This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
Who's your favorite Star wars character? Don't write her.
Merry, everyone. And welcome to episode 42 of the erasable podcast. It's occurred to me that our show is comfortably middle aged. So for those of you who are worried about that our show ran away with its secretary or started a metal band because we've been gone for a month and rest assured, the show is still young. That's year's nine episodes. So I'm your oldest co host and I'm joined as always by Tim Wasem and Andy Welfle. Tonight we're also in league with Mr. T.J. cosgrove of Wood and graphite, filmmaker, pencil lover, IKEA visitor, and our first international guest. Hello, Mr. TJ.
Hello.
How are you guys tonight?
Pretty good.
Great.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for staying up like. Well past your bedtime, tj.
So far past my bedtime.
So go ahead. I was going to say this is, this is momentous. Yeah. Our first guest international that we had. It's hard enough to coordinate between Pacific and Eastern time.
No, no. More time zones. More time zones. Let's get everybody from across the globe.
Imagine if you were in San Francisco during this.
I am. Oh, I can't even imagine.
Like lunchtime. So tonight we are ringing out 2015. We're going to talk about our favorite three. Do we pick three? Three pencils of 2015 and our usual fresh points. And then we're going to talk to Mr. TJ and dig into his brain a little bit because that's fun. And Mr. T.J. is going to join us for the entire episode instead of just the segment tonight. So do you guys want to jump right into tools of the trade? Sure. And you go with our guest first.
Oh, okay. I am drinking some very, very fine British aqua pura. So tap water. I poured it myself not 20 minutes ago from the tap, so it's delightful. I'm riding with a Blackwing 1138, which is just about at the Steinbeck stage, but not quite on a yellow legal pad that I got from Paperchase, which is a store here in the uk.
I'm so jealous. I really want to go to a Paper Chase store.
Yeah, they're pretty good. The one in Manchester in. It's like one of their flagship stores. It's huge. It's like three floors.
I had a co worker go work from the London office and he brought me back some Paper Chase stuff. So I was like, if this is only a sampling of it, I can't wait.
Yeah, they used to sell their stuff at border stores before they Closed up?
Yeah, Maybe not a lot.
It's a pretty cool store. They do a lot of art stuff and a lot of books and gifty things. But they do some really nice sort of imitation moleskins. But the big thick ones with the soft covers and the strap, they're quite nice.
Awesome.
How about you, Mr. Andy?
Well, I am. This is not the end of my evening, I'm afraid. I'm actually having a little bit of caffeine and my. My typical, like, fussy coffee setup is not readily available to me here. Although I did buy an AeroPress specifically to have while I'm. While I'm here in Indiana for three weeks. But there was a Pepsi that was sitting close by, so I just grabbed a can of Pepsi and I don't know, I drink a lot of soda in Indiana. I don't know why that is, but
you're in good company.
Although if I'm in Indiana, I should say pop. Yeah, pop is the correct, correct term. As opposed to the south where you say Coke even if you mean a Pepsi. Right?
Yeah.
Do they do that in Tennessee or is that not a. Not far south enough.
It's somewhere in the middle, actually. I hear soda more than anything else here.
Yeah.
And I am writing. I am writing in a. I'm going to pronounce it nemosine. Although I think that. I think that the Greek goddess of memory, who it is based off of, is pronounced. Pronounced mnemosyne. It is a really great little. A five size notepad, like a reporter's notepad that flips from the top. It's the 7 millimeter version. Or no, I guess the lines are 7 millimeters. Never mind. My friend Michael Metz from the group sent this to me when he sent me a bunch of field notes that I bought from him. It's really great. Like, the paper is really nice. Have you guys ever seen these before?
No, no, not the notebooks, but I. They are known for making pretty solid fountain pens that are under 20 bucks. So that's how I know them.
Okay. Yeah. I'll post a picture or a link in the group. The pages are divided up, they're perforated and they're divided up into three little sections with like a faint thicker line between. Between the three sections there's like 1, 2, 4, 5. There's seven lines per section. And then at the top there's a place to put like a date or a number and then a title. And just really nice smooth paper. It reminds me a little bit of like a. Like a Claire Fontaine Page. And I actually have two writing instruments in front of me. One of them I was going to make you all gasp. I bought the other day a blue Le pen because I like les pens.
Hey, those things are nice.
And I was buying some colored pencils at an art supply shop for my sister to give her like to give a coloring book. I actually listened to our episode with Anna before I did that. And they had a bunch of lay pens and they have a blue color that's called Oriental blue, which is kind of like a blue with a little bit of green in there too. It's a really beautiful blue. So I have that. But I am also writing with. Sitting up on this desk. I'm in a. At a desk in my wife's childhood bedroom at her parents house where we're staying. There is a. There's randomly a USA made desk. Ticonderoga. Sitting here.
Sweet.
Her mother is a. Is a teacher and yeah, she. There's a lot of Ticonderoga. She loves the Ticonderoga. So it's just sitting here. So I thought I'd pick it up and I'm. I'm writing with that. And sure enough, there's a definite difference between this and, you know, something I. I can buy at a store right now. So yeah, that is. Those are my tools. How about you, Tim?
I'm drinking some Jim Beam neat. And that is it. And oddly enough, I am writing with a Ticonderoga USA made Ticonderoga, which we'll get into later. There's a reason for that. That's me,
Johnny.
Oh, sorry. I'm drinking Perri.
Johnny.
You hear a mute?
I'm belching. Just finished a whole French press of coffee because you know, it's only 7 something here. I'm also writing with a Blackwing 1138 in the Glitch. Not Glitch. The Xoxo 2015 field notes which have such a really cool texture.
Yeah.
Maybe it's because there's so much ink on them.
Oh, that's sort of match. The glitch ones are the 2014, I think.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the black and white ones. The ones.
Oh, that one. Yeah, those. Yeah, those are great. Cool. What is your. What is all of your feeling about Aeropress as opposed to French press?
I've never had it before. I don't even really know what happens.
I haven't either. Yeah. T.J. so I hate it. Yeah.
Never tried it. One of those things. Like one of the things I keep meaning to try, but I'VE only recently, kind of in the last year or so, really gotten into coffee in any kind of meaningful way, which means buying ground coffee and putting it in a coffee maker. But I think it's one of those things that, like, pencils I'll get into in the future and delve quite deep into.
Isn't it kind of. Is it kind of like a reverse French press or where it, like.
Yeah, it. It's like a cross between a French press and a syringe. Like, it's. It's. You basically.
Appetizing.
Yeah, you basically, like, stir your. Your water into the coffee grounds in the top and kind of let it, like, marinate that way. And then you just kind of like squeeze your. Squeeze the coffee, like down through it in your cup and you make some sort of like a. Almost like an espresso. And then you add more hot water to the coffee to bring it down to regular caffeination level. So you're actually kind of making an Americano. But, like, true, true espresso. People wouldn't call it that because the pressure is not high enough. But it's. It uses a lot more like coffee per. Per water. But it's super easy to clean up. And it's. It tastes really good. It's super. It's smooth like an aeropress.
It sounds good.
Yeah, you should. So I can't wait until you get really into coffee, TJ because then. Are you going to change your blog to, like, wood and graphite and caffeine or something?
Yeah, I'm just going to keep adding things. Just went with the ampersands. Wood and graphite and coffee and coffee
and pens and typewriters and the Internet and video.
The Internet.
Do you guys want to jump into our fresh points? Speaking of fresh, delicious things, do you want to go first again, Mr. TJ?
Sure.
I was recently home in Northern Ireland visiting my parents for Christmas, and I happened to go into one of the biggest stationery stores in Ireland. I was both in Dublin, which is the capital of the Republic of Ireland, and Belfast, which is the capital of Northern Ireland. Just geography lesson for everybody. Two different countries. Either way, I was in both of the main stores of this. It's really, really good. When I left, I wasn't really into stationery that much. I just kind of had an appreciation for it. But coming back now that I'm kind of into pencils quite a bit, I was walking around the store.
This is so good.
Because, you know, I'm in. I'm near Manchester in England. There's a Lot of stores here, you know, Fred Aldis and Paper Chase and all these other big art stores that are, you know, they're pretty big name ones for the UK and like I've seen a lot of it before. So going home and seeing the really quite astonishing range of stuff that Northern Ireland, piddly little country that it is, has, was pretty cool.
That's cool.
Yeah. What are some pencils that you can get there that you. That some people who listen to this might not know about?
