to mention the refurbished wood pencils from Huckleberry Woodchuck.
Absolutely.
Because these things are beautiful. Which we'll get to him and his operations later. But Huckleberry Woodchuck, it's an Etsy store he has, and you actually need to search for it, I believe. Huckleberry Woodchuck, one word. Don't put the space in the middle. Makes it easier to find. If you Google that, we'll put a Link to it in the show notes how you can get to his shop. But what J at Huckleberry Woodchuck does is he takes these old vintage ones and then he cleans them up really nicely. He puts an actual functioning eraser. Because a lot of these old vintage ones aren't going to have useful erasers because they've been around for the 30 years and they've dried up. So. Yeah, so he'll put. He'll extract the old eraser and actually get a nice new, fresh, young eraser there in the top. And then every pencil you get. Well, I think it depends or I don't know if you can choose, but they come with either a Musgrave Testing 100 or Blackwing 602. Palomino Blackwing 602. He puts quality pencils in them too, which is all awesome. And you can buy refills from him. And at some point you can expect to see an erasable podcast refill pack.
That's very exciting.
Very excited about that. He had us pick some of our favorite refills that'll come up at some point where you can actually get a refill pack for your bullet pencils that contain some of our. Three of our. Three of us.
Our favorite pencils curated by the Eraserheads.
Yes.
So, yeah, those are, those are some of the places you can get. Get those cool kind of old bullet pencils. I've. I've taken a couple of mine and just using my little Dremel and a little like rotating sander with like a fine grit, I've just sanded the kind of the oxidized, hardened outer layer of the eraser off and it's, you know, brand new underneath. It's not the best eraser you've ever used, but, you know, you can really get to it. So that's, that's a good way of doing it. You can kind of buff up the. If you just kind of want to try it yourself, you can, you can buff up the, the brass yourself. The Jungle is neutral actually has a. He actually did that himself and he, he just kind of stripped down and refurbished a bullet pencil. And he, he's very minimal. He doesn't like the, the advertising kitschy stuff on it, which is actually one of my favorite parts. So he just kind of strips all that stuff off. But I, yeah, but that's, that's really cool. You can buy current bullet pencils. They're the kind of. The most notable example is the. Is made by Midori M I D O R I they have, like a whole series of stationary and traveler notebooks
and stuff of journal fame. Yes, Midori Journal.
Yep, they.
Midori notebook.
Yeah, you can buy those at Jetpens. I'll have a link. I. I mean, I. I use. I carry mine with me everywhere, all the time, and I actually use mine pretty heavily. Today I was in a meeting kind of out in the field, out on a farm, actually, and had my word notebook out and a scribbly notes in it with that, and it worked great. But it's $21, I believe, and it's. It's made of brass. It's stamped brass, but it's. It's fairly lightweight. And the thing about Midori is they. The pencil they have in there is really excellent, but they use kind of a proprietary circumference, so you have to buy their refills, which is kind of a big thumbs down. But, I mean, I guess you could probably find a pencil, but it's not a standard pencil. Just won't fit in there. And then, you know, it's. It's good quality, but it's not probably what everybody would be looking for.
Is it more. Is the refill more narrow than, like, a standard pencil?
I believe it's a little. Oh, man. I left mine upstairs. I believe it's a little thicker. Okay. Yeah, so I think it'd be harder to kind of like, shave one down to put in there.
But it's.
It's a round. It's a round pencil, which, you know, I generally. I prefer hex pencils, but it's rounder. And then it has. It's a natural wood grain, which it's. It's beautiful. Like, it writes really well and it's. I think you'll like it, Tim.
Yeah, I'm salivating right now.
Tim just ordered one.
I'm actually on Jetpens right now, putting one in my cart. I'm not even joking.
