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Transcript
Boo.
Creepy foot doctor.
Yay, beer.
Hello. You're listening to the 21st episode of the Erasable podcast. Tonight we'll be looking at the year past and the year to come, answering listener questions and discussing 2015's first pencil of the week. This is Tim Wasem and I'm joined by my co hosts over the magic of Skype, which after a month of no podcasting, is nothing less than a Christmas miracle. Johnny and Andy, how's it going?
Very good.
Fantastic.
How are you, Tim?
I'm doing pretty well. Little pooped. The holidays were busy. A lot of travel and family in town, which is all good. But on the exhausting side, I assume
that having a two year old makes it much more relaxing.
Oh, no, he's just, you know, totally energizing. No. Yeah, he is. Just like a cup of coffee in the morning when he wakes up, which is not true. Yeah, it was a whole new. Added a whole new feel to vacation when you're waking up at 6am with a toddler who wants to play with choo choos and eat five bowls of cereal. So
let's go to the beach.
Yeah. At like noon. And I'm like, well, I need to take a nap because I've been up for six hours. Yeah. Did you guys have a good Christmas?
Yeah, mine was. Mine was pretty insane, but in a
different sort of way, moving across the country thing.
Yeah. You should never, ever, ever, ever fly with a cat. Just in case anybody ever wanted to know.
Early on in the flight, it seemed like it was going so well.
It did. We gave them these little red pills that were sedatives and the little cat just took them and he went to sleep. He slept the whole time. It was great. But the older cat, it seemed like it maybe had like the opposite effect on him. He just got really anxious. And we put them in like the pet version of a duffel bag, basically like a TSA compliant cat carrier. And, you know, the zippers all come together at the end and he figured out if he gets his little pointy nose right to where the zippers meet and pushes, he can actually unzip the bag. So he almost like hopped out during the flight and like started running around the cabin. Like, I kind of caught him and like, had to forcibly, like, get his head back into the bag. I'm just like pet travel carrier.
You had one job, keep the cat inside the bag.
So I had to like contain the cat. Yeah, Keep the zipper closed. I felt really bad for him. But it was. It was four hours. Four And a half hours in the air. So after that, he's fine. Yeah, and they're all settled in now, so that's fine.
Good. All right, well, why don't we jump right into tools of the trade?
Heck, yeah.
Johnny, get us started.
I am lifting my moratorium on whiskey and enjoying some Wild Turkey rye, which, if you like rye, is really delicious. It's a good, like, $25 bottle.
This episode sponsored by Wild Turkey.
It's the best you ever going to have. That's really offensive. I'm sorry. Just imitating my grandfather. And I'm writing with twists with a stub of a wopex inside, which I copied because on the website they had the all silver with the green wopex. That's what made me pick silver. It's so pretty.
Yeah.
And I'm writing in an ambition because ambition is field notes. Most wopex friendly paper so far.
I need to try wopex on mine. What makes it wopex friendly?
I don't know. It's sort of got a little bit of a tooth to it.
Picks up like the old paper did. Yeah, it kind of picks up the lighter ink a little bit. Or the lighter graphite.
Yeah. I have a theory that everybody likes black wings so much because field notes aren't very good for hard pencils. So everyone likes that nice, smooth black wing. And then if you write with that in a barren fig, it's like, where's the black wing marker?
Yeah.
How about you, Mr. Tim?
I am working on caffeine tonight, so I'm drinking some Barry's gold blend.
Yeah, I thought you were going to
drink a gold bond.
Just got a lot of gold bonds. It's been a rough week. Been a busy week. Got some black tea to keep me awake long enough to go to bed after this podcast. That's the way I would describe it. And also had some wine with dinner. But I'm writing with some of my one, not some, not multiple, but one of my new ladee triwrites that I got over break from Amazon, which I am loving, which I'm going to talk about later in the pressure points. And I'm writing on some D paper, which is actually a piece of loose leaf, which is my first don paper order from last year that I'm still working through because it was like a pack of 90 sheets. And so every once in a while I'll pull it out and I'll like to use it for the occasional letter. And today at school, I was using it to make my notes. For the show.
Can I make a confession?
Yeah.
I'm not a fan of the D paper. Like, I like. I like the quality of the paper. All right. But I feel like the. Especially in the loose leaf that the lines are too dark.
Oh, yeah.
Like, it feels like I ran some paper through my printer at work, like a laser printer, and just made my own.
Which you can do off their website.
Yeah, that's true. And I like. What's his name? Chad. Chad Doane. I like him a lot and he's really interesting and really cool. But I have not yet found a Doan paper product that I like. I'm sorry, Chad. To say that if you're listening, he
probably to play the left or the right. I'm kind of obsessed with it. I love it. Yeah, I do. I like it a lot. One of the things I like about it is the. I totally ignore the small grid lines, you know, like in the background. But the horizontal lines I love because of the distance apart is a little bigger because I like to write big so I don't have to skip lines. And so I like to use it because I can write it. It just so happens to kind of naturally fit my. My handwriting style. So I like that. And also hands. Fountain handles. Fountain pens really well as well.
Yeah, it is. It is really fountain pen friendly. But yeah, I think that's right because I write really, really middle of the middle of the road. So, like, the grid lines are too small and the horizontal lines are too big. So if they made one in like a different kind of grid, which I bet they do, I probably just haven't found it yet.
I'm a fan. I like the. I think of the pocket notebooks. For some reason, the grid design's a little much in a pocket notebook. I like it in the big sheets. So I might one day get one of the big wire bound ones. Because I think I would like that in pocket notebooks. I'd rather go with the field notes or. Or even a word.
Yeah, I like that they made a. The dome paper partnered with Topo for a mountain briefcase. It's in that. Oh, you have one, Tim, don't you?
Yeah, I do. I have the first. The first generation.
Yeah. The new one with the red and the orange is really, really pretty.
Mm. Yeah, I love that bag. I'll have that for a long, long time. Andy, what are you writing with and sipping on over there?
I am at work right now and just because it's. It's still much earlier here than it is where you guys Are and using the Facebook WI fi. And I found a. I have been experiencing all of the beers that you can't get in Indiana that you can get in California. So I've just mostly been grabbing beers that I've never heard of before. And today I was walking from one desk to another, kind of getting all my podcasting stuff to set up in a random conference room. And there is a bar that's kind of by my seating area. And I just kind of looked in there because I was like, oh, I don't want to just be drinking water or green tea or something while my co hosts drink alcohol. So I grabbed a session premium lager. And it's really good. It's in like one of those little squatty red stripe looking bottles and it's made in Oregon and I've never heard of it and it's super good. It's a pretty light lager. It's very smooth. So I'm drinking that and I am writing with a golden bear, a blue one that I had sitting on my desk in an Ambition memo book.
Copycat.
I really like this addition. This is one of my favorite dot grids and I think it's because it has the blank spot for the title line at the top.
Yeah, digging that.
Yeah. I love the kind of double lines that they like.
The.
Oh, America, the beautiful paper and some of those use. So this combines the dot grid, or not the dot grid, the grid, which I love, with those double lines. And I like it a lot.
Yeah, that's one of my favorite additions.
Yeah.
That they gilded the COVID too. Yeah, Just fantastic.
Yeah. Yeah, they did a good job all around on this. Cool.
All right, how about pencil of the week?
Pencil of the week.
Andy, why don't you describe the pencil that we were using this week?
Yeah. So I think we may have talked about this the last podcast, the last episode. But. But I went to the Maido, or Maido, I don't know how to pronounce it really. The stationery store in San Francisco and they have a lot of tombows there. They have the nine thousands, they have the monos. They have the. The other ones, the mono one Hundreds. Yeah. And they had someone I've never really seen or heard of before. It's a tombow kimono, Gatari dragonfly, and it is FFC certified. Has a little logo right on the pencil. And I think I feel like they are made, they're recycled. And I feel like rather than like reconstituted sawdust or something like that, it has a really Nice wood grain to it. And I think they use odd lengths and kind of like notch them and glue them together to make these pencils. I picked up a dozen of them and I sent a couple to Tim and to Johnny several weeks ago. And it's in the 2B variety. So we kind of scheduled this last minute and we were trying to look for a pow and I was like, how about those tombows? Because I've been using mine and yeah, it's. I guess we're kind of breaking our usual rule of thumb, which is to pick pencils that are readily available. I have not been super successful finding like non sketchy websites where these are available. But if you have a Japanese stationery store anywhere near your vicinity, you can pick these up. So they're at the Mido store, I think. Yeah, anywhere where they sell like a lot of tombows. So I think that you could even get it at maybe like a Utrecht. Is that how you say it? Like a blick or something like that. But don't quote me on that. I'll. I will try to find out where these are able to be purchased from and put it in show notes.
Move to talk Gary into stacking them.
Yeah. Hey, Gary, if you're listening, Better be listening. I actually found a website. It's Rakuten Global Market.
Rasputin Global Market.
Rasputin Global Market. If you go to global.R-K-U-T-E-N.com and search around, you can find it there. And you can apparently, yeah, just like purchase it in B or 2B. And not only does it come in kind of these plain colors that I'm using, but you can also get it in like these. Did you guys get those like odd color ones too? Did I send you one of those?
