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Transcript
He was innocently filling his fountain pen when jugular. Hello and welcome to the erasable podcast, episode 17. I am Johnny Gamber and I'm here tonight with Tim Wasem and Andy Welfle, two men who twist my pencil heart. Good evening, gents.
Good evening.
Tonight we will be joined by John and Jay, creators of the Twist Bullet pencil. So we look forward to that. Yeah. Also we have our pencil of the week. We settled on a name for that now, which is awesome.
We can call it the pow.
Yeah. And so this week it's the Mitsubishi Hai Uni and HB specifically, which is very fragrant. So shall we start off as we always do, with our tools of the trade? Mr. Andy, would you like to go first?
Sure. Well, I am. I am drinking the last beer I could find. I feel like I've been posting. I've been having too much, like, bourbon stuff lately. So I decided tonight to drink some beer and it's the last beer in the house. And that is a Leningkugel orange shandy. Which I'm not usually a big shandy fan, but the orange is pretty good. And what's weird is it's really like. It feels like a summer drink, but it's for some reason just the orange. They sell in packs, at least around here in the floor fall, so starting in like late September.
Never had clove in there.
I've never had the orange shandy. I've only had the summer shandy, which is the one like the lemon.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Real super fruity tasting.
It's.
It's good, but it's like a good summer beer.
Yeah. And I am writing. We had a text message conversation about the general's test scoring. Not. Not to be confused with the Musgrave test scoring, but the General's Test scoring 580. So I realized I had one that somebody. Which one of you guys sent me.
That definitely was me.
Okay, maybe. Yeah, I think it was you. Yeah. So I decided to whip that out and try it out. And it's nice, not bugly. Yeah. Wait, what'd you say?
At all? It's not bugly at all.
It is not. Yeah, it's a nice. Just a. Just a black pencil and it says Generals test scoring 580 on the. On the edge and is a pink eraser and a pretty standard silver ferrule. It's something that wouldn't like beautiful. Yeah. It's something that wouldn't stand out. Like, you know, when you were using it like a. Like the Musgrave test scoring, but it's. It seems to go really nice. It's nice and dark. It seems to be holding this point pretty well. So yeah, I'm enjoying it so far. I think I'm going to take it to work and that's where my classroom friendly sharpener is. So I'll, I'll take it to work and give it a good, good super sharp point.
Those things look mean out of that machine.
Oh yeah. I'll post a picture of me holding it like on Buffy the Vampire Slayer or something.
You do a Kickstarter for erasable branded tiny pencil bow and arrow.
Yes. Yes, please.
A little one handed crossbow action.
Yeah.
Until we kill somebody or somebody kills somebody with our products and we get sued huge.
So that's probably the end of our podcast. That's how it will end one day.
Yeah, we just never gonna get tired of sucking up.
Pencils.
That's how you. That's how you go out, you know, with such a mundane topic. Yeah, pencils.
Pencils.
A dude died.
Yeah. Watch what you say about pencils, man.
He was innocently filling his fountain pen when
jugular.
Yeah.
How about you, Jim?
I am drinking a Highland Brewing Company oatmeal porter, which is the same brewery I had talked about in the last episode. They make the Thunderstruck Coffee porter which is seasonal, but this one is available all year round and it's really delicious. It's actually my first favorite beer when I moved down to this area. It's brewed in Asheville and I'm writing with a super drawing, Kitabashi or I don't know if you pronounce it. Kitabashi. Kitaboshi.
Kitabashi. Kitaboshi.
I don't know.
Sure.
9500 HP. I love that it has Kitabashi in quotation marks just in case you. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that means that I have a knockoff version. It's the Kidobashi.
I like the super drawing part. It sounds kind of poorly translated like. Yeah, exactly like super drawing. Great fun.
On the back it says for retouching and special drawing. Hb. Yeah. So. And I. I really enjoy that pencil. It was sent to me by a listener and I've been. I keep it at home in my pencil stand and use it here quite a bit.
You know, I'm looking at a picture of this, Tim, and is the, Is the writing left handed on it?
Is the writing left handed? What does that mean?
Is it. Well, like, is the writing. Oh no, it looks like the writing takes up A lot of the barrel. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I meant like is it right? Yeah. Like is it when you hold it in your left hand, is it upside down or is it right side up?
It is upside down.
Okay. Nevermind.
Gotcha. Yeah, yeah, that's. Oh, I never thought about that.
Yeah.
Just blew my mind a little bit.
You can buy like left handed pencils and there's some pencil out there and I can't remember what it is that has the writing kind of in a left hand orientation. And so when I as a left hander hold it, I can, I can still read it. Every other pencil I hold is upside down when I'm holding it, so.
Whoa.
Man. You live in a different world.
I do.
What about you, Johnny? What are you drinking and writing with?
I am enjoying Nitro Milk stout from Left Hand Brewing company because I saw a truck that was painted black and said nitro and I went looking for the beer and I found it. It's delicious. If you're a milk stout fan.
Is the nitro there like higher gravity milk stout? Is it different than just the left hand milk stout?
I think it's their standard one. It says America stout at the bottom, which is a bold claim, but it has an abstract cowbell which I appreciate.
An abstract cowbell?
Yeah, there's a cowbell that says 12 fluid ounces at the bottom. I was staring at it for a long time, like, what is that? Oh, it's a cowbell or cowbell.
Good band name. Abstract cowbell.
And your first album is more cowbell. And I'm writing with a general's cedar point because this naked pencil is so autumnal and beautiful.
That's true.
It makes me happy. So we can move on to our pencil of the week segment in which we are going to talk about the Mitsubishi high oni hp. And a little disclaimer. When I put the vote up on Facebook, I wasn't really clear about what we were voting on. So I got the feeling that folks just thought it was what's the best pencil vote? I'm not sure I would have voted for it for that either, but that's my fault. So if there was confusion, I take responsibility for that. After that disclaimer, who wants to go first? What did you think about this pencil?
I can go. Go for it. This to me, I've always really, really loved the look of a high ouni, like just that color and just the, the fact that like HP is written on like all of the various sides, the hex sides and just the. Just everything about it, like it to me, like it and tombow are like the most gorgeous just pencils. They're like, you know, thick lacquer. They. I just love the cap on the end with the kind of gold, you know, the gold accent. And like the tombow, like the monos have, you know, it's black and white kind of like this. And I just. I just think they're. They're so gorgeous. So I've never actually had one until again, one of you sent it to me. I can't remember who. I'm so bad. So that was the first time I ever used one. Just because they were always a little expensive. And for some reason, I just always, like, bought. When I was looking for an expensive pencil, I'd get a. Like a palomino or a palomino blackwing. So these are actually more expensive than the palomino blackwing, right?
Yeah, they're a lot more expensive.
Yeah.
28 at JetPens.
Yeah. Yep. You can buy them singly at jetpens, which is nice, which I think I'll do. But yeah, they're. They look amazing.
Yeah. The box they come in.
Yeah. That was actually the reason I had been attracted to it at first because Johnny mentioned the odor or being like one of the strongest smelling cedar pencils. And I remember I was. I had an Amazon gift card I was dealing with. I was trying to decide what to go for. And that was the main reason I went with this pencil. And it's. It smells wonderful.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
No, you go ahead.
I mentioned that a lot in a review, and that was the only thing I could find that about this pencil that I didn't compare to palominos. And being a little less experienced in Japanese pencils at the time, I got a lot of flack in the comments about sort of being in palomino's pocket.
Well, are we all. I mean, yeah, I sort of like
this pencil, but I don't use it a lot because it reminds me of, you know, lost sleep one night. So if you're listening whoever sent me those comments, you owe me a beer. I expect you to pay up.
It's gonna be a blackwing lager.
Yep.
So you're become the vodim buy it because it's made down the street from my house. But yeah, the printing on here is so pretty. But then they have that weird little string of white letters and the white barcode that, oddly enough, don't rub off. And I've tried.
Yeah, this is. It's up There in kind of the Cadillac level of pencils, we were talking about the price of it being, like, one of the more expensive ones. But I think we all sort of naturally compare it to the mono.
Mm. And I think I like it better than the mono.
See, I was just about to say I like the mono better because. And for me, and I think it makes. I can see why you would maybe choose this one. Is that comparing the HBS side by side, the high uni HP is harder. It's a lighter line. And so I actually found myself this week. I mean, it's. Of course, it's a really nice pencil, and it's always perfectly, perfectly centered. And I enjoyed using it. But I, too, a little bit, would kind of, you know, in a very minor way, because it's a pencil. I would dread using it because I have gotten accustomed to the kinds of pencils I like, which are the darker.
Yeah. Lines, you know, but you get maybe like a high uni 2B or something.
Yeah. That would probably be perfect for me. So I might. I'd like to try that. But I've got. If anybody out there has some two Bs, they want to trade for some HBs, I've got about eight of them. So I would trade. Trade, you know, three for three, if anybody wanted to trade. But because these are. These are nice, but I just don't find myself using them. And I think on a previous episode, we talked about how. Or I mean, I mean, I talked about definitely how I tend to just always lean towards pencils with erasers on them for, like, weighting issues. Just because the cap. Having a capped pencil that doesn't have an eraser makes it lighter. And so I just like the feel of having an eraser there just to keep it balanced.
Yeah, the. I. I guess I did. I definitely, like, I'm just really an eraser guy on the end of the pencil. Like, I. When I was using this, it's like the same when I was using, you know, a tombow, I just missed the eraser on the end. And it does write so nicely. And this does give me a chance to, like, get my pencil pouch and use my Koh I Noor magic eraser, because I really love that. But I. I'm just. I guess I just get so used to using a, you know, an eraser on my pencil. Do they make hyuni's with erasers?
I've never seen one.
I'm gonna Google this. Hi, Uni with erasers.
There's a little disconcerting.
