This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to episode 16 of the Erasable Podcast. I am your host, andy Wellfleet from woodclinch.com and I'm joined by my two lovely co hosts, I'm told. I have Tim Wasem from the writing arsenal. Hey, Tim.
Hey, Andy. How's it going?
Very good. And I have Johnny Gamber from this blog. What's it called?
Pencil Butt.
Pencil Butt. That's it. Pencil Revolution Revolution, ladies and gentlemen, Johnny Gamber.
You definitely need to buy that URL so you can. If anybody puts in Pencil Butt, it'll just send them straight to Pencil Revolution.
It's gotta be taken.
You know that disappointed you. There are some registrars where you can register emojis as domain names, some top level domains. So for a while when LA domains were available, you could buy. Somebody bought the poop emoji and la. So the website was poop la.
That was me.
It looks like pencil but is free. So think about it.
Oh, man. All right, so we have a lot to cover today. We have a lot of follow ups. Some big things have happened and we're talking about erasers. And I'm sort of surprised because this was kind of a last minute topic because we didn't have a guest this week and I just. We talked to the Facebook community and people had a lot to say about erasers. So we have some discussion ahead of us and we have a new feature, so let's get right into it. Tim, what are you drinking and writing with today?
I'm drinking a beer that's made in Asheville, North Carolina. It's a brewery that. It's a really great brewery around here and just went on a tour a few months ago. The beer is called a Thunderstruck Coffee Porter and the brewery is Highland Brewing Company. Yeah, it's really delicious and has a really good distinct coffee flavor. I'm a big porter fan, especially in the fall and it's finally starting to get cool here. And so I went a little crazy on fall beers. That's what I'm drinking. And of course, which we'll get into this later. I'm riding with a Musgrave test, scoring 100.
I realized that with our, you know, with our new feature that, you know, it kind of invalidates that whole riding with thing.
Yeah, we're making it obsolete.
Yeah.
If we do it every week.
Yeah.
But we'll get into that later.
Johnny, what do you have to drink?
Well, we had a few technical difficulties, so I had like three cups of coffee and a little tiny nip of the Turkey. It might be my second. Not that tiny nip. But I'm out of whiskey in my house because the boy and I were alone all weekend. So I didn't see the point in buying any whiskey. I never drink when I'm alone with kids.
How do I drink constantly? I figured Henry just drank it all.
He was begging me for whiskey recently. So I let him smell it and he kind of just looked at me and walked away.
He's like, are you serious right now?
Yeah, he always tries to get beer. He's a good.
Come on, dad.
Come on, dad.
I'm teething.
Help me out here. That hurts real bad.
Dada dada wan turkey. We're gonna get that sponsorship.
Heck yeah, we will. So here's what technical issue he was referring to is we tried to get all fancy because what we're trying to do is do a multi ended recording. So we are all recording our own tracks and I'm going to try to piece them together. So we have a little bit more control over volume and editing. But we decided that since we're recording off of that, we should just video chat. So we tried doing the Skype group video chat and some of us use Linux and that would be Johnny and apparently that's not available for them yet. So then we switched over to Google Hangouts and that didn't work. So here we are 56 minutes into the hour. So we just switched back to the old standby. So I think Tim and I, let's buy Johnny a MacBook. That's probably.
Why don't you just buy me a fountain pen?
Probably Skype for fountain pen doesn't work either.
Nothing works for fountain pens.
All right. And so I am drinking a. Do either of you had a Costco in your area?
We have Sam's Club in the state.
Yeah. So we have. I'm a Costco member and I bought a bourbon there for pretty cheap and it's actually not that bad. It's like not as good as, you know, the turkey or like Woodford Reserve or Maker's Mark or something like that. But it's a little better than rot gut and it's cheap. So we bought a bunch of that and I'm drinking it in some unpasteurized apple cider that I bought off a roadside stand because it is fall. Yeah, that's kind of my fall thing as we go out to the Amish farm because we're in Indiana, we have a lot of Amish farms and I buy apples and apple cider there and I just Happened to stop by a roadside stand that had it. So I put the bourbon in the cider and it's delicious. Good fall drink.
Sounds good.
And obviously I am also writing with the Musgrave test scoring 100, which I guess leads us right into our first feature, which doesn't really have a name yet. Maybe you guys can help us think of a clever name. But if you're a member of the Facebook group, you know that we are starting a new thing where we're all going to use the same pencil for the week and we let everybody vote on it and we decided the Musgrave testing 100 won by a landslide. So, yeah, I guess I should kind of ask your guys opinions. Wow, that is really Indiana thing to say. Your guys' you guys opinions. What's youse guys got to say about that? Youse guys. So Johnny, what do you think about the Musgrave test scoring 100?
Well, you know, there are certain pencils that I really like and I couldn't tell you why I like them because, you know, the lead is scratchy or the eraser sucks or they're made of really crappy wood. But this pencil smells good, it writes smoothly and has a nice eraser. But I really don't like it and I don't know why. I just really don't like this pencil.
Do you think it's the way it feels or the way it looks?
I don't know. It could be the marking that extends the length of the pencil. I really don't like that. Or just that the thing is butt ugly. But I really want to like this pencil. Everybody loves it and it smells really good and I'm big on smell, but I just don't like it as much. But it could be that the Generals the general's test scoring pencil is vastly superior.
I think we should try that one either next or soon.
Yeah, I don't think it's the same class because they're a lot more expensive because they're harder to get.
Yeah, I'm sort of running out. So I kind of like the, the, you know, the text that runs the length of pencil. Like, I really like the at the top where it says Musgrave pencil co Shelbyville, Tennessee. Like, it's all kind of like smushed together but yet stretched out, if that makes any sense. By the way, we will have a picture of this pencil up on our website if you want to go look up the show notes and the links and a few things just go to erasable us 16 because we are episode number 16.
And we should post some pictures of our pencils after their full week of duty.
Yeah, mine. I have worn mine down to. The word test is no longer there. So I'm up to kind of the middle of the S in scoring. And then. Yeah, but I guess. I guess I. Well, Tim, I think that a lot of people that. They've been following us. Know what you. How you feel about it, but tell me what you thought about it.
Yeah, so I. I've always been a fan, or I've been a fan since I had first tried it, which was probably. It wasn't really that long ago. It was maybe a year ago, year and a half ago, something like that. More like a year.
But.
But I've been a fan of it. And the things that I originally had talked about really liking were the softness of the lead and also the diameter of the lead. The core, I feel like that made it really soft. It gave it a really long point that would last forever. So those are some of the initial things I liked. Aesthetically. I really hadn't even factored that in. I tend not to factor that in too much with a pencil unless it's just gaudy. You know, if it's a pencil that's just way too colorful or there's too much going on, where it's going to distract me, then I sort of think about that. But. So those are the original reasons why I liked it. And there are some things about it that were also not what I usually look for in a pencil, such as the sharp corners. You know, it's a full hex. So it has the. And in that I did notice using it exclusively for a week, that did kind of get to me. If I was writing in my. In my journal or writing for a while and I'm twisting it, that did kind of wear on me a little bit. Like the old, you know, Hemingway or not Hemingway, Steinbeck quote when he talks about using round pencils so that it doesn't dig into his fingers. And I always thought for being a really manly dude, that's kind of a baby thing to say. But. But now I totally get what he was talking about, because it did. It didn't. I mean, I wasn't, like, holding my wrist out in front of me like, oh, you know, it wasn't hurting that bad, but it just kind of annoyed me a little. Yeah. And another thing, which, when we were talking, I don't know if you remember, when I got my first Midori Bullet pencil and I talked about how my hand was Turning it like a dark bronze color. Like something about the chemistry of my hand or the sweatiness of my hand maybe. So I've only used it down to the T in test, but my hand has stripped off the black in test scoring 100.
Oh wow.
Yeah. And the silver was coming off too. So this, which is kind of weird and I didn't like that. Like I was. I would actually have. If I used it for an extended period of time, I would actually have silver dust like on my fingers from the, the actual paint coming off
Ink man.
I guess that's the like the biggest complaint that I would have would be just kind of the cheapness of the paint around the pencil. I was, I was kind of looking up reviews of it online and on, on the onlines and Stephen from Pencil Talk really did not like it. I don't know if any of you have read his it's back from 2008, but he, he had a review and he just did not care for the hard sides. He did not. Yeah, he said the test scoring 100 pencils finish seems very thin and cheap. The pencils varnish is silver with black lettering and it has some checkboxes and stuff like that. But yeah, he apparently did not care for that varnish at all. And, and I agree with that. I really like the silver and I really like the kind of typography that they used. Even the like janky, you know, boxes with one filled in.
Yeah.
But I, but I did not care for the thinness of that compared to like a golden bear, which is super
plush and mine has like notches in it. It looks like something chewed on it and it's a new pencil and I know nothing chewed on it.
Pretty sure that's what you think.
Yeah. Reach it.
This isn't his bite pattern.
Yeah.
Yeah. You can see on mine if I look really closely at the, at the silver, it's almost like you can see the brush strokes. You know, like there's like a texture to it which is. I mean when you compare it to something like the Palomino HB and how smooth and nice that is. Yeah, it just, it has a long way to go.
But I do like how it performed. It did like it held a point really well. It's dark.
It's kind of smeary though. I feel like.
Yeah.
And it's a messy pencil. We have to acknowledge that it is cheap for being such a nice pencil. I mean, I sort of had a meh sort of week with it when I was writing with it when the Actual pencil was on the paper. I was enjoying it. Some of the stuff in between cost some issues, but I will still continue to use it a lot. And I actually just bought another dozen of them. And so I'm going to use it a good bit because it's to get a pencil this. This nice. That has the size, you know, this diameter core that I really enjoy for. What is it, 325 a dozen on pencils dot com. I mean, that's. That's great.