A lot of the pencils that you get in Ireland any is mostly German ones. So a lot of Faber Castell, a lot of Staedtler, the old favorites, the Norris and the Tradition. Some weird unnamed Faber Castell ones. They didn't have any. It was just Faber Castell and they were red, green and blue. There wasn't any name or anything on them. They were like 30p each, which is I guess like 50 cents. They were pretty nice. They're quite hard, but yeah, they tend to go for the German ones. That tends to be the kind of the only market we have, apart from unnamed ones. But some really cool sort of accessories and templates and paper and envelopes and all the kind of minutia that goes with stationery and pencils and stuff.
So do you.
Pretty cool.
Do you guys. Do you get a lot of the Helix products over there?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think, I'm not entirely sure. Is Helix the French brand or it's an off shoot of a French brand?
I don't know. The only one I'm familiar with is the Helix Oxford, which is that navy blue pencil.
Yeah, the Helix. That's from the. The same as the math set that they have, which is the Helix math.
So.
Which is quite an old one.
Oh yeah, I have one of those.
Yeah, that's the one we used in school. I remember using it. Yeah, it's pretty common, although it's not a superb pencil.
Yeah. Mike Hurley told me that Helix is a super common brand when he was going through school.
Yeah, it's like the classroom to steal a phrase from something else. It's the classroom friendly brand. It's kind of like the one everybody picks.
Somebody should trademark that.
Yeah, that's a really good name for something.
I always like the Oxfords because the wood is a little bit pinker than typical.
Yeah, it's quite odd, isn't it? It looks like what I guess red cedar would have been.
But it's probably just dyed though.
Yeah, I'm almost positive they just dip the ends in paint or something before they send them off to you. So, yeah, that was one of the things I noticed recently that was quite surprising, that I've lived in England for four years and I've been pretty spoiled for the stationery that we have here. But going home, I was like, oh, there's going to be nothing. And I got home, wow, there's so much. And it was all exciting and new, but that was pretty cool. And then the other thing I was doing is after Christmas, I was given a typewriter. I know it's not strictly pencils, but it's in the analog realm. So I was given a typewriter by my girlfriend's grandmother. And so I started typing letters. Like, I write a lot of letters to family members and things like that, but I typed up a few letters. And I think one of the best things you can do is send people letters at any time of the year, really. But it's. People don't do it anymore. It's such a rare occurrence to get a letter from someone in the mail that when you send one to someone, it really makes their day. It doesn't matter what's in it. Doesn't matter how much you're saying. It doesn't matter if it's just hello. But, like, people really remember it. And all the ones I've sent have really made an impact. And I just thought it was a really cool thing that people don't do, and it takes so little time to do it.
That's great. Well, you should write a letter to me and I'll write a letter back to you.
Let's do that. That'd be cool.
I just bought some airmail stamps.
Let's do this.
Oh, let's do a little. Little round robin.
Heck, yeah.
That sounds great.
Yeah. I mean, I like this.
We should really do it. I feel like we should do a typewriter show. Like, we. We kind of did an ink show when we had Brad on. And I know my. My coworker Cheryl Lowery, is. She used to write the Strike. The Strikethrough blog. So she has lots of typewriters, and she knows a lot about typewriters. So. Yeah, that would be fun.
That sounds great.
Yeah. Good episode. Solid. Yeah.
We can cuss and we can use the ding.
You gotta be really fast, though, to make sure you get them.
This is a really great dinging typewriter.
Unnecessary censorship.
Funniest thing.
Ever
seen that. The YouTube video of the Count. And he's singing, and they, like, bleep out random words as he's singing. It's fantastic. He's like, he's counting spiders in the room, but like they bleep it. Like it'll be like, of course, really inappropriate moments, but it's pretty hilarious.
I'll go next with, with fresh points. So as, as we mentioned before, I am back in Indiana and I'm here for three weeks. I got here two weeks ago and I'm leaving in a week from now. And I immediately upon entering the Midwest, I got sick from the lovely weather. And yesterday there was freezing rain. That was fun. Just because apparently we've all been sick. I think that's, that's the reason we like, we haven't recorded for so long. And I posted this to Instagram, but I was trying to pack as light as I could since we were going to be, we were going to be here for so long. I really needed to fill my stuff with clothes and my suitcase was packed full of Christmas presents. So both Katie and my suitcases came in at like 49 and a half pounds, the limit being 50. So I was like, I need to make as few of this stationary as I can. So I put this on Instagram, but the only things I brought with me are field notes and actually my Nemo Nemosyne notebook that I forgot was in my bag, which I didn't put on Instagram. And then a 211, one of those recycled tombows, a Palomino HD HB and then a Lipin, then my sharpener. So that's all I've had with me, you know, for, for these last two weeks. And it's been working really well. I, I didn't think I was going to be able to get away with just like with my, with my stationary adhd.
I thought you were going to be rush ordering some stuff from CW Pencils.
Send it to me.
I even left my confidante that I usually have with me back, back at home. So yeah, it's, it's worked out really well and I, I think that kind of like Tim has mentioned before and Johnny and Johnny both, you know, the, the fewer selection of tools you have with you, the more focus you can give to the content of what you're writing as opposed to like picking out the perfect tool. So I don't think I'm ready to downsize and simplify as much as Tim is, which I'm sure he'll talk about here in a minute. But it's definitely interesting to me just to have that little pencil pouch full of stuff in my pocket. I actually also brought back From Mido, I bought this little tiny 6 inch ruler. And it's not even that. I think it's like four inches. It's really nice to have a little straight edge when I'm trying to draw a, like an underline on something or draw a header into, onto my page. So I've been actually carrying that with me a lot, so I thought I'd take that with me on my trip. But yeah, somebody in the group is asking about taking their sharpener through, through the TSA checkpoint, security checkpoint. And I have never had a problem with mine. In fact, I thought I was going to have a problem with having a whole bunch of razor sharp, long tip like pencils because I feel like you could do some damage with those if you try.
Especially that in that long piece of PVC pipe you were carrying too.
And long piece of PVC pipe to
blow them out of. Yeah.
Feathers on the end. Self assembled that says do not drink.
Self assembled blow dart gun.
Oh, man. Natives are taking over the plane.
Oh, man. I hope nobody from the TSA is listening right now.
You're totally black.
Oh, man.
Yeah, so it's, it's, it's good to be simplified. I, I don't know if this is a lifestyle to which I can adapt, but permanently. But I'll try.
I sent you a bunch of stuff. I'm gonna ruin your way home.
Well, I have more room because we, we actually, we should have sent these beforehand, but we actually had like a big bucket of blocks in our suitcase for my, for my little nephew. Just like, this is just, this is just chewing up room. Like, just wait. So, yeah, we have lots of room in our bags now that Christmas is over. I was going to mention the field notes Roastery pack. The new, the new edition, the Capitol Hill pack. But actually I haven't really had much time to play with it. I was going to try to record an unboxing video to send over to TJ to expertly edit together before I left. But the last couple days were super crazy. So they're sitting unopened on my desk at home.
I opened mine.
Yeah, I was gonna see if you would be willing to kind of talk about it a little bit.
So I, you know, the first ones, I guess wood and copper puts you a mind of coffee. And the last ones were Coffee Origins. So I'm staring at this and I'm like, what the hell does this have to do with Starbucks or coffee? So I flipped it over. They talked about it being, you know, representative of the vibrant neighborhood of Capitol Hill. Oh, that makes sense. But they're not as rubbery as I thought they'd be. Stiff. That makes sense. They don't feel like the. The unexposed.
I think the, the biggest, the two kind of biggest markers of distinction for me was a. That there were five of them in a pack.
Yeah.
Instead of three. So they were $15. Or they are $15 if anybody's in Seattle or has a Seattle connection. But also all of them are nubbed.
I got them nibbled and I got made fun of.
They remind me of those things you can buy in like a gas station bathroom.
What?
Well, I won't go there, but.
Oh, never mind.
They're nubbed for her pleasure.
They're very much a zoomed in nub.
I won't. Yeah. This is a family show. Yeah.
But I was surprised they put new suggested uses in the back.
Yeah.
Although I didn't.
I didn't understand them at all.
But are they named after the Seattle neighborhoods like. Like Queen Anne and. Oh, Marigold. Is Marigold Magnolia? That's it.
Oh, I don't know.
They just say. What do they say?
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Just talk about. Oh, they just named the inks by Pantone Colors and that's it.
What, what. What weight of paper is in there? Is it the new.
It's just the 60 pound, like they're putting in now.
Oh, good.
The staples are white, which is very pretty. Yeah, I noticed. You know, I'm sure everybody got their free pack of pitch black when they had that sale a few weeks ago. And the new ones came with the 60 pound paper. I was surprised.