Might be Close.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I don't see anything. I. I remember most about the Hyunies is I. I remember seeing on Pencil Talk a while ago a natural wood Hyuni.
Yeah.
And it looked kind of like those. Oh, the caran d' aches that we. That we got.
Swisswood.
Yeah, the Swisswood ones. It was that same really rich, like, stained wood, and it's just gorgeous. I'll have to find a link to that and put it in show notes.
Stephen has all the best pencils.
Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll track that down and put it in the show notes.
Yeah.
I feel like this plastic thing on the end is kind of bizarre that the. The mono has that too. I don't really understand its purpose. I'd rather just have a nice end dip like Faber Castell would do.
Oh, that's a plastic end.
Yeah. Beyond the gold band, it's a little plastic thing.
Oh, you're right.
One or two of mine aren't really on very straight. Huh. But I didn't pay for them, so I don't care.
Yeah. I love the look of. On the subject of the end, like the Kitabashi I was talking about that I'm using. I love that it. If it's. If it's gonna not have an eraser, I like the ones that just cut off and you can see the wood grain in the end of it.
Yeah.
I almost wish it was. Wish it was like that.
Yeah.
My wife has a serious hatred of pencils like that. Like, I don't like it. Something has to be on the end. Okay.
Seems like unfinished or something.
I don't know.
She likes Kate Spade pencils. That's my answer to that. This pencil is so nice. I don't really reach for it very often.
It's not in your edc.
It's always one of those things, like, you know, yeah, it's really expensive whiskey, but I like Wild Turkey. Yeah.
One thing that I will say with. Thinking about our conversation with Jay and John later, because of the hardness of this, I kind of want to cut it into some. Some stubs and use these in a bullet pencil because I feel like, you know, for sort of a classy insert to a bullet pencil, it would work. It would work really, really well because it. It holds a nice point. You never have to worry about the quality of the. The graphite and the centering. I don't know. I think I might do that.
Especially in the red one. It would look like with the color, with the brass tip, it would look really good.
Yeah, that would look awesome. Yeah, that's gonna happen.
Yeah.
But then you have to cut up a Mitsubishi, which might make your heart die a little bit.
Nah, I could do it, depending. I'll get out my.
He's cool.
It's Japanese pencil. So I'll find a katana and slice it in half. I'll have somebody throw it up in the air for me, and I'll just slice it mid. Mid flight.
Do you remember that old SNL skit, Samurai Delicatessen?
No.
Okay, which one's that? Oh, it's. Who is it? I think it's John Belushi, and he's. He's a samurai and he runs a deli katesan and he makes a sandwich and then he takes out his katana and slices it and slices the table along with it. And he. I think he, like, spreads mayo with his katana. Yeah, you can be. You can be the samurai pencil.
I'll sharpen it with a katana too.
Exactly. Cool.
Well, should we give it a grade?
Yeah,
I think. I mean, the trouble is, is it's. It's hard to. It's unfair to compare it with, like, the general's test scoring, considering it costs, what, like. Like, almost literally. Literally 10 times more.
But the awesome part of that is that it's still like $2.
Yeah. And by the way, we talked about this a little bit in the erasable group, but I don't think we're going to, at this point develop like a litmus or a scorecard for our pencil reviews here just because it's. You know, this is kind of an organic conversation and, you know, we. We rely pretty heavily on just kind of like personal observations. So I think we're going to leave the objective pencil reviewing to our own respective blogs.
Yeah, it's a. It's a little. It's hard, especially when you think about. Just like you said, I guess you were talking about the generals. But if you think about the first two pencils we've done, one is 325 a dozen. One's $28 a dozen. They're just kind of different, you know, it's hard to grade them on the same scale. So.
Yeah. Did I say generals? I think I meant Musgrave earlier.
Okay. Yeah, because it would just be. If we had a strict scoring setup, it would just kind of feel wrong to make the high uni an A and then therefore, Musgrave would be like a C just because of the comparison. I don't know. It appealed to me for a minute to do Something like that. But at the same time, I kind of like just vamping talking about it.
Yeah. But overall, I think if I were to give this a grade kind of along with like a Tombow and a Blackwing and things, I would give it a pretty solid A maybe A minus. Yeah, I do love, like, I like the way the tombow writes a little bit better, but I. Man, it's so gorgeous. I just love the way it looks.
Yeah, I'm with you on that. I think I would lean more towards the A just because. Personally, because of the hardness thing. Just as far as like a usability. Just because I have trouble comparing hbs to hbs and there's so many different variants in there and some feel different and I just. This, this HB just doesn't to me feel like the HB that I. Yeah. Like. Or that I think should be a true hb.
How about you, Johnny?
I think object, you know, quote unquote, objectively, as an expensive pencil. An A maybe an A minus, but for me, maybe a B plus plus. It's one of those pencils I really like, but I don't really use it a lot.
Yeah.
So it doesn't make a lot into the rotation. I basically have had one for two years. That's pretty short. But it's lasted two years.
Yeah.
It shows how much I use it.
I bet some of our listeners and group members who are artists would have a different opinion because we're all. None of us are artists. And I bet that this pencil, being in all these different grades and probably being primarily an art pencil, might have different opinions, which we should acknowledge just because we're all just writers.
Absolutely.
Oh, I did find one thing out two years ago when the American. What do they call it? The traveling salesman from field notes came out that had that weird green paper. It took me five of the books to figure out that the high Ooni HB is the perfect pencil for that paper.
Really?
Because it's got a little bit of a tooth. And a lot of things were. They weren't. They weren't shearing, they were smearing. And it was just disgusting. But this pencil was perfect. It was crisp and dark on that paper. So if you have any of those and you don't know if you're gonna whip them out, whip them out with one of these.
Speaking of that. Of the traveling salesman. So I just got one the other day. I did a trade with somebody in the field notes group. Is it just me or is the field notes like off center?
Yeah, it is.
I was looking at it, looking at. Then I look at some pictures online and I was like, yeah, that's totally off center.
My friend Jen has one that's pretty close to the center.
Really?
Yeah, actually she gave it to my wife, but my wife has to give her one, so it's an incomplete trade.
Yeah.
But I have it, so.
Cool.
Yeah. And one other thing I wanted to mention about the pencil of the week is that understandably, some people will say, why don't you try like a different grade? Why don't you do two Bs for that pencil? Or why don't you do four Bs? Like, why don't you try different grades? And. Which would be awesome. But the, the only problem with that is that the list we provide on the, the poll on Facebook is made up of pencils that we all have and we don't have every pencil.
You should have seen our like 30 minute text conversation leading up to that. Do you have this?
No.
Do you have.
We have, between the three of us, we have, we have a lot of pencils, but we, we don't have all the pencils. And so especially with. And if as far as grade goes, chances are HB is going to be the one that we have in common. So.
Yeah.
So probably for, for the most part, maybe 90% of these pencils of the week that we do are going to be HP of some kind. It's, it's not because we don't want to try the other ones. It's just because that's what we all have in common. So sorry for those of you who want us different grades, we'll try. We'll include some of those when we, when we find common ground. But we just unfortunately yet don't have unlimited funds to buy pencils for this. So. So I guess we all kind of settled on an A minus. Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.
Shall we go on to fresh points?
Sure, let's do it.
You want to go first, Mr. A for Andy.
Sure thing, Mr. J for Johnny. So you were talking earlier, Johnny, about, you know, it would be interesting to get an artist's take on this because following up on our Eraser episode, we did get some artists take on the kneadable Eraser. So I just wanted to do a follow up and read a couple of the Facebook comments which I thought were really good and had really good points. Excuse me. So Jeffrey Clements on the group, he said please, please, please talk to an artist when you are going to talk about an art supply for an artist working in Graphite pencil. A kneaded eraser is the only eraser. The reason it's a kneaded eraser is that you take it out of its packaging and knead it. You use it to remove stray lines and shading or lighten or otherwise manipulate your drawing and then knead it. It will turn a darker, uniform gray. When it gets too saturated with graphite, you throw it out and start a new one. An art teacher, I had suggested chewing on a kneaded eraser to get the graphite out, but I don't recommend it, which sounds kind of gross. He goes, okay, I lied. He goes, artists will use the electric erasers too. I don't have one. You don't need to erase big areas with the electric eraser. Use it to nibble out tiny spots that you can't get to with a needed one. I don't. Many art. Don't know many artists that use a block eraser. If pencils come with one, they get thrown out. So that's an interesting comment. I think Larry Marshall had a good comment too, and some of them aren't relevant to the needed ones. But let me pull that out here. Okay? There was a point he felt we didn't understand about the kneaded eraser, which includes anyone using watercolors as well. Artists are very worried about bruising their papers because if you press hard with a pencil and or use an abrasive eraser, you can compress and or tear paper fibers, which totally makes sense. You can't see this until you try to shade the area or apply watercolor to it. Then those areas will take graphite watercolor differently and you'll never recover. So we use kneaded erasers. The shaping aspect that was mentioned is important, but this is the really big deal. I think what you don't understand about kneaded erasers is that when an artist lays down a line, it's not like writing with a pencil. We use almost no pressure. We don't want to bruise the paper. So the graphite is sitting high on the paper, and a kneaded eraser will remove it quite nicely. Another thing people do if they're using graphite for the underpinning for ink or watercolor, is to roll the kneaded eraser in a cylindrical in a cylinder and roll it over their drawing. This will lighten the entire drawing, leaving only enough to act as a guideline for what's to come. So that's. That's super interesting to me. Like, I. I feel silly, but I completely didn't know that.
Yeah, that's. It's really interesting. Think about. I talked about when we were. We were talking about the kneadable erasers. I talked about my mom using those. And I. When I read his comment, it did kind of make me think. Think back. And I do remember my mom sitting at an angled drawing board and just kind of rolling it in her hand while she was looking at what she. What she was working on. So maybe she was doing that with. Putting into that kind of cylindrical shape. Yeah, I hadn't even thought about that. So that's. I definitely value those kinds of. That kind of input because we, like, we said we're not artists. There's nothing we can do about that. So it's good to have that. It's good to have that input. Yeah.