Be sure. Be sure to order. Be sure to order the refill pack just to come with it, too. Yeah. So, yeah, Jetpens has it, and they sell refill packs for pretty cheap. It's. I mean, it's great. I'm really, really pleased with mine, actually. On ebay, you can also get these. They're called blank Umpire pencils, and they are. Oh, man, they're so crappy. Guys don't ever get these. I have a review on my blog kind of comparing the two, the Midori and the umpire pencils. And it's a little plastic. Little plastic tube that they just kind of cut off and they stuck an eraser at one end. And they have the cheapest, crappiest pencil you'll ever find with a plastic made to look like metal. Like a plastic. The end on it. And when you put it in the pencil, it falls out. It doesn't fit properly in the tube. So when you kind of try to shove it in there, it breaks the tube. It's so brittle.
I wish they wouldn't tarnish the name of umpires. Right?
Yeah, Umpires.
Yeah.
Any umpires worth their salt would have a Midori bullet pencil. But I think it's also. Umpires use this style of pencil, from what I understand. Do you know anything more about that, Tim?
I've never heard that before. I mean, I'm thinking about the kinds of things that umpires would use pencils for, which. And of course, totally biased. I know other sports call the referee or whatever an umpire, but I'm thinking of baseball.
Yeah.
I know that it would be with dealing with lineups and things. If they're pulling a lineup, which. This actually makes total sense that they're. They're dealing with lineups. So if a manager comes up and says, I'm putting so and so in to replace this person, the umpire would have to keep track of that. So they knew. So they know that teams aren't sneaking people in that aren't supposed to be there. And so. And they're also going down into a crouch when they're waiting to call a pitch and stuff. So it makes sense for them to not want a jagged pencil stabbing into their leg every time they bend down because they already have 90 mile an hour fastballs flying at their head. So.
Well, I know if you go to this, this official supply website, like referees and umpires, and if you click on baseball and softball and then click on umpire accessories, you can get like plate brushes, you can get ball bags, you can get sunglasses. Flipping coins. This is actually super cool. And you can get Empire card wallets and pencils. And it's that same crappy blank pencil. Yeah. You bought. I bought them for a hundred of them on eBay for $20. I was so excited. And it's the worst. Don't do it.
Ooh. Lifetime supply.
Yeah. All the bullet pencils you'll ever need, you can also get. I found a link. There's a guy who makes basically for woodworkers and people who like to kind of carve their own things. You can carve your own barrel for a wood pencil and he makes the insert for it. It's fun. It's definitely not quite what I'm looking for, but it's a neat way to kind of make your own little pencil.
Have you tried it?
No, I haven't. I haven't even seen one in real life. I just found that it's kind of expensive and I'm definitely not somebody who's handy enough to do that. I'll have a link. I have to go looking for that link again. Craig from the Jungles Neutral. And I kind of corresponded back and forth about this and he sent me a link to it. I just have to go looking for it. And then also when I was talking earlier, I was going to mention Aaron Draplin again. I know as of like 2008, he had mentioned on his blog that he wants to design his own bullet pencils. And, you know, he's having some problems. And I talked to him a little bit about this when he was in town that in Fort Wayne, that he's having problem being able to source everything from, from the U.S. which is, you know, he's a big stickler for that. So he, he was having trouble finding the right tubing that you fit the pencil into because it has to be pretty, pretty exacting. And, you know, if it's some, if it's made out of brass or aluminum, you can just kind of bend, you can bend it to the shape that you need to be. If it doesn't fit quite right.
But it's going to crack.
Yeah, but you can't do that plastic. So, so he, he was going to try to make one like that, like a cheaper one, which would be super cool if you can do that. But he has not quite figured that out yet. I would love to see that come in the horizon. But, but yeah, there's. And I'll kind of let you know, Tim, take this over now. But there, there are, there is some exciting bullet pencil news on the horizon.
Yeah, we were. I mean, this, it's been a, it's been a little while since he had first gotten in touch with us, but Huckleberry Woodchuck, we mentioned earlier who, he's an Etsy. He has an Etsy store where he sells all kinds of cool stuff. Makes like right now he's been making these really cool handkerchiefs.