Oh, cool. It's nice that they're redoing that.
I was going to give them away for Christmas, but I kept them instead.
I'm hoping within the next three or four months to go to Seattle. So when I. When I do all, I'll take a select few numbers of Roastery field notes orders. So, tj if you want in on
that, let me know. They might even have a new one by then.
That's true. They've been. They've been really doing it. I think the Coffee origins ones were not that long ago. I. The Roastery, the original with the copper foil stamp is still. Still my favorite of those. I just love how unique they are.
Those are ridiculously cool.
Yeah.
I mean, not that the ones with the nipples aren't cool. That's pretty neat. Something kind of like S and Amish about them. It's a good thing they didn't make a black one.
Leather
Yeah, I am waiting. Oh, man. A leather bound field notes.
The vegetarian in me cries at that idea.
Pleather. We can have a pleather version.
I guess everybody would get mad. It's not real leather. I deserve real leather.
I'm a subscriber. I'm entitled to real leather.
The animals that died for that would be horrified by how few people are going to use them.
Yeah,
they all sudden show up on the market and all of a sudden the prices jump from $9.99 to like $45 a three pack because they have authentic leather. It just flips out.
It's made of artisanal dead stuff. It's bespoke.
There's 25,000 packs, which means that we killed a crapload of cows in order to make these field notes.
Like the video where they have that whole tree that they're stripping for the.
Oh, God, just a slaughterhouse.
The worst video ever. Yeah. The same machine. They just used it with animals. So I'm sorry.
Floating them in that dumpster full of water.
It's got dark fast.
All right, now that we've offended all the vegetarians out there. Johnny.
Johnny left the show, folks. So that. That is the extent of my fresh points we should probably mention too. We didn't really discuss this beforehand, but we've been not recording so long that we didn't really have a chance to talk about the 1138s, which I think that we should probably. I think we're going to try to record again sooner than two weeks just to make up for some lost time and maybe we can just devote a discussion to that then. Yeah, yeah. Although I would be interested in hearing TJ's take on the 1138s, because you're using. Like that.
Yeah, it's a pretty awesome pencil, I must admit. I was talking to Alex at Blackwing who designed. Yeah. Sort of conceived the whole thing and it's just such a cool idea. Like I know a lot of people kind of got up in arms about it because, oh, I don't like it. It doesn't look nice or blah blah, blah. It doesn't really matter if you don't like it or not. I think the concept behind it is really, really cool. I think what they're doing with the whole ethos is it's different and no one else is doing it. And it's nice that someone is. I personally think it's a gorgeous method. I like the silver ferrule. I like that there's film on it. Like whenever you people generally don't Care. When I tell them about pencils, I'm like, hey, look at this. This is really fun. And they're like, yes, it's a pencil. Great. If I tell them about this, I'm like, hey, there's a film on this pencil. They're like, oh, what? And it kind of. It's a lot more imagination capturing than. Than just a normal pencil, I think, because it has a story behind it. And like, I can tell people about the discovery of graphite or whatever. Like, I have all this stuff in my brain, but people switch off as soon as I start going into this. But if I go, there's a film in this pencil, they go, what? And then all of a sudden got an in. So it's the sneaky pencil lovers pencil to get people to talk about pencils when they don't want to talk about pencils.
Well, whatever. Tj, what do you. What do you know about film?
Yeah. Nothing at all.
Is there a. I was watching the. I don't know if you've seen the Star wars documentary. I think it's called Making of an Empire so long when it covers the first trilogy. And they're. It just reminded me they're talking about George Lucas's first movie. Was that THX 1138? Yeah. So is that. Is there a connection there? Because I've never seen it.
Yeah, it's just the name of the robot, as far as I know. And they named it because it's a sci fi pencil. I think they went for the sort of dual sci fi hints with the 1138 is the George Lucas to kind of tie it in with Star wars and then the Journey to the moon
or Voyage to the Moon for the actual design. I think that's awesome.
That's cool.
One of the things I thought was cool is that now we have a different feral cover color.
Yeah.
So that opens the doors. I want to see the blackout blackwing.
Oh, that would be pretty awesome.
MMX core. I could go for normal wood. I don't need dyed black wood, but I want full black, black, feral black eraser black clip. Just. Just everything darker than midnight on a moonless night. I want this thing to be noir.
The same spade pencil.
Yeah, that. That. That was my favorite part of the. The pencil was the. The silver peril. I was. I was most excited about that. The only thing, like, the one thing that's brought up for me that I was sort of bummed about is that I just never use the. The regular Blackwing, like, hardly ever. And so when I got it I was like, oh, cool. It's just. There's the. The Black Wing. And then it got me thinking. I don't know if I would subscribe to this if it's just a constant rotation because that's. That means that one out of every three shipments I'm pretty much never gonna use, you know, Which I don't know if it's definitely going to be Black Wing or how do they do it? They did Pearl and then 602 and then Black Wing. I don't know if they're gonna cycle like that all the way through or if they'll mix it up now and then.
Maybe they do 602 next.
Double them back to back. I would think they do more 602s than anything else.
Everybody likes sound.
Maybe they'll do.
Okay.
Good.
A lot of people were talking about wanting a firmer lead. I wonder. This would be a good, you know, dip into that. They did like the H from the Palomino.
That would be pretty sweet. Yeah.
We haven't talked about if. Yeah. If they're going to kind of move away from the three different cores. Seems hard for me to believe financially.
It seems like they wouldn't.
Yeah.
Because of the quantities that they would have to order at.
But.
But still, it's interesting to. To muse about at least.
Yeah. They use the same supplier as the. The drawing pencils. I wonder if they could just.
Yeah.
You know, order them that way and then paint them and put the feral on them.
Well, I'm sure if that happens Black Wing them, nobody in the group would have strong opinions about it.
I doubt none at all.
Yes.
No.
Especially not in the field nuts group.
Maybe they'll do some like they'll do Pearl and then 602 and then Black Wing and then 602 and then Pearl and then like they'll just kind of.
Yeah.
I could see them doing something like that, but I just. I think if it cycled one through three, then that would mean that there'd be some year where I got two different Black Wings and that they would just be building up on my desk.
Yeah.
They do write really nicely on the smooth field notes paper, though.
Yeah.
I just never, you know, they just. I just never use them because. I don't know, just they get sharpen. Sharpening too often and they're good for snarky cartoons. Yeah. And I'm just not much of a visual. Like I don't do much drawing. I feel like it'd be better for me if I did do that.
Yeah.
Anyways, Cool.
Tim, do you want to continue on with. With your fresh points now? Sure.
I found two things that are kind of in the same ballpark as each other. And. And I found this through. It was an open culture. If you've ever seen that website, open culture, they did an article about the Great Gatsbys original manuscripts being available online. I don't know what draft it is, but so I thought, oh, that's cool. And I followed the link, and then it led to a file that is 604 images.
Wow.
This is like a handwritten galley. 600 images. And it is a pencil. 604 images of a pencil draft of the Great Gatsby, which is amazing. I mean, you can flip through every single page of it. He wrote the whole thing by hand pencil. Kind of has this, like, loopy, almost like teenage girlish handwriting, which is really good handwriting. But all throughout it, you see him crossing things out and xing whole huge sections. It's really fascinating. And so there's a. I didn't even realize this, but when we were looking in the show notes there, someone posted. I think it was probably Andy put the link from Johnny's blog. Or did Johnny. You might have put it in there.
I did. Then I took it out.
Well, but it's. That's a different one. That's total. That's a different one. So that was interesting because that was only four images, but that's a different version because the handwriting's a lot. A lot bigger. And so it's not the same thing. So I don't know what the difference is. But so there's that. You can see through Johnny's site and then this one, which is just incredible. I mean, it looks like he's writing in just a big, huge blank notebook, but it's through Princeton's archives, so they have other things of his you can see. But this is by far the. I thought, the coolest thing. I was really excited to find that because it's. I mean, me and a million other people. It's one of my favorite books, even independent of pencils.
I love that sort of stuff too. I got to see like the. The big continuous manuscript of Jack Kerouac's on the Road.
It did the Chicago.
Yeah. They did a library tour and they were in Bloomington, Indiana, when I was going to school down there. And it was super cool to see. Just like he just loaded like a long scroll of parchment or canvas or whatever it was into a typewriter and just. Just kept going. That's super cool.
Yeah. That was really cool. I. If I remember right, he didn't even break for paragraphs in that, did he? Or use punctuation.