So, yeah, I just wanted to read that. What I love about the group is people. I mean, that comment came really soon after he posted that. So we get a lot of people who listen to it pretty quickly, so we get pretty fast feedback. The second thing I wanted to mention, so I think Johnny can relate.
I just.
On Friday, I got out of bed and went down and checked the mail, and there was a box sitting there, and it had that cool little block with the dots on it that said, dudek, Modern Goods. And I'm like, holy crap, what is this? And so I took it in and I opened it, and it was that thing that Tim has. So I looked at a. I looked. He wrote. He wrote a little note in pencil just saying, hey, you know, I thought you guys might like one of these. Here you go. And I'm like, whoa. Like, it's. If you. If you're not familiar with Mike Dudek, he has a blog called Clickypost, and he posts pencil, pen reviews, things like that. And not that long ago, I don't remember when it was, but he started making those blocks of solid walnut that he polishes and cuts to size and drills pen and pencil holes in. And he's had some kind of cool, fancy ones. And I guess it was you, Tim, you ordered kind of a custom one, right?
Yeah, we. We interacted over. Over Twitter and just kind of like message back and forth. And I sent him some drawings of just something I was looking for. And I was trying to find something that would incorporate pencils because he didn't have one at the time that. That you. That had holes with a small enough diameter to hold a pencil without it sort of wobbling around. So we came up with an idea to split it down the Middle to have a slot for, for field notes or some kind of notebook to go in the middle. And then it fits nine pencils on the right and six pens on the left. And even on the pen side there are three smaller holes and then three bigger holes to hold different size pens. And then. And yeah. Yes. And he made it and it was perfect. I love this thing I've got. It's right in front of me. And he, he actually came out with it a week. Was that a week ago officially.
And he, he's calling it the Divide, which is pretty cool. It kind of reminds me because you put all your pencils on one side and your pens on another and you put some paper in between them to like moderate, mediate.
But yeah, hold them back so they don't get in the fight.
Exactly. Well, I did, I did put a bit click in the pencil area because it would fit. So I, I think that's the, it's reaching across the aisle.
Yeah, you might, you might come home, come home from work and that big click has a black eye.
Everything's on the floor. So, so Mike, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. This is super cool.
Yeah, I, he, yeah, he, he got in touch with me to get your, your details and I was, when he told me he was gonna do that, I was like, oh, man, you are awesome. And they are gonna love this.
Oh, yeah.
Have you opened and set up yours, Johnny?
I have.
That's awesome.
Yeah, I'm in love with it.
So I'm usually more of a, like a pencil cup kind of a guy. I just take a bunch and just like, you know, shove it in a cup. I have a bunch in my basement. But this, this is interesting because now I'm going to try to use it and try to start thinking strategically about what I'm gonna put in it. So. Yeah, that's, that's super neat. And so check out clickypost.com to see, see these things that Mike has made. There's a bunch of reviews out there too. Tim has one on his blog and I know that. Oh, like the pen addict has one. And there's, there's a bunch around, so they're just gorgeous. And they smell really good too.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That thing really is like this, the center of my world when I'm at home, because it's at my desk and it holds everything that I use. And you do you get strategic about what you put in it.
Yeah.
You want the things in there that you use the most. And so when I come home, mine right now has Hyuni 602, an original 602. It had the Kitabashi and Tombow Mono 100hp and 2B the Blackwing MMX and a Mitsubishi 9852. Yeah, it's all the kind of the nicer pencils that I want to have readily available when I'm sitting here. And then I've got my, my pens
and what I love is there's, there's like an extra little pinhole at the very bottom that your pointed tip kind of rests in. So. So it sits kind of you know, bolt upright.
Yeah, yeah.
Kind of found I had shot a flashlight down there and take a, took a look. That's really neat. So yeah I have mine upstairs so I don't know what pencils I have in it off the top of my head but I put a couple fountain pens on the, the big side. But it's great, it's great size for a Sharpie.
So in the, the smaller, the smaller holes on the pen side are a perfect fit for jumbo pencils like oh the Castell 9000 Jumbo and my first Ticonderoga fit really nicely into the smaller hole on the pen side.
Okay, what do you have in the paper slot in the middle?
I have an old just craft paper field notes that is full of some ideas for a project I'm working on and then a shelterwood field notes that I use for blog related stuff and then a few Keras Customs stickers got here. They were in between. Yeah, that's cool.
How about you Johnny?
Right now I have that balsam fir notebook that's not a field notes that I made reference to last time. Anna, Maryland. Field notes nice and snug.
Nice.
Well, mine is a perfect segue to my last fresh point which is I have a Baron Fig apprentice in there. I, I got some in Joey. I want to say cafone but maybe it's Cafone. C A F O N E. He sent me a pack and I'm, I'm liking them so far. I you know they're a little, they're about a half an inch shorter than a field notes and like a word notebook. And I think I was kind of playing around putting them in my pocket trying them in different formations and they fit just ever so slightly better in my shirt pocket being a half an inch shorter and then I can fit them into the back of my jeans pocket sideways that way. So I'm kind of digging the shorter, the shorter format design wise. I like the, I like the yellow is Kind of, you know, on the. The confidant, the yellow is used for the bookmarker. Just a touch of yellow. And in this, they actually sew the pages together. Instead of saddle stitching with a staple, they're actually like, literally stitching, and I think it looks great. That kind of gray paper matches the cloth that's on the confidant. And it has a dot grid inside, too. And somebody pointed this out, and I need to bring my confidant upstairs and check it out. But the pages of the Apprentice, I believe, are a little bit creamier in color than the confidant, which is a little bit wider. Have you noticed that? Have either of you. Have you tried these yet?
I haven't seen any Baron fig in person.
Neither have I. I've been meaning to for a long time, but I just haven't. It's. It's so rare that I actually. That I actually need a new notebook. And the last time I was coming to the end of the one, the slate showed up. And that thing has just been rocking my world ever since. I haven't. I just haven't ordered one.
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it's. It seems to be pretty nice. I just got it on Friday and I haven't really given it much use yet, but I'm gonna. I'm gonna give it a try. Another thing they have which I really like, is there's six pages in the back of the notebook that are perforated. So if I wanted to, you know, scribble a note and then, you know, tear it out, I can do it really cleanly and easily and then, like, give it to somebody, because a few times with my field notes, I made a note to somebody and then tried to tear it out and gets a little messy. Or I'm just like. I don't want to mess up my field notes. So, yeah, with the perforated edges, it's really nice.
The Moleskine K here has that on the back. I think it's only the last two or three pages, but I think it does.
Yeah. That's really great. I'd love it if Word or Field Notes would adopt that. So, yeah, I'll have more information about that. I'm kind of in the early stages of a review for my blog about that, so those are my fresh points. How about you, Tim?
First off, I'm going to need Andy to drop Johnny from the call for a second because I'm going to go on the list. Man.
Looking at this for a while.
Johnny's gone. Speak freely.
Click I have to go rogue for a minute, and I just wanted to give a shout out to Dan Bishop and Keras Customs because they wrapped up their last Kickstarter, which was for the ink, which was their fountain pen, and it showed up this week, and it is awesome. I posted a review on my blog, and I just couldn't help myself bringing it up on the podcast because it's such a nice pen, and it's. It's really blows me away that they were able to hit such a home run with their first take at a fountain pen, which is something that can be kind of finicky, and, you know, you have to get it just right. And it's. The crowd that likes fountain pens is a pretty picky, picky crowd. So I think they did a really fantastic job. And then I just want to encourage people to go check those out, because it's in the grand scheme of things for fountain pens. It's sort of in the middle as far as price, but it's. It's totally worth it. And this thing could withstand anything. You know, you could run it over with your car, strap it to a grenade, throw it at somebody. I think it would probably make it out, but they're gorgeous.
See what pens bring out?
Yeah. Pencils are all about peace and love, guys.
Yeah, right.
I got to hold one last week when I saw Joe Lebo. It's got a nice heft to it, but it's not, like, heavy. No.
Yeah. And when you take the cap off and you write with it, it has a really nice balance to it. What I said in my review is that it kind of disappears in that you don't have to think about it. You're not thinking about it being heavy or thinking about it being light. It just sort of fits. So. And then along with. Do they use Schmidt?
Okay.
Yeah.
It's a Schmidt Nibs, which were the original Twisby Nibs. But along with that, I also. And this kind of transitions into my next point. I was also sent a bolt, which is their bolt action pen, which has a ballpoint refill. And this thing, I can't stop playing with it. It's so awesome.
Those are super cool looking. Yeah.
And it's really also very well weighted and has a nice ballpoint Schmidt refill in it. And this sort of segues into my next point, which is that I've been getting into kind of the everyday carry mentality sort of over the past couple weeks with, you know, just coming up with something that you carry every day, things that can cover Everything almost more that I'm intrigued by it. Not that I actually subscribe to it totally, but it's been kind of fun to play with it. And so I've been.
Pretty soon you're going to be Skyping us from the woods like late at night.
Yeah. Or I'll just be sending in like recorded videos or like audio of me and just to totally edit it in
your rugged field recorder.
Pretend I'm having a conversation. So I've been getting into that and I've been posting some pictures of the. The Karis custom stuff that I've been carrying with me because that made it in. And then of course the bullet pencils are a natural fit into that. It's not the pictures I post. And the way that I think about it, it's not the same every day. And I'm not exclusively using that stuff because I do carry just regular pencils pretty much every day. Also, along with that, Other things that are in that world, like Jay's handkerchiefs, he makes some really cool stuff. So I've been waiting for him to get those back in. They sell so quickly that he. He's got to constantly be selling to keep up with the demand because they're so well done. What I've heard. So yeah, I've gotten into that mentality. It's intriguing to me.