Those are super cool.
Yeah, I mean, they're, they're really awesome, the kind of fabrics and stuff he's using. But he also has been, like I mentioned earlier, he's refurbishing bullet pencils. That's kind of his thing. And so we had talked to him before on the show. And he was really helpful and was, like, sending us information.
He.
He sent some. Did he send you all the.
The field notes with the stamp on the back? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So he's at like a. Stamped this field notes notebook, just the craft edition, which is still one of my favorites. I love those things. And he would stamp them on the back with his logo, which is. I'm guessing it's a woodchuck, but it's a really nice stamp. It looks really sharp. But he has started a project that he let us know about that he was obviously very excited about, as he should be. And he is in the process of producing a new bullet pencil, which, I mean, really, as far as we know. I mean, it's one of the only. A very tiny amount of potential projects that will. Basically, the only competition will be the Midori.
Yeah.
Which is just really exciting. He's lives actually close to me. He's a Tennessee native, and we just couldn't be more excited about that. So he has reached out to us. He's talked to us about us. Right. Talk to us about it. And we're actually gonna have him on the show sometime in the next month. Talk about it. So we'll have him. Have him on. Let everybody hear him talk, and he can give you some information. And by the time we talk next, which will be in two weeks, he may not be on that episode, but by the time we have our next episode, one of us will have a prototype on hand.
And by one of us, you mean you.
I do. Oh, yes. Yeah, it is me.
Well, actually, if you. If you join the erasable Facebook group, he has posted some pictures of it there so you can go and check it out. Kind of what he's come up with so far and comment.
And these are pictures of the first prototype. Yeah. So it's the first round. He's still got some work. There's. They've already decided on several things that they're going to. They're going to work on which he'll. Obviously, he'll be talking to you about involving the number of threads and.
Yeah.
It's just so far from what little. I know. It's a really cool design.
Yeah.
Really thoughtful. They're going to be, you know, the pencil. On a traditional bullet pencil, you have the tip of the bullet or whatever the shape of it, where the pencil slides in is usually a thin metal that you can just kind of pinch, but that, you know, that that sort of thing can wear out. And so they've thought of that. And so they're actually making it. So the. The pencil that you use will. Will actually screw into that tip. Yeah, there's some. Some metal threads which really holds it in place, which will be really awesome. What do you guys think about the pictures you've seen of it on. On our Facebook group?
I. I thought it looked really cool. I definitely. He's gonna. I think he's gonna put it on Kickstarter, and we'll have him on once the Kickstarter is active, so we can send some his way. But I'll definitely pledge to me, like, I would. I would love to see a little. A few more embellishments. Like, not necessarily things that don't make sense for it, but like a. Like, it just looks really, really plain and smooth.
And he's. He's already talked about that. I don't know. Good. If you.
Yeah.
He's already talked about all kinds of ideas they have. I mean, beyond just. I mean, they've obviously. Or. One thing is they talked about putting a clip on it, which is the first thing they're gonna put a clip. But they're also talking and asking people for suggestions about what kind of other additions would you like to see to this? And the first one that came up, which is an awesome idea, and this kind of relates to the Monteverde One Touch Tool. The same idea. They're looking into making a stylus that will go over the eraser.
Yeah. That'd be super cool.
Which would be awesome. So little things like that and different. And he had mentioned a couple other. Which we'll let him tell you about.
Yeah.
Comes on the show. But they're. They're looking. They. They are. From what I've heard from talking to him on the phone and online, there are different little modifications that they're looking into making, which sort of takes it to the next level from Midori, if, you know this. This works out that there. It's not just the pencil and the eraser. They're talking about extra modern things.
Yeah. And it's really interesting because it's kind of like, you know, how vulcanized rubber was kind of invented in the US and in the UK kind of at the same time. I've actually talked to two other people kind of independently of Huckleberry Woodchuck, who have kind of ideations of their own about bullet pencils. So it's interesting to see this take shape again. And none of those other ones are at a point where I feel comfortable saying anything about it, but I hope that we can have a whole series on just really cool brand new concepts of bullet pencils.