No, I don't. I don't think he did. Yeah, there were kind of like fevered. Fevered scrawls kind of in the margins,
but yeah, his editor gets it in the mail. Thanks, buddy.
His wife had to, like, ring out his undershirts because he was just sweating so much while he was doing it. That's really gross.
Take some. Take some methamphetamines or something as you.
Yeah,
sweetheart, I need a new shit, sweetheart. I can't do a Lowell accent. Kali Baka looks like Buddha.
But a kind of related thing I found online was a link that I. This one I just totally found because I was doing that thing where you just Google someone's name and then add pencil at the end, just see what comes up. I'm sure you've never done that before.
We need to call them the German.
No, I've never done that. That's ridiculous.
So I put in George Lucas in pencil after having watched that whole Star wars documentary I was talking about. And it ends up because they showed him holding pencils in the documentary. I think that's the big reason why. And then I found out through this article that all of the different original stories. Because he didn't write all the scripts, but he did all the treatments of the stories. And he wrote the first script. He did them with the Dixon Ticonderoga number two, even up through Phantom Menace and the new. The newer movies. So he's a. An avid pencil user. So it was. That was a cool little article. It's an article through the Sun Sentinel, kind of random, which it says. Hang on a second. It says Sun Sentinel, but it also says Chicago Tribune. But it's an interesting little article if you're a Star wars fan. He talks about. Talks about him using Dixon Ticonderogas and buying them in mass quantities, things like that. So that's cool. The article is called Even in Age of computers, number two pencil still pushing on. And this is in 1999.
I see that they said they. Dixon Tiger sent him a box and they were like, I'm sure he could afford to buy his own. And I was like, yeah, especially now after he, you know, sold the Disney.
Yeah, right. He could easily buy Dixon Ticonderoga, I would think.
Yeah. There should be a. Now that. Now that Disney owns Star wars and they're tying it. Doing a marketing tie in with everything. I know I've used Star wars tie in pencils, but I think we need a Star wars tie in Ticonderoga.
Yeah.
Specifically. Or a Ticonderoga lightsaber where there's like two green rings on the lightsaber handle.
Nice. Or maybe a Dixon branded sharpener that's like Kylo Ren's head and you like, stick it in his mouth or something. Yes. Or BB8. You put it like in the top of BB8's head.
Oh, yeah. Come on, Disney, you gotta hire us.
We're full of ideas.
We're full of something.
The pencil merchandise department.
Yes. We'll tie in anything.
Have you thought about erasers?
Tim's doing some amazing things with erasers.
Have you seen these things? And. Well, my last. I'll get to my last fresh point. And this is. This is something that happened right after our last episode, which I was really excited about. I'm still excited about, but I've been getting into and doing a lot more writing lately and just trying to get focused in a lot of different ways. And I've just been basically playing with pencils for the last year a lot. You know, trying lots of different kinds all the time. And I decided to take a break from that. I wasn't gonna, like, give stuff away or anything like that. I. I just wanted to simplify, I guess. And. Yeah, there's. There's a huge box of pencils outside if you want to pick them up. No, there's not. They're mine. But I. What I did is I took a box. Some people will get this as a reference, but it's a. The largest sized Target diaper box. They're strong, which is. Yeah, it's probably two feet by one foot, maybe like a big rectangle and pretty deep. And I filled it to the brim with pencils and boxes and also pens. And I boiled everything down to, like, what I would actually want to use on a daily basis. And I limited myself to three different pencils. And I don't think it'll be terribly surprising what they are. But yeah, it was a really good exercise. And so I limited it down to a handful of pens and then three pencils. In front of me, I have my new bin, which inside of it I am down to. I have my collection of four dozen two 11s.
Four dozen of them?
Yeah.
Limited edition pencils. Yeah.
Yeah.
Legit. $100 in pencils.
Yep.
Also, I got a. And then 602s, another box 602s I got for Christmas, so same thing. But those are together. I Have my three dozen cedar point number ones and then of course my mammoth friggin box of Palomino hps. And so that's all I've used for three or four weeks now.
So.
And I love it for now. I'm sure I'll get antsy. I mean I have played around with stuff like when the 1138 came. I have a few other things around
but you still have an obligation to your own audience, Tim.
Right.
I still still have to, still have to know my market. But yeah, so that's been, that's been cool. It's been, it's been helping me be productive. But I, I'm not gonna lie, I mean there's been a couple times where I pulled the mammoth box out of the garage and like found something that I was like, oh God, what is that? What is that? Where's. I got to see it? You know, somebody mentions it, I'm like I gotta try it. Where is it? I forgot. I think I used to like that. I used to like that. It happened the other day when Johnny mentioned the. Which one was it? General's layout pencil. So I had to dig out the box and get out, get out a layout pencil to play with that. So what pencil? What sort of paper have you been using?
I'm sorry, what sort of paper have you been using with, with your lower
pencil selection almost exclusively? My Amazon Basics legal paths.
You can Write with a Blackwing 211. You can write with a Blackwing 602
and a Palomino HP and a bloody finger and anything you want, but that's basically it. And then I have a, I don't know how to pronounce it. Quo vadis or Quo vadis. Have you seen these notebooks? The Q, U, O, V A D, I, S. I have one of those that I've been using as kind of my main jot stuff down notebook. So mostly just those two things lately which I still need to send out some, some of those Amazon Basics to you guys. You can try them out. I like them a lot. They've been on sale for a while. The yellow ones were like 7.99.
I do feel like they're so cheap. Like I'm just ridiculous to not have just bought some already because they're, they're
so cheap and they're good. I like them a lot.
Yeah.
But that's all I got. So cool. As far as fresh notes go. So Johnny, what about you?
Well, a few weeks ago Write notepads had an event at. I think it's called madewell. It's some sort of offshoot of J. Crew at a local mall here. So Mr. Joe Lebo and I went and bought a bunch of notebooks and Chris made some. I don't know if folks have seen their pocket notebooks, but they come in a pack of three in a box, which is just really, really, really cool. And he made some blue ones that had a gold stamp of a jeans pocket. And on the front it says, you know, from the pocket of. So I thought I'd use it and put it in my back pocket. And they're like the most indestructible notebooks ever.
They're super awesome.
And I get to have dinner with Joe, which is awesome because Joe's nice. And yeah, if folks don't have them. The link is in the show. Notes. Buy some. Write notepads and company placa notebooks. They're cheap, they're awesome, and the paper is very good. And you guys have some in the mail coming to you.
Yeah.
Don't you guys buy them? Yeah, but I mean, I think they sell them at a local store that's not far from where I live. I always tease Chris that I buy like half their stock for everybody. Everybody in my family is like a full cabinet of right notepad stuff. Also, I'm sort of thinking like Tim, but I haven't had the guts to put stuff away. So I bought a pencil roll that holds 36 pencils. So I figured, you know, I can't hold more than 36 pencils at a time, which to a normal person would seem crazy. But the folks in our group are like, oh, my God, only 36.
Only 36.
So Charlotte got one for Christmas from Santa Holt's 48. And I'm like, man, I want the 48 one. But I have to find the link for this. Eric put it on the Facebook group on Amazon. I think I paid like six or seven bucks for it because I wasn't picky about the color. But it has a little flap under which you can stick your points so they don't break. But I'm having trouble because it has 36. And then I'm always looking for something that's not in there. So it's not working out so well, the downsizing. So I might just have to do something drastic like Tim and hide stuff from myself. Although Charlotte has an art cart that's full of pencils, so that won't work because I'll go steal hers.
She'll find you, like, punched down over her art cart.
Like, Danny, where are my fabric cast nails?
Shut up. Shut up, Charlotte.
Look behind you.
So I only have one more fresh point, and that is that to echo what a lot of folks have said about black wings, and that's that they kind of have made me re. Enjoy and rediscover drawing, which is, you know something, when you're a grown up, you're like, well, you know, I can't draw because you can't draw as well as people that draw for a living or, you know, your friends who are super good artists. But to Tim's point about the mmx, it's not super great for writing, but, like, well, you know, draw mean cartoons about people I don't like, and that's really fun and cathartic. Just like when you're 16, you can get a red pencil and draw blood, you know? Anyway, so moving on to something less gross, why don't we jump into our top three of 2015 pencils? So I don't know what you guys did. I went with pencils that I tried in 2015. Not necessarily my favorite pencil of 2015.
Yeah.
It's, like, new to me how I took it. Yeah.
So, Mr. TJ, do you want to go first?
Sure.
Yes.