And you're carrying like three or four guns with you, is that right?
Yeah, yeah. I've got like a Glock and then a bazooka over my shoulder and you know, pretty high powered flashlight that can like set things on fire. No, I don't. That's the one thing of the EDC mentality that I don't subscribe to is that I don't believe in carrying a gun. That seems silly to me. And also the flashlight, I don't carry a flashlight because who needs a flashlight that often? If you need a flashlight that, please
send all of your emails to Tim Wason.
I just thought that just doesn't with my. Maybe it's just because I'm a lowly middle school English teacher and I'm not doing anything adventurous that I just don't need to. I just don't need to carry a flashlight. So I was actually looking into it and I was like, oh, there's so many cool flashlights out here. But then I just kind of decided, you know what? I won't use it. So why would I spend $40 on one of these sweet flashlights?
My father in law kind of compulsively buys flashlights at you know, when they go on sale at hardware stores, and he has so many flashlights.
You send me one.
I should. Yeah. My favorite is he has just like, right on the. You know, like in the hallway in the corner, he has one of those giant, like, cop meg lights.
The three feet, like 25D batteries.
Exactly.
Yeah. So.
So, yeah, I've been getting into that. And then my last fresh point, which also is a segue, and it's actually a question for you, Andy. I think mostly is for bullet pencils. If you're making your own stubs for your bullet pencil, what's the best way to divide a pencil into stub lengths?
Well, I've tried a couple different ways, and I'm. By no means. I'm sure, you know, I'm sure Jay's the guy to talk to about this, but I. I found a couple different ways. One of them is to kind of take a knife and just kind of score along the edge of, like, the circumference of a pencil and then kind of just snap it pretty quickly. You don't get many splinters that way, but you do get some splinters. My favorite.
Does it break up the. The core if you fracture the core?
If you snap pretty hard and cleanly. It does not. And I'm sure, you know, people have better ways, like maybe put it against the side of a table and, like, snap it. But you want to. You want to kind of, you know, make a. Make a. Kind of strike it kind of pretty close to the. To the core. Like, you know, dig into that wood a lot. The more you do that, I think I feel like the less. The less splintering you'll have. But the. My favorite way is I have a dremel. And so I just put my pencil in like, a. In like a vise and then put the kind of wood carving thing on the dremel and just do it that way. It makes it much cleaner.
I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try this while we're recording. So you're gonna hear a sound here in a little bit.
But if you get any splinters while you do this, I will not be held responsible for.
I'll send you the bill.
Okay. But the splinter bill. The splinter bill. So the dremel's.
I go to the splinter doctor again.
I think the dremel. The Dremel method is my favorite. So if any of you guys have any out there in listener land, if you have any ideas for a best way to kind of make these yourselves, just maybe post them up. On the erasable group, which we'll give the link for at the end. And the link will be in show notes. Yeah. So that's my favorite way. It's super loud.
You're about to find out.
Okay, are you ready?
I pulled out my pocket knife and I'm scoring the edges.
Okay. You should give us a warning before, you know, before you're about to do it.
I'll think about it.
Okay. So, yeah.
And I'm doing it to my high uni, by the way.
Oh, man. Did you hear that, Johnny Gracious, man.
Okay, here goes. You ready?
Yep.
All right. One, two, three.
Wow.
That was so quiet.
Did you do it?
I'm really good at. Yeah.
Yeah, I just did it.
How does it look?
I did it on the side of my.
It sounds like you just tapped the table. Like you were, like, tapped the table or something.
I did it on the edge of my desk.
Okay.
It's perfect. It looked like I. Wow.
Good.
Ladies and gentlemen, if anybody do this, just let me know because I'm apparently really good at it. I use my Swiss Army Alox to carve it away.
You should open an Etsy shop or go into business with Jay.
Artisanal Pencil splitting.
Splitting. You can have your own TV show.
That's the most productive fresh point I've ever had. Like, immediate help. And it's already working, so thank you.
No problem. So do you have any more fresh points, Tim?
No, that's all I got.
Cool. How about you, John? I'm satisfied he's ready to shut down the show. See you later.
Bye, Tim. I also want to thank Mike for the super awesome divide. I've always sort of eyed up one of his desk caddies, but I figured, I don't have fancy pens, so you know why. And then I saw it. Saw this one in real life. Like, I should have got one of these a long time ago. Plus, it was one of those I'm having a bad day, but I'm gonna have a fun night days. And this was sort of right in between. And started picking things up. So super awesome. And it gives me good vibes. Now the colors, perfect. So chocolatey and delicious. I love it. It doesn't match the wood of any of my pencils, which I really like. It'll set them off nicely. Another thing I was thinking of recently is that I sort of miss when field notes. The seasonal ones were seasonal. Like, the autumn ones were autumnal, and the autumn ones this time were most certainly not autumnal. And I get a headache using them. So I Was sort of thinking about what are good autumnal field notes, and then my wife bought me a pack of the county fair ones. And the yellow and the red are so pretty.
Wasn't there a Mackinac one?
Yeah, I wish I had those.
Those were super autumnal.
Yeah, those. And what were the ones that came out to that absolute zero, just below zero or something?
Yeah, those were really wintery. Yeah, those perfect.
I have all the ones after those,
but I don't have those.
I'm sure short of a thousand dollars, I'll never get them. Also, I wanted to mention something that you. I'm sure you guys have noticed, and that's all the cool friendships that are resulting from, you know, maybe not our podcast, maybe the Facebook group, and things like that that just warm my little heart, make me very happy. In Baltimore, we have little hangout groups. So Mr. Joe Lebo and I were drinking some Blackwing lager.
That's right. I'm so, so jealous every time you talk about it.
It's so. It's one of those things, you know, you're afraid when you try it, it's gonna like. Nah, this tastes like junk and a can. But, no, it's really, really good. It's a toasty black lager that's made by Union Brewing Company right near where I live. I think it's actually officially in my neighborhood in Hampden. Good old Hampden, where all the hipsters and racists play. We're getting tired.
Which one? Which one are you?
I am neither.
I'm just.
I'm just a native son. I'm watching the whole thing and writing funny cartoons about it in my notebook. I do it, but my neighbor who drives me crazy, he insists on saying racist things around me despite the fact that I'm the only white person in my house. Dude, seriously, that's my son. That's going in a weird direction.
Racist. You can email Johnny Gamber.
I'm down.
My house.
Well, roll. I've got pencils. So, speaking of pencils, I've got a really cool new pencil case that my wife bought me for my birthday a few weeks ago from Black Wink. Black Wink Black Ink in Boston, which, oddly, has a lot more pencils than it does pens. And it's made by a company called out of Print. They're the place that makes T shirts.
I love that place.
Yeah, the COVID of the Grapes of Wrath and things like that. But this. This pencil case is just cotton canvas. It's unbleached, and it has little Ed Garland powheads. All over it. I think that it's called Polka Dots or something like that, which is awesome. But I have another pencil case by Blue Q. I think that's the name of the company. And they're all those recycled plastic ones which are cool, but there's something about dirty graphite infested cotton canvas that just gets you. It's very pencilicious. So I've only been using it a few weeks and it's already like disgustingly dirty inside. It's awesome. Smells really good.
So can I tell everybody about this website real quick? Out of print.
Yeah, go for it. I don't know anything about it.
So if you go to outofprintclothing.com you can buy those polka dot, polka dot pouches, but you can buy shirts and pouches and phone cases and everything with a bunch of classic book covers on it. So like the original Great Gatsby cover, one of the original 1984 book covers, the very hungry Caterpillar they have. We bought my nephew when he was born a little prince onesie, which is super cool. Yeah. You can also get socks that look like library cards, which is really neat. And we even bought these super cool little match books. Not books, but like match boxes that fit into this little case and they look like books. They're so neat. My wife kind of told me about this and I spent a lot of time just like just kind of drooling over some of the stuff they have. It's really good for book nerds. If you have a book nerd in
your life, it's not expensive. The Pencil cases are 12 bucks and they're made in America.
Yeah. So there's a link to that in show notes. Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to hijack your thread.
Oh, no, no. The only other fresh point I have, and I would love feedback on this is is that I realized after reading you guys blogs that my blog is ugly and has no discernible theme or logo or anything. So I'm sort of experimenting and it's not going well because I don't know any code. So if any listeners have some good feedback for how I can make it not look like crap anymore, that'll be very much appreciated. I do have a fave icon now though. So moving on up.
For nine years, we had a client one time who called it, called that the Flavor Con. And I was like, that is the best name for this. So I, yeah, I started calling it, started calling the Flavor Con kind of ironically and then I just ended up, you know, just Referring to it as
that sounds like an awesome food festival.
Yeah.
Flavor convention.
I like the theme you have up there now, Johnny. It's. It's. Is that the Omega theme,
maybe?
Yes. Yes, it is. I just looked at the code. Yeah, I like it.
It's messing with that late at night.
It's super simple.
I need a logo. The only thing I ever had was that sort of thing that was handwritten and typed on with my one typewriter, but I don't know where it went.
Lost over the years.
Well, this is. This may be a better conversation for offline, but if you need any coding help or branding help or anything, let me know.
I will talk to you about that.
We can make stickers. We can make Pencil Revolution stickers.
You know what? I was looking at your blog and the header, I was like, damn, Andy's got some nice stuff up there. I'm jealous.
We can make yours pretty too.
Awesome.
I like it.
And it's responsive now, isn't it? Your website, if you look at scale your browser down width wise, it kind of goes with it.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Well, that's it for fresh points. So we'll move on to our main topic now and talk to Huckleberry Woodchuck and Metal Shop ct.
Yes, indeed.
How does that pronounce Metal Shop? Connecticut.
I think it's Metal Shop.