Yeah.
So it's Tennessee.
So yeah, we have a listener who will. Who's a nerd uprising on Twitter. He just moved to Shelbyville and apparently
I didn't realize he moved there.
Yeah, coincidentally, apparently he just sort of got into pencils as this was happening, not because of it. So that's. That's kind of a fun thing.
That's awesome.
So. So what, what do you guys think? I know that they say that this has an electro graphite core. Does anybody know what that means?
No idea. I don't.
The description on Pencils.com says it's better for being picked up by those Scantrons or those electric electronic test scanners.
That sounds like it has to be
a number two pencil. As a teacher, I've never. Or you know, someone who's been in school, I've never heard of a situation where Scantron didn't pick up a pencil.
Yeah.
So, I mean, maybe that's true.
But it's funny because it says test scoring pencil on it, but it does not say number two. So I knew some know some teachers who, you know, would check to make sure it said number two on the pencil before they allowed them to use like, use it for like the, like the Indiana standardized Test. The istep.
Yeah.
So it'd be. It'd be ironic if you were not allowed to use this because it did not say number two on it.
Oh, and Cody Williams told me that this pencil actually comes in different degrees if you find them. Yeah. I don't know if the 100 is the dark or light end or in the middle.
I've never seen that.
To talk to Cody. Yeah, that's cool.
I don't run this by you guys just. I mean, since this is the first time we've done this, what did you think of having to use one pencil for a week?
Oh, yeah, yeah. It was. Honestly, you know, I took. I took one of my new caps from Gary Varner, that pens and caps thing, and I. Pencils and caps. And I just stuck it on the end of it and And I just, like, stuck in my bag, and that's all I had with me. It wasn't as hard as I thought, but it definitely was weird not to be like, okay, what am I going to use today?
Yeah, I actually. I have to admit that I cheated a little bit. Not actually a lot. Not. Not in using a different pencil, which I might have once or twice, but. But I carried. I had the, you know, the single Musgrave that I was using, but I also was carrying a bullet pencil that had one inside, so I had that, too for, like, carrying out my pocket.
Right.
But I. I used other stuff, too.
I definitely used it way more than anything else, but I forgot and picked
up a generals test scoring pencil in the middle. I don't understand why they're so expensive, but I like them better. I think it's just scarcity.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So. So, yeah, that was. That was. That was a fun experience.
Should we. Should we give it, like, a grade?
Ooh,
I will quote Andy. It's a little better than rot gut, but it's cheap.
Well, let's have. Let's have a feature where we just compare pencils to bourbons.
What would be the Wild Turkey pencil? Probably Ticonderoga.
Yeah.
No, something American.
Well, not.
That's pencil makers.
How about makers? Oh, wait, no, never mind.
I'm just.
Just comparing bourbon to bourbon. I don't know.
Whale turkey would be a general cedar point, if.
I see that.
That makes sense. If I were to grade this, I would put it at a solid B.
I'd probably go B plus,
C minus. The minus is because of the terrible packaging.
Yeah. It's pretty sad.
What does the packaging look like?
I haven't seen the plastic bag.
Yeah, they're in there kind of loosely. That could be the problems with the finish.
It could be.
They're perfect and they just don't pack them well.
It's like California Republic. Kind of early days, you know, they're California. Yeah. So it's hard. It's so hard to believe that the same company produces this and the Golden Bear because, like, the Golden Bear finish is so, like, lustrous.
Yeah. And the price.
Similar.
Yeah.
They're produced by the same company.
Yeah. The Palomino line, except for the black wings, are now made by Musgrave.
I didn't know that.
Yeah, that's right. Isn't it, Johnny?
Oh, just the Prospector. The Golden Bear.
Oh, is Palomino still made overseas?
Yeah, and not the first choice, which is disappointing because that pencil is so awesome.
Yeah.
Everybody vote for that one next time. Very autumnal pencil.
So what I think we'll be doing, everybody, is kind of the first day of the off week of when we record, we'll put up a poll with a few pencil choices. And just if you are a member of the Facebook group, which if you're not, you should go to facebook.com groups erasable. I should make like a bitly link or a shortener or something for that.
We had. How many votes do you think we had? 40, actually.
I have. I have that right up right now. Oh, somebody unpinned the poll so I don't have at the top.
That was me.
Sorry.
No, it's all right.
I saw it was winning and I unpinned it.
Yeah, yeah, it definitely won by a landslide. Yeah. So I think it's. I think it's because I had. I kept expressing that I had never used it before. And so kind of at the same time, Johnny sent me one and Will Nerd Uprising sent me one.
Then all of my all CAPS shenanigans probably factored into that.
They just figured you would just always just yell it. Yeah, cool. So, yeah, that is our. That is our feature. And if anybody has any ideas for a name for this thing, all it says at the top here is shared pencil experience, which kind of sounds a little hippy Dippy. Yeah, man.
Like institutional or something.
Yeah, to me. Exactly.
Sitting in a circle. How does that pencil make you feel, Tim?
Experiential pencil. I don't know.
Nevermind. Experiential pencil experience.
There you go.
Mind's blown.
Tim, do you want to start us off with the fresh points?
Sure. So first thing I was going to mention is that I don't think it was the last episode. It was the episode before. And I talked to you about my disappointment with Ticonderogas, the ones that I bought at Target, how they had brought back the soft. The word soft on the pencil. And I was really excited. So I bought, you know, 24 of them. And just for that sole reason, which of course we know is enough of a reason for us to buy 24 pencils that we already have. But I brought them in there. I was really disappointed. The wood quality was crap. The ferrule was not put on straight. You know, it was chipping off and there's just so many problems. And then I took them to school. So I took them to school. I was like, I'll just, you know, I'll use these or I'll just put these out at school. Kids can use them. They're not as picky, but they're not terrible. At least they'll be usable. But then kids started picking these things up and they would put them in the classroom friendly sharpener and it would just never stop sharpening. So it would just like they would start sharpening and it would sharpen until the whole faceplate of the thing,
they
would pull it out and it would be half sharpened. They'd pull it out and they'd put it in again. They'd sharpen it and it would go until it was closed and they'd pull it out and it wouldn't be all the way sharpened, which is really strange. And so I thought, okay, something's wrong with the sharpener. I sort of cleaned it out, shook it out, put a nice pencil in. I actually put my Musgrave in and started sharpening and it sharpened perfectly. And then they put another one in and it kept happening. So I don't know if it's because of the crappy quality of the wood that something about the texture of it was getting stuck in the actual gears and so it would never automatically stop. It just kept sharpening and sharpening until it broke off the tip.
That's really weird. That's like a Wolfex situation.
Yeah. So I went through several before and maybe one out of the 10 that we. That I had tried to sharpen over the course of a couple days would sharpen normally and I would put in one of the cedar Ticonderogas because I have a bunch of those at school too, and it worked like a charm.
So, yeah, lately some are cedar and some are something else. I just bought some franken wood trirites and they're. I don't know what they are. They're not based with. They smell horrible. I can't even use them. Huh. But I think for back to school and especially from the Mexican ones, they sell some that aren't cedar, which makes me sad and I want to cry.
I can't remember, Johnny, is it the Mexican ones or the Chinese ones that are better?
I don't want to speak blasphemy, but the Chinese ones might be better than the last couple runs of American ones.
So I used to buy. I used to buy the black Ticonderogas just, all just, just religiously because they had this wonderful like matte black color.
Yeah, those are so pretty.
And then all of a sudden they started getting. They started being shiny and they didn't perform as well either.
Yeah, the Chinese ones are pretty good. The Chinese black ones, you can get those At Target, they're unsharpened for some reason. I can only find those at Target and I think Office Depot. But the pre sharpened black ones that are made in Mexico are awful pencils.
So the unsharpened matte ones are Chinese and the sharpened Chinese ones, they're not really matte.
They're just a little less shiny.
Okay.
They're not as matte as the American ones. Those are gorgeous. Yeah, but they're darker, so the light is darker, which fits good. Yeah, they don't have that Ticonderoga smell.
Yeah.
Some of the more recent Chinese yellow ones do, which is very good. Oh, while we're talking about Taon, I was wondering what you guys thought of the Groove.
I. I like it. All right, sorry. Go. Go on, Tim.
No, you go ahead.
I. I liked it. All right. It was, you know, whenever. Whenever they do those weird like, groove things or like kind of like cut in a grip or something like that. I never liked that very much, but it was. I liked it. It seemed like it was a little darker and smoother.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Yeah. I actually gave mine to my mother in law because she loves Ticonderogas and she'd never seen that before, so she really likes it. But yeah, I got a chance to use it a little bit before and yeah, it was. It was nice and smooth.
Yeah, I actually just pulled mine out my cup. It's on my desk. And I felt the same way that it wrote really nicely, but I'm a little picky with like the width or like the diameter of a pencil. And so it. It's a little thin for my taste. My hand kind of swallows it up. Especially with. If it's going to be a triangular pencil, I need kind of a big one. I really want to try out the. The Dixon, the tri. Right Laddies. I haven't tried the.
Yeah, I haven't.
I want to try some of those. I've been meaning to order some, but I just happened. But yeah, I like it. All right. It's just. It's a little small for my taste.
The finish is pretty for.
Oh, yeah.
Modern Ticonderoga. Mm, I suppose. Sorry, I'm hijacking your fresh points.
No, that's what they're for.
They're mine.
Take it.
Take it.
Here's my wallet.
The only other thing I was gonna bring up, which I know we all want to talk about, is the Twist Bullet pencil.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
So our buddies John and Jay launched their Kickstarter campaign for the Twist Bullet Pencil, which. I love the name. It's nice. It's a simple name, gets straight to the point, and it shows off kind of the. What do you call it? I want to say gimmick. That sounds negative, but the original thing about it. So the twist bullet pencil launched. Was it six days ago? I think it was, yeah, six or seven days ago. So it's gonna. It was on the. It's gonna be funded on the 31st. That's when the. When the project will end. So there are 23 days left to support it.