I went with a similar theme. Kind of like three quintessential pencils. Three pencils that kind of meant something this year. Sounds very poetic, but it's not getting as exciting as that. So the first one is, of course, the Blackwing 602, the first good pencil I ever used. Back In February of 2015, I got a pack of these in the mail and contacted you guys, and that was the first time I kind of dipped my toe in this world of pencils. And it's kind of the first pencil that sort of started this journey for me. So it's. Was that really good? Pardon?
Was that only this year?
Yeah. February 2015. Wow.
That's it. I feel like we've known you for longer than that.
Yeah, years.
Years.
We go back decades.
Wow.
But, yeah, it seems like such a short time, but it feels like a lot longer. I think everybody's so friendly. You kind of feel like you know them for a lot longer because you kind of get through all the kind of awkward, normal Internet interactions, and then you move on to actual conversations and sharing things. And people send a lot of stuff, which is really lovely. Yeah. So you get to share things. And we did Secret Santa with a bunch of people on the group this year. So, like, things like that bring you a lot closer than. Than you would Be with just random people on the Internet, you know.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
So that was my first and Blackwing602, because it's kind of like the. The pencil prime, if you will. The next one is the koh I Noor3423, which is this big, big, chunky red and blue double ended pencil. If you guys have ever seen it. It's Koh Nourish.
Which Czech.
Oh, that one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was in Prague earlier this year a couple months ago, and someone had actually sent me a box of them before, a couple of months before. So I find them in Prague again. And it's such a good pencil. It's just this big, big. It's like a big chunky size one with red and blue one on each end. And it's just a really nice pencil to use if it's. I think it's called a postman's pencil in Prague. And it's kind of like they used to mark mail or whatever. But it's just a really, really nice pencil. Really, really vibrant and excellent if you just want to make big chunky marks on things or write in your notebooks or whatever. So I don't think you can buy them in the US I tried looking for you guys, but the only like I could find is from the Koh I Noor store, which is Czechoslovak. It's not Czechoslovakian, it's Czech. But unless you want to import them, I don't know if you can get your hands on them. But I have a couple. So if we do a package swap, I'll stick some in.
Looks like we just have to take a trek, a trip to Prague.
It's a wonderful city. Yeah, it's a little bit more expensive for you to go than me, but definitely worth the trip. The last one of my three is a relatively new one to me Anyway. The Mitsubishi 9000 in 2B. I got one of these in a swap just because it's gorgeous. Made by elaborate process, don't you know. Really lovely pencil. Not quite as dark as the original Blackwing, but just quality Japanese pencil. I kind of. I didn't expect that much from it because like the Mitsubishi ones are great. But I kind of picked it up just because it was on the desk and started writing with it. And then I've used almost half of it now. I could. Because you just keep not putting it down. Every time I pick it up, I write loads with it. So just one of the more recent ones that I picked up and thought, hmm, that's A fine pencil. When you use as many pencils as I do, it's something for it to be stand out. Yeah. So those are kind of just three. Three pencils that stood out during my year.
Anyway, I feel like if we were to pick a tagline for the erasable podcast made by elaborate process would be a perfect one.
Yeah.
I wonder if they would let us.
It sounds awesome.
Although. Although I guess half the pressure, twice the speed could work because some people do listen to us at more than like standard, like more than real time light speed.
Yeah.
Like an overcast. You can listen to stuff at a. At a smart speed. And some people just listen to it at one. One and a half speed.
Yeah.
I have a podcast like that that I've been listening to for like two years, this baseball podcast that I'm so used to listening to at 1. I put it at the 1.4 or whatever it is with the smart speed. Yeah, I've been doing that for like a year. And then the other day I turned it on at normal speed and it was like, what do you guys. It's like, wow, these guys really talk slow.
Does it. Does it increase the pitch?
No. Okay.
It breaks out. It breaks out little pieces of like, of audio from the sample. So it's actually broken up audio, but it's in such minute portions that you can still make out what everybody's saying. Yeah.
I think it's told me the other day that I've saved like 60 hours just from the smart speed thing. Not even by speeding them up. Yeah, like, just from the cutting out the blank spaces.
That's crazy overcast. Yeah. Well, I'll. I'll go with my top three.
Thank you.
Should we say these in unison?
Yeah, let's.
I'm thinking of like Zoolander with that scene with like orange mocha frappuccinos. We'll just say that with Black Wing 211.
Tim and I. Tim and I just realized that two. Two thirds of our. Of our top three pencils are the same, which is the Black Wing 211 and then also the General Cedar Point number one. I. I think, at least for me, like the Blackwing 211 is kind of an obvious choice because they're just like kind of the pencil that.
Yeah.
That we've all been dreaming of. Like a natural finish to 11. As Tim would say, the perfect pencil. I. I really like. Yeah. I screenshotted when I, you know, when the news first broke about what they would be and just like, it's like, oh, man, I really want to see what Tim's reaction is going to be. And then I think you sent back just, like, a bunch of periods because you couldn't, like, form the words or something.
Yeah, yeah. They had to send you, like, a few lines appeared.
I was worried that you weren't going to, like, see it for hours because you were teaching.
No, no, no.
Kids, wait. I have to do something.
There's been a disturbance in the forest.
A million brown erasers cry out in agony. And then all of a sudden, we're
silenced and they're all coming to me. Got as many as I could.
So. Yeah, that was awesome. I'll let Tim talk a little bit more about it when we get to him. I guess where we differ is my. My second choice was I don't have one with me because I was stupid and didn't bring one. The recycled tombows with the black eraser on the end. You can get them in two B and B. Excuse me, HB from. I can get them at Mito, but you can get them all over the place. I know that Caroline sells them. I will look it up and post it in show notes. But it's really nice. Johnny commented that your wife, who's really picky, loves these pencils.
Yeah. She's not the biggest pencil fan. She likes those a lot.
My wife, too, actually, like, loves them. She uses. She makes lists and she, like, when she wore down one of those, she was like, you have any more of those? That. That eraser is really great. And it's like a very. It's a very attractive pencil, too. It's funny because it looks very much like a general cedar point.
Yes.
Except with. With maybe your, like, Japanese pencil finish on it. And I think the cedar point is a little bit more like a little lighter of a coat of varnish. Is there. Is there any varnish, or is the cedar point, like, completely raw?
I think it's naked.
Yeah. Yeah, the cedar point was. I've never really been, like, a huge cedar point fan until I got a hold of some of those number ones, and they're just, like, extra good. So I like those a lot. I. I sort of realized, you know, I'm somebody who's never been, like, a huge, natural finished pencil fan, but I just realized all of these pencils on this list are natural finish. So I think. I think you two are slowly welcome
to the light side.
Bringing me over to the. To the light side. Go to the fragrance. I know there is good in you. I'm like, I won't. I won't spoil anything for those of you haven't seen Star wars, but when Kylo Ren, like, encounters his father and speaks to him, he's like, help me, help me.
Oh, I thought you were going to tell everybody that Chewbacca was actually Luke Skywalker.
Yeah, he just pulls off his head and, like, it's a mask.
Chewbacca is Kylo Ren's dad.
Yeah. Which one of you is that?
Turns out the Millennium Falcon is BB8's father.
Mother was a basketball.
Yeah.
Do you guys notice the. When they. Yeah. When they drop there, he actually makes the sound of a basketball at that one point.
When he drops into the, like, the smuggler.
When he's in the Millennium Falcon, he, like, flies up in the air. When he hits the ground, you hear, like, a bounce, like a basketball.
Do you guys follow? I think the lighter was my favorite bit.
Yeah. Oh, yeah, that was awesome.
Do you guys follow emo Kylo Ren on Twitter?
Yeah, I followed.
I followed him at, like, 1500 followers or something like that. Wow, this is hilarious. And I checked it, like, a week later, and it's. It. Was it like 400,000?
It's pretty great. Gosh. I. Yeah, I just, like, this is the best because I I watched Watch Girls a lot, the show Girls, and I just can't. I can't separate Adam Driver from. From his role there. So, like, yeah, like, hipster Darth Vader is just kind of amazing.
Sorry, I just got way off Dark side before. It was cool.
We should just. Yeah, we should just have a sci fi podcast.
I'm sure that I really want to start a fake spoilers, fake spoilers hashtag. That would be fun.
Cool. So, Tim, tell us about your three pencils of 215.