If you were into stationary enough to listen to this podcast, then the Twist Bullet Pencil almost needs no introduction. We are talking about a modern recasting of the tool of a bygone era of advertising bullet pencils. Machined from solid aluminum, the Twist allows you to carry a pencil in your pocket without fear of impaling your hip, thigh, or other sensitive parts with graphite. This project has already reached its funding goal in Kickstarter, and the stretch goals, which will give supporters more color choices from which to pick, are in reach. Finally, this is a piece of pencil gear which can last as long as the pencils you've stashed away for your kids and grandkids. We at Erasable Podcast are lucky enough to have the two gentlemen who are bringing you the Twist right here with us tonight. And we extend a warm welcome to Jay Smith and John Fontaine. Hello, gents.
How you doing?
Hey, guys.
So, as a to start off, maybe Jay, you and John could tell us a little bit about your backgrounds in metalsmithing and how you guys got together to form Huckleberry Woodchuck.
Jay, you want to start that?
I was gonna say the same thing
to you, but yeah, I'll start it, then take it away. Well, my brand, Metal Shop has been around for just over a year now. I call it maybe last August was our kind of coming out party. First retail event we did in New Haven, Connecticut and had the kind of the first product line there, which were some stainless steel machine bottle openers, two different types. One was more of a key shackle and then there was a larger bottle opener that was kind of a twist off opener and a traditional church key. So as I started to do some of these kind of pop up markets and notice that for the most part, the Metal Shop brand was the only brand there that had anything for a gift for any guy. So there was tons of jewelry, there was tons of handbags and women's vintage clothing and all sorts of different stuff if you were looking for something for a girl, but nothing for a guy. So I started to take a look around and see some other small craft makers and started to kind of add to my collection of stuff with products that were complementary to what I had. So I kind of created this Metal Shop general store. And, and that's how I found Jay. Just kind of looking around Instagram and I noticed the bullet pencils and the handkerchiefs and kind of shot him a message one day and said, hey, I want to pick up some of your handkerchiefs and bullet pencils and sell them at events. And that kind of started it from there. You know, I called them up and said, we got to make our own. And you know, 25 weeks or so later when we had that first call, we're here, you know, live on Kickstarter. Awesome.
What was the inspiration for specifically being a bully pencil to start with?
Well, I've always wanted to do a bullet pencil since I got the first one and had to pry the first pencil stub out of the cap. I was like, there's got to be a better way to do this.
Yeah, that's it. You know, after I did that first event where I had the bullet pencils, the vintage ones from Jay, I called them up that next Monday or so and said, we got to make these. And he said, I've been trying to find someone to make them with forever. And I said, well, let's do it. That was it.
This has been a whole introduction for me into metal fabrication and CNC and all that stuff. I had no clue. It was so, you know, accessible to get stuff made. But it's been fun.
Can you guys tell us a little bit about the history of your partnership, even though it's very young and where you got the name Huckleberry Woodchuck.
Well, me and John have been actually, our shops open around about the same time. I think his open in August and mine started officially in September. Huckleberry Woodchuck. I don't really know how to explain how that came about. That was just a random suggestion by my girlfriend, and I. I went with it, not realizing that I was going to have to write it a billion times throughout this whole thing. So now, yeah, even email address is in@huckleberrywoodchuck.com so I've gotten pretty quick of typing it, but other people get frustrated. Other than that, I started it primarily to make handkerchiefs and then the bullet pencils I just did because I enjoyed bullet pencils. And so it was just sort of a secondary thing, handkerchiefs to make some money in bullet pencils, just because I enjoyed it. And, yeah, then, like John said, I got a message from him saying he was interested in producing one. I was like, oh, thank God. I've been talking to people. I've been saying for years. I've been like, we've got to make one of these. Nobody's making them. Like, they're perfect. There's nothing wrong with the old design. You know, like, we could get something new going, something sturdier, something a little bit more updated, and, you know, really have something that I think would, you know, is. Is a good product and a good. I don't know, there's a reason why it's. It's been around for 100 years. It works.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's really the, you know, there's not much to the history of this. This partnership. I mean, it was a phone call one day saying, we got to make these. And, you know, Jay shot over a sketch that he had that kind of meshed with what I was thinking, and I kind of showed that to my guys, and they started, you know, messing around. And, you know, I think it's. If I look back through my Instagram role, I think it's about 18 weeks ago when we first got that first prototype that you guys played with for a while, which is sitting right in front of me. So, you know, it's been a relatively quick process, and if you think about the product life cycle, it's just kind of ironic that there was no new ones forever. And then Jeff came out right when we came out, and all of a sudden, you know, you guys had a whole bunch of things to look at.
So, guys, I really, you know, have been interested in kind of the design of this bullet pencil, because it's you know, it's very much kind of a throwback to the original. And, you know, we've been talking a lot about, you know, the prototype that we all got to see. And congratulations on selling that, by the way.
Thank you.
I think it was definitely our pants comment that helped.
It really survived.
So I'd kind of be interested to know kind of who started with the design and how that kind of went from the sketch that you had to real life.
Well, I would say it started with that sketch, and then John's done a really good job of making it happen, because not having a background in metal work, I wasn't entirely sure what was possible. What I drew in that little sketch was just what I. What I would do if anything was possible. And we've gotten fairly close. I think you've done a good job on your end as far as implementing it, making it happen, and keeping true to the aesthetics of the original. You know, the traditional bullet pencil, which is what I think we both agreed on, was, you know, no need to change, you know, what looks awesome to begin with.
Well, it's interesting. You know, the shop I'm working with on this project, they took a liking to it right away. They happen to be, you know, big shooting guys, so they. They like the going to the range and shooting. So the whole concept of a bullet pencil kind of kind of got them excited to begin with. But they have a machinist, younger guy, and they let him, for the first time ever, kind of just work with me directly. And it was just a phenomenal partnership. He just knew exactly what I wanted. And it's funny. This is how I've developed all my products. I haven't come in with crazy CAD drawings and all this other stuff. I just kind of sketch out as best I can, which is not good at all what I'm thinking in my head. And just the chemistry usually works with whoever I'm working with. We come up with what we're looking at, what I'm thinking, and they, you know, they spent a lot of time on getting the bullet right after that first one, and a lot of time and a lot of money because we went through. I mean, there's probably a good 200 bullet tips sitting in little cups throughout his work area that are, you know, different attempts. The knurling's different. The point is different. The threads are different. So it's. It's been a. It's been a not a long process. It's been a probably more expensive than I thought process in getting these done. But I'm, I was just so happy with how they looked.
Yeah.
You know, we still are tweaking. The tube on the production piece where the bullet goes in will be slightly thicker. So we can have a thicker thread in there because believe it or not, when you really tighten the pencil in, it actually expands that metal a little bit. So we, you know, beefed up the thread in the tube. Now from the eye, you'll never be able to tell a difference, but you know, it's going to be just a tad bit thicker at the tube where the bullet goes in. So we're constantly kind of tweaking and making it better as we get ready to crank out what now is probably close to 250 to 280 units. We'll probably, you know, make double that and hopefully, hopefully we'll have to make double that definitely by the time this campaign ends, but, you know, make even more.
Yeah, it's, it's interesting that I, I guess I always kind of thought that when you go into something like that, you know, I've, I've kind of envisioned a bullet pencil idea before. So I started trying to learn Google sketchup and like to do some CAD drawings and, and that's awesome. You don't necessarily have to work with a, you know, kind of start off with that. That's.
It really depends on the machine shop. And the guys, you know, especially, they got it right away. They saw the old ones, they happen to be big gun guys, and they just like, were like, cool. And they literally, there's, there's a bunch of different bullets lined up and on the shelf in that place. And we're like, all right, let's make it look like that one and that one. And so I mean, they just, they loved it. And the guy owns a shop is just a great old timer, probably in his early 80s and you know, just loves the project and loves trying to do different stuff and really kind of, I guess, kind of like the fact that his guys in the back were working with the client and working so well. So it was, it was a win.
Win. Do you have, Is it one of those kind of hand crank CNCs that they're using or is it going. Is it a like full, like automated machine?
Full on machine. So now, now at this point, the program is done. So these will crank out pretty quickly. Yeah, these will crank out pretty quickly.
So how, how close in contact were you? I know that you've, you've talked with Jeff from the bullet pencil ST project. We had him on the show when. When that launched and kind of knowing, you know, what he was doing with the bullet pencil st and the fact that his project kind of launched first, did that kind of affect the concept of your project at all, or did you start out with something different and then because he was doing something, you changed it up a bit?
No, it didn't really impact it at all. It just impacted. When we launched, we agreed that we wouldn't put ours up until after his was done, which was fine because we weren't ready to.
It worked out really well considering they both cropped up randomly at the same time. And Jeff was awesome about it. He reached out to me when I first announced it, put some of the teasers out, and, you know, he was real gentleman about it, you know, So I think it worked out great.
Yeah, it's amazing that nobody's made a new bullet pencil in 25 years and then in the same three months.
I know. That's. That's what I said. That's what I've told, you know, people. I'm just like, I told you we should have done this was gonna happen as soon as I do. Bam.
Yeah, I really do. You know, I've told Jeff this, and I think we talked a little bit about this too, but I think it's really cool and interesting that you guys have two completely different takes on a bullet pencil. Like, you know, it doesn't seem like, you know, there would that be that many different kind of takes you could. You could take on it, but I. I love the fact that, you know, they. They look completely different, they have a different aesthetic, they have different purposes, but yet they're both bullet pencils.
Yeah, I was glad about that. When I talked to him, I asked him, you know, some. I was like, well, how many details can you give me, you know, without giving away any trade secrets or, you know, all that just to make sure, you know, that, yeah, it was cool because he, you know, he had things that I never thought of, and then, you know, I had stuff that he never thought of. So it's just kind of cool to throw them back and forth and. Yeah, you know, you don't get to talk bullet pencil manufacturing with too many people, you know,
So I think. I think Tim was going to talk to you a little bit about some of the, you know, the project details and. And once you actually kind of started the Kickstarter, how you got started with that.