The triangular?
No, it's. It's the same. It's the same Komono Guitari pencil. But it's like it has like some designs on the end, like silk screened on.
You just sent me the. The plain ones, which.
Okay, I love. My envelope had a hole in it and half of a pencil with flags, so it might have been in there. My new FedEx delivery man is not my favorite FedEx delivery man.
Oh, man. All right, well, I'm sorry.
Most of the pencils and all the books were like.
Yeah, copacetic. Well, if you go to this website, which I will put in show notes, I. You can see like some of these other colors that it has and they're really cool. So. Yeah. What did you guys think of this? Pencil.
It's pretty.
I know. It's a natural.
Moving on.
I really like a lot of the white print on the natural wood. It looks really good. It's really understated.
I love too the tombow with the little dragonfly on it. That's. Yeah. In that white print. That's really, really light and understood. Understated. Yeah.
Like the new logo is a cute little font.
Like the white stripe and the brown stripe that's kind of on alternate size. Kind of weirds me out.
But really, I like it.
Well, I kind of like that minimalist but like sort of funky at the same time. I like that.
I didn't know which end I should sharpen.
Which end did you sharpen?
I sharpened the end with the barcode.
That's what I did.
Okay.
It's a nice little grip down there for you.
Yeah.
Very thoughtful. I figure you're supposed to still have the 2B visible at the top. Just so you know. I started from this.
I'm going to sharpen the next one that way. The next one being mystery. Well, the greatest. I don't know, as a left hander,
I should have sharpened it that way. Then everything would be like right side up. But I would Sharpen off the 2B and the Tombow more quickly than I would the barcode. And I don't like. I don't like barcodes on my pencils, so. So I just did it the old fashioned way.
Makes sense. The core is really nice. It's. It's a. Yeah. Part of me even feels like it's softer than to be. Do you feel that way? Like maybe like a three? I felt like it was more like a three or four. Yeah, it was real soft and I. I was using it all day today and used it a lot. I had a lot of writing going on at work today and I sharpened it. I had sharpened it a few times, which I didn't mind because I really liked how it was writing, but it just seemed a little. Just a little softer than like what I. At least the idea in my head of a 2B.
Yeah. And as Johnny said, it does still. Still have really good point retention too.
Yeah.
I feel like it was as dark as a 2B but smooth as smooth as a 4B. But the retention was as good as an HP. It's like you pulled this off. Yeah, I really like this. I think I might change my grade.
Maybe it was the paper.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was using Baron fig paper, which sort of erodes your pencil and it held up really well.
Do you write in cursive, Johnny?
I usually do. Catholic school holdover. Yep, that and it's like code now the kids can't read it.
The only issue per se that I had was just kind of weird. When I first sharpened it, it was over the break and my classroom friendly sharpener was at school. And so I tried using a hand sharpener and we were talking about how it seemed to be a piece together pencil and mine, at least the one that I had first sharpened up. One side has this really nice red, like pinkish red tint to it, like a cedar color. And then the other side is more white, so they have different colors. So I'm wondering if one side is basswood and one cedar or something. But the lighter side was chipping, like the wood part when I was trying to hand sharpen it. Yeah, I tried several times, but once I got to school today, use the classroom friendly. It sharpened beautifully. So it was just like with hand sharpener. I was just having a little. A little trouble. I'm still kind of hung up.
Go ahead. I'm sorry.
I'm still a little hung up. We've talked about this before, but not having an eraser, like I wanted to have an eraser. So yeah, I put one of those pentel caps on it just because like a waiting thing. I don't like the. I don't like when a pencil is so light that it's like I can't even tell if it's in my hand.
Yeah, I wish I had a little like kit at home so I could like dip my own to cap it.
You can do it with nail polish.
Really?
Yeah. I bought some Norris's once on ebay and they packed them in a letter envelope. So when they came the end, dips had chipped up. So my daughter and I dipped them in nail polish. And if you do a couple coats and you take your time and blow on it, it's pretty good.
You should make a YouTube video of that. That would be interesting. You know, in the gift shop at Facebook there is a. This is really stupid. You can buy a nail polish that's the exact blue of Facebook.
Pretty cool.
I could make my own Facebook dipped pencils.
Yeah, when I did that, I put it on my blog and Statler felt bad for me and sent me a pack of Norris pencils.
Stae. Read your blog.
That's awesome.
Oh, yeah.
Huh.
I always wonder which of the companies read our blogs. I wonder if they listen to this podcast sponsor us. We all like a Faber Castell platinum perfect Pencil, please.
Oh, yeah, the desk set with the refills. What we should do is talk about how we. We all ordered them, but somehow they all arrived damaged and we can't use them, so we just had to give
them to our kids. Yeah, our cats.
Exactly.
They were fighting over the extender.
So if we were to grade these, what would you all say about this?
I would say B plus. I like this pencil a lot.
Yeah. Yeah, I would. I would say B plus two. Maybe a B plus plus. But an A minus? No, I don't think so. So I'd settle around a B plus. B plus plus somewhere in there.
I. I'm gonna stick around that area too and say somewhere between an A minus and a B plus. So. So, yeah, probably like a B plus plus, I guess. I don't really know that works.
I would go A minus if they put a nice white end dip on it. Yeah, that would look pretty.
I would probably go. I would probably go solid A if it had a ferrule and eraser on the end of it. Because, I mean, you know, I like natural finish pencils. And then to have a natural finish with a 2B is something I've never had before. So I was really excited about that. So I like that. I like the way that it writes a whole lot. If it had a ferrule and eraser, I probably would have. It probably would have become a staple. I'd probably be having Andy ship me monthly. Monthly. Dozens of them.
Do you think that maybe it doesn't have it because it's trying to be all like, you know, ecologically friendly and they don't want to add like waste to it because it's. Yeah. Probably certified. Yeah. But I guess the forest choice makes sense. Yeah.
Yeah, but it's. It's at least recycled. Like I think all that is recycled on the forest choice is. Yeah, I don't know, but it's a good question. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. All right, let's dig into our first points.
Right, Johnny?
All right.
Did it.
Okay, so I have a lot. So if I start rambling, just, you know, E nudge me. So first I got. I finally attained a baron fig confidant because I hinted, not very quietly to my wife, that I really wanted that three legged juggler edition, which is very nice. But it's nowhere near the color of the website. It's a lot more subdued. And I mean that in a good way. But I was wondering what.
Sorry, the orange of the notebook is more subdued.
Yeah, it's more of a. Like an ochre color, huh? I mean, it's very pretty.
Yeah.
But for some reason, it's considerably more expensive than the Confidant, and it doesn't come with free shipping. It was kind of weird, but it was my first experience with their. Their box, which was good because they don't pack it very well, and the box was pretty crushed, but the book was fine.
That First Confident was packaged really well. Yeah.
This is just in an envelope.
Yeah.
Okay. You charge shipping and it's in an envelope.
Have you seen Take Note there in fig. I think Joey and Adam listened to our podcast. I know they've talked to me before about it.
Yeah. I was surprised by how. How. How stiff it is on the website. It always looked kind of soft.
Mm.
It's really sturdy. I really like it. Did you.
Yeah. Yeah. Like you said, it's a little toothy, but I think it works really well.
Yeah. I might be able to use a lot of those, you know, harder German pencils I don't get to pull out in field notes because they don't really write.
Yeah.
Dream.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Have you seen the. The one actually today? The Apprentice they just released?
Yeah, That's a really cool one.
Yeah.
I don't understand how that. How it relates to time travel.
Yeah. It's like when art majors make a notebook. Which is. Which is awesome because, like, I mean, I'm sure there's, like. It's rife with symbolism, but to me, it just looks cool. I like that green and that blue together. Green and blue. Is it purple? Is it blue?
I think it's yellow and purple, isn't it?
Let me go to their website. I had it up earlier. Yeah, it's like a. Yeah, it's like that purple from their. From the other confidant or apprentice, and it's like a bright green kind of a color.
Yeah. My wife bought me the dot grid, which I don't usually go for, but this particular dot grid is really nice. It's really, really faint.
Yeah.
It's not bright. I can't see it, which is good.
Yeah.
I find dot grid more. More distracting than everything else than even a regular grid. Yeah. I feel like I'm seeing things. What is going on? Field notes does a good job because they make them a little wider.
Yeah.
Field notes plug. Are you guys fans of the Baron fig paper for the graphite?
I've still not gotten to try any, so I've never. I've never used. So I would be a good judge.
I have some of the. Of the Apprentices. Tim, I'll send you one. Yeah.
I mean, yeah, if you. I've been meaning to order a confidant.
Yeah.
So, yeah. Is the apprentice the big one or is the confidant the big one?
Confident's the big one. Yeah. And the Brutus is the pocket notebook.
Yeah. I've been meaning to get one of the hardback ones. I just haven't. Yeah, I keep getting. Like, last time I was about to, I got my slate, which I fell in love with. And then I was kind of thinking about it again, and Johnny sent me the awesome write notepads, which is going to come up next. So eventually I'll. Eventually I'll get one of those big ones.