Well, I'm glad you asked. Yeah. So, yeah, Blackwing 211. Totally obvious. I mean, that's my. I don't think I know for. I'm probably 95% sure that Blackwing volumes will never top that for me, but that's okay. I mean, it just happened. It was just kind of like lightning struck. And my, like, ultimate pencil was the second one they made, so I just got really lucky there. But I love it. I use it all the time. You said I got as many as I could afford, and that was. And that was in, like, several different ways. I ordered two initially, and then Andy got me, like, a half dozen, and I got bought a dozen off of somebody, so just tried to assemble as much as I could. Kind of hoarding, but I'm using them,
so he's Been begging around the groups. It's really not very dignified.
Yeah. More.
Please do.
11. Sir, can I have some more? Yeah, that's me. I showed up at Charles front door the other day and, like, torn up clothing, like, on my knees at his door.
Tj, I need you to just do that voice for the rest of the. The podcast. Just be like, hey, boy.
What? I can do some killer accents. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna embarrass myself, but there's a lot of variation we can do if you want. If you don't want the normal Northern Irish brogue.
I want all of them. Right. Just. Just keep throwing them in at random like this. We're going through.
Switch up different guests every minute.
Yeah. So the 211 is. It was a total obvious choice for me. The cedar point one number one actually grew on me over time. Initially, I didn't care for it a whole lot, but then all of a sudden, it. Yeah, I just. It grew on me, and I fell in love with it. And I love the rough finish, like, the unfinished sides of it, and really thankful for the group and Gary and bringing those back, because I would have been down to my last, like, half dozen, but now I've got an extra two dozen, and hopefully they're not going anywhere anytime soon. And where we differ on my end between me and Andy, Andy and I is the Tombow Mono KM KKS is my other favorite that I tried, which is the blue and white and yellow pencil that CW Pencils sent out as their pencil of the month. And she brought back a bunch from Japan. So it's the 4B penmanship pencil, which was just killer. I mean, it's. It kind of goes against what I was saying earlier. It's. It's soft and it's almost like a black wing, But I just love that thing. I could use it all day.
It's.
I don't know if there's a smoother pencil out there. It just feels so buttery smooth.
Aesthetically, it's just 10 out of 10. It's just.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
It kind of looks like some sort of like a big, shiny, like. Like Star wars droid. It's just like some brand new, like, Rebel alliance droid. Yeah.
Tombow Mama C3PO. That's awesome. But big. Yeah, that's a good one. But big, big virtual High 5 to CW pencils for. For bringing that one over with them. So I love. Love me some KMKKs droid.
This is what we're gonna pitch to
Disney for the tie in, the pencil.
Tie in. It's a pencil, you know, also a
droid, but it's also called the same numbers as a droid as sharp as itself.
And it never gets shorter.
You know that. You know, they always have called a mechanical pencil. Yeah. They have to write with something. You never see anybody carrying pencils. So clearly, obviously, the droids do it.
Yeah.
Or no one can read.
Yeah.
No one in the Star wars universe can read.
Have you ever seen the right.
Those are all just pictures. I don't really understand what you're seeing. Could you draw me a picture?
Oh, the. The ship goes in the Death Star. Gotcha.
See, Darth Vader, like, sending a secret message. It's just like a doodle on a back of a piece of paper. An angry face. Yeah.
Like, you have to give it to, like, a written protocol droid. For I'm. Oh, this can be a written protocol droid. Is fluent in over 6 million forms of written communication.
Darth Vader just drawing, like, a frowny face and a hand picture of, like, a thermometer. She's sick.
Yeah. Vader said, I have sent you three flamenco dancing ladies.
Well, Johnny, what about your top three?
Well, of course, one of mine is the Blackwing 211, because, you know, it's awesome. I'm sort of echoing you. I'm going with a penmanship pencil, but I'm going with the Mitsubishi penmanship pencil in 4B, the hex one. I originally had the Ticonderoga renew, but it was all naturals, so also, I think I tried that in 2014, so it's cheating. But the Mitsubishi one is super awesome. It doesn't really smear for how dark it is. And everybody here has stolen most of mine, so I had to order another dozen from Japan, which sounds really fancy, but it was, like, 10 bucks on Amazon. It's just, you know, it takes long enough. You forgot you ordered them. They show up one day, you're like, ooh, Christmas. For my third, the pencil doesn't get enough attention. The caran d' ache natura. Yeah. Which is, you know, a very simple pencil. Doesn't even have an imprint, but it smells incredible and has ridiculous core.
It's awesome. I'm so glad you brought that up because I just got my first one in the mail from Girls CW Pencils as a Christmas gift. Yeah. They sent a little care package and that was in there. So I want to say thank you to them for the awesome.
Thank you.
Which one?
Cool.
Did you get the 3B or the HB 3B.
Yeah, I got 3B and they sent some. A few Nataraj Indian pencils.
Those are great. I need to do a kind of a more in depth kind of dive into the Nataraj pencils.
Yeah.
There's any people that do pencil adverts anymore?
Oh, they do.
Yeah, they do pencil. I think it's, it's Natraj I think is natural but it doesn't. I'm not going to get into pronunciation but I think they're the ones that deal the like the Indian pencil adverts. So I've seen a bunch of them on. I'll see if I can dig some up for the show notes. There's a bunch of them on YouTube. Natraj are the other one, which is Appsara I think is the other Indian brand that's very popular in there.
Look for those.
Yeah, I'd love to see those.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna put my American accent and just call them Nataraj N Dare them there. Nad them there.
Foreign pencils.
Foreigners. Donald Trump pencils here.
Topical the pencil with a weird piece of hair on top.
You can really brand pencils for anything, right? You can any tie anyone.
I mean these hurt everybody.
Let's not become a politics show.
Yeah, I was hoping we wouldn't use the DT words on the show.
They're like, who likes this? Why is this in a store? I don't understand. I want to leave this country.
Canadian pencils are looking pretty good by now.
Do you have any philosophy PhDs up there? All right, so cool. Now we can grill Mr. T.J. heck. Yeah, we call him Teach. So I'm going to jump in and ask first question so it turns out.
Well first can I. Can I give people a little bit of context on tj? If you don't know who he is, he's. If you have seen our brand new erasable logo that is a dual adorned on the various hoodie that I'm wearing right now.
Me too.
Yeah, that is, that is all tj. He's been like an amazing graphic design resource. So in addition to like just an amazing filmmaker and pencil lover and writer, he is a really skilled graphic designer. So he designed the bumper stickers that we sent out where that kind of looks like an old black striped blackwing box and he put this logo together that is just a very simple pencil with some ribbons that say erasable podcast on it. So he's kind of a friend of the show that he came through the group and then just immediately started just Jumping into a lot of the stuff.
So.
So yeah, you're someone I, I know I wanted to have on the show for a long time and I know that Johnny and Tim have too, so.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
It's really good to be here. Thanks so much.
Cool. So, I'm sorry, Johnny, to interrupt.
So you're 24.
Correct.
Which a lot younger than us or a lot younger than me. So can you tell us how by 24 you're already such an impressive professional filmmaker?
You should have seen what I was doing at the age of three.
Yeah. How does TJ become tj?
Well, there's. There's two sides to this. There's the filmmaker side and then there's the pencil side, because the filmmaker side obviously came first and then the pencils were kind of the start of this year. So what should you want to hear?
The film side first.
The film side. So I went to film school. I did TV and film at the University of Chester, which is here in England. That's why I moved to England. I did my three years there. I'd worked on a couple of bits and pieces back home in Northern Ireland, a feature film called Killing Bono. I'd done a few bits and pieces, came over, did my university time, got my degree, got a first in TV and film for all that worth, and then kind of finished well, was finishing my degrees in the last year of it. And I thought, what is everybody doing now in terms of jobs and things like that in filmmaking? What is everyone up to? And I looked at what everyone was doing and I thought that looks a bit boring. And so decided I would just start a company because 22 year old does so decided I would start a company out of just before I finished university, did that and then pitched, went through several rounds of pitching and basically got £10,000 investment for my company.
Nice.
So that was two years ago and I've been running exposivo since Wood and graphite is now the sort of creative content, the original content arm of that. But I do a lot of corporate work for charities and businesses and sports teams and all that kind of stuff here in England. But my real focus and my real passion is the original content. And at the minute that's pencils and it will always be pencils because I have a real passion for it and I think I kind of just fell into it and it really clicked. So doing the original content, putting out things that are really interesting, that there's an audience for, that people like watching that I like making was always a goal of the Company, right from the very, very first pitch was find a niche, find something I love doing, find something people love watching, and then make it. Because obviously the whole paradigm that exists now with TV is totally flipped on its head. You don't have to go to BBC, you don't have to go to sky or whatever to see TV programs, because it's all on the Internet. You can see whatever you want. So that was kind of the filmmaking journey, the genesis, if you will. And then more recently, in February of this year, I think it was, I write a journal every day I've done for, like, three years or so. And I'd written it in pen for a long, long time. And I was reading about the archive ability of notebooks, basically, to try and find out how long these would last.