Sure.
Yeah.
First of all, I just wanted you to kind of talk about how the project is going at this point, but Maybe before that kind of step back and talk about the development a little bit more. Especially we talked about the original idea, but to talk about the development between prototype and the current version, and maybe. I don't know if in the last couple weeks, there are already some changes or not necessarily just changes, but things you want to add on after the Kickstarter that you'd be willing to talk about. So sort of anything in that. In that ballpark, we'd love to hear about it.
And don't worry, nobody listened to this show, so you can talk about whatever.
Yeah.
You know, on the development, it's. You know, when we set out and that first one went out to you guys, it didn't fit every pencil. So we really. We spent some time trying to make the bullet fit as many pencils as possible. So I'll have to count and I'll do this at some point, maybe take a picture and get it up on Instagram of how many bullets he made in that process of just playing with the different threads and different. Different depth and just. Just little tweaks that they made for. For probably a good month before we finalized the bullet. And then, you know, once we really got a pencil in there, realizing, okay, this expands it, so we're having to beef up the wall of the tube to put, you know, thicker thread in and everything. So the really, you know, as far as development during the process, there hasn't really been much from what the original prototype was. It was kind of just refining the aesthetics of that bullet and making sure that the threaded end will accept as many pencils as possible, which it will. And, you know, even if you stick the nub end in a sharpener and give it a twist or two, then it really holds almost anything. It's crazy.
Yeah. I was excited how it came out because that was my main question when I, you know, because I've been tossing this idea around, you know, forever, but never, you know, having a way to try it out. I wasn't even sure that, you know, that twisting that twist mechanism would, you know, hold or, you know, withstand, you know, a few minutes of writing, even hours of writing. So I was happy that it just worked.
Yeah.
On that end. Because I figured if it did, that would. That would make. That changes everything. With a bullet pencil, I think it opens it up. It's an open platform for anything that you want to twist in there. We've, you know, we've already got a pin. You can do screwdrivers, files, you know, whatever you want.
I make a little knife in there. That's what I want to do. Just a little kind of pocket knife.
I have seen my co worker is really into just like little pocket knives and he has a, he has a bullet knife. So it's a little tiny pocket knife that kind of folds up into the side of what looks like a little like 22 or something like that. Yeah, that's cool. So can you maybe describe, because I know that there were some people with some misconceptions about how it may work on the Facebook group. Can you kind of describe what, what this does as opposed to like a traditional bullet pencil? Maybe the twist action?
Well, it, it essentially works just the same as a bullet or, you know, a traditional bullet pencil. The only difference is there's no friction fit. So when you're. I don't know the exact terminology, you know, but when you have the cap with the pencil side in the tube, then you know, there's a couple threads to keep it in. And when you twist it out and deploy it or, you know, extend the pencil, then it just twists back in. Both is just instead of the friction fit. And then the pencil stub itself is twisted in via internal threads as opposed to friction fit. So really it's just replacing all. Everything that was on a bullet or, you know, a traditional bullet pencil that was friction fit with some threads to make it a little hardier and just easier to. Easier to work with.
Exactly.
I don't think the farmer back in like the 40s, 50s, 60s, we've never given these out. I don't think the farmer was too concerned about, you know, interchanging pencil stubs until, you know, one wore out and who knows how many seasons that took. But with this, you know, you've got people who, you know, like pencils, like to use different pencils, like to use different grades of pencils. It works well for artists who just, you know, don't want to carry a full pencil case, just want to carry, you know, some stumps, you know, with the different, you know, from F to B. And you know, I think it works good for, you know, pencil geeks mainly.
Back then, I feel like the pencils were so disposable that, you know, probably threw them away. Yeah, yeah.
They were not careful with them. I mean, the ones that I've restored and I've restored, you know, hundreds of them. There's some crazy stuff shoved up in there. This will work.
One of the first times I had the pencils at kind of one of these pop up markets and there was a woman interested in One and the point broke. So, you know, not thinking because I'm just brain dead at most of these things. I'm trying to pull the pencil out of that bullet and replace it and it's just jammed in there. And all I had to do was take the bullet out of another pencil and stick it in. But I wasn't, you know, that was clearly not the obvious choice. I'm trying to get this thing out and I'm like, you know, like, wish I could call jam. Like, is there a secret to get these things out? It was, it was stuck in there. I mean, I had to get like pliers and yank it out. All I had to do was, you know, literally take it out of another
one and stick it in just some WD40.
Yeah. So, yeah, the twist part is just phenomenal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it really allows us to make it very versatile. You know, it's. Everything is threaded, so anything can twist in, you know, anything you think of that you can twist into something. It's every component of this thing is threaded.
Yeah.
So I guess the answer to the question, it doesn't work any differently except instead of jamming something in friction and fit, you're twisting it in and screwing it in.
Yeah.
It's the only difference.
Yeah, basically.
So how do you feel the project is going so far?
I've been come up. So with this, Jay's got his job, you know, and he's still sewing handkerchiefs like a maniac. But so I'm kind of like, I'm driving myself a drink, literally. I didn't plan on launching it the Wednesday that we did that Friday. That Friday night I was starting a 24 hour endurance event and the last thing I wanted to do was be away for the whole kind of the whole weekend and then be kind of, you know, laid up all day Sunday and probably most of the day Monday. So I felt you had to like have your project reviewed by Kickstarter and approved and then you could say I want to start it on Tuesday at 9:06am or whatever. You know, just figured that was the way to do it because that's what
I had heard and that's how the App Store works. The Apple App Store. Yeah, yeah.
So I literally clicked like continue or okay or whatever the heck it was. And it's like, congratulations projects live. This is on Wednesday at like 2:50 something. And I'm like, oh, my lab on this, guys. I know what. And because, you know, I wanted to be able to tell, you know, the erasable community, the field Nut community. It's gonna be live at, you know, X time on Tuesday. There's really cool early birds just for you guys. Go get them. I wanted to have a list of the blogs I wanted to go out to. I wanted to have all this stuff pre done and that was live. I was like, okay, you know, in the end, it doesn't matter.
It's.
It doesn't matter. And I bowed out of the 24 hour event at about 10 hours in. So I was home by Saturday afternoon feeling good anyway, so I didn't miss much. So it worked out well. And since then, kind of you go through that honeymoon stage and the honeymoon's over for us. And now it's trying to think of any little thing you can do, work in social media constantly, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, taking lots of pictures and really reaching out to whoever you can to try to get it in front of other people. It's a tough process. It really, really is. And I can't figure out how we haven't gotten Kickstarter staff picked. I've inundated them with requests and people kind of like on our side kind of backing us. And I'll never figure out how the supposed magic search function works because I probably look at our. I look for our project under magic probably seven times a day. I've never seen us higher than like one. So I don't get what magic means. It is what it is. You know, I'm having fun with it.
Yeah, it's pretty much just clicking refresh on my phone about every 15 minutes to see if somebody's pledged.
Jay, I'm sure you saw it. We had a ten pack pledge today. Oh, wow, that was great. That definitely makes the day a lot better.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
That's cool.
So you know, we're what, 11 days left. I've been trying. Here's. I'll tell you guys another quick, funny story. I was trying to get a friend of mine who I went to college with, who's a professional voiceover artist to do some voiceover on the video. So I messaged her, I called her, left her a voicemail.
Nothing.
Nothing. Which is very strange to not hear from her. I finally got a message back today. She happened to be on that Carnival cruise ship that had like the Ebola quarantine.
So.
So hopefully the, the big news for early this part of the week was we'll get a little voiceover on that video and that'll maybe, you know, spruce things up a bit. And we've got a few Instagram everyday carry Guys that are going to give us a little shout out and just keep plugging away.
And obviously, the awesome power of the erasable podcast will get you six or seven thousand, just the millions.
So coming in hordes to support us. That's what I'm looking for.
Speaking of that, I'm interested to know if it's kind of strange getting, like, almost near instant feedback from, like, field Nuts and the erasable group. Like, as soon as you guys announce the pen and talking about the clip, I know that, you know, people are more than happy to kind of give you opinions about that pretty quickly.
I love it. I mean, this is stuff that, you know, some companies have to go out and, you know, pay for. Like, it's R D, you know.
Yeah.
It's. It's stuff that's only gonna make the pencil better and, you know, negative criticism, constructive criticism, positive criticism. It all works.
Yeah, that's cool.
Yeah, I love it. I love the fact that everybody's so, you know, quick to respond, and if I have question or say, hey, what do you guys think of this? Or that? And I want to be able to write back, you know, as soon as I can. It's great. I mean, that's the best part of it. I don't know how people did business before this, you know?
Yeah, I know.
Well, could you kind of. For those people who are listening who haven't pledged or maybe who haven't gone over to Kickstarter to check it out, could you run us through the pledge levels and, like, what's included in the different pledge levels? Sure.
I should be able to do this from memory.
I've got it pulled up right in front of me, too.
Oh, you do? Go ahead, Jim. Take it away. I talk too much anyway.
Well, I'll say that, and I'll probably still screw it up. Let's see, we've got the pledge of $32 or more, and that is one aluminum twist bullet pencil with the aluminum bullet tip. And that's either round or point, and it's initial color run, which is the raw aluminum or the black. And it includes three pencil nubs and two erasers. Additional colors, forest green, royal blue, and red may be available if stretch goals are reached.
Now, the pencil included, is it the 602?
Yes. Right now. That's right, John. We're doing the 602 for the. For the packages.
Correct. Okay.
And then $35, you're getting the aluminum twist bullpen. The only difference is. What is the only difference?
You're getting the brass Tip there?