They made their goal in, like, three days, didn't they?
Yeah, three days. That's awesome. And right now, their goal was 5,000, which seems a little conservative in my. I would think.
I think. I think Jay said something about how he. He knew he was going to make that goal because with machining, there's not, like a whole lot of overhead. It's just when you get into the minimums, they have to have a certain amount of minimums to do the anodizing. So I guess that's where he really saw the goals being kind of unknown, is how many of the minimums he was going to be able to make.
Yeah. Yeah. So they passed that 5,000 goal, and right now, with 23 days left, they're at 5,748 with 129 backers, which is awesome. So happy for them getting that goal met so early, just to kind of get that stress out of the way so that they can just continue pushing it and promoting it. So far, they're doing a great job, posting some really great pictures. Jay likes to post things on that sort of bumpy cardboard sheeting, and it looks great. So if you go to the website and look at their video and the pictures, you can see all the colors. So they're. They're running it in. The first two are matte, black and silver, and then they've got some stretch goals to bring in green, blue, and red.
I really like the. You know, as of recording right now, the. They're at 5748 out of a goal of 5,000. So they have 129 backers. And I just love this blue. I mean, all these colors are great, but I. Yeah, the blue a lot.
It's gonna be a tough choice.
Yeah.
If they get. If they get them all.
Yeah, yeah. The prices are great.
Oh, yeah.
I was sort of like the. The price points that they chose. I was. It almost seemed kind of too. I don't know, not too low. They just seemed. I would have paid More for it, I guess that's. Yeah, but, but they said. But they're. Which I'm sure, you know, usually with the Kickstarter thing, once it's funded, now they're selling them on their own, it'll. The price will go up a little bit. So I guess for Kickstarter, it's pretty perfect.
They had an Early Bird pricing that was. It was $24.
Was it 28.
28. And that got you a. Oh, yeah, 28. It got you an aluminum one with an aluminum tip with either round or point style or if they make stretch goals, one of the colors, which is cool. Sorry, go on, go ahead.
I went with the third Early Bird, which was such an awesome deal. It was $55 for two. And you can choose. Choose the color and the tip style for either of them. And then of course, it depends on the stretch goals, what colors are available.
That's the one I went with too. And I guess there's been some talk of a pocket clip that might be like an add on.
Yeah. Another stretch goal.
Yeah. So I'm. Yeah, this, this thing is super cool. Oh, and they, they, they sold the prototype, the one that we all carried with us.
Yeah.
And I didn't tell you guys about the ransom that I got. He was sent back to Jay. I got a very sizable ransom. I might share it with you guys. I don't know. We'll see. I'm hitting the fry boiled turkey for our sponsor.
Well. Well, presumably it's $125 because that is the way more than that. That is the pledge goal that you had to pledge in order to get it. And of course I joked on Facebook that this has been in all of our pants, so it was worth much more. And I had it last.
This thing, that thing sat on top of my engine block in my, in my, in my car.
That's awesome.
Remember I took that picture when I was changing my alternator. So it's been. It's been places.
Yeah.
It's been in three states at least. So.
And it worked like coffee. Yeah. And it worked apparently because it's. It's got somebody. Somebody bid on it. So that's awesome.
Yeah, that's really cool.
Did you see that somebody back the $300 level too?
Really awesome.
Yeah, it was. That's for the 10 bullet pencils. Yeah. And somebody. I don't know who it is, but somebody been on it.
There's a really likes their family.
Yeah. There's a field notes package which is the like design for the field nuts. In the group, which is pretty awesome. It includes the field notes, pencil to go in it, and a set of craft brown field notes. Yeah, that's.
The black looks really nice. And the silver, I just. I'm a sucker for the just straight aluminum. You know, I'm really excited for this week because the Keras Customs Inc. Is shipping this week, which I backed. And mine's just the straight aluminum, which I'm really excited to see that.
I know this is a long time coming.
Yeah, it was a Keras Customs last project was a fountain pen that they. A machined fountain pen pen.
Hey, he's one of those crossover guys.
What is up with that?
This is like that. The left, right, and center show. You know, I'm the center.
I'm off this podcast, man.
Peace out.
Drop the mic.
Hey, those mics are expensive. Don't drop the mic.
I think the. The black, I would be happy with the black and the silver, but I really hope the colors, if they meet the stretch goal, because that red. Oh, the red and the blue, actually, they all look so good. But I would. I would have. If we got up to another color or two more colors, I would have trouble deciding. Oh, yeah, I love the iron man look. The red with the brass.
Yeah, that's cool.
So anyways, so that's. I'm really proud of these guys. They put together a good project, and I can't wait to get to use one again, because we got to use. We hinted at the prototype that we had all used, and that was an early prototype before they changed several things, and they were really kind enough to send that our way. And we just sort of passed it around the America and used it and used it pretty heavily. So I was really happy to have gotten the chance to use that, but I can't wait to get my hands on the final product.
This one I don't have to ransom off. I just keep it.
So I should probably clarify. Somebody on the Facebook group asked, and I can't remember, they thought that the twist meant that you sort of, like, twist it and the pencil, like, comes out, like, extends out and. Yeah, that would be cool, but that's not what it is. That just references the fact that the pencil kind of twists to stay in place, and then you twist the cap into the sheath in order to store it. So it's. It's all screw threads. It's not like an automatic action anything. So. Yeah. And also cross your fingers. Next week, we're hoping. Or next episode, we're hoping to get one or more of the guys.
That is going to be awesome.
Yeah, that'll be fun. So it'll be good to hear them talk about it in their own way because they know it, of course, way better than we're pretending to know about it.
Yeah.
So that's, that's. That was a big. A big fresh point. But I knew we all wanted to talk about that and all. Pitch in. We'll talk about it a lot more in the upcoming weeks. So if you haven't gone to Kickstarter and looked up the twist bullet pencil and backed it, go for it, head over there. You'll hear more from them next week and maybe we can put out some questions for them to answer about the project because I know they're both really cool dudes and they're always happy to. At least with me. And I know with you two, they're always happy to answer questions and talk about the project because they're proud of it. So we'll.
They're also both very responsive on the Facebook group, so I'm super glad, and I don't mean to keep patting ourselves in the back about this, but I really love this Facebook group. I think it's a really cool community that this kind of thing can happen.
Yeah. I was about to get off Facebook before we started this group.
Yeah, I definitely use. Probably 70% of my time is spent in this group in the field Nuts group. Then much less is spent in my actual, like, friend feed.
Yeah, I kind of gave up on the field Nuts group. It's a little quiet. Kind of. Kind of annoys me sometimes. It's like the same eight people posting over and over and over again. Yeah.
So anyways, well, my first three fresh points have to do with our very generous listeners. First, I think you guys might have also gotten some oil samples from Micah Thomas from her friend that does some perfuming. And the oil is called number two pencils.
Number two pencil shavings.
Yeah, I keep kind of putting it on stuff so I can smell it later. It's. It smells like red cedar to me, which is the original pencil wood or the old fashioned pencil wood. So at first I was like, well, you know, it's not the right cedar, but I really like that it's not the right cedar. Just makes me think of, you know, Thoreau in a very romantic way whenever I smell it. So Micah is super awesome.
Oh, yeah.
And also, Mr. Cody Williams showed up
at my house a week or two
ago with awesome pencils, but he couldn't stay for coffee. So Mr. Cody I owe you coffee for sure. But I sent you guys some. They were some pencils that he picked up from his travels around the world for work. I don't remember which one in the pack. I asked where he got it. He's like, I got it at a grocery store in Dubai.
That's just awesome. Of course. What?
Well, some of them secret agent or something.
Hey, Cody.
It's a good secret agent code.
He's a spy.
Yeah, it might be Cody Williams.
Sounds like a fake name.
Yeah, you need a code name. How about Cody Codee?
His codename could be Redbeard, if you guys know Cody. And third, if folks are readers of my humble little blog, you saw the tutorial or the tutorial from Luke Sinclair about how to sharpen pencils by hand. Luke was super generous with his time. He not only wrote it, he also took a lot of photos and he made a video, which was super awesome.
Yeah.
And it turns out my. My technique is not terrible, so I just need to keep working at it. But Luke's was amazing, and his knives are so sharp, it's ridiculous.
You guys have started a revolution on the. On the Facebook group. There's a lot of people who are doing that.
I just hope no one cuts their hands. But if I haven't done it yet, everybody's probably safe. Yeah, I'm accident prone, but, yeah, a lot of people have been doing that, and people seem to be enjoying it, and it seems to be a really fragrant way to sharpen your pencils.
Although, seems like as far as cutting yourself, it's actually pretty safe as long as you're not holding, like. I mean, if you're holding it in a normal way and you're always swiping away from you, seems like it'd be really hard to cut yourself. So, like, when I've talked to people about sharpening a pencil with a knife, and I actually did it in class while my kids were working on something just to, like, mess with them. I was sitting at the front. I was sitting at the front of the classroom, and they were writing an essay, and I just sat there with a trash can between my legs and was slicing off pieces of pencil.
And then you polished your musket.
Your boy's been lying. You spend a night in the box.
Very the substitute. Awesome. I got a balsam fir notebook from my wife recently. But if you're a field nut, it's not that kind of balsam fir. There's a designer. I forget the name, but they're sort of moleskin knockoffs and this one has a deer and sort of a woodland theme on it. So it's very autumnal. It's very, very cool. But the paper in it is really nice. It's sort of like word paper as far as pencil is concerned, but it's a little less bright white and that's good looking. I did try some ink on it and ink works a lot better than it works on word notebooks.