So my new Baron fig purchase is making me rethink my current practice of journaling and pocket notebooks, which is fun because you get to go through all those field notes that you buy. But also, you know, your pocket has a lightweight notebook that you might not notice losing with things you might not want people to read. Yeah. So I do this every once in a while. I'm like, I'm gonna have a journal for a while and then the field notes start piling up. Oh, gotta use these things. Yeah, I want to be one of those hoarders. No offense, but the last time I did that, it was with a paper blanks book, which are also super nice for a pencil. Those things are gorgeous, but I don't feel like anybody ever used them because they're a little fancy.
The paper blanks. I'm not sure I'm familiar with that.
Yeah, they're the ones that sort of look like, you know, an old Italian leather notebook, but they're paper and they're 30 bucks or 20 bucks for some of them.
Oh, yeah, yeah, those. You can buy them at like, Barnes and Noble.
Yep. Yeah, they're surprisingly nice. The quality really holds up.
Yeah, Yeah, I like the. I become a fan of the journaling and in small. And even writing in small notebooks, like in my pocket notebooks. I think mostly because of Steven or maybe Stefan Bruner, one of our listeners. His. It's like my favorite Instagram feed of all time. Yeah. But he posts of like, when. And he's journaling and stuff. And I always. And he seems like he journals every single day and he uses all field note size books. And I started doing that. I was like, hey, this is kind of nice.
I've been using the America the Beautiful and the Shelter woods to journal because it has such nice thick wash paper.
I'm using America the Beautiful right now too. Awesome.
So also in my holiday haul, I finally gotten the pencil I've drooled over for 10 years. And that's the design version of the perfect pencil. The aluminum one where you can get black pencils or the one I have always wanted, the natural pencils with a silver ferrule and black erasers.
They're so beautiful.
Should post a picture of that for show notes.
Yeah, I'm oohing and owing over this thing. It has a little box with a magnet. It's very cool. It's sort of. I think it has the same sharper that the green one has, which is very nice sharpener, but it's, it's, you know, a little dressier. Not that I have occasion to be dressy with my pencils, but it's your bucktail. Yeah, this is the rehearsal dinner pencil, not the wedding day pencil. Yeah, I'm rambling. Another cool thing that happened this holiday is I got it in my head because all of a sudden my daughter's writing and her spelling is really entertaining because she's only four. Really interesting.
You just cross it out with a red pen. It's like false. This is incorrect.
No, what I want to do is make a transcript so that I can show it to her later in case she can't recognize her writing anymore.
I have a 4E. Charlotte. I have a 4E.
Oh, no, it's even. Whoa. That is not how you spell sculpture. So I took her to a local shop, which is actually the home of a bar that we like to go to for stationary night in my neighborhood. And we bought a red moleskin diary. So now my daughter keeps a diary, which is really cool. And she uses pencil so it'll be archival safe. And she writes little notes in there. It's the cutest thing in the entire world. And also on that note, I was talking to Luke Sinclair, who has a six year old. So we're going to do an international old school pen pal with my daughter and his son.
That's awesome.
That's pretty cool.
Oh, wow. Yeah, that's very cool.
Yeah, we'll have to send him some US pencils too.
So is her diary off limits to parents or do you. She reads it to me every day. Okay.
The other day, at the end of the day, she wrote her diary and you know, mentioned what she did at the end. She said, and now I'm going to bed. I hope I have sweet dreams. You have sweet dreams too, Daddy.
She's writing a diary to U. Yeah.
And she spells too With T O O like a lot of adults forget to do.
So.
Genius. Just saying. Yeah. And she also got some Santa delivered field notes the Cold Horizon. Because she thinks it looks like frozen. If they market it that way, somewhere they could have sold out of the rest of that stock. Because kids are crazy for frozen.
It's all you have to do is just slap her like a frozen thing on it. You're guaranteed to sell it.
Yeah. She's already filled up half one.
Yeah.
Running around over break and things like that. I like this notebook.
Okay.
A lot of people didn't.
Honey, do you have any stickers of like Olaf or something that she could.
I'm doubting your taste.
Honey, we have sheets and sheets of frozen stickers in our house. It would nauseate you. It really would. There are packs and packs of frozen pencils and erasers. They're actually not. Not bad.
This must just be me showing mine, like not having kids side. But I have not seen Frozen.
It's actually.
I actually went to. Because. Yeah, it looks interesting.
Stay. Stay that way as long as you can. No, it's not terrible. I went into it. We watched it. It was. It wasn't. Henry wasn't involved because he was like eight months. So it was just. We just got it, red box or something and watched it. And I went into it still thinking that it was basically going to be a Pixar movie, which I'm a huge fan of Pixar movies. And it definitely is not. I mean, it's like, you know, a musical. So that was a. I think I have a negative feeling about it just because of my expectations being so far off from what it actually was.
I actually watched it today.
It was snowing after school, so they had a little treat and Charlotte got up and went and wrote her diary. Anyway, so that's good. I have one more fresh point is that Dan Bishop sent me a retract from Kara's customs. So now I'm sitting here holding a very nice pen, which feels like blasphemy, but, you know, I actually really like gel pens. So. This has a black G2 Bold in it. Just fantastic. So many, many thanks, Dan. You picked the perfect color, too. I love it.
It's red. That's a great pen. Great. The bolt is my favorite of theirs. I use it every single day.
Yeah, I have to admit, I'm gonna go get one of those. Yeah, they've got me.
Yeah, they're pretty sweet.
So I'll stop rambling about all of the goodies I got for Christmas.
Now
if you'd like to go next, Mr. Tim.
Sure. Yeah. Actually, speaking of Christmas, this is first year in several that I actually got zero stationery related things for Christmas.
Were you on the naughty list from other people?
I bought myself a couple.
But
the first one is that I am proud to say that I'm officially a colors subscriber. I might have mentioned that on the last episode, I can't remember. But I'm still like pretty pumped about it. So that's awesome. Color subscriber. I got my first first pack which came with two ambition. I got one three pack of blank and one three pack of grid. And then I got a pencil, a pen, bookmarks and a belly band. So I was pretty excited about, about all the, all the bonus stuff.
Can you tell me about those bookmarks? I've seen them, but I can't really figure out what they're like.
I've seen them and I have them and I'm also not really sure sure what to do with them. I'm gonna. Hang on a second, let me. I'm gonna grab one.
Sure.
There. It's right here.
I tried to use mine in the planner, but it catches in my pocket.
Yeah, it comes down like, there's sort of half whatever half triangle shape at the end. Like it comes down like a ribbon, but the other side is the opposite. One side says now, one says later. So I assume it's supposed to go which. Well, I assume like it would make sense to me if it would go up so that the tabs came off the top of it. But then the words would be upside down. But I still don't really understand how to use it. I haven't really thought that hard about it just because it seems like something just get in the way. Yeah, kind of, kind of a cute idea. But I'm just like, oh, whatever. I don't need a bookmark. They're like there's 50, what, 56 pages. Notebook. I don't need a bookmark.
If ever I really need a bookmark. I just use one of those little like sign here stickies and just like,
oh yeah, stick it out at the top. And yeah, I use like a big like a huge paper clip sometimes to like go from the, the front cover to where it is that I've left off.
Yeah.
So yeah, I got that. I'm really excited about the subscription. It also comes with a little sort of a level of anxiety. Like what's good the next one gonna be? Am I gonna like the next one? I already paid for it.
You know.
Well, I find it takes him for the.
I'm sorry.
Good.
When, when like the Ravenswing and stuff came out. If you didn't have a subscription and you weren't online, there's a good chance you weren't going to get it. So I was. I know it's not like that anymore, but it's peaceful. It's like, oh, I'm already getting mine.
Yeah, I. I was, I was thinking like, as I was talking about being sort of anxious about it. It's almost like asking for the chef special or something. And then I'm afraid that it's going to show up and be like, disgusting, you know, which of course is never going to be that bad. I've never. I got onto the field notes train with. Which was the first one? First colors one. I forget now. Oh, drink local. And since drink local, I've liked everything pretty much besides Cold Horizon was just whatever. But yeah, yeah. And I guess.
I guess you can always. If you don't like it, you can send it back and they'll send you some craft. Is that what I've heard?
Oh, yeah.
I didn't know that because somebody was arguing about on the field, the field nuts group about arts and sciences and how they only got two notebooks instead of three and they have more pages and they're bigger, but I think it says like in the color subscriptions, like three, six notebooks a month or whatever. So, yeah, he said he was able to send it back and just trade it for craft.
A bunch of babies.
Is that what we're thinking?
The other thing I got for myself for Christmas is the tri rights, which I had talked about before. And we've. It's pretty, pretty well documented my. My love affair with the laddie. And that was one of my first just kind of semi obscure pencils that I found thanks to you all, like helping me find something. I was looking for a round, round pencil and then it was just kind of a bonus that it was a little bigger even. But this pencil, let me tell you, is, I think, even better. Like, I love it even more.