Yes, the brass tip instead of the aluminum tips, which I'm excited about. I love that color brass, especially with the. The black and the green. Well, actually on all of them.
It does look good on all of them.
Yeah.
Yes, it does. Let's see,
there's also another $35 level where you get both tips in aluminum. So now that's perfect for the. For the pen. You know, you get the pen add on and you have the pen in one tip and a pencil in the other, and you can swap them in and out.
It's also great for the pencil folk too, because that's what I used to do with my bullet pencil. You know, since I had so many of those little caps laying around, I would just load them up with, you know, all my different pencil stubs and pick one as I was going out that day.
That's cool.
It always goes back to test scoring 100, but still. Oh, yeah, I dabble. I dabble. Let's see, we still have the $42 pledge, and that's the field notes package. And that comes with the three pack of field notes. The twist bullet pencil with the aluminum bullet tip. That's either the round or the pointed. And it will include the field notes brand pencil as well and a couple spares. And a three pack of the kraft brown field notes, which are awesome.
Should have a special level where you just have like a butcher blue in there. And for $800, I got some shelter woods still.
And I know those are pretty hot commodity.
I would be pledging at that level. Let's see, we've got the set. They're pretty much the same thing. The fill notes package with a brass tip. And that's either the round or the pointed. And we've got the $50, which is the aluminum, the aluminum twist bullet pencil, and it has the two bullet tips in aluminum. And that's one for the pencil, one for the pen or for the multiple pencils or for the artist. And on these we will have additional caps and tips and all this stuff available, you know, for reasonable prices, you know, if you want multiple ones or if you want to do a whole, you know, drawing set with caps on just to save you some time, you could do that fairly reasonably. Then we got the sixty dollars.
That's the best level. The sixty dollar level. That's the. That's the best deal out there.
That's the one I did, except with the 55 at the early bird.
Yeah, the early bird. That was a great deal when I, when I was like, oh, God, that was a really good deal.
Yeah, those went fast, too. I had people, you know, like you said, when we started early, and I got that text saying, hey, we're live. About that time, most of the early birds, you know, had gone, or at least, you know, half. And then by the time my folks, you know, the huckleberry woodchuck supporters, found out, most of them were gone. That was awesome that it went so fast, that one.
I was like, oh, I really gave that one away.
Thanks for that, by the way.
Yeah, no problem. Even at 60, that's a great case. You can, you know, you can pick both brass tips or both aluminum tips, so whatever. I'm just like, let's get them out there. Let's make a bunch of these things and, you know, get people using them and talking about them.
I want enough of them out there to where someday somebody's gonna be rummaging through an antique store, and they're gonna be like, hey, look, it's one of those old twist bullet pencils. You remember when dad had one of those?
That's cool.
I just want to start seeing some of the cool, you know, pocket dump pictures that Jay gets of his handkerchiefs all the time, but with the pencil in there, too. That's all I want to see.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Oh, and the final. I mean, we had the 1 25$1. That was for the prototype pocket carried by the Erasables crew.
Yeah.
Made it authentic custom patina.
That's our episode title.
And then we've got the. We've got the $300 pledge, which is a tib pack, which I don't understand why more people aren't getting on board with that. People with companies, people with businesses, real estate agents, anybody. You hand somebody one of these and, you know, they might be confused at first because they've never seen a bullet pencil, but after that, they're gonna think you're awesome.
Yeah.
And then, yeah, that's the 10 twist bullet pencils. And then that's tip style material. And then it comes with all the nubs, erasers, everything you need.
Well, the stretch goals are different colors, so we're assuming you're going to reach out to stretch goals. But if for some reason that doesn't happen, how are you going to pick which colors?
We're going to survey the backers at the bottom of the page where we talk about the stretch goals we mentioned. If we don't hit all three, we'll survey everybody. And the winning, we'll just make that public. So if it's you know, look, if we're close, we're close. I think if we're close to it, I think we'll be over it. If we're not close, we'll have to also just kind of, you know, take a look and say, okay, can we still do all three colors or does it not make sense? And then put the survey out and see what happens. And, you know, some people may. May be upset about it. Hopefully they won't. Hopefully they'll understand that, you know, we didn't reach that goal. And it's. It could get very pricey to anodize a small amount of tubes. You know, If I anodized 20 tubes in green, you know, probably add, like, it'd probably be like eight, nine bucks a tube.
So I feel like schisms would form
when we get there. But I. I'm feeling. I'm feeling good. I think this would be a good week. You know, we're really going to make a big push to a lot of the blogs. We were on gearmoose.com the other day, and thanks, Adam, for that. There's the big ones. We do really want to get on cool material. We'd love to get picked up by an Uncrate or an Instash.com or, you know, Muted.com or Word.com any of those. So if anybody out there listening to this knows anybody at any of those, hit us up. We definitely need to get some more visibility, and that's definitely one way to do it. You know, those are really cool blogs that get a lot of visitors.
It'd be cool. Or if anybody could even tweet, tweet the link to all those places just to kind of keep heckling them to do it.
Yeah, you know, I'll probably do a update early this week like I did with the Kickstarter staff pick and, you know, ask people, hey, tweet out to oolmaterial or ncreator, you know, pull up some of their Twitters. You know, once one or two of them have it, then it's all keeping up with the Joneses. So once one or two of them put it up, the rest of them are jumping on it.
Mm.
You know, and we had Aaron Draplin actually tweeted out.
I saw that. That's awesome about that.
And hopefully he will do that again for us. He said he would, so we'll see what happens there as well.
Did he play with Lucky? You probably can't say that.
Pen addict. I really enjoyed that. The first six minutes of that Episode.
I enjoy when Mike found out that wasn't your name, wasn't Huckleberry.
Oh, I know. How disappointing does my name sound in, like, a British accent?
Sin and somebody, like, discovers that it's not awesome.
Yeah, I was actually. I was actually in the chat on that episode and I'm the one who told him your. Your actual name, like, so he saw that.
Why'd you do that, Tim?
You know.
Oh, no, no.
It was priceless. I've never heard my. My. My name said with such disappointment, like a formal manner. I mean, it made. It was conflicting feelings, but it was awesome.
I liked it.
So what colors? Let's say you didn't make your stretch goal, which, of course you will. Which color or colors do you think that people will probably most pick? Most likely pick.
That's hard. What do you think, John?
Maybe. I can't even say. I honestly can't say. I really love the green, but I really love the red and I really love the blue. So, you know.
Yeah.
Well, that photo that you guys put on Instagram of the red one on the red leaf might go a long way.
Yeah, pushing.
I think I have that up there. I'm looking at my Instagram right now. That's another thing that I'm just too obsessed with. If I lose a person, a follower, I'm like, instantly going to my Followers plus app going, okay, who left me? Finding out who they are, and if I follow them, unfollow them, come back,
I always send a thank you card for thanking them for their service throughout the various months that they were my follower. I can't back that up.
Yeah, I'll have to. I'll probably retweet. I have some other photos with the leaves like that. I have, like, all different colors in there. You know, I try to get a good picture or two out every day and see if it kind of spreads around. And, you know, you never know when that one picture grabs someone's attention and next thing you know, Instagram puts it up on their Instagram and you have 10,000 followers in five minutes. And, you know, life is good, but so you just kind of keep going at it.
It's been fun. Instagram's a different beast. It's been interesting because since I've been doing the huckleberry woodchuck thing, it's been growing and I've been getting all sorts of crazy stuff. When you put in, for example, when you put in edc, you know, everyday carry that. That's also Electric Daisy Carnival, I believe.
Electric Daisy Incredible.
Yeah. For the longest time I was thinking that DJs were like profuse sweaters or had sinus problems because they were all lik handkerchiefs. But just turns out I'm just tagging it to like the electro crowd. So I even asked my girlfriend, I was like, I've got all these DJs liking my handkerchiefs. And she goes, well, they sweat a lot. And I was like,
you know, before I started, before I started talking to like, you know, people in the pen community, I just never really like was really tapped into the EDC community because I don't really have like a usual everyday carry myself and just like just seeing people get crazy about that, I mean in a good way, but like.
Oh, it's insane. Yeah, it's insanity.
Sometimes I don't know what, I wonder how much how they fit all that stuff into their pockets personally. But
get a good belt.
Yeah, like Batman.
I don't know. What gets me is like the, I don't know, the man jewelry. I love seeing all that $500 necklaces and rings.
I'm gonna post a picture of mine and just find a grappling hook to involve.
There you go. Put it all on a carabiner or something.
Yeah. Just in case teachers need good grappling hook every once in a while.
Oh, tell me about it.
So after the project ends, when I know you said you were kind of expecting a holiday delivery. Are you still thinking that sometime like mid, late December?
Yep.
Cool.
Yep.
And so then kind of, what's the future after that? Are you going to be selling the pencils regularly or are you going to maybe do like a Kickstarter twist ball of pencil 2 or what are you thinking after, after Kickstarter?
You know, we'll have the product available on both of our sites. I've been working on developing a retailer list, kind of the small specialty gentleman shops, you know, places you'll find in Brooklyn and Portland and the hipster type places to, you know, try to try to get the product out there that way as well. I definitely want to do more, you know, and I know some people don't like the Franken pencil idea, but that's what's so great about it. It's, it's versatile and it allows you to do with it what you choose to do with it. So if you just. If this is never nothing more than a pencil to you, that's great. But you know, like I said, I'd love to do a small screw in knife or screwdriver, whatever. There's A million things you can put on there.
So many, like specialized attachments you could do too, like torque. Like, you know, you could do a torque. Torque wrench or adapter with, you know, the one or two torque wrenches, you know, some IT guy uses every day or, you know, some mechanic uses. So it's really like. I hear people call it a Swiss army knife, but it's not a Swiss army knife. You just pick what you need and use it.
Yeah, Swiss army pencil.
Yeah, I mean, it's a pencil, but it's a, you know, it has adaptability and there was a whole, you know, point of it, the innovative point.