Because.
Because I kind of want them for, you know, I want my kids to be able to read them someday just to see how, like, how much I did not know what was happening when I was their age and how it's totally normal to feel like that. So I started researching a bit and thought, oh, maybe pencils would be a better option, because obviously ink fades. Ink can be transferred off, and graphite is actually very chemically stable when it's on paper, so unless you actually physically erase it, it doesn't go anywhere. So it's a lot more archivable and it survives a lot better than ink. So I thought maybe look at pencils. And I obviously use pencils for a long, long time and kind of thought, oh, maybe there's more to this than just a Staedtler Norris. Maybe there's, you know, a deeper, deeper rabbit hole to go down here. And then, I mean, it kind of just went a bit nuts after that
when we put together our pencil rap. I think that more to this than a Statler Norris is definitely one of
the rhymes I started. Like, when you said rap in the notes, I was like, oh, no, I can't rap. So I started looking things up. So I've got a couple of rhymes that you can write down. Now. It's not a rap, but I have pencil rhymes with prehensile, as in fingers. There you go. Graphite felt just right.
Perfect.
And I'm a Cedar cheerleader, so you can have those for free.
Cheetah cheerleaders.
Those are beautiful. Yeah, yeah.
Thought I'd share them with the group so we can put those down for our inevitable music video in 2016.
Which you're going to film, I assume,
once we all get together naturally. Yeah. There's going to be drone shots, helicopter shots, skydiving. It's going to be nuts.
And also, of course, the totally essential documentation of us getting a tattoo.
Oh, yeah, Forehead tattoos, close ups of the shaving.
But no, it's one of the. It's quite weird. My descent in two pencils was so sudden and so all encompassing that if it wasn't so shocking, so mundane, I think my parents might have staged intervention. It was just.
Oh, boy. What happened? He regressed.
I kind of fell into it and then just kept falling and in the best possible way.
It's beautiful. What, what is it about pencils then? Like, what if you said a little bit with just being permanent, stuff like that. But what is it about pencils that made you fall and fall and fall and fall? Enjoy.
I've always loved stationery. Like, that's, that's nothing new. But finding a topic and getting incredibly engrossed in it is something I'm very, very good at, much to the detriment of many other things, attention span being one of them. But I like finding something and then delving really, really deep into it. And so pencils came along and I needed it for something, so it was utilitarian purpose in. In finding a good pencil that I could get a lot of. And then I started using the Black Wing 602, which is the first pencil, the first good pencil I got. I was like, oh, oh, this is a game changer. This is not like what we used at school. This is not just a pencil. And so then you go online immediately, obviously, to find out if there's other people as weird as you. And of course there are.
There's a whole group of people, sure enough.
And once you start talking, that's the point where it tips and you kind of go, oh. Because there's so much like pencils is. Pencils are just pencils in one hand. But on the other hand, there's so much story and history and associated things with them that really you can look at anything through the lens of a pencil. Like you look at space travel from the sketches that they made in NASA with pencils. You know, there's so many different things you can cover with it. And that's kind of what I like to do with wooden graphite, is that look at a lot of different topics, but through the lens of the analog and the pencil. And it's just provided such a very deep well of fascinating information and really, really interesting history and very passionate people, which I think is important as well. It's great that you come in and you speak to people and suddenly it's not just a pencil. It's, have you tried this one? Or what do you think of this? Or let's try this one against this one against this one. And there's this massive community we have now of people that are just as passionate as I am, more so sometimes. And you can just talk to them about pencils. Whereas your family and friends, I'm sure, maybe don't want to spend all day talking about pencils.
I don't know who you're hanging out with, because all my friends, that's all they want to talk about.
Have you seen the new 211s?
Yeah.
Let's go drink a beer and talk about black range.
Yeah, I overhear that in the grocery store all the time here.
But, yeah, I just think it's the. The depth and the. The. The wide variety. I mean, pencils are such a anachronistic thing nowadays. We don't necessarily need them because so much of our lives is digital. So much of our lives is cashless or plastic or apps or online or whatever. But I think it's nice to connect with not only your own childhood education, but the physical act of writing and doing things. I think it's very important, and I think that's what really drew me to it.
That's awesome. So when you go out looking for a pencil, or maybe. Maybe you're just wandering through a stationary store, what specifically draws your attention? What do you look for in a pencil?
At this stage, I've seen quite a lot of pencils. So when I go into stores, I'm just looking for things that are different from what I know is already in that store. Because I have almost a recollection of. Well, Staples has this, this, this, and this at this kind of price point. When I first started, it was more, you know, packaging is really important. But also plain packaging, it's kind of like the two opposite ends of the spectrum. So you can have really flashy packaging and terrible pencils, or you can have really, really plain packaging and amazing products. So you kind of look at the packaging go, hmm. I wonder what they're trying to say about this, because I got some of the Midori stuff for Christmas from my parents, and their stuff is just so plain. The packaging is just so toned down. But then you get the brass pencil case side, and it's just gorgeous. It's a piece of art. And, you know, I don't know. That's one of the things when I look at pencils now, mostly what I'M looking for is something different and something not awful. Unfortunately, a lot of what I see when I go into stores is just they've picked up the literally the bottom rung of the pencil shop. It's like, what can we turn out that is literally the cheapest possible. And so you get this horrible basswood pencil. The cores aren't even straight, it's snapped off. It's got the really rough factory sharpen on it. They're just nasty things. No one would want to write with them. And unfortunately that's what people do. So you see a lot of these like the ones with the, like the catchphrases on them or whatever, or like branded pencils with someone's name on them and you look at the actual pencils, the thing that they're selling and it's awful. And you're like, what's the point? If you're going to sell a pencil, at least get a half decent one.
Show some pride in your craftsmanship.
Amen.
Yeah, exactly. I mean if you're going to sell a pencil in the 21st century, don't sell a bad one. Yeah, there's no point.
Pun intended.
I see. I didn't get that. Slow night. It's nearly 2:00am I'm struggling here, guys.
So aside from pencils, what are some of your favorite pencil accessories like erasers and point protectors, maybe even clips, things like that?
Yeah, I mean I love John Fontaine's bullet pencil. I think it's awesome. I did a lot of the promotional videos for that. Some bits and pieces there and his stuff is really, really cool. I think it's a great way to use the stubs of pencils. One of the things I'm trying to do a lot of the minute is use up all the pencils. I've started and not finished because I'm very good at going this is really fun to write with and then put it down and there's like half a pencil left on the desk. So I have a little pile of just trying to churn through. So if they get small enough and they don't have a ferrule, they go in the bullet pencil. I think that's a really good thing to, to use any pencil with. I also have a variety of a little station beside my desk here with just random stuff on it. I don't tend to use erasers all that much, although I have loads of them. I have this nice little hexagonal one I got in Prague and it's basically just. It looks like a hexagon With a dip in the middle on both sides. So if you imagine a little bowl in the middle and it's a koh I noor one and it's just super simple. I have a few of those. Pardon?
I have a few of those.
I think.
I think they sell it at cw.
Yeah, I think she does have them, actually. I've seen them a couple times, but they're really, really nice little erasers. And because they have six sides, you can always get a point if you want to, like, erase between words. So it's just one I have sitting around. That's quite nice. I have a couple of point protectors. Is it the kura stad? The aluminium ones? Aluminum ones, if you will. The long ones. Long metal ones that you can get from Japan? Oh, yeah. I have one of those that someone gave me that is excellent. But I can't source them in the uk, so that's all I have. And a couple little brass caps and stuff like that.
You should definitely only say aluminium because it's much more classy than aluminium. Aluminium.
I can't say aluminum. It sounds odd. Yeah,
that's very Johnny.
I've reviewed to say thank you very much. I'm a good Jony. I've impersonator. I've done it once before.
Your video of the pencil, which we talked about here and elsewhere, is very good.
That was good fun. It's up to like 12,000 views or something silly.
That's awesome. I showed a bunch of people at work and a lot of our product designers just like, this is amazing.