You all should have seen these text messages we got over the holiday break
from T. They're pretty, pretty raunchy. Yeah.
Ooh, baby.
Yeah.
Soft lighting.
All the knife sharpening. Very intimate knife sharpening.
Piles of shavings on the floor. My God.
Rolling in them on the floor.
Make it rain.
Making it rain.
Shaving. Get it rain.
We need to get a gif of you like with your knife. Make it a rain shavings.
Yeah, I've got a giant box of them. I could send you for it camping in a while.
But I absolutely love it. It's so good there. You know, it's the exact same pencil. Pencil, essentially, but just. It's a triangular. Which. The way they did the. The triangle is it like, kind of like smushed it in. So the actual edges of the triangle are a little bit wider than a normal laddie. So it doesn't fit. So the only. The only downside is that doesn't really fit into the sharpener is that I like to use my laddie with my other ladies. So my main problem is the only sharpener I have that fits it is the bigger side of the KUM 2 hole, which puts a stubby point on it, which I hate. So. So. But I've been knife sharpening it and I love it with. With a nice long point sharpened with a knife. That's. That's really the only. The only downside. It's. I'm as soon as I got it. And luckily it's pretty much only sold in 36 packs, so it comes with a large amount as far as what. You know, as far as I've seen. But I was immediately kind of anxious because it's not really talked about. You don't see it very much that it's not going to be around.
Yeah.
You know, like, where something's not very prevalent. You just think, oh, this is gonna disappear. I'm gonna be pissed. But hopefully won't be because it's. It's so much nicer than the Triconderoga. Like, so much nicer.
Oh, that thing's a piece of crap.
Yeah, this is like the deluxe version or the. Yeah, the non. The non.pos version of the Triconderoga.
Can you use. So, you know that. That one comes with a sharpener and some. Some versions of the package. The. The Triconderoga.
Yeah.
Can you use that? Yeah. You can't use that sharp. Yeah.
I don't even know. I threw that thing in the trash. I think just because I was discouraged by the pencils, I probably threw it. I don't think I have anything left from those, but it might.
Does this laddie have a triangular feral and eraser?
It does. That's cool. Yeah, the eraser is triangular, and then the. The feral is as well. It's all very smooth, streamlined, very cleanly done. It's a. A plus in my book. I'll send you. I'm gonna send you guys some and we'll maybe do A pencil a week on at some point.
Yeah, definitely should.
Yeah, I'd like, like to hear what you think. Another thing that showed up.
Is it fragrant like the other one?
Let me check.
Sound effect.
It's pretty fragrant.
It's not, maybe not quite as fragrant, but it. Can you guys smell it?
I can. It smells. Smells good.
Skype. That's pretty nice.
Yeah, if you have a Skype Premium account, you can have Smell O Vision now too.
You know what though? Doesn't work for Linux. Johnny slept out again.
Everything smells like burnt wires in the Linux version. Burnt wires and engineer body odor. Sorry.
Go, get out of my house.
Well, and my next fresh point is by the amazing kindness of one of our friends, Liz, she sent me a. A word standard memorandum for2015. Oh yeah, thank you, Liz. I got it yesterday and it is pretty fascinating. Of course everybody says this, but it's so much smaller than I thought it was going to be. It's this tiny little notebook and at first I was thinking, okay, this is cool, but am I going to find this useful? I mean, what am I going to do with it if I'm carrying it around? But then I sort of realized that I was missing the point that it's supposed to be this little record of the day. And then I just was struck by how cool it'll be at the end of the year to basically be able to flip through and get a nice overview of your entire year, which is pretty amazing to think to approach it that way. And so what I started doing is yesterday I took it, I went to bed, took it with me, wrote in it for the night, and slid it into the pencil cup beside my bed. And I'm just going to do that each evening and record stuff about the day. So I'm really excited to get through the year with that and to be able to look back and it's so easy to forget things, you know, and to not realize how much has happened in a year because you're so caught up in the moment. And it'll just be really nice to look back and see all of the things that happen. What's. Of what's primarily on your mind at a given time. Like this week, I'll be able to look back and say, wow, I was really working hard on this this week. Or I was, I seemed really preoccupied by this. Or oh, I forgot that, you know, we went and did that. That was a lot of fun, which I'm really looking forward to. So, Liz, thank you so much. I'm really, really happy with it and really looking forward to it.
I'm doing that with my Ambition memo book or date book?
Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask you guys. So as far as the difference between the Ambition date book and the Memorandum, do you see them as basically serving the same function?
Not for me.
Yeah, what are you using? Are you using the Ambition date book?
I've been using it as a planner because I have one of those five year diaries that I got and Valentine's Day 2011, so it's mostly full.
That's awesome.
But it's. It's like the same amount of space as the Memorandum, which kind of sucks because for five years I can't get one of those cool memorandums, but Countdown.
Yeah, cool. Yeah, I really enjoy it so far and I've got some of the. I was trying to decide whether to go for the Memorandum or the Ambition, but then I sort of realized that I'm drawn to the Memorandum. I've been wanting to try it. And also the sort of beauty of the field notes is that it's not tied to a year. So you can just save it and I'll maybe use that next year. I gave one to my wife for. For Christmas, which she. She started using for this year.
Are you making her a convert?
Yeah, well, she already is. Yeah, she. She went to. She had a conference in Atlanta and she took Shelter, Wood and Arts and Sciences with her to take notes for the conference. And she actually has a NATCO Hightower that she carries too. So bringing her over. She's not on the pencil train yet. She's not. Doesn't quite get it. Doesn't want to have to sharpen them, but you just gotta hide all the pens in your house. Yeah, there you go. That'll be hard. They're everywhere, man. Pens and pencils. They're flooding out of drawers.
Mine are all currently sitting either in boxes or like they're in cigar boxes, but in packing boxes or sitting on our futon.
So that makes me kind of sad.
Yeah, I need to figure out what to do with them. Like I'm not gonna get rid of them, but I don't know really how to display them like I was before.
So.
Yeah, we're still working on that. We're looking for like a. Like a small cabinet from IKEA or something like that that we can put them in. Just have that be the pencil cabinet.
Yeah, they have that one that looks like a red metal locker cabinet. Yeah, I've seen that would be very cool. Yeah, I Don't know if they still make those.
I think it's too small. A lot of cigar boxes full of pencils. Yeah, we'll figure something out. But yeah, something.
Get a shed out back of the apartment complex.
Maybe I'll just find like a conference room at work that's just kind of like in the corner nobody uses and just like, you know, block it off and make people forget that it's there. And just keep all my pencils there.
Maybe make like a handwritten sign says
do not enter Keep out under construction.
Andy's room.
The Toy Story reference there sounds like Toy Story. And my last point, which is going to make. I think it's going to make you guys kind of jealous. Well, we all got our NotCo Dash notebooks, the reporter notebooks, which are pretty cool. I've enjoyed mine. I keep one in my Hightower, just like they recommend, kind of as you can open up the Hightower, pull out a pen or pencil and it just flips open. Like we need to slide the back. The back of the COVID in. Yeah, really, really like that. And I also like writing it with it as a. As a landscape. But another thing that was included in my package, which I think is a thank you for a pencil sampler that I sent to Mr. Jeff Brukwicky of NotCo. He made me a elongated chimney top that fits pencils.
What?
Yeah, and it's pretty great.
Where is NotCo located? Yeah, George, storm the base.
I could pick you up on the
way and you can meet us in Savannah.
Yeah, catch a plane.
I have some driving I need to do. See you guys in four days.
Yeah, it's a. The chimney top is there long. Just, you know, basically solid tube. It kind of comes to a flattened end.
Yeah.
That they have for pen and accessory storage. And Jeff made me one that's the same exact thing and orange, the black zipper, but it's just maybe about 2 inches longer. So it fits. It fits a full size pencil just perfectly. I want some pictures of this. Yeah, yeah, I'll send you pictures for sure. I was holding off. Brad told me about it, that they had sent it and told me to wait until the podcast to. I guess he was just being kind of mean and wanted me to rub it in your face, which I'm totally not doing. I'm not.
I thought you were nice, man.
I'm not totally rubbing it in your face that I have a customized NotCo case for my pencils that you don't have.
He's not.
None at all. I'm Not Brad.
We've known each other for so long.
Only taking me 21. 21 episodes for the. The power to go to my head. Being on a podcast and getting special things. Thank you. Thank you, Knocko. Fellas, I love it. I use it. I use it every day. It's. It's. It's amazing. I use that for my pencils and then I have my. My brass town for my pens.
So see, I went to the moji store, I went to the muji store and I brought with me an unsharpened blackwing and it would just would not fit in any of the pencil cases they have. And they even call them pencil cases, but really they're pen cases.
Bunch of frauds.
Yeah. Shut that place down.
Well, that's. That's all I've got for fresh points.
Andy.
Andy, what do you got?
Yeah, I actually only have one fresh point, but I think it's a big one that will kind of weigh in on. So did we talk about the Starbucks roastery edition field notes last episode? I think it came out that day. Right? At least it was announced that day.