Maybe you can make a corkscrew so Johnny could use it on his Wild Turkey.
You don't need a corkscrew for Wild Turkey.
Oh, that's true. You're right.
But it does have a cork, which it has over Jack Daniels. Yeah, you just, no offense to Tennessee
residents, you just break it over a table to open it up, right?
Well, not actually bite it off.
Yeah, yeah, bite it off.
Or the guy. Oh, yeah, you break it over the guy next to you.
Yeah, just look it up on the floor.
As far as a Kickstarter number two, I could, I could see that happening maybe with different materials. I've had a couple people say, how about a brass tube? I've got brass tubes priced. I just want to kind of get something, you know, finished and out first before I start getting into a million different things. So I can see, I could see it in a brass, copper, titanium, you know, you can do all different kinds of metals. You know, brass tube with a brass tip. That actually be a heavy little piece.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Especially trying to weight it with a wooden pencil on the bottom.
Yeah. So I don't, you know, I don't know, but I can, I could see a version 2 hitting Kickstarter at some point. I've got a couple other projects I'm working on with some people that I could see bringing the Kickstarter. I think if I could go back and do my business over again, I probably would have done more with Kickstarter and, you know, had a chance to kind of test the waters with product before making a bunch of them and, you know, trying to sell them, trying to find customers. But I can definitely see something coming in the future to go back to Kickstarter with it. But in the meantime, we'll be selling it and trying to add, you know, little add ons and cool stuff to go with it.
Well, I mean, both of us, I mean, both of Our shops have been going for a year, maybe a little bit more, you know, with the prep and everything. So this is early on. We've got a lot. We've got a lot. We got a lot in store, a lot of ideas.
We're running a little long on time, so being erasable. I'm sure a lot of people besides me are wondering what your favorite pencils are. John and Jay, both for bullet pencils and just in general for awesome pencil goodness.
Huge fan of the test scoring 100. That's primarily what I use. But then I also have, you know, a bunch of the Palomino Blackwing 602s laying around just for my business. So I always picking one of those up.
I don't have one because I am so new to this community. And it's kind of like I didn't know about bullet pencils till I first saw Jay's pictures on Instagram. And I tell people about this community and they're like, there's a. What? You guys are, you know, so incredibly passionate about it, and it's really neat to see. And I don't know much about. Like I said before, when I was talking to myself, I probably hadn't picked up a pencil. I mean, maybe, you know, the mechanical one lying around here. If I was trying to sketch something out poorly, like I said, I do. But, yeah, this is such a new world to me. Such a new world. So it's exciting to start to learn a little bit, you know, And I. Yeah, I know that everybody loves the Palomino, so, you know, I'm just. I am such a rookie. It's unbelievable. There you go. There's the answer.
That's awesome. Yeah.
Well, I started out the same way. I mean, my first introduction to. And I've always used pencils in art and stuff. My first introduction was Cody Williams doing that. That was a mix pack, that pencil mix pack on the field.
Nuts.
You remember that?
That's.
Yeah, yeah.
I was like, that sounds fun. I was like, it's got to be cheaper than my fountain pen addict or addiction.
So what,
you're gone.
Just leave.
Yeah, yeah, I know.
Well, we're about to kick Tim out when he talks about his ink.
I'm a Renaissance man. I like a plethora of options.
I understand.
Anyways. But once, yeah, I would say it was the black wing, probably, and that the test scoring got me right away just because it was so dark. My problem with pencils is a lot of them aren't dark enough. I don't know if Y' all caught that picture that I did with that. I'm gonna butcher it. But what are those exotic hardwood cronies?
The karan dash. Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you. I tried one of those. I don't know if you saw those pictures that I posted of the bullet pencil with one of those in there. And I hated it. I hated that pencil.
I feel like they're mostly meant to just be looked at rather than used because some of them are so hard. I can't imagine, like, trying to sharpen it.
Oh, I know. And they should have put that on the label that maybe, like, before you cut it, you should try it out first.
Yeah.
Because I already headed down to a 3 inch nub and I was like, I don't know.
I don't think I like it.
It's beautiful, though. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what they were going for.
Well, they achieved that.
Yeah. That's. It seems like it sort of defeats the purpose of a pencil. And you're like, I'm gonna break my sharpener with this thing.
Well, the funny thing about that, though, is I got that set when I was, I guess after I've sold a few bullet pencils and I'd sold enough to where I had a little bit of an extra, you know, I had a little bit of money, and I was like, well, I was like, I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do, like a fancy bullet pencil. I've got a really cool vintage bullet pencil, and I'm gonna put an exotic hardwood pencil in it. I think it's gonna be awesome. The Cadillac of pencils. Not bothering to check to see what size the pencils are. And when they arrived, they were way too big. So that didn't work out. But I've got something nice to look at.
Yeah. Well, guys, should we button this up?
Sure.
It's been great.
Jay and John, do you guys have anything to you want to mention before we sign off? We'll definitely see where people can find you on the Internet and where people can find the Kickstarter project, but anything
last before we close, just, you know, this community has been so great to us, you know, getting us right out of the gate with, you know, great backing and support and promotion and just everybody just keep at it and let people know. We've got 11 days left. So not this Friday, but next Friday. I think it's at midnight is when it. When it ends. And we'd love to hit those stretch goals and hit all, you know, the two remaining stretch goals. So everybody just kind of tell a friend. And at this point, we just, you know, if it wasn't for this community, I don't know where it would be. So this is, you know, you guys have been phenomenal.
Yeah, I know. We're at 8,800 right now, and I think the final stretch goal is 14,000.
Correct.
That's cool. So we are, we are way more than halfway there.
Yeah, Yeah, I think we can make it. I mean, if we can get a little late, you know, surge and get on a couple of these other blogs and like I think I said, I'll be. I'm going to kind of go out with an update and see if we can get kind of a Twitter army together and let these blogs know that the project's there and we'd love to see it featured so we can tell the world about it. Any help is appreciated.
Well, thanks guys for coming on, very, very, very much. Can you tell our listeners where to find you online?
Jay, go ahead.
Yeah, I'm@huckleberrywoodchuck.com I'm also on Etsy. That's where I do most of my business. Trying to switch over to my website at the moment, but that's taking some time with it being football season and all. I've been pretty busy. You find me on instagram@huckleberrywoodchuck.com so you can pretty much Google Huckleberry Woodchuck and get pretty much all my stuff. Oh, I would, I would like to, I would like to say a thank you to a fellow out in Indiana. His name is Louie and he's a buddy of mine that's been supplying me with bullet pencils for the last almost year. And he's been great. He's been a great resource, a good somebody, you know, somebody's brain. You could pick as far as, you know, to different livestock, agriculture. Groucho.
Where in Indiana is he?
Oh, I couldn't tell you. Somewhere near all the bullet pencils, apparently.
I know where that is.
Yeah. So wherever you see that big pile, he's.
He's
John, how about you? I'm sorry.
Yeah, I'm@metalshopct.com and that's also the Instagram Metal Shop CT. And then obviously, you know, you can get to the Kickstarter, just search for bullet pencil. There's only two of us and only one live. So that's the easiest way to find that. Or just link right from my main website or from my Instagram bio. There's a link direct into it as well. And Then Twitter is metalshop5. The number five. So that's where you can find me.
Yeah, I forgot about Fit. Twitter. I'm on there too, but I have no clue how to operate it. If you would like to tune in and see me bumbling through it, it's bound to be entertaining.
How about your Instagram account?
Oh, yeah, that's Huckleberry Woodchuck.
Cool, cool.
Where can we find you, Tim?
You can find me on Twitter writing Arsenal on Instagram, thereriting Arsenal. And then my writings and such show up at www.thewritingarsinal.com.
can I say one more thing?
Sure.
I would just like to thank you all. When we sent you all that, you know, the first prototype, me and Joe and kind of talked about it. You know, it's kind of risky to send out a first prototype, you know, because it's the very first thing, you know, nothing's been tweaked. But I really appreciate your all's feedback as far as pencils that fit. You know, y' all have pencils that we don't have and really helped us out as far as the R D getting this final. The final production model up and going. So I'd like to thank you all for that. Y' all were very helpful on that end.
We were second that.
Yeah, we were honored to be part of it. That was a lot of fun. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
And even a little bit more to Andy, because I would kind of ping Andy a couple times too. Like, hey, can you check this for me? Because I know we see him on Facebook. So I'm like, there's Andy. Hey, do me a favor. Just check that. An extra thanks to Andy as well.
I'm always around Facebook. I'm always at my computer. I work at a web development company, so always with that in front of me.
Cool.
And where can we find you online, Andy?
I am@woodclinched.com and you can find me on Twitter awelfley or oodclinched. And I am on Instagram. It's awelfly, but mostly it's pictures of cats.
Adorable cats.
Aw. Thank you. How about you, Johnny?
I am@pencilrevolution.com I'm on Twitter ensolution and on Instagram @johnnygamber, which is admittedly largely pictures of children and coffee. Yeah. And occasionally beer, but I never drink beer. And we are the Erasable podcast. We are at Erasable Us. This episode will be at erasable us17, their 17th episode already. We are on Facebook at facebook.comgroups erasable, which is probably the best group that's on Facebook. And I expect to get an email like that every, any day. We'll all hear about that.
Did you hear that? Field nuts?
It's more baby. And we are on Twitter, raceablepodcast. And we've sort of developed our own little hashtag, which is erasablepodcast. So if you post some really awesome pencil stuff on Twitter and you want to be connected to us in spirit.
Or Instagram.
And on Instagram, too. Thanks very much to John and Jay for joining us tonight. We're all looking forward to getting our twist bullet pencils in the mail. I'm looking forward to Christmas, specifically for that reason, because they holiday delivery. So we'll catch you in two weeks. And we might talk about National Novel Writing Month.