Scribe

I had no idea.

It's like, guys, guys, we're going to do Space Jam, but hockey.

Hello friends and welcome to episode 237 of The Erasable Podcast. You alright?

I'm Andy Welfle. I'm hosting today and I am joined by my co-host for the last 237 episodes, Johnny. Hey Johnny.

Yay. And Tim. Hey Tim.

Yeah, come on.

Yes, if you're, uh, if you're a Patreon member at any level, uh, you could be watching a video of this, uh, not just listening to audio, and you could see the amazing hand motions that Johnny and Tim both just threw up. Uh, we're in a gang, so we're just throwing up our, our gang signs.

Um, we have decided, um, actually, so a couple months ago there was— I was in the Pencils subreddit and I think I linked to just a previous episode of ours and, uh, somebody in there was just like, oh hey, this is great. They were like, you have so many episodes, do you have any episodes so I don't have to go back to the beginning? It's just basically a primer on pencils. And I realized like, you know, if we did do that, it's been so long. So we decided to do a series of episodes that's a primer to pencils. So today we're going to cover some of the very basics where graphite was discovered, kind of like some of the ratios of graphite, and we'll get into some of the other pieces and like accoutrements of pencils and eventually get to the point where we're talking about some of our favorite pencils and also what to look for when you're buying your own. So The next few episodes will be a primer. So before we do that though, let's jump into some tools of the trade. So if you're new here, if you're getting into the primer, we'd like to talk about some of the things that we are using and consuming at just the beginning of the episode. So Tim, how about you? What are you, what are your tools of the trade?

And he's the Stephen King of country music.

Are any of them as cowboys they say they are?

Uh, Ram, Ram, like I hear there's a ram shortage because of all the AI stuff. Is that what we're talking about?

Oh wow.

Speaking of cowboys, do you wanna tell us about your, uh, concert experience a few weeks ago? Oh yeah.

Like it's just a cloud of haze just surrounding him. Yeah.

I remember before I moved to San Francisco, my, my ex and her father went to see Willie Nelson and commented the same thing. And that was like more than 12 years ago. They were just like, he's, he's good, but he's so old. I was just like, here we are, like, years later.

Was he reading this or does he remember? Like do you think he's recalling this?

Can't wait to make the rice again.

Love that.

Oh yeah.

I really want to go to your garage and just see what's in there.

B-A-O?

That's right. Yeah, those are cool.

Timorama. Timinator.

Remember how we were gonna make, when we were doing that fundraiser for the live show, we were gonna make those instead of the The Baron Fig Squires.

And I think we ended up doing that just because they were cooler, but like, yeah, we should, we should do another line of like a run of those.

Custom.

Nice.

I can't remember. What were they called? It was BA—

Okay. Oh, here we go. Okay, they're still around.

Put that in the show notes.

Oh, okay.

We'll relaunch their career. Johnny, how about you?

Lipitor?

But I was gonna ask how that went.

Oh, okay. Now we can, we can talk about when we get to Fresh Points.

Good chance.

In the mid-aughts, in the mid-aughts, it wasn't, it wasn't Steel Eagle, was it?

Okay, okay.

Oh yeah, hey, that's pretty.

I mean, a very fancy tampon.

that's incredible.

Gosh, I have been going down a camera rabbit hole. I think I've talked about that here before. I've been really getting into photography and I'm trying to figure out about myself. Do I like photography or do I like playing with cameras? Because, and maybe both, but those are two different things. I definitely like playing with cameras. I also like taking pictures, but really cameras are fun. So, um, I've been definitely going down just some, some rabbit holes of just like some cool old cameras out there and just weird little things. I think I've talked before about how I, um, Bought this little, it's called a Charmora. Kodak made this tiny, tiny little digital camera that's a keychain.

And it takes pretty terrible pictures. But hey, guess what? That sort of like early 2000s digicam aesthetic is back again. People are really loving those like really pixelated kind of choppy pictures and videos. I'm just like, oh man, like I had so many little digital cameras that did that back in the day. And people are really into that. So doing that, I'm also— there's a— I've been watching a lot of camera YouTube. There's this, uh, channel called Micro Four Nerds.