I think I was still in shock from.
See, so, so, so I remember seeing this and if you haven't seen it, I. It's. It's an arts and sciences sized field notes and it has a wooden cover like a shelter would. I think they use beech wood or birch wood or something instead of. What do they use cherry for? The other one? Yeah, so it's lighter. But then they put a metallic copper foil stamp on it, which is gorgeous. It's so pretty. And has copper staples and has a dot grid inside. And the inside cover is like. The substrate is bright orange, which they sort of bring over to the grid too. So it's a. It's a really, really good looking notebook and there's a lot of stuff about coffee in it because it's part of the Starbucks Roastery, which is like the. I've never been there, but it's like the tasting room or something. Like a. Like a tourist thing.
Mm.
Yeah, it's in the gift shop. Yeah, so they released it. It's available only at the gift shop. And everybody's like, oh my God, who here lives in Seattle? We really need to get that. Just everybody went here insane for it.
So, yeah, I bet the roastery is like, what is going on? They actually walking in buying like 10 of them.
They sold out their, like the stock that was in there. They had to get some more from the warehouse, wherever they keep it. But. But I just Went online, and I realized that the Facebook office in Seattle is less than two blocks away from the Roastery. I'm like. So I. I got into the, like, the social group for some. The Seattle Facebook. For the Seattle Facebook office. And I just messaged somebody there and was like, hey, can anybody pick these up for me? It's like, two blocks away, and I'll give you some extra dollars for it. So I had a really nice guy, software engineer there who responded to me, and he went out and got them, and he sent them to me, and I got a few of them, and I sent a pack to Johnny and Tim. And yeah, it's. So I did a short unboxing video because I don't know why. The unboxing video I don't like for a lot of things, but I think I love it for field note stuff. So, like, Mac stuff and field note stuff. So I started doing that. Yeah. So you guys just got yours today, right?
Yep.
Yep.
And I'm about to bust open my package on the air.
How could you wait?
I haven't opened yet. I came home and dropped my dog off because I had to go to dinner somewhere, and it was waiting on the Porsche. I was like, oh, my gosh. I just. I held off long enough to set it aside, and then by the time I had a chance to open it, we were about to record, and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna stick to it, and I'm gonna wait until we're recording so I can look at it.
This is live reaction, folks.
What? There are goodies in here. There are extra goodies. Oh, that's pretty. Okay. Hey, guys. Sorry.
Well, that's it. See you guys. No, I'm just kidding.
Oh, wow. Man, those are beautiful. That copper is amazing. It's like. Like green and copper color. Oh, man, that's awesome.
It's like an. I'm surprised they got the copper to stick to the wood like the foil stamp. I wonder. I wonder if it's more of, like, a metallic ink than it is, like, a foil stamp.
Yeah, it might be, like, simulating the. The copper.
Yeah.
Coppernous. Yeah. That's amazing. Those look so cool, and. Thanks. And you sent these little Facebook pocket notebooks, little scout books.
So pretty.
Yeah.
Those are awesome. I love it with the fox, man. Those are awesome. Thanks, man.
Yeah. Can you tell us the story of those, or is it secret?
I don't think it's secret, but I. I'm not quite sure what they are. Remind me again what it says on it. I Don't have it in front of me.
It has a fox on the front, and then it says the Content Strategy Fellowship.
Yeah, So I think, like, the. The Content Strategy Fellowship used to be called something like the Friends of Content Strategy, which is a particular discipline of web development. And they. That acronym was FOCS Fox. So that was kind of the unofficial mascot of that. So I think that's where they came from. I found a couple of them in the department, so I got them and sent them out. Whenever we get more, I'll. Yeah, I'll talk about them a little bit more in the group. But, yeah, I think they're just a. Just a dot grid Scout book, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah.
I'm loving this blue. Yeah, it's very wintry.
Yeah. Yeah. Those scout books, I. I've been seeing them more and more, and it's funny because, like, I feel like I can recognize them so easily now.
Like.
Oh, that's the Scout book.
Yeah. Let's get that texture.
Yeah.
Yep.
So, yeah.
Kind of oily.
Yeah, yeah. So have you.
One of mine.
Sorry, go on.
I ripped mine right open, and one of them has ripped. The COVID is ripped in the back. Oh, no.
So, like, is it your FedEx guy again?
No, no, no. It was inside the plastic. Like, it was just that way when they made it.
Oh, man.
But it's like a quarter of an inch. So at first, the collector in me is like, bleep this out. BLEEP this out. BLEEP this out. And then I was like, wait a minute. I'll just use that one first. Put a little tape in the inside. No biggie.
Have you used it yet?
Have you written it? No, I'm gonna crack it out tonight. I didn't realize that the inside orange was like a matte paper. I thought it would be, like, the unexposed. I'm really glad it's not.
Yeah, it's that substitute.
Did you get two. Johnny?
I'm sorry?
Did you get two packs.
No, two books. I thought about it, but my wife assured me she didn't want any, which sucks, because when she does, she never uses them, and then they become mine, which is nice. I've got a fire spotter single, two single Ravenswings, and an untouched box of National Crop that she gave me because she never used them. Yay.
So I haven't actually used any of my. The notebooks that are that size from. From Field Notes. Like, I haven't used the Arts and Sciences or this Roastery one yet. How do you Think it would be the difference in the difference in size. How do you think that's going to change how you would use it?
Well, it won't fit in my pocket.
Yeah.
But I usually have a diaper bag on me so you know, it's all good.
Use it to wipe wipes and butts.
Yeah. You know this wood looks like a wipe clean
if you want to make that field nuts cry.
Yeah, the. The unexposed was pretty good for wiping off baby poop on the outside. It didn't really get messed up. The snow just slid right off.
Gross.
No, I think these would be good for if. If I weren't in the middle of a notebook for podcasting stuff. That would be really good for like a long term project podcast. Maybe even a little journal.
Yeah, I'd like it for journaling if it wasn't dot grid. I like, I like lines for my journal, but. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Like a long term kind of project thing. Something to pick away at. I'm excited to use these.
I might stain one of them because just.
Because if you wait till the summer and just put it out in the sun. I have a shelter wood that tanned a lot because I left it out for two days in the sun.
That would be cool.
Yeah.
But I. Do this.
Do it.
Do it now.
Boy, I feel like this is one of the best designed field notes ever.
And this is a limited of 4,000.
I can't remember. I feel like if Starbucks runs out of them, they're going to order more, but I. I have no idea.
Yeah, and the only issue with this one is that the back of it is so heavily branded, which is not field notes thing.
Yeah, field notes.
Exclusively Starbucks reserve. There's a lot of Rs on there.
Yeah. I assume when you're Starbucks you have more pull for, you know, with than when you're like XOXO or something.
Wonder if they'll do another one. Maybe they could do silver.
Oh yeah, that would be fantastic. What they should do is they should have the whole cover should be silver with it should be like wood foil stamped. But then the whole cover is foil stamped and in reverse and then like the lettering is the wood.
That would be pretty fantastic using that
word a lot tonight.
The optimism of the new year.
Fantastic.
They should do an Olympics version for 2016. I felt like that was really obvious. They didn't do it in 2012.
That would be cool. That would be cool. Yeah. Alright, before we go on to our main topic, Andy, you want to talk about sponsorships.
Yeah. So this week we don't have a sponsorship. I did tell Topher in the Facebook group that we would say how dreamy he was. So wouldn't you guys all agree that. That Topher is pretty dreamy?
I like Topher.
I think it's Topher.
He's Topher.
Yeah.
Total, total dream boat.
I like you enough that I'm going to learn your name.
And I told him that I. I would do that for free, even though he didn't want to take our. Our charity compliments.
But.
But yeah, so.
So anyway, Topher segment, if he. If he sponsors us, we'll do a top segment.
Oh, yeah.
Well, we'll just.
Yeah, that's perfect. So as you may have noticed, we don't have a sponsor at this point week, and that is because we have just sort of like very casually launched into our sponsorship programs. So Gary from notegeist did it last week or last episode, and I think he was pretty happy with it. I'm sure he can give us a recommendation. But if you or your business is interested in a episode sponsorship, please reach out to me or to us. Really, the best thing you can do is probably go to our website, which is erasable us, and click on the contact form and just drop us a line with your business, your name, and how we can reach you. And I'll drop you a line and you can figure something out. So feel free to Facebook message me or tweet me or whatever. But yeah, we would love to promote your business and make a little revenue for us because most of that revenue is going into making cool things that we can then sell. You see how that works?
No, give us all your money.
Yeah, no, we definitely. We still want to make those scout books.
Yeah, we need to get some more stickers rocking.
Yeah, we do need some more stickers. We have this brand spanking new Squarespace site now, so we can really easily have commerce. So in the same tier as like adding podcast is the ability to do E commerce. So, yeah, we. We need to just build up a little capital to do that. So this is the best way to do that.
Yeah, we should pause and point out that Andy put in a lot of work to upgrade us to Squarespace and our awesome new site on which you can find our bios, which I think is an awesome feature.
Well, except for Tim's.