Johnny, do you have. Do you have any bullet pencils? Do you use them very much?
I have some. I don't really use them very much because, I don't know, I get. I get used to just using the shorties with a cap.
Yeah, yeah.
And the dirty erasers bother me for some reason. My suggestion for the one from Huckleberry Woodchuck would be, did not have an eraser at all, but. But I think I'm the only one that would like that.
I think you are.
It's so pretty. And then it's gonna have that dirty eraser.
Unclean.
Unclean.
I don't really erase. I mostly just kind of cross out and keep going.
Might as well use a pen. Oh, snap, it's on.
That's fine.
Words.
Boy,
it's very nice. But if they had an option with no eraser, I would definitely go for that one.
Yeah.
I find myself using it as much
to make you feel better. I'm pretty sure the erasers are going to be replaceable. So you could just potentially remove the eraser and just do it that way.
A stylus would be nice instead of an eraser.
That's true.
Yeah.
I don't know if I would use it. I would just. I don't know. It won't get dirty.
They're usually black.
Stay clean.
So. So, yeah, kind of the. The purpose of this talk was just to introduce people to bullet pencils because we'll be talking about them a lot more in future episodes and less of, like, you know, old bullet pencils and the backgrounds of them, but probably more about, you know, trends and upcoming things. Because this is. This is going to be a popular item, I think.
Yeah. Because it's really strange that they've. They've even fallen out of production because they. They aren't an obsolete idea. Yeah, they're. They're an idea. They're something that is very useful. Is very practical. You know, my. My introduction at the beginning, I mean, it's practical. It's very portable. People who love pencils. It's a great way to carry pencils with you. There's no really good reason for them not to exist anymore. So it's not like, yeah, oh, we're gonna start making typewriters again, which some people like. Very small group of people will be like, oh, that's awesome. But then everybody else would be like, why?
That's not practical.
Why would I not use a computer? You know, Some people, or the majority of people would think that, but with these, I mean, pencils are going to be around arguably forever, you know. Yeah. So this is just a kind of a perfect option for keeping one with you.
Yeah. So, yeah, that's. That's kind of all I had to say about bullet pencils. We're running about, oh, an hour 16 or so, so we could probably. I know some people aren't a big fan of when we run over an
hour, but yeah, this is a hard. We had a lot of fresh points, but that's a hard topic to not get into.
Absolutely.
Well, thank you everyone for listening to the ninth episode, the Erasable Podcast. You can subscribe to our podcast on itunes. You can also listen to it at Erasable Us because we are the erasable us. Andy, where can people find you on the Internets?
I am on Twitter, as Merlin Mann would say, at Awel F, as in Frank L E or at woodclinched. I look at both of those Twitter accounts and then My blog is woodclinched.com.
johnny, how about you?
I am on Twitter @pensolution. My blog is pencilrevolution.com and you can find me on Instagram onnygamber. And I'm trying to put more stationary and less adorable children on there. It's been tough.
It's gotta be hard to do.
Yeah, they're just so cute.
Keep it up with the adorable children, I say.
Yeah, there's a lot of overlap between pencils and adorable children. That's true.
You have a very pencil heavy household.
So smells good here.
And I'm Tim Wasem. You can find me my writing@thewritingarsinal.com I'm on Twitter Writing Arsenal. You can follow me on Instagram at thewritingarsinal. This is, as we said, as you know, this is the Erasable podcast. You can find us at www.erasable.us. you can contact us through that website. You can also follow us on Twitter raceablepodcast. Well, gentlemen, I think that's all we've got.
All right, say goodbye to the nice people.
Bye, nice people. That sounded so nice. Yeah. So there's a little something for your nightmares from Johnny Gamber. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for listening. Please do not erase us from your podcast feed, even though we are the Erasable podcast. Keep those pencils sharp and we will talk to you soon.