That's true. That's, that's a good point. That's a good point. Sorry, there's a, there's a small kind of digital camera called a Micro Four Thirds sensor, which is a type of camera sensor. So there's this Irish—

British? There's a woman named— who has a channel called Micro Four Nerds, which she just talks about a lot of this stuff, and it's pretty amazing what she can find. There's this Canadian YouTube channel called Petapixel where he just reviews cameras, and he does everything from like really fancy Hasselblad cameras that you might use for, I don't know, shooting like National Geographic, all the way down to like things like this. He just Checks them all. So it's kind of fun. Uh, there's a local guy in San Francisco whose YouTube name is King Japes, J-A-P-E-S, or no, J-V-P-E-S. And he was really interesting because he went into the East Bay and he thrifted a vintage Leica camera from the 1950s. He paid like $200 from it. And like, if you were to buy that sort of like in an antique store, like in an old camera shop, that would be like a $12,000 camera. So I'm just like, damn. So now I just really want to go out to the, like the you know, the thrift stores, you know, outside of San Francisco and see if I can find that, which I probably wouldn't, but that's really cool. So yeah, I've been playing around photography, been just carrying a camera with me when I, when I go places just to take pictures. It's fun to kind of like get off your phone to take pictures. And because your phone, like at least my iPhone is amazing and it will like take multiple, multiple pictures and sort of like piece them together to make this really high dynamic range image and That's great, but it's also really fun just to like compose the shot and try to like figure out your, your settings. Like, you know, how— what aperture do I want to put this? What, you know, how wide open do I want to put the f-stop? And just kind of figure out some of that manual stuff. That's been really fun. I think— I feel like photography with a camera could fit into our, our remit at some point. We should do a photography episode. Yeah, easily. So yeah, I've been doing that.

oh man, film photography is a whole other thing. I've been— yeah, I have. I think I talked about this when I was in New York in October. I bought a film, film camera and I've been playing with that. And when I was in Japan, uh, a few months ago, I, I bought some film and it was so freaking expensive. I bought 4 rolls of film and it was like $70.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's still, still cheaper than gas. So I've also, this is, this is all thanks to you, Tim. So I'm in this little science fiction book club that I started with some former coworkers of mine. We would talk about like various sci-fi books. And we've been, we've been doing, we went to one of, one of my coworkers' houses and we read Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz, which is a fun novella. And we decided for For the next time, which is in a week, uh, we're going to do a book club on Psalm for the Wild Built, which is a book, book that you recommended to me, Tim. So I was like, I read it like months ago, I think when you told me about it. And I was just like, yeah, sure. I'll do a book club on a book I already read. This is like less work for me.

But one thing we've been doing is, uh, whoever's hosting does a, does dinner that we, we try to like. Have it like thematically tied into the book. And so last time we did Automatic Noodle, which is about a future dystopian San Francisco where these robots decide to open a, like a Biang Biang noodle shop. And so my former coworker made Biang noodles, which are this Cantonese style of noodle that's really delicious, like hand pulled. Like we stretched the noodle and we like banged it on the table to stretch it. And it was kind of like one long continuous noodle in the bowl that was really good. It's very chewy. So I'm thinking because Songfall: The Wildbelt takes place in like a post-industrial future where everybody's back in like these semi-agrarian societies, like I've been thinking about making like a lentil stew or something like that and maybe some like homemade bread I'm thinking about. So, and then like serving tea. Yeah, serving tea. 'Cause like the main character is like a tea monk, serves tea around the world. So yeah, I'm still have to figure that out. I've been like playing with some recipes, but that's such a good book. It's like we talked about it back then, but like, it's like, it's like a cozy mystery. That's not really a mystery. Like there's really no real like antagonist, right? Like there's no villain, kind of like nature and society is like, oh, will, will this robot be accepted by this village? Like that's kind of the main conflict is just very cozy. And it's also feeling like, man, you know, maybe I should just like give up society and go live in, in some agrarian society.