Oh, yeah, yeah, that one I wrote for Tim was pretty awesome.
You should have just left that one.
I should have.
I didn't even get to read it, so. Yeah, you should have left it.
It was Very complimentary. Yeah, I bet it straddled the line between compliment and flattery.
It was perfect. It was complattery.
Bad name.
So, yeah, that website is Erasable Us, same as the old site.
And that looks fantastic.
Yeah, technically our episode URLs now are instead of like erasable Us Twitter. Technically it's erasable us episode 21. But I set up some redirects anyway. So if you just type in the number like we had been doing before, it will still take you there. So apologize to everybody who got weird podcast reader screw ups. I know that for some of you it redownloaded all of the episodes again. So I hope you weren't on data when you were doing that. But I think for most people it was a pretty, pretty seamless transition.
You just have to listen to them all over again.
Yeah, that's all you need to do. Just. Yeah, listen to them all over again.
It's a new year, new experience.
Catch up. Yeah.
Speaking of the new year, for our main topic today, we're going to start by looking back at 2014, and I think we're all in agreement that we can name 2014 the year of the Bullet Pencil.
Heck, yeah.
It was a pretty exciting. I mean, in our little corner of the Internet, in the world, it was a pretty prolific return of the bullet pencil in this last year with all the refurbished bullet pencils and then of course our two Kickstarters that came out. It's pretty incredible when you think about the amount that it spiked in just one year.
So we didn't list this, but who are the people that we know of who are selling refurbished bullets pencils? I know Randy Reagan is.
And Jay from Huckleberry Woodchuck.
Yeah. Is that all that we know of who are doing it? I know some people are refurbishing their own, which is cool.
Yeah. That's all I know of. I know of other people that are doing them for themselves, but yeah, those are the main ones I can think of.
That's cool.
Yeah, and it's a kind of a fun thing to get into on your own, figure out how to refurbish them and get, you know, get, get the right supplies and be able to buy them in bulk or something on, on ebay. It takes a little bit of work and you might have to buy like large amounts of certain things to, to really do it right. But it's, it's a fun thing to get into.
The thing I'd love to figure out how to replicate is the, you know, some of those Bullet pencils. The design that's on them, it's just like, a little, like, wrap that goes around the aluminum barrel. And I would love to figure out how that works. Like, is that silk screened on some adhesive and then it's wrapped on there, or is it. You know, this is before, like, dot matrix printers or laser printers or something? Like, how do they do that? I wonder? I need to. I should figure that out.
We could do it with some paper and clear gorilla tape. That's true. It'll be indestructible. Would smell horrible for a week, but,
yeah, that would be bulletproof. Yeah. My favorite of those is the ones. They're all of a certain style, but it's tourism pencils, so. Like the Golden Gate Bridge or, you know, the Rocky Mountains or a flamingo for Florida or something like that. They're all, like, in this cool, like, oh, what is it called? Halftone design. And that's something I've been kind of wanting to think about doing is, like, who designed all of those? Because they all kind of look like they're from the. The same artist, and I have a bunch of them, and I know that there's just countless others that exist, and it seems like all over the US and further. So that would be really cool to figure out how that's done. But, yeah, some of the. Some of the new bullet pencils are really cool. I guess there's just two of them for now, but the ST that Jeff Grant made and then the twist that John and Jay made, and I know I have the st. I don't have my twist yet because I told them to put me in the last batch, but what do you guys think about your twists?
I'm holding it. I love it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm not a really big bullet pencil fan because, you know, they don't really provide any more usefulness for me than a short pencil with a cat, but this thing is just so cool. It transcends usefulness. It really does. Which is not to say that it's not very useful. Yeah, I love it.
I've had a little bit. I'm sorry. Go on.
I say. I agree. I love it. I think it's very useful, and it's versatile and good, you know, easy to carry around. My favorite combo has been my red one with the. With the brass.
Yeah.
The rounded tip.
Yeah.
My iron man and I. I love that. My favorite pencil to put in it so far is force choice knife sharpened for his choice, which has been incredible. It's like, I never have to sharpen it. Just pull it out and write with it. It just holds its point so nicely. And John and Jay are just doing a, a great job with, with this project and dealing with any, you know, the contingencies that come up with any project like this with. There have been some issues with. Some people had issues with the tip or with the eraser and they've been right on, right, right there, ready to not just fix the problem for the specific person, but fix it for everybody in the future kind of thing like solve problems and please their customers. So I think they're. They're just doing a killer job. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm looking forward to the cap and the clip very much.
Definitely gonna buy one of those.
And I think they're. I think those pencils are on sale on their website now. If you go to metalshopct.com yeah, there's
a discount for erasable members, but I don't know what the code is.
Well, you should join the group.
Yeah, get on there. Yeah, he's answered that question a bunch of times.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's in there.
So you'll find it to read all the posts and see how awesome it is.
Mm.
I like how between Gary and John and Jay they've already. They've kind of nicknamed people in the group the Erasables. That was completely like not originated by us, but that's pretty, pretty funny. I tried getting people call us the Eraserheads, but no. So I have an st. The one that Jeff Grant made and it's really cool. It's not as bullet pencil y as the twist. Like it doesn't quite harken back to those days, but it's really extremely well engineered. I really love how. Oh to go clip the cap into the. Into the barrel. I don't even know what it's called. It's those little like ball bearings that kind of fit out. It just kind of snaps in place to hold it on there.
Oh, I didn't know they did that.
Yeah, it's. He was gonna go with a, like, with a screw, like screw on. But I think he had access to this technology and I can't even remember what it's called, but it fits really nicely. Just kind of snaps in place. It's pretty long. It's, it's, you know, doesn't solve that problem that a lot of bullet pencils do because it's short. Like it's still pretty darn long. But yeah, it's still really nice. I like it actually better without the capacitive. Touch tip. I like the just plain old bullet in there better, but it really does add a new level of usefulness with that tip in place. The stylus.
Yeah.
So it's extremely well engineered and. But it's. It's more of a. It's more like a rope ring than it is like a traditional bullet pencil. That makes sense.
Yeah. What color did you get for your twist?
Indy. I got. I ordered the black one. I got the two. I got a black one and a blue one. And then I ordered a. A brass tip and a aluminum tip, so.
And you have the Iron man, right, Tim?
Yeah, I did the black and the red, and then I got both rounded tips. I didn't want the pointed one. I got one of brass and one in aluminum.
Pretty. I'm boring. I got silver.
That looks good, man.
Yeah, the silver looks great. Yeah,
silver one looks like you could shoot it. I'm hoping they'll do full brass one. That would be really awesome.
I think somebody should do it like a. Like a slow mo video where they shoot one of the bullet pencils to see if they can have you. You know that Slingshot Guy on YouTube? Have you ever seen him?
No.
He's like the big, like, German guy who just makes like insane slingshots, like, with more like, force than like a shotgun. And what he makes. He one time made a. Oh, man. What was it like a. Like a chainsaw slingshot? Like just. He has a lot of free time on his hands. He's German. He always looks. Looks like he's having the most fun. But he should see if he can like, make a bullet pencil slingshot.
Wow. I know what I'm going to be doing all night.
Mind blown.
I will send you the link to his.
Yeah, please do.
Yeah, he one time shot like a large ball bearing out of a slingshot. And you know that ballistic gel, like jellicin they make? He got one to go, like, almost all the way through, which most bullets only penetrate like, like a few inches. What? Insane.
Like, he was like, a weird thing to be into.
Oh, he has. He has so many viewers on YouTube. It's just fascinating. I'll find the link and put it in show notes.
Yeah, I think we need to find a picture of this guy for our episode picture.
Yes, I will. I will do that.
Yeah, we, I guess, kind of still sticking to the subject of bullet pencils. We got a question. And who's this question from? Do we know. Do you remember?
I don't remember who this one is from.
Yeah, well, the question is Or a statement and then some questions. Someone said, I'm also interested in the vintage bullet pencils, which we've talked a little bit about. We can talk about some more. And then he said. He or she said. Do any of you three collect them? Any experience with them? Johnny? What? Do you. Do you collect them or do you have much experience with them?
Johnny?
Johnny.
I'm sorry. I was looking at the picture.
I found a picture of the slingshot guy and I posted in there.
That guy looks awesome.
No, like I mentioned a few minutes ago, sometimes they're icky. They're not that useful. But I have a bunch. I have a few that are very special to me because I like what's on them or because they're square. And I have one that's square and the metal is brown. It's for a menswear store. It's really cool.
Nice.
It's. It's hidden from the kids because they like bullet pencils. And Henry's small.
He'll eat.
He'll eat it and he'll die and I'll go to jail.
Death by bullet pencil.
Yeah.
Yeah. I. I have a. I think I maybe have. Well, I had six, I think. And then one that I really liked. It was a square, a gold one that was square. I lost, unfortunately. And then I've given a couple away. And then I have one. I have one like. Johnny, you said you have some that are really special to you. And I have one that's really special to me. It's one for the St. Francis Monastery in Wisconsin. It's really pretty. It's gold. I like that one a lot. I have it. Always have it loaded with a ladee stub that fits really nicely into it. And I actually just ordered a couple days ago on ebay. It was $8 in free shipping. And I got two Chicago themed bullet pencils.