I just had so much fun with that. That was an idea. I think I sent it to you, actually. When I was in Prague at the time and I was sitting in this. It was like a bunk bed at this hostel and I'm sat in the bottom bunk going like, oh, my goodness. I said it had just come out. I was like, I can't not say anything. I can't be the wooden graphite channel and not say anything about this. So I think I just frantically messaged you. God knows the time difference because I was in Prague. I was like, I have to make this. What do you think of this? And you were like, it's a good idea. I think you're a bit taken aback because I kind of just rammed you with information at the time. And then I got home like three days later and literally spent, I think it was 10 hours non stop in the studio just making this thing painstakingly, frame by frame, taking the video. I'm making it like, if you watch them side by side. They're pretty close. There's a couple of bits I had to leave out because I just couldn't possibly replicate them. But it's just insanely fun. And I spent that day frantically making this thing. At the end of it kind of looked at it and went, went oh. I didn't think I'd get it done but here it is and I did. And I'm proud of it because it's good fun. But I don't think I expected everyone to be so excited about it. I mean it made it all the way to Apple at one stage which is pretty cool.
That's super cool.
I don't think they'll make any official comment on it, but we all know which one's better.
You should be getting a call from Johnny anytime now.
Oh yeah, me and I've are tight. Yeah.
Homies. Yeah.
So when you're actually using the pencils, what is your favorite way to sharpen? Preferred sharpening method. Are you a knife sharpener? Are you a handheld sharpener? Are you a crank sharpener? You crank out. It's a safe place.
Please stand up and tell the group I have, I have a classroom friendly that I was very fortunate to get in a group by from because again they're very difficult to get your hands on. Over here I have a classroom friendly that is literally the best sharpener I've ever used. I love it. The only thing I don't like is the chompy bits it leaves in the pencil. But I use the old post it note trick to fix that. But that's my go to if I'm in the house and I'll sharpen everything with that. But it's now downstairs on my desk. I really need to buy another one. I have my shooting desk downstairs and I have my office desk upstairs and every time I run out of a pencil I have to go downstairs to sharpen it with a nice sharpener. But I use that for most of it. I do have a knife. I have a little Spyderco bug which is a little tiny, tiny pathetic like Americans would just laugh at it. It's this tiny like 1 inch knife but it's really good quality and I occasionally sharpen with that. I can hand sharpen things. I don't really like it. I'm a little bit OCD on some things and so I don't like the rough edges that much. I'm kind of like it's not perfect. So I much prefer the, the really, really smooth, almost faceted fronts you get on the classroom friendly. I think that's good fun. But I have a couple. I have so many sharpeners. I have so many sharpeners, so many mixes of stuff. And I find actually, surprisingly, the really, really cheap Indian sharpeners are really, really good. The nitrage, Netarage, whatever you want to call it, make some that are just so cheap. I think it's like 4 or 5 pounds for like a box of 30. So there's something ridiculous. But what I think makes them so good is the blades are razor sharp. And I think that's a big problem you have with sharpeners is the blade gets dull, the blade gets nicked, and then it doesn't sharpen. So nice. But I've used these ones a couple of times. I have a bunch of them here. I'm going to order some more. And the blade is so sharp that whenever you sharpen the pencil, you get a nice fine point. It doesn't break. But also the wood is really, really smooth, which is something I really like from a good sharpener. I hate when you get, like, the chunks taken out of it that really. I don't like holding those kind of pencils. It's not very pleasant user experience. But, yeah, cheap, cheap Indium sharpeners. Surprisingly good.
Like to try one of those?
Heck, yeah. I just put a link to go. To go research those. Well, we should probably wrap up and let you get to bed, tj. But I do want to ask you first, if you. Inasmuch as you can say, what is next for wood and graphite in 2016?
What isn't next? Is a better question.
What isn't next?
Thank you. One of the things I'm kind of thinking about, are you working hard on
the new Star wars movie? Is that.
Well, yeah, actually, the new ship is just a Blackwing. It's called the Blackwing Falcon. It's pretty. I can't talk too much about it. NDAs and all that stuff.
Yeah.
I mean, one of the things I love about this community and about the channel that I use is that everybody's so receptive and it's not pigeonholed. So I can say, hey, I'm gonna do a video about a lighter or a torch or an EDC thing. And because it's got an analog slant to it, because it's not necessarily not related to pencils, people are pretty cool with it. And so I'm really excited because there's a lot of stuff I want to do that is very related to pencils. A lot of stuff that is tangentially related to pencils. A lot of stuff that's just really, really awesome and sort of related to pencils but it'd be too awesome not to do it. So I've got a couple of documentary style stuff that I'd like to do. Sort of semi planned, potentially some Kickstarter based stuff or, or maybe even traditional media things, but lots of really like ridiculously big projects. I've got one at the minute. I'll kind of let everybody know about this night. It's really super early stages but I have this weird notion that I'd like to see a documentary where I try and make a pencil. Like I know that, I know that you can't. I know that they. There's a whole thing about globalization and it's kind of an analogy of why free trade is good. But I want to know what it takes to make a pencil. And so I've thoroughly researched it and I've done a lot of notes and stuff and basically this documentary would be me start to finish making a pencil. And I'm not talking like oh, drill some holes and do this. I mean like mixing the graphite, the clay and the things to formulations, firing in a kiln that I have to build. I don't have a kiln. I need to be able to. I can't make the six like cut six slats at once. So I need to build a hand plane that will cut pencil slats perfectly. Basically I'm. This is just insanity. It's such a stupid idea, but the best kind of stupid idea. So I'm in the early stages of that kind of idea which is probably more like a four or five part mini doc almost that I just released on the, on the channel. And then potentially I've got some kind of ramp ups of that because that's not nearly complicated enough.
T.J. cosgrove.
Yeah, well, you know, he's kind of laid the. David Rees has done a lot of cool stuff so kind of laid the way for, for pencil people. But one of the things is that you can wrap that up again and then travel all over the world and do all that kind of stuff. But I think I can make this one here in England. I think I can do it now. I think I can manage my way through. I'm not going to say it's going to turn out well, but certainly it'll be fun to watch. But I mean I've reached out to a couple of different companies and one of the companies is said they're going to give me all the graphite I can use, which is awesome.
So tune in to see TJ lose a finger.
Yeah. Or four. I might not be able to climb past six anymore. Who knows? But that's the kind of stuff that I'm going for. And there's some really cool stuff back home in Northern Ireland that I really want to get involved in. There's a charity that does, like, creative writing for kids and all kinds of really cool stuff that I'd like to kind of bring in. So I think there's. It's a big, bright future and I don't really know any limits on my imagination. So that's good or bad, but certainly going to be bigger, better things.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for staying until 2 o' clock in the morning on a Tuesday.
So much for having me choose my skill mat as well.
So, tj, can you tell folks where to find you online?
Absolutely. You can go to the Woodengraphite website, which is woodengraphite.com, or the YouTube channel, which is www.YouTube.com woodgraphite no spaces, no ampersands, no nothing.
Just wood and graphite together.
If you want to find me on Twitter, I'm Team Cosgrove, so underscore C O S G R O V E. And wood and graphite is just at wood and graphite all spelt out with no spaces.
Thank you.
And Andy and Tim, can we figure out where to find you gents for folks that don't know?
Sure. I am on Twitter at A Wealthley A W E L F L E. Or you can find me to see specifically pencil stuff at woodclinched. And you can also go to my blog@woodclinched.com how about you, Tim?
You can find me on Twitter at timwassom and I'm on Instagram timothywassom. Or you can just hold a dozen Blackwing 211s in the air and I'll find you.
He'll sniff you out.
It's the irl, Tim.
Awesome.
So I'm Johnny Gamber. You can find me at Pencil Revolution, on Twitter enzollution and on Instagram onnygamber, because there's less and less pencil on there these days. And we are the Erasable podcast, the only pencil podcast in the world and also the best. You can find us at Erasable Us. This episode will be at erasable us42, episode 42. You can find us on itunes. We have, of course, the greatest Facebook group in the world@facebook.com groups erasable and God. They're like a dozen or two dozen people that say that's the only reason they're on Facebook. And that's pretty awesome. Hopefully not offensive to Andy and his employer.
That's why they hired me.
We have a page which we sort of use as our official mouthpiece@facebook.com erasablepodcast which you can like. We're on Twitter erasablepodcast, and we have an Instagram account that we sort of take turns hijacking, which is rasablepodcast. So thank you very much for listening to our midlife crisis episode 42, and we'll talk to you in less than
four weeks this time, not making any promises. Maybe we'll all get sick of me.
The intro music for the Erasable podcast is graciously provided by this Mountain, a collaborative folk rock band from Johnson City, Tennessee. You can check out their music at www.thismountainband.com.
If I could just count the time this has happened before. All I said.