Yeah. He like goes around to different towns and like serves tea and like listens to like, he looks like a therapist. He's like a therapist, but with tea and. He, yeah, he lives in his, like, his cart that he wheels around. It's, yeah, I'm just like, oh man, maybe I should just do that. But I'm like, no, I like having thousands of pencils, so probably couldn't do that.

You're off. Um, yeah, so really been enjoying that, and I am writing with, uh, some throwbacks I found I was, uh, I have a person I know through tech stuff who has a newsletter about like people and interesting things. So I, I, she interviewed me on her podcast about stationery, which when it comes out I'll talk about.

And so I, I, I got out some of my Golden Bears because she was asking me about my favorite pencils. So I'm writing with one, just a trusty, trusty blue Golden Bear. And I found this old notepad I used to love called an Ampad. And it looks like this. I put the Draplin sticker on the front, but it has this really nice, like, kind of like thick fiber, like golden kind of cream colored paper. Just really nice for pencil. So I've been, I've been using that lately to take notes as I've been job hunting.

So yeah, cool. Let's jump into just a few Fresh Points before we get into our pencil primer. And for the, again, for those of you who are just here for the first time for Fresh Points. This is— we just talk about some stuff around the industry or just semi-related to what we do, which is different than Tools of the Trade but also very related. So Tim, do you have any, any Fresh Points for us?

So Johnny, just go back. Sure, Johnny.

Didn't know they're still doing it.

Quick sidebar, have— has anybody had a Pop-Tart lately in the last like year?

Have you noticed the sort of like, uh, shrinkflation that they've been going through? They look like crap. Like there's hardly any frosting on them. They're, they're smaller.

And I bet they haven't gone down in price.

Yeah, yeah. Anyhow, sorry, man.

Mabba.

Are you saying they judge a book by its cover?

Yeah.

I use that all the time. Yeah, uh, I saw Vito Grippy was there. He was—

I think so. He was at least at some fair that was going on at the same time that was in Maryland. Like, I saw— I don't know if you walked around the, the thing, but he was somewhere.

okay, maybe it wasn't there. Uh, he was at, he was at some outdoor thing with a bunch of Story Supply Company stuff.

Has your— have the outdoor, like, craft fairs like that where you are been doing the same thing that people have been doing out here where they just like 3D print a bunch of crap?

Yeah, like the articulated dragons. And there's also people who do the thing where they get like bags and things very cheaply digitally printed, like probably overseas, and then like have that come in because it's like something they customized but didn't make. I've been seeing a lot of that and it's just— I hate that.

Hello, welcome!

Yes. The answer is yes.

So they've really been, uh, merchandising lately. Like, I think, I think we, I think The Erasable Podcast follows them on Instagram and there's like a lot of t-shirts now. And, uh, I think, uh, have you seen the baseball bat? The Ticonderoga baseball bat? Okay.

Oh no, you can, you can buy them like that.

Nice. Um, I, I don't mean to turn this podcast into the, uh, Andy Welfle vibe coding channel, but, uh, I've been vibe coding. I made a new thing. So something that I've been paying attention to myself about is like whenever there is like an app or piece of software or something that I want but like what's out there doesn't serve me. I was like, well, maybe I should make my own. So I really just want a very simple app that just basically lets me quickly enter a book to sort of like to a to-read pile and then like be able to move that book to a currently reading or have read pile. So like Goodreads, it's too big and slow and just a, just there's a social element I don't want. There's a lot of other like sort of book tracking apps that just don't serve me. So I was like, I'm just going to make a really simple, lightweight thing. So introducing booklet.lol, which is just a very, very simple book tracking app. And it's really, it's a website, like it's a, you can add it to your like iPhone home screen as an app or whatever, but it has a little scanner. You can scan a cover or a barcode, or you can like search and type it in. And it just adds a book to your to-read pile. You can move it around. You can put it into a like a different pile, like to read or like have read or currently reading. And it all, it stores, there's no data being shared with me. There's no like database. It's all being stored locally on your browser, which also means that it could just like, you know, if you accidentally clear your browser cache, you could, you know, get rid of it, but have to figure that part out. But yeah, it's just a little fun thing I made for myself. So feel free to use it if you want. I'll have a link in the show notes if you're interested. That took me like a couple evenings of just sort