Oh, cool.
Which they're not like the city of Chicago, but they're like stockyards in Chicago. I'm really excited about those. I was planning to get those and then, like, we were talking about refurbishing and I was going to refurbish it myself and fix it up, put new erasers in it and all that, which I'm really, really excited about. I love the old ones. I don't necessarily. Wouldn't necessarily call myself a collector. Personally. If I have one that I like to use, then I'm good, you know, unless it just looks really awesome. I actually got into a kind of a bidding war for one on ebay, which I Was not expecting myself to get into. But it was. There were two really awesome ones and right up to the last second we were to going. Going back and forth and it was. One of them was silver and then it had a green, just a two tone green and black. Whatever you call that foil or that goes around it of the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee. And then the other one was a Rock City bullet pencil, which is really cool. But I lost. I wasn't willing to go as high as it was going because it was like, it was up to like 17 bucks for two of them. And like meh.
And that's the trouble, I think with kind of the resurgence in popularity is. And, and to be honest, there are people who collected bullet pencils, you know, years and years before. They just, you know, were really quiet about it. There were a lot of like those American pencils collector society people who did it. So I feel like they've. It's always been like a really kind of a. Because at one point they were commodities. They were just all over the place and they were so cheap. So I feel like for a long time they were just pretty easy to find and cheap to find. But yeah, that's, that's my problem is I like them and I have a bunch of them, but I don't want to pay more than 10 bucks for a bullet pencil.
Like I want to pay more than three.
Yeah, like five. $5 is. Is kind of reaching for me.
Oh, there's a really cool one on ebay right now with John Deere yellow plastic. For five bucks, I would pay five bucks.
That's cool.
I have. Oh, I have several of them, but I. They're. I mostly just find them when they have something specific to do with Fort Wayne, where or at my hometown. I found a bunch on ebay that way and I found some in like some flea markets and antique shows and I think I have a few like Illinois stockyards and grain and seed companies. And I really like the tourism ones too. I was thinking about maybe keeping an eye out for those. But yeah, I've been giving a lot of them away to people when I send them pencil sampler packs. Like, hey, this is what a bullet pencil is. You may have heard us talk about it. That's a big question. I hear a lot like, what's a bullet pencil?
Do you guys have any of the refurbished or restored kind?
I don't.
When I got my first batch of used ones that I bought on ebay, actually sent four of them to Jay and he fixed them up for me,
I have one that Randy sent me and it looks like a brand new pencil. The eraser looks new. It's really awesome. Cool. And it's sort of longer and thinner than most bullet pencils and it doesn't have the sticker on it, so I actually carry this one around.
Yeah. I've been meaning to get one of Randy's because his are really, really good looking. I like the silver. The silver ones, he has always look really nice. Really well done look. Like you said, good as new. So I'm keeping my eye out for when he. He loads him back up onto the site. Yeah.
And he sent it to me with a blackwing pearl in it too, which I thought was awesome.
That's cool. That's awesome.
Smell very good. I'm like, usually when you get a bullet pencil and it smells like oil
and old bread or something.
Disgusting.
That's like my first. You do to this?
Yeah. The plastic ones especially.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it smells.
I like plastic ones.
The brass ones even. Sometimes they smell like you open up the package and it like, has somebody been holding this in a sweaty palm for like 40 years? Like, that's what it smells like.
Vintage.
Yeah, vintage.
To get a hold of it. It comes with the guy sweat.
I haven't let go of this for 40 years. Yeah.
Our two is no minor sweat. I don't get hate mail from hipsters. That's okay. It'll take a while to write it. The deliberate pony express.
We would have gotten it by now, I think. Yeah, we haven't gotten it yet, so.
Yeah, I have to keep trimming my beard because I don't want to be mistaken for a hipster.
Hey, it's dangerous territory.
And this time you're going to want to trim it. It's very lush.
Yeah, mine's pretty bushy right now, actually.
Say lesh. Lush.
Lush. It's lush. It's lushy.
Mine's got a lot of gray for my age too.
No, mine's totally brown. My whole head's gray. So I got the opposite.
I get like weird different silver patterns that change with the seasons.
Whoa.
So for one winter, I had a silver stripe above my lip, so it looked like I was sloppy with toothpaste. So it was really weird. And it wouldn't go away. It went away like over a second summer.
I'm like a fox or something. Yeah.
Changes. You're never. You're never bearded.
That is because there. I would look like a homeless person if I tried to grow up. I get really patchy Facial hair.
Well, you just have to keep at it.
Yeah, but there's. I want proof, like that awkward face. I will find you a picture and I will send it to you of what I look like with facial hair. But like, the awkward stage is too long for me. Like I tried and I just was
like, I have to get rid of
this because it's uncomfortable. And like, the awkward stage lasted a long time.
Really? Well, that's probably good because shaving is not really that fun if you don't have to do it as often. That's good.
Yeah.
I. In March, you'll be seeing some pictures of me with a mustache because our school is doing a. Like, we have a lot of beards at my school. The teachers, not the eighth graders, but
they probably look like me.
There's a couple of them. Yeah. Yeah. But we're going to do a mass mustache day. So eventually I'm going to make mustaches mass stashes in this school. So I'm kind of worried about it because I want to. I've, I, I've had this beard for like a year and a half.
So anyways, your face will feel really cold, man.
Yeah, it's gonna be weird. It will be weird. Let's look ahead to 2015. So let's move on to that side. We're gonna look ahead to 2015. We have a question from Logan. He says, with the success of the recent Bullet Kickstarters, what's next on the horizon in pencil products or what's needed? I think it's a great question. It's a good thing. It's something I think about all the time.
I think we've talked about the thing that I really, really want to exist. And that is a recreation of the Janus 4048, which is an old hard Faber pencil sharpener. And I can't, I can never remember who it is, but somebody hoards them and I just want to be like, damn it. Just so.
Isn't it Giles?
Is it him? Yeah. Kooten. Yeah. I need to just be like, hey, can I just buy one of these from you? You have so many of them. Like, I think I feel like he's trying to corner the market, but I really want him. I love, love that tapered, that tapered point that it leaves.
We need to get a good Dan Bishop on that.
Yeah.
And I think it's a machined, American made version one.
It's probably gonna be. Yeah. Really, really hard for the blade because like, that has to be so fine. You probably couldn't machine it. And I bet that like the tensile strength of that blade to kind of get it curved just right would be pretty hard to do. I wonder if those old ever hard Faber blades, I wonder if they're different somehow because you have to like bend them onto the pencil sharpen orders in order to get that, get that curve, that taper. But yeah, it's, it's gorgeous. And I would love even if it looked different, but it just made that point. It would be fantastic. So I don't have the knowledge or the manufacturing resources to put it together but. But somebody out there does.
There's a cheap carpenter pencil sharpener that sharpens them in a round way and it'll make a point like that on a pencil if you stick it in there. But it doesn't really work with normal pencils. But you can get a, like put a Dixon beginner's pencil in there and get a Janus looking point on it. It's pretty cool, huh?
That's cool.
The sharpener is crap. It'll probably sharpen 10 pencils and die.
They cost so much on eBay, like 50 to $75. And there's a Janus 4046 that I know we talked about with David Rees. That's not the non brass version. It's like aluminum or lead or tin or. I don't know what it is but it's like the less fancy version. But you can hardly find those. And I'm guessing it's because they weren't quite as hardy. They didn't last as long because they're like from the forties. They're pretty old. So yeah, that would, that's, that's my, that's my goal for the new year, for this year is to get convince somebody to kickstart that.
Yeah, I think there are so many nice pencils out there now. Like, I mean we have all these like the, you know, the tombows and the Mitsubishi and the Palominos. We have, we have all these really nice pencils. But it does feel like there's a big hole in the shape sharpener department.
Yeah, there are a lot of just dumb sharpeners and that seems like something that would be right up like an edcer's alley because like you know, it's all about being prepared and having the nicest tools to do that. But like the night, many of the nicest tools out there for sharpening pencils are stationary like the classroom friendly sharpener and something like that. So if there existed a really, really, really good handheld Sharpener. I feel like the EDC guys would just love, love that.
Yeah, for sure. I think that's. This is a huge gaping hole in this market.
Yeah.
There needs to be some really solid. I'm, I'm definitely willing.
We will partner with somebody on this guys.
Yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm definitely willing to pay $15 for an awesome machined sharpener, you know, or $20. I don't know. It's just. I'm not like, you know, that isn't. It's not deterring me to pay. For what it's worth, if it's, if it's made with good quality, it's gonna last forever. I mean, I'll pay.
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah.
Somebody mentioned better pencil caps and clips too.
Yeah, yeah.
I guess the default list, like we were just talking about that today. The Faultless is like a really good. Yeah, they're great out there but the
only problem with them is they get stuck on your pocket or your.
Yeah.
Your, your cuff of your shirt and your watch. Or like sand it down. Yeah, but I only have like one. I don't want to sand it.