You should post a link to that in the Field Nuts group and be like, hey guys, look, you can buy balsam fir notebooks for 1168.
I might get kicked out of a
group, you know, I have a balsam fir field notes notebook and I did not know how much they were worth until I was like, hey guys, this is. Anybody want to do some trades? And they were like, oh my God, Cha Ching.
Those were really pretty. I think that's the first one where they started using the new paper.
Yeah. Yep.
The only. I'm not a collector of field notes, but the only one that I would consider paying like money for just to get a hand, get my hands on it. I would use it definitely. Of course, I don't have the money, so I'd have to like, see if I can get a loan. But I would love to have a pack of Day Game.
I wish I could expose mine up. I'd send them to you.
Almost like Gaydame. Day Game would be awesome. I bought the novel that came with it.
Oh, cool.
And that's actually next on my list to read. Anyway, it's quick.
You'll stay up for two hours at night. Yeah.
I really am excited about it.
Awesome. And on the topic with my wife, we recently celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary, which is also the 17th anniversary of our first date. We sort of did the same date so that we wouldn't forget and super cute. Yeah. And our wedding program had that line from on the road. Everybody comes home in October. It was very adorable. It's the feast of St. Francis and my middle name, which I won't tell anyone, is Franciscan and her name is Francesca. And our kids both have Francis's middle names.
That's awesome. I have a. I have a foot and a half tall hand carved wood statue of St. Francis two feet away from me right now.
Awesome.
Yeah.
I went to a Franciscan high school. The Friars were really cool. I get to play electric bass in the folk group, which is always awesome for a teenager rocking out the chapel.
We should have an episode where we just get our spouses on to talk about what they think of Our ridiculous obsessions.
My wife's starting to get into it
a little bit, which is cool.
My wife just joined the Facebook group
that are ridiculously expensive. That's what I bought her for anniversary. We do like a $20 price limit thing.
That's cool.
But they're 10 for 20 bucks, which is more expensive than black wings.
And they're short.
But my curiosity got the better of me, so I tried one out and they're actually pretty nice pencils. Got an old fashioned ferrule. I think they're cedar. I didn't sharpen one because they're expensive. I didn't want to sharpen it if I didn't have to. But they write pretty nicely. They sort of feel like a general's. Maybe a cedar point, maybe a number two and a half semi hex, which is high praise for me. I love generals. I have a tattoo of generals on my thigh that no one knows about.
Are you serious? No,
no. I'm going to stab myself with a Until now, cedar point and break it off. Says generals for life.
I'm. I'm still. We haven't talked about this since like episode four, but a pencil tattoo needs to happen, so I'm still.
Well, there's a very good tattoo parlor near my house. You guys will have to make a trip to Baltimore.
We're going to. We've got by all the plans we've been, you know, piecing together in our Wild Turkey sponsorship this week that we're together whenever it is. It's going to be nuts.
Yeah, it'll be like the Hangover, but only for pencils.
Stationary nerds.
We'll have to go visit Union Craft Brewing where they make the Blackwing lager, which is so delicious.
You know, I can borrow a high quality field recorder and we can just record like an on the road podcast.
Just like have it hanging over your shoulder, like just follows us the whole night. It's like a 25 hour podcast and
we'll just live stream it the whole time.
Where's Andy?
I don't know. There's a tiger in our room.
Suddenly I have a pencil tattooed on my lip as a pencil mustache.
But it's a no plot and then you don't have to go to the emergency room. Say, broke the coin off. My last fresh point is something that folks have probably noticed and that's a serious uptick in the number of pencil reviews on general stationery blogs and especially pen blogs, which is super awesome. And I'd like to delude myself into thinking that we have had something to do with that.
I think we should take full credit for this.
Yeah. We sing the praise of the best thing you can write with. Yeah, those weird things you put liquid in. It's bizarre.
Syringe.
But yeah, I've noticed a lot of reviews, not only of Black Wings, because everybody reviews Black Wings.
They're cool.
But folks have been reviewing just regular pencils lately, which is great and awesome.
We need to give a shout out to Mike Dudek's picture on Instagram that where he put. Which coincidentally, one of us sent all of those pencils to him. So it was awesome to see them all lined out and he's trying them out because he's a pretty heavy, you know, pen guy. So it was really cool to see him, you know, branching out to some pencils.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing him
write about it because he writes. He's a really good writer. He writes some really good reviews.
Patrick Rohn just posted a picture on Instagram of him using the Golden Bear doing his thing. So I know he's. He's at least trying it out. And I did in back in March, I sent Mike Hurley before I was on the pentatic podcast. I sent him a bunch of pencils. And just in the last episode of the Pentatic, they talk about the twist episode. And he said he's like, well, I'm not really a pencil guy. And I was like, oh, whatever. No, it's fine.
Nobody's perfect.
Mike, you may be British, but you're still not perfect.
I really enjoy listening to you talk
about pens, which is a pretty astronomically huge compliment from Johnny Gamber.
That was a lot.
He was ready to kick Tim Wasem out for talking about pension.
I'm not going to kick Tim out.
I'm just rolling myself supporting a friend of the podcast.
No, I have pens. Just not fountain pens.
Yeah.
But that's all I have. My very large list.
Yeah. Well, I wanted to first talking about the pen addict. I want to talk about an episode that was on just. It was the Last episode, number 122. It physically hurts My head is the name of the episode. It was actually a really great episode because they kind of got meta a little bit. And they talked about. They just talked about, you know, they talked about talking about pens, which is pretty cool. And I always like those kind of meta episodes. And one thing that. That Brad and Mike both talked about is that Brad is going to be making the transition into doing this thing full time, which. Which is super, super Cool. He just switched over his blog format, so now he gets weekly sponsors. And as Mike said, it's astronomically low. It's $200 a week if you want to sponsor that. That blog. I think it'd be funny if we used some of our money to sponsor the pen addict and just make him talk about pencils all week, but we
would be his bosses.
Yeah. We could just have him do whatever he wanted. But no, actually, he has. He has sold out on sponsorships. He hasn't sold out. Sold out. He has no more sponsorships left is what I should say.
For this year.
For this year, yeah. Which is amazing. But. Yeah. And I know he's. You know, he still has his day job, or I guess in his case a night job. His jobby job is as. As Mike says, but he's still doing that. But I think he has plans to leave it and just kind of continue on doing this, which is astounding and a huge, huge leap.
So.
Congratulations, Brad, from all of us. That's really cool.
Cheers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Drink some Wild Turkey to that.
I'm all out.
Oh, no, Henry. So. So the. The other thing I was going to mention is a. Another Kickstarter, which I have not yet pledged to. I'm. I think. Think I'm going to, but it would involve breaking my embargo, my spending embargo, which I mentioned last week. Last time.
Embargoes are meant to be broken.
I know. It's called the six Mile pencil Kickstarter, and it kind of plays off the idea that a standard pencil has six miles worth of graphite in it, which I don't think is true, and I don't think is necessarily measurable, because when you sharpen it, you know, you sharpen down some of the graphite. So who knows? Maybe. Maybe it is. I'm not sure. But it's a really cool design. It's a bright yellow. It has kind of like mile markers on the side of this pencil. They also have a kilometer version for. It's a British Kickstarter. So there's a kilometer version as well. Yeah. It comes in a little box. It has a little, like, notebooklet thing that comes with it, which is really cool. And they start at. What do they start at? Is it £12? I closed. Let me open that Kickstarter back up. It starts at five pounds, which is like eight bucks. I'm sorry. It starts to eight pounds. I guess the five pound was a early bird special that ended. Yeah, it starts at 8 pounds, which is like $12. And there's another 3 pounds to ship outside of the UK. But yeah, they're, they're really good looking. I actually got a tweet from the designers about this. I wanted to make sure I mentioned it. Yeah, I love that yellow. It's just very bright. Yeah, it's super cool. And I just want to mention that and I think I will be pledging before it ends in 13 days. So there's that. The other thing I was going to mention for a couple weeks now, Baron Figg, the maker of the Confidant, that notebook that we talked about that we like, has been teasing that they were going to release a new product. And I know that they kind of talked about it a lot and the field nuts people were like, oh, it's a pocket notebook. That's, that's got to be what it is. So just today they announced it and sure enough, it is a pocket notebook. It is, it kind of, kind of has that same Baron fig color scheme. It's, it's kind of a light gray and then instead of the, it doesn't have a bookmark in it that's bright yellow, but instead the saddle stitching is yellow. So it is stitched, actual stitched, instead of stapled, which if you staple it, it is also called saddle stitching. But it's a little bit wider and shorter than a field notes book, which I think means that it's more like the scout book, if you guys can correct me on that if I'm wrong.
Is it shorter? I thought it was just wider.
It's, it's a tiny bit shorter and a little bit more wider. I think if that diagram. Yeah. And I mean it's a, it's a good, it's a good notebook. I mean it seems I, it's, they won't ship it until the 14th, but you can pre order it today.
It's the whole kind of, which Andy and I talked about this earlier, but the hype of it was a little overblown. I mean they made it seem with they have these really well produced videos and people having these sort of life changing epiphanies while ordering coffee and jogging. Jogging. And then it was a pocket notebook. Yeah, there's kind of a little bit of a wah wah factor but starting
to get a little moleskinny.
Yeah. But we do, we should give them credit because I mean, it's Baron figs. You know, the paper quality is going to be pretty nice and they are really pretty. Yeah. And the price is nice too. So. Yeah, it's the they have a deal for three. Three. Three packs with free shipping for 24 bucks. And that's pretty.
That is sweet.
That's a sweet deal. So I'm probably gonna do that because I want to. I want to try them out, and I like the aesthetic of them.