Yeah.
So what would a better kick started clip look like?
I. I think that the like the ideal clip would be something in the, in the department. Like something similar to the, the fat pencil clip that you sent us, Johnny. Like something that's just.
Yeah.
Really simple, streamlined like that. You basically just need the piece of aluminum and then you bend it and just to make it so that it would fit. I think ideally if it could fit over the ferrule of a pencil that would be pretty.
Yeah, I had a box of those once from when I lived in Carbondale. But I gave them all away. I don't even know if I have one. But they were sized like a little smaller than a ladee. So you could put it on any pencil.
Well, I couldn't.
Fat pencil. You could put it on the ferrule. I used to keep them on the ferrule of a black wing. I think how I lost them. But I would like to see a clip with a car. I'm sorry, cap with a clip.
Yeah.
Have you guys seen that weird thing called the pencil shield? I think the standard one's clear plastic and has an eraser stuck in it. It looks like a pen cap but you, you screw your pencil into really messes your pencil up. But it holds it well. I think I have a couple. I'll send you guys one. But something like that. But with the fit of. Okay, so basically I'm Talking about the Faber Castell perfect pencil, but. Okay, maybe another one of those. I don't think they have it patented because Staehler makes one and Kuhn makes one
in Germany.
But you know, an American version of that in copper. I would burn all the pens in my house. It's not a really big pile, but it would stink.
That would be awesome.
I think microns would probably smell especially disgustingly.
Yeah.
Smell like Ubuntu.
Yeah. I think one thing, I think we've talked about this before that I wish would be easier to do is that people like Keras Customs and companies can make and like metal shop CT can make things like the bullet pencil or pens pretty easily, you know, as compared to if you want to make a pencil. Like if you're trying to kick start a pencil, you need all this crazy.
Yeah.
Specialized material like machines that, you know, Keras Customs can make a pen on a machine, but then they can also make basically anything else that they want. Right.
Well, and they, but they still use like, you know, refills from a pilot G2 or something. So. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, with a pencil it's kind of like that, you know, that funny or die sketch where the guy tries to like follow the thing and make a pencil. Right. Like he just can't do it.
And it's.
I think it's kind of, you know, it's a joke, but it's true. Like you just can't make a pencil unless you have vast resources behind you. Like they're all so like, like all the pencils out there are like. What is it called? Oem. Is that the original. What does OEM stand for?
Oem?
Original Equipment Manufacturer. Yeah. So like if you, you know, like the Palomino stuff, maybe a lot of them are made by Musgrave, you know, that kind of thing. So there's. There's a lot of that kind of stuff out there. And that's awesome. But yeah, it would be great to have like some brand new front from scratch pencil made.
Yeah, I wish that was. That was something that could be done. But yeah, anyways. Yeah. And on the lines this is a pretty tall order. But more American made pencils would be. Would be cool too. We got some good ones.
But I would like Black Wings without that silly feral. That's not a draw. I find that it gets in my way. The erasers they put in there aren't very good.
Yeah.
And it drives the cost of the pencil up. If they dipped them, I would pay the same price for them. Well, okay. I Paid a dollar less on principle.
Gonna miss that trademark look, though.
Yeah. I mean, I think it's ironic that the thing that ceased Blackwing production was a little piece that holds the eraser in. But on the modern ones, no offense, Charles, the erasers are their weak point.
Those ferrules are bigger than the original ones, aren't they?
Yeah, but like, you know how you identify it as the ferrule. But the erasers are not very good. But the pink one is pretty. I usually just put the pink one in there and I don't use it. Yeah, I want to put like a piece of gum in there or something
chick lit for later.
Yeah, that's what we should do. We should hack black wings to put things into the end that are more useful than those crappy erasers.
That sounds like a Tumblr right there. Call them hack wings.
Oh, my God. I've got it right.
Somebody needs to go buy hackwings.com.
i haven't had as many problems with the erasers. I actually don't mind them that much, but I know they're not fantastic, but they get the job done. I still kind of like the gimmick of it, you know, or that it's able to be extended.
Yeah.
Any other spoon, A coffee spoon? Yeah, bottle. Bottle opener. That would be fantastic.
Side project, guys.
Any other ideas for the future? What do you see on the horizon? What would you like? What would you. Or what do you. What do you think will happen soon? I don't know.
I'm hoping. Well, I think we're all going to be millionaires because our sponsorship program. Program takes off in 2015. So obviously that's going to happen.
And I keep finding that pencils I like are no longer made of cedar. And I think that's going to continue in 2015.
Yeah.
Break my heart.
I was going to ask you all about this, about cedar. So is the main benefit of cedar the smell or is it also the sharpening quality for you?
Well, there was a big, big upset when they stopped using red cedar that, you know, like the stuff for closets. They used to make pencils out of that, which I can barely imagine. So they started dyeing the incense cedar, and they came up with the name Incense Cedar to make you think it smelled good. So, I mean, that's part of it, I think. It's just. I don't know. In my head, I'm like, this is your flagship pencil. Why is it not made of cedar anymore? Yeah, like. And you're charging more money. What's wrong with you, Dixon Tuck under Roga.
Yeah.
Yeah. I hope that doesn't happen, but it keeps happening. The Marauder Black warriors are now made of some junky wood that smells terrible.
I'm just not a fan of those guys.
Yeah, I noticed their packaging doesn't say cedar. It says premium wood, and so does Ticonderoga. So that way, when they can slip the junk past you is just sad. But the right dudes, pencils get better and better. And, you know, we know some inside information that means that they're getting more and more actually American made, so that's good. So that bodes well for 2015.
Have you ever been in communication with one of those guys? One of the dudes?
Yeah. It wasn't a dude, but it was a lady. She sent some stuff out for review a year or two ago.
We should get one of them on the show.
Yeah, I mean, they were. They were really receptive to stuff like, you know, this, you know, URL you have on here looks pretty bad. She's like, I'm glad you said that, because we're getting rid of it. And they got rid of it.
Nice.
Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's why they got rid of it, but they probably heard that a lot. Yeah, a lot of hate mail. Like, dude, you're ruining a nice pencil.
Right, dude.
Right dude.
Wrong dude. Am I right?
Yeah.
All right.
Should we button up, guys? Yeah.
Sounds good. Where can people find you on the Internet, Andy?
I am@woodclinched.com you can find me there. Or you can find me on Twitter welfley or oodclinched. I check both of those. How about you, Tim?
You can read my occasional writing@thewritingarsenal.com and you can follow me on Twitter writingarcenal or imwassum. And I'm also on Instagram therewritingarcenal. Okay. What about you, Johnny?
I am enslerevolution.com I am on Twitter ensolution and on Instagram onnygamber. And if I stay up late tonight, possibly on hackwings.org
Nice.
You think I'm joking.
And you can find the Erasable podcast on Twitter raceablepod. You can also go to our website, which is our beautiful new website, thanks to Mr. Andy. Well, erasable us also head over to Facebook and we have our. Of course, our Facebook group that we gush over all the time, which we're almost. We're getting pretty close to 400 members, which is pretty exciting. And that's facebook.comgroups erasable. And we've also started what is. As opposed to a Facebook group. We have a Facebook page that is basically a place for you to go, which is facebook.com erasablepodcast which, if you would go there and then like our page, then we can give sort of. Andy, correct me if I'm wrong, we can give updates on the podcast that isn't discussion based, but we can post, you know, when a new episode posts, which we're not going to spam you, but when a new episode posts, we'll post it on there and it'll show up in your feed.
Yeah, that's more of a, like the authoritative voice of. Of erasable rather than, you know, something that's discussion based. So there's still, it's still threads, comments, but mostly we just started it because I wanted to do a little bit of Facebook advertising and you have to have a page in order to do that. So technically that's why it's there. But we already have almost 200 likes already, so that's pretty cool.
Yeah. And the group is still kind of where the, you know, where the community is and where anybody can post. We really encourage you to join that. It's a private group, but only so that we can have a safe space to talk about this obsession that other people in our life won't.
Yeah. If you wanted something, just one thing to go to and do, I would recommend the group over the page. It's a really, really active, interesting community.
Yeah, we really love it. So it's brought some pretty amazing things out and things are being created and talked about and discovered and it's pretty, pretty exciting.
Yeah, it's all I do on Facebook at all.
Yeah, pretty much.
Me too.
Well, we also would really appreciate it if you would go to itunes and rate and review us. This makes us more visible to people who are on itunes and just happen to be searching for pencil related podcasts or other things related to pencils. But it'll just make us more visible. So we'd really appreciate that. If you go to itunes, rate and review us, you can also, if you're using Overcast, you can recommend our episodes to your friends and any other podcast app that you're listening to us on, whether it's Stitcher or whatever the other ones are. Some of those you can leave reviews and you can also share and recommend our page. We'd really, really appreciate that. So really thank you for listening to episode 21 of the erasable podcast. And Johnny and Andy, Happy New Year. It was good talking to you again.
You too. Happy New Year. Happy New Year.
And we'll do this again in a couple weeks.
Awesome.
All right, see you guys.