Are you getting the blank ones, Jim?
I mean, I don't know if they're gonna let me choose different ones. If I have to choose all three in the same. It'll be a tough choice between blank and grid. Because lately I've been enjoying using grid field notes and then writing in them sideways. I've been doing that a lot with my poetry and things that I'm trying to work on right now that it's just. It's like a perfect width for me, so. Which is nice to have the grid for doing that. So I don't know. I'll see if they'll let me mix it up.
Yeah, I'll probably order. Order a pack a little later since this is. Doesn't seem like it's gonna be something that's limited edition or anything.
My.
My kind of like PTSD for ordering field notes before they go out of stock kind of kicks in. And so I'm like, get it, get it. Oh, wait, I don't need to, because it seems like it's going to stick around. So I'm going to order this a little later when I maybe have gone down. I have three cigar boxes full of pocket notebooks. My sable on these things is very high, so I know I don't use them that fast, but I definitely want to use down the stock a little bit before I kind of jump into these. But. But they are very cool looking. The last thing I was going to mention is we had. You know, we sometimes have stickers or T shirts or various merchandise items that sell out really quickly because I think we misunderstimate the quantities we need. So I set up a. And a lot of people who don't want to be on Facebook, not part of the group, would then have to wait two weeks between episodes. And sometimes by then we sell out. So I created a tiny letter account for Erasable, which is just a. Basically a little, like, listserv email address. Well, it's more of an email newsletter, but if you sign up at Erasable Us Shop, there's a little form at the bottom you can put in your email address. We will notify you the moment that we have some kind of merchandise available. I kind of. Earlier, once we sold out of the stickers, I collected email addresses and we had like 40 of them, so. So, yeah, if you are interested, Erasable us shop. And there is hopefully soon something on the horizon, which we're still kind of figuring out. So. Yeah. All right. Should we talk about our main topic, guys? Yeah. Yeah. So we were kind of thinking, oh, we really need a topic. How about erasers? You know, the Atlantic article just came out. We linked to that in the group. We'll link to the show notes here. The writer of that piece, it was. Oh, where's that Atlantic link? The writer interviewed me and Johnny and Charles Berlsheimer. And essentially the title is why Do Erasers Suck at Writing? And it's definitely hard hitting news. But it's essentially the premise is, you know, erasers are there for one thing. As the tagline says, they have literally one job. And apparently the writer has discovered that they kind of stink at what they do. So I think that kind of one of the main takeaways from that, from at least me, and I know, I know Johnny and Charles probably said this too, is that I think you're probably just using the wrong erasers or the wrong pencils. So that kind of prompted some discussion on the group and then kind of prompted our topic here. So I figured we could just kind of go down the line. We can talk about some different types of erasers. We could talk about our favorite types of erasers, the three top favorites, and then there's a bunch of interesting points and questions in the group that I kind of wanted to read over to. So does that sound good, guys?
Sounds great.
So, yeah, I guess the first thing we should talk about are the different types of erasers. And I know there's way more than I have even, you know, encountered, but I think. And when I say erasers, I'm not just talking about the kind that go on the end of a pencil or the kind that you hold in your hand, but just kind of all encompassing. So I think that's probably a topic too. We should talk about why, you know, why we do or do not prefer them on a pencil. But I guess kind of the biggest difference between erasers to me are the ones that are made out of rubber and the ones that are made out of a vinyl or a plastic or a natural rubber latex or something like that. Do you guys have any. Any just noticeable differences between those or preferences as far as that goes?
I'm sorry, go ahead, Johnny.
It's sort of like why I don't like the test scoring for effectiveness, definitely the plastic erasers. But I just really like rubber erasers. I guess it's. Am I in a mood to make this thing work or just have an enjoyable experience?
I think that a lot of people who at least have weighed in have never really, like, experienced the plastic erasers, which is interesting. I think that probably the Mars. The Statler Mars Lumograph eraser, maybe it's just. I don't think the Lumograph is in there. That one is a plastic eraser. It's bright white. When you erase with it, it kind of the shape. The. What do you call the leftovers from the eraser that rubs off, kind of comes off kind of in one long roll rather than in little crumbs like a rubber eraser. And it is really effective. But he's right. It doesn't really. I don't know. It doesn't. It kind of feels like.
For me, man.
Yeah. Kind of feels like a mechanical pencil. I just. I don't get the same sensory experience with that than I do.
Yeah.
If you can't write something down and erase it and then breathe it in, then it's just a waste of time.
Exactly.
My lungs are just full of.
Mine are 40% pink pearl.
Can hear it rattling around in your lungs.
Right. If you were a minor, you'd have a black pearl. So I. I generally prefer the rubber erasers, too. I think one of the huge advantages to a plastic eraser, though, is it doesn't oxidize like the rubber does. One of the things I mentioned in the interview was once a race rubber erasers get, you know, beyond a certain age, maybe a few years old, they start to harden on the outside. And I mean, that's easily correctable. You can just like, you know, sand off the outer layer. But the plastic. Plastic ones, I mean, I have one that's been sitting in a. In a box for 15 years. And part of it is because the air does not circulate in there, but it still works perfectly.
I've actually got a cool tip on that subject. J from Huckleberry Woodchuck and Twist Bullet pencil fame. He sent me a message today and said that he has a simple eraser hack for old pencils. He says that you can pull the eraser out with slow, steady pressure and turn it around so you can actually pull out the bottom so it sounds like. And then turn it around and push it back in. He said the ferrule will protect the rubber somewhat. And if the eraser isn't too bad, it can be used. And then he just thought it was appropriate Considering the podcast subject tonight. Yeah, I thought that was a really cool tip. So you can. I mean, I know I've. Yeah. So I guess what I interpret that he's saying and I actually have a. I'm gonna do it right now live on air. I've got a Dixon. My first Ticonderoga. Yeah. And so I'm just kind of twisting it out.
This is a life hack, ladies and gentlemen.
There it is. It's out Live life hack. It's free. And then I can. Oh yeah, sure enough, I can just push it back in and it's back in place. So if you got like old pencil or if you. Or like us and you have a semi embarrassing hoard and one dries out by the time you get to it, then you can sometimes, as Jay recommends, you can use steady, slow pressure and twist it out and then push it back in the other direction and you'll have the bottom half of the eraser is being protected by the ferrule. There's a pro tip from a definite pro in the refurbishing department.
So then there's also. And I haven't used one of these in years, but somebody mentioned it in the. In the comment thread. And does anybody have any kneadable erasers? Yes, I used to just love to fidget with those things.
Yeah, they don't really work. Or if there's a trick to them. I don't know this trick.
They seem to be. You seem to buy them at like a store where you would buy like drawing supplies. And I honestly, I'm not quite sure why they need. Except that maybe what it is is you are erasing so much and so stuff that's so dark that it would just kind of coat the whole surface of that eraser. So then you can just fold it in on itself and then have a brand new surface. That's why I think it's kneadable. That's. But that's a theory. Does anybody have any corroboration to that?
It's for that and also so that you can shape it to.
Oh, like a shape.
They're sort of a good cheat for blending graphite. When you're drawing, you can smear it with that.
My mom is an artist and growing up she just from home had a business where she would do architectural renderings where people would give her blueprints and then she would do like a watercolor painting of what the building would look like. And so I have a lot of memories of her balls of eraser, like on her desk. And on her tables in her room that she had that kneadable eraser. Would use it all the time. I have some pretty fond memories of that.
That's cool. Yes. Somebody. Let me see if I can find this comment here. Yeah. Somebody said that they will take a knife and they'll just kind of like chisel away a fine tip on the back of a pencil. A pencil eraser. And then they can get. Then they can kind of get something fine and something in the crevice, which is pretty cool. Yeah. Not as cool as the kneadable pencils, though. What other kind of types of general erasers are we missing here?
Well, this is a question I have for you two because you've read Petrovsky's book and I actually haven't yet. I was curious if he talks about what people did to erase, like in the old days, like before there were those. So what kind of stuff did they used to use? If we're talking about different types. Bread crumbs. Oh, I have heard of that.
I want to try this, but I don't want to waste food. I like to eat.
Do you have a toaster?
I do have a toaster.
That's a good idea. Just pull out the little tray in the bottom of your toaster.
Mine's full of rye seeds. It might just tear up my paper
and char.
You know, I think I'd make it look worse then. Yeah, it's. Yeah. And I know that, you know, some of the very early erasers were gum Arabic and so just. And just kind of. Just kind of raw, unprocessed gum, which I would imagine would just make it sticky and gross.
But yeah. Yeah. And cool.
Bar fact. Rubber is called rubber because it rubs out.
Pencil.
That's where it's got its name, which is awesome.
You're welcome. English language.
It's vindication for us all. We invented a word, inspired a word.
Your car tires would not exist if it wasn't for pencils.
That's a really inferior use of rubber.
It would be called something like round, black, semi soft circle things if we, you know, wears off.
Costs a lot of money.
Yeah. If they didn't have an actual name
pollutes the world stuff.
So I think that we each kind of picked out some of our favorite erasers. And Johnny, why don't you tell us about your favorites?
Well, we were supposed to do three, and I did four. Because, as I mentioned, I have two sort of eraser strategies. And one is when I actually want to erase, and one is when I want to Have a pleasurable experience and I don't really care how much it works.
So.
So on the effective line, my favorite eraser is the Faber Castell plastic eraser, which is similar to the Mars plastic eraser except that it works better.
Is that the one that says PVC on the packaging?
They used to say pvc.
It says no pvc. It's the one that comes with the pencil.
It used to be PVC and then they got rid of it because of environmental and health concerns, I guess around 2007, 2008. About PVC.
Yeah, I guess I knew that. I just misspoke. But yeah, but they're the little ones that they include with certain pencils is that.
Yeah, when I lived in Illinois there was an art store that had them in real life. So I have one in my hands that I've had since 2004 or 2005 and it's half used up and it looks disgusting but it still works perfectly. The plus of the plastic erasers, as Andy mentioned, they don't age and they just keep chugging along like a real pencil.
I have a Statler plastic one and it just says Statler Mars plastic on it.
Yeah, they used to say pvc. It used to be like a selling point. Like this is made of planet killing stuff that'll make you sick if you burn it.
The one I have that I was meaning, it just says Faber Castell PVC free. And that's all. Besides made in Malaysia, that's all it says on it. So maybe that's a different one.
Oh wait, you're talking about Faber Castell. I'm sorry, I was looking at a Statler one.
Yeah, the Faber Castell brags about it being dust free and it is dust free. It rolls into a nice little ball and you can throw it away or I don't know, I guess you could do something more creative with it than I do. I just throw it away. But next on my list is the Staedtler Mars because I don't think it works quite as well as the Fiber Castell, but it's really easy to find. You can even find them at Staples these days I feel like I sell them at Target. They're starting to sell some Staedtler stuff there, which is good news.
Not my Target.
And they have the Alex right at my Targets, which is cool. And they have some other pins. They do not have the Norica yet though.
But one hopes my Target doesn't have that either.
We have many targets in Baltimore. Selling point in the city. No and so on the.
The.
The other end, the enjoyable spectrum. My favorite eraser, probably in the entire world is pink pearl. Because it's the pink pearl, man.
It's a classic.
I have a confession about the pink pearl. I should get this out in the air. I was walking out of my school the other day. There's this huge lost and found table and they were getting ready to throw everything out and there was a pencil pouch that they were getting ready to get rid of. And I opened it up and there were like five pink pearls in it. I definitely took them home.
That's not a confession, that's bragging. Awesome.
Anybody at Johnny's school hears this, or
Tim school, they're all listening.
Suck it. No, they're not.
Sorry. They used to be really abrasive. I guess they had more natural rubber in them and the pumice. But these days, I swear they're a plastic blend. They're a lot softer and they don't dry out as quickly.
I love that font.
Yeah.
Kind of cursive.
Y a pack in honor of this episode of the little ones. But the big ones, I've noticed since they switched to the softer stuff, the. The German branded plastic sharpeners have a sleeve around them, which I thought was to keep your hands clean, but it's really because the eraser will totally break in half without it. And since the. The pearl's gotten softer, they break in half. So get a smaller one. And my other favorite eraser, my last one is the factis that's distributed by generals, it's made by a Spanish company, and it's just a black block of rough rubber. It's awesome.
Oh, yeah.
I have no idea what the name means, but it's really good. It's a very fun eraser. Might have broken in half before because they dry out and they're disgusting, but they're awesome. They're pretty cheap and easy to find. And I'm gonna cheat and give a fifth honorable mention to the general's pink eraser, which is, performance wise, the best pink eraser I've ever had. But they're impossible to find. I have one and ain't nobody touching this thing. But it says a number. Number 102E. If I find them, I'll send you guys some. But those are my favorite erasers. How about you, Tim?
So my first favorite and it's sort of a. It's pretty pedestrian one, you know, it's not like with some. I mean, pink pearl is too. And there's nothing wrong with that, but I really love the Pentel Click Eraser. I find them very, very useful. And it's that which, if you don't know what that is, it's the Pentel eraser that you can actually extend as it wears down. So it has a plastic casing and you can sort of slide it down and the core. And you guys can correct me if I'm wrong because I don't have the packaging and it doesn't say on the actual whatever on the plastic casing. But isn't this the high polymer eraser from Pentel on the inside?
I don't know about that particular one. I've definitely used some that were like a white rubber. But I think the polymer would make much more sense because it's so long and skinny.
I think everything they make now, because I know I have some of their pencil caps that I like using. There are the eraser caps. That's high polymer. And I love the brick, too, of high polymer. They're just. You can get them anywhere. But they're really good.
I love them.
And I.
And I use. As far as a standalone eraser, by far, this is the one I use more than any other. I use it, I carry. I've talked about my Brass Town from Knotco, and I always. One of the six slots. My Nocco always has a Pentel Click Eraser to use. So that's my first and sort of major favorite one I really like. And I. And I think you can refill it, if I'm not mistaken. I don't. You might have to order them online or something. But they're like that. And it's got a really nice sound to it. I'm gonna try to get it over the mic right now. Can you hear it?
Yeah. I wonder where that clicking was coming from.
Yeah, it's a very. I've been playing with it, so it's a very satisfying click. And it's so. And you can get them for. They're just so cheap. I get them at Target, so I love these. These things are highly recommended and very controllable, you know, and they fit in. They don't take up a bunch of space, like with some brick erasers, like in my Brass Town. I'll throw it in there and it just sort of makes the thing lumpy, you know, but this just fits in right with your. With your pens and pencils. Mostly pencils. Johnny.
That was a good day. Gonna start a fight, man.
Gonna get on Skype punching each other over our amazing microphones.
They're hitting my webcam
Linux can take it.
Craig it up you two.
That's my first one. Second. I was going to mention when we talked about this over. We were deciding what we were going to talk about. One thing we pointed out was maybe talking about an actual. An eraser that comes on a pencil that we really like. And my favorite. And this sort of is. I guess this would technically go for any Ticonderoga, but the my first or the beginner's Ticonderoga. That fat pink eraser is so nice. I love it. And I actually have figured out that you can pull those erasers. Those erasers are the same size as the Midori bullet pencil erasers. You can actually. Or not sorry, not the Midori. Just like general bullet pencils. Like I have this, this one right here from St. Francis Monastery and it's the same size, so I can actually use those as replacements for those. But I think that's. It's a really nice eraser. And I don't know, I assume it's the same for all the other Dixon pencils. But that's my favorite eraser that's on a pencil for sure. And let's see after that, which I know, Andy, you had this on your list too, so I'm gonna sort of usher you in to talk about it with me. But because you sent this to me and so I don't want to like steal your thunder because you. You bought these and sent this. But the Koh, is it Koh I noor or how do you pronounce it?
I usually say Koh I noor, but I don't know.
That's the chicken.
Pronunciation.
K, O hyphen, I hyphen, N, O, O, R and C. The magic eraser.
And not to be confused with those tide, you know, erasers or whatever it is that you use to erase stains off the wall. Yeah. That are just fall apart. Yeah. They're super useful. They're made of magic toxic chemicals, I bet.
Super magic toxic chemicals.
What'd you say, Johnny?
It's a pipe insulation foam.
Really?
Germany, they discovered that you can clean stuff off with it. It's just an abrasive.
Oh, nerd moment. They're super weird though.
Yeah. Do you have a wall cleaning blog too?
Yeah.
Two children.
Yeah.
Those magic eraser.
Your paint.
I first saw those magic erasers on the well appointed desk. And they're gorgeous. They're like. Basically what it seems like is somebody took a bunch of different colors of the rubber when it was still maybe in liquid state and kind of layered Them. So there's, you know, there's white and green and orange and yellow and red, you know, red and all these great colors, and they're. They're amazing. I bought. I could only find them on ebay in the uk and I bought.
Oh, man.
How many did I even buy? I think I bought, like, 15 of them. And I sent a bunch to you and Johnny and to Anna and to a few other people. They're kind of in my head. They're kind of like our little trademark erasable podcast swag.
Definitely.
You know, not like stickers or something
like that, but I've had one sitting on my desk at school all year. I've used it all year long. It just sits right there. And it's. I will back up the magic title in that it just doesn't seem to ever wear down. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of weird, so it sort of weirds me out a little bit.
What is this magic?
Yeah, so they're great.
They're kind of little gritty, maybe a little pumicey, and they texture to them. Yeah, they work really well. And I've been trying to figure out how I can take these erasers and, like, silkscreen, like, our logo on the other side of them, because that would be the coolest thing in the world. But. But as soon as I saw it on Anna's blog, I. You know, I actually sent her a DM on Twitter. I'm like, hey, if I, like, I'm gonna try to buy a bunch of these. Do you want some? And she's like, hell, yeah. So.
So there's our. There's our next. Our next T shirt. Do you believe?
Oh, yeah. That's awesome. We should get Koh I Noor to make Tiffan those.
I could sponsor us along with Wild Turkey.
Yeah.
Yeah. We're gonna have, like, the most diverse sponsorship.
We're gonna be rich Czechoslovakian pencil company,
Wild Turkey, Kentucky Bourbon, and then a small soda manufacturer in Johnson City, Tennessee.
Hey, I feel like we could actually get Dr. Enough on board.
I feel like we could, too. I'll just walk over there. Yeah.
See what they're up to.
Small operation. I wrote them a letter when I was in college because they have green bottles and Tennessee earliest East Tennessee recycling centers don't accept green glass. And so I sent them this impassioned college sophomore email saying, like, why do you give. Why do you bottle in green if they're not going to be able to recycle them?
Hippie.
It was. Yeah, right? But then. But then A year later, they started selling plastic bottles. So maybe it was you. It was all me. So aside from the. The Koh I Noor and the. My first Ticonderoga, and actually, I kind of coupled it because they're about the same size, but the eraser that comes with the Midori bullet pencil, I feel like, is a really nice eraser. Yeah, that's. That's a really good. They're about the same size, and they're very similar. But this one might be vinyl. The Midori one might be, like. I can't tell because it's so perfect. Sorry. You might be able to hear my dog. She's pawing at my chair right now, trying to get me to pay attention to her. Put her on. She's a sweetie.
What's her favorite eraser?
Rosie, Say something, Queen. Erasers. You're an idiot, Rosie. So besides those, I went for a fourth, too. And my fourth favorite eraser is no eraser, which I know Johnny can back me up on that one. I like not erasing. I like just crossing out and keep going. That's sort of the joy of writing and revising. Whenever I'm writing something creative or I'm just trying to get it out of me, like a poem or something where I'm writing, and if something doesn't work, I just cross out and keep going. Don't take the time to erase. Just leave it. You know, warts and all, for the draft. And I really. I really enjoy that.
That was. That was kind of an interesting discussion on that Facebook thread.
I didn't see it.
Logan Ley said, wouldn't we all be better off using sepit erasers free from the shackles of inferior rubber. Blah, blah, blah. That's a different part. But he says he's a dedicated crosser outer. And then Katie Pruitt weighed in, who just happens to be my. My spouse. She goes. I also just crossed things out. Erasing. Interrupting interrupts my flow. But I like erasers for the aesthetics, the shape, the color, the smell, and also because they weigh down the top of the pencil just enough, which we'll talk about. But then, you know, somebody was saying, you know, why? Oh, what did they say? You know, by my logic, you know, erasing is a waste of time and creates a mess of eraser crumbles. Space is plentiful on the page. So I mentioned that. Keep in mind that the erasing process is very important to people who draw rather than write with pencils. Just because you can't cross out a line that you put In a drawing. So I think that's probably why it still exists for that, but then also for the sheer fact that that's what sets your pencil apart from your pen, is you can erase it.
That's not the only thing.
Well, obviously, it's better to. But so, yeah, that was. That was kind of interesting discussion that a lot of people are just crosser. Crosser outs.
Yeah.
I think your wife's got it completely right,
so it's not to use.
Andy, what about you?
I. My. My favorite eraser. Well, see, it's kind of a cross between that Koh I noor magic eraser, and then I have a black pearl. Have you guys seen those racers?
Yeah, I have a couple of those.
I've seen them. I just don't.
I love. Love the shape of them. They're. They're like a little pebble, and they're kind of the black rubber, which, to my mind, it's a little bit more pumicey, A little bit more gritty. I really like it. And it's so. It's kind of like a flattened something. Like somebody took a sphere, and they just kind of smushed it. So it's. It's kind of a pebble shape, and the edges are pretty. Pretty fine. Pretty sharp. So what I really like about it is it's really. It's a really good whirring stone. Like, you can just kind of hold it over, like, run it over in your hand and kind of rub your fingers on it.
It's smooth.
And I kind of wore the lettering off, but.
Did you say whirring stone?
Yeah. Do you know what a. You know what a whirring stone is? Or like a worrying doll?
Doll?
This for, like, sharpening your sword?
No, it's just like the fidget with, like.
I've never heard that term.
Yeah, it's. It's. Let me just look this up here. Worrying doll. So there's a. Oh, worry stone. Yeah, worry. Oh, like, worrying. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah.
I was thinking, like, W H I R R I N G. Like worry. No. Yep. Okay.
Gotcha.
Yeah, I'm with you now.
Yeah. So it's just great to fidget with. I fidget a lot when I'm reading or, you know, thinking or something like that. I keep silly putty at my desk at work Because I pull it out and just mess with it. But this eraser is wonderful for that, and it's really good for erasing kind of fine points. And then you can just flip it over in the flat edge and erase like normal. Which kind of leads me into my favorite pencil eraser, which is probably the black blackwing eraser, like the one that comes in the 602. Because I really do. Like, I noticed all of these, these pencil. These erasers that I picked are kind of the more pumicey ones. They're rubber, but they, they're a little bit more gritty and they wear off in mostly like little. Almost like a sand or something like that rather than like, like a little mess, if that makes any sense. So I, I really like those. And yeah, the, the black, black wings I really like a lot. They just work really well. I think everybody here probably knows what a black eraser is like, but they're. They're a little bit longer, they extend down into the ferrule a bit more and you can extend them. So I like that fact a lot. But yeah, those are probably my favorite erasers. I have a bunch of like decorative erasers, like those silly like sushi ones and stuff like that. I think they're fun. I have some, but I don't take them out of the package because I don't do anything with them.
So this is semi related to that. But I was in a. I went into one of my fellow teachers classroom the other day and I saw some. Some odd objects sitting underneath their desk. And so sometimes you'll see kids that have goofy erasers. These, you know, ones that are a foot and a half long and really thin and are the ones that are just shaped like things. But this girl had a sharpener that she had left in the class and the sharpener was shaped like an old fashioned record player. What do you call those? Victrola. Victrola, yeah. And it was made of metal. It's like pretty hardcore. I mean it's pretty awesome. This little like tiny Victrola sharpener.
That's cool.
Pretty impressed.
Yeah, I have a White House sharpener that I got at a gift shop across the street from the White House.
Oh, nice. I wish I would have seen that. I'm gonna look for that this year.
The. The pencil sharpener inside, it sucks. But the. But it's a cool little desk accessory. Yeah, cool. So yeah, that's kind of our favorite erasers. I figured we can probably now just kind of go through that feed and just kind of mention some of talk about some of the things that people have asked. So somebody asks, Logan asked, wouldn't we all be better off using separate erasers? Free from the shackles of inferior rubber. Ferruled to. Otherwise good. Otherwise good. Wood and graphite. And then he said. Or just not using erasers at all. So that's when he mentioned he's a dedicated crossrouter. So I know that in Europe, Europe and Asia it seems like there's a lot more pencils that are just capped at the end rather than eraser. I personally prefer the eraser if given the choice because I think it just makes. Gives a really nice counterbalance to the pencil. I don't know how you guys feel about that.
I agree. I think it's depends on the pencil. Yeah, yeah, there. There aren't many actually I can say that there aren't any un. Eraser like pencils that don't have an eraser and a ferrule at the end that I use on a regular basis because I think for that. For that reason. Yeah, I mean some of them I'll even. I use the General's layout pretty regularly and a Mitsubishi High Uni. But I'll put one of those Pentel high polymer ones on mostly for. For waiting. I mean because I, I have lots of pencils that don't have racers that I, I enjoy but I don't. I don't use them as much as ones that do have racers. And I think for me it's a. It's a feel thing.
It's like using those knives that are like a really nice like Wusthof knife or something that has a little bit of grip kind of behind the handle. It just like. I feel like it just gives a nice counterbalance to it sometimes.
I really don't like the eraser.
Yeah, I mean there is something nice about like. Oh my. One of my tombows that doesn't have an eraser because it's very whippy and you know, it's very lightweight and I do like that sometimes but.
And sometimes that the ends are so pretty.
Yeah, that's true.
The Norris with the eraser is kind of ugly, but the. That red tip.
Yeah, I love my Statlers with the
red tip and even the Wopecs. There's. There's some European versions that don't have erasers that are beautiful.
Yeah, I don't know why they're so
pretty, but they are.
I'm definitely not saying that I don't like the look of them because some of the uncapped ones. I mean the ones that don't have erasers look beautiful. I mean the. I love the look of the one I'm thinking of. It's the. It's mitSubishi of the 9000. Mitsubishi 9000. The green one. I love the look of that one. That doesn't have an eraser on it, but yeah, it's just a feel thing.
I like to run the. The smooth end tipped ones through my beard. Makes a really funny pencil sound.
Can you. Can you replicate that sound of the microphone for us?
Oh, the only pencil within reach is our test pencil.
Here, I'll try it. Let me see it. My beard's kind of short, but can you hear that?
Yeah.
No. I think my pop filter would filter.
I'll get there today.
Failed experiment.
Yeah. The Palomino, while beautiful with the eraser, is just incomparable without it. I love that pencil. Yeah, that's gone now with the gold print. Sad face.
So our good friend Topper, he asked, how long do you use an eraser before you toss it out? I find him very quick to throw them out and get another one. So I don't know if he was referring to, like a handheld eraser or if he was referring to the one on the end of a pencil.
I would think the handheld.
Yes. When it comes to pencil, I generally wear out the pencil before I wear out the eraser. But I definitely. I definitely have abandoned erasers because they've gotten too short. But I honestly don't think I erase that much. My erasers. Handheld erasers last me a long time.
Yeah, I don't. I've never in recent memory finished a handheld eraser. You know, just. I mean, I guess the problem is that I have a lot of them too. Yeah, that's part of it.
But,
yeah, I mean, I regularly finish off the erasers that are on the end of pencils. And I guess this is one thing I wanted to throw in and you were talking about the Blackwing, is that I don't. It's not the greatest erasing eraser for me. I'm not crazy about it. And I mostly use the pink one. I bought the pink erasers and I put them into my 602.
I like to use that because they look more classic.
Exactly. Yeah. Same with me. But I can't deny that they should be high up on the list. Just for the functionality, just for the. For the extendability of them. Actually, I have a couple vintage 602s and I bought the replacements and put them and put them into the vintage ones.
Did you have to cut them?
No, no, they fit.
That's cool. So Arthur in the group, he says that the quality differences between American and German pencil attached erasers. I really can't say that I've had regular problems with Faber Castell, Statler, Stabilo, or Lyra. And I did not regard those erasers as less capable than separate erasers. I just checked some, and most did fine. Bad performers were The Faber Castell 1117 in B and Stabilo Greengraph HB that needed more rubbing than the others, and a redrubber dessin dessin 2001B that had smeared half the graphite before gripping it utterly abysmal. On the other hand, was a pink eraser on a Chinese Bifa B, E, I, F, A. And the bics I tried were rather poor as well. Have you guys noticed any difference between. Between nationalities or even between specific brands? I can tell you on my hand, my end that Mongol erasers from the Mongols that were made in the Philippines would just break off eventually. Yeah.
Yeah. I. Gosh, I mean, I don't. I'll admit that I don't have a lot of experience with using European pencils that have erasers.
Yeah, a lot of.
A lot of. A lot of the European pencils I have are capped or just, like, you know, flat end. But I do have. I feel I have definitely have more experience with, like, Japanese.
And.
And there are some Japanese pencils that have some pretty awesome. Yeah. Razors. Like the. The Mitsubishi 9000, 852 has a. Has a really nice eraser that lasts a long time. And I. It's another one that it's kind of similar to the Midori, that it's kind of hard for me to tell if it's vinyl or if it's rubber.
Yeah.
Because it's just. It's so solid, you know, it looks perfect.
Johnny, have you noticed any trends?
I have. I've noticed that Staedtler's erasers are very, very good. It could be because the Wopex is sort of hard to erase. They put an extra awesome eraser on there, but that's a really good eraser. And Faber Castell's grip 2001s, they sell here. Really nice erasers. They're a little gritty, but they're very nice. They wear down kind of quickly, but anything Dixon, I love their erasers are great.
Yeah, definitely.
I have some that are 10 years old that still work.
So Ray Ray asks, are there pencils whose erasers are so bad that you won't use the pencil?
No.
I have found, like, generally, my Mongols, I now sort of just hoard because I don't want to use the eraser because they're gonna just. They're just gonna come off. But there are definitely some like novelty, like Dollar Bin target pencils that have erasers that just are more akin to like those, you know, like those sushi eraser erasers, you know, just kind of like super plasticky, but not particularly like useful. Useful. It's almost like it's dried plastic or something like that. And I generally tend to. I tend to avoid those pencils anyway because they're mostly the foil wrapped. But I generally tend to avoid those also because of the erasers.
You know, that's. I should have mentioned this earlier when we were talking about our pencil of the week, the test scoring 100. That eraser is pretty bad.
That's true. Yeah.
That thing, it just like shatters into a million pieces when you start erasing. Like, I would erase something and be like, what happened? My desk is just covered in red, like red dust. Like it's everywhere. And I can already tell that the eraser on mine is going to be gone before I even get to the halfway point of the pencil, which is, you know, pretty bad. So that. But I'll still use it, I think, on that. To answer his question, definitely, the performance of the graphite is 10 times more important than the performance of the eraser because there are so many good standalone erasers that it doesn't really deter me. I would definitely, if there was a pencil that I knew had an eraser that was just garbage, I would. But wrote really well, I would still buy it.
Yeah. So then the discussion kind of got off. Apparently the uk, they call them rubbers, which we all tee heed about that.
I think. I think I conveyed a story about that early on in the podcast.
Yeah, I believe so. Ray also mentioned that he sent a link on Amazon to the best eraser he ever used, which is a Derwent eraser. It's a battery powered eraser, which I believe what it is is it's just like a little eraser stuck on essentially a motor that you grip that spins so you. It's kind of like an electric toothbrush. You don't really have to like, you know, rub it yourself. You just, you know, just let it spin and do its thing. I've never used one of these. Have either of you guys?
Yeah, definitely, I have one. But I think part of the problem, I always assume with pencil erasers is that they can't put rubber that's soft enough to be effective onto the back of a pencil. And I think that's doubly so at the. The really thin little erasers that come on, the electric models. Yeah, they're Sort of abrasive. I kind of burn holes through things.
This thing is only four pounds, which is what, like six, seven dollars in U.S. but I was thinking about getting one, but I don't know, it just seems. I don't think lazy is the right word because, I mean, they do all sorts of things that are like that. But I feel like I would lose control of it a little bit or something.
Well, they hold pretty steadily. I think part of the Rationale forum is that you can get into a small space and you don't have to move your hands. It rotates for you, but they take
a lot of patience.
They make a lot of noise. It makes vibrating my hand and it's not doing anything.
It would make sense for somebody who's in drafting, like an architect or something to use that.
I think so then Ray says, let's try to get past the concept of a battery operated rubber, shall we? Do you like how this last part is just me reading Facebook to you? Well then my mom said something about how.
How does this Facebook work that you speak of?
Obama's a secret Muslim. What? So Arthur posted some trivia in Germany and eraser is called Redir. I'm terrible at German, but is also referred to as a ratzelfummel in an informal way.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Ratzelfummel is pretty good.
Very good.
Someone needs to start an eraser blog called Batzel Fumble. Steve actually had a really good suggestion for a title, which is Erasers are from Mars, Wolfex are from Venus. Miguel mentioned that he's tried an eraser called the Moo Eraser. It's really great and it clumps up amazingly. Although I always have a special place in my heart for the Pentel High polymer erasers for their price, erasability, and the fact that it could probably outlast my lifetime. Let's see, anything else interesting? Martin asked, what is the shelf life of various types of erasers? How old is too old to expect a pencil eraser? A pencil and eraser to work a few months? A year? A few years. Any tips for reviving old erasers? Kind of. Besides the usual, you know, just kind of use a very fine grained sanding
or
a dremel or something like that? Yeah, I've done that a couple times, but I actually, it depends on how you store it. I really. I think I have a box of old ticonderogas from the 60s that have never really been opened and they've been packed tightly and those erasers still work great and they're what 50 years old. So yeah, those. Something like that. But then I have like a pencil that just has been sitting on a shelf for a long time and maybe a couple years, and that's, that's gone hard, so. So I think it has a lot to do with airflow. We also kind of mentioned what Tim mentioned, the life hack from Jay about taking out the back and turning it over. But generally I'd say with general use, I bet. Like, I would give it a couple years. What do you guys think?
Depends what it's made of.
Yeah, and that's true. And like plastic and the high polymer ones, you know, I've had some for five years and they still work just as well.
Yeah, I've yet to. At least from my experience, as far as pencils that I've purchased that are new, in the last five years, I've not had one become unusable. Does that make sense? I mean, I have some, some Ticonderoga mediums that my mom gave me that were my aunts that are probably 50 years old and those are unusable. I don't think they're restored as well as your. That you had mentioned. But yeah, I mean, I think they, you know, for a, for a decent pencil, if you're not getting like some cheapo foil stamped or foil covered pencil, like, I mean, just. That is generic. I mean, it's gonna last a while, I would think.
Yeah.
Especially for most people who don't have like at my feet, I have a Tupperware that's full of probably like,
gosh,
300 pencils. By the time I get to some of those, they're probably gonna be dried out.
But I don't know if they're in a Tupperware, you might be safe.
That's true.
Yeah. Put one of those silica.
Oh, yeah.
This is the. What is the word? We came up for it. For me, this is the writing arsenal. This would be like the barracks or the. Something like that.
The armory.
The armory. That was it.
The armory. Johnny, do you want to mention the interesting little factoid that you just pulled up?
Oh, no. What was that? That was me.
Oh, that was you. I'm sorry.
Yeah.
Johnny's cursor was right on it, so I thought it was.
Yeah, I was just kind of curious. And while we were talking, I googled what the largest collection of erasers would be. Or actually, no, the Google search was the largest eraser in the world, and I didn't find that. I didn't look hard enough because I was. Didn't Want to, like, totally stop paying attention. But I did find in the Guinness Book of World Records, there is a record for the largest collection of erasers. And the largest collection belongs to Petra Engels. And she's a. She's German. And she has 19,571 non duplicate erasers from 112 countries, which she has been collecting since 1981, which is when she was 9 years old.
How would you like to be the Guinness official who had to count that and then remember if there were duplicates or not?
Oh, gosh, that's humanities degree. Yeah. So it pays off. Says she first developed an interest in erasers after visiting a stationary shop selling various and extraordinary erasers. Extraordinary erasers.
Come on down to Frank's eraser shop. We have extraordinary races.
Friends of her mother used to give her erasers instead of chocolate. And her parents used to bring her erasers from various business Trips. Petra, now 34, is celebrating the 25th anniversary of her eraser collection, which is stored in 22 glass showcases and an additional cupboard with 12 drawers. Wow. So how about that?
We really need to do an episode about how we store our pencils.
Yeah, that's. I agree.
Yeah.
Maybe three episodes.
Maybe the next non guest episode. We do.
Yeah. Yeah.
Anybody have anything else to add about erasers?
My daughter has a collection that's a few hundred strong.
Wow. That's.
And she's four.
Jeez. Is this her? Are you collecting this for her?
Is she.
Watch out.
You know, if we go somewhere interesting, she wants that $4 eraser that says Baltimore Museum of Art just stamped. But she's got some pretty cool ones there.
That's awesome. You should do a post about that. I'd like to see some pictures.
Yeah, man.
I don't know where it is they're buried in. It's in some sort of tin box that has princesses on it. But there are a lot of things that look like that in our house, so it's probably camouflaged somewhere.
That's where Henry keeps his whiskey now.
He's got a very nice flask. I gave it to him. It's one of the Stanley ones. We have matching magic masks. Mine's blue, his is green.
Yeah, that's. Just kidding, guys.
Don't call Child Protective Services. I'm just kidding. He doesn't drink whiskey. He's a beer man.
Yeah. All right. Anybody else?
I don't think so.
Okay, Johnny, where can people find you on the Internets?
I am ensilrevolution.com. i am on Twitter. Pensolution And I am on Instagram onnygamber. All one word.
Awesome.
Tim, you can follow me on Twitter writingarcenal or imwassum. And you can follow me on Instagram thereriting arsenal.
All right. And I'm Andy wellfleet. You can get me@woodclinch.com youm can get me on Twitter at awelfly A W E L F L e or oodclinched. And I guess I'll put my Instagram it's awelfly on instagram. I am Erasable Podcast is on the web at erasable us. That's where you can find show notes or listen to the episode on the web. You can find us in your friendly local itunes podcast directory. You can find our group on facebook@facebook.com groups erasable. Or you can get us on Twitter at erasable podcast. So thank you all for listening, and we'll catch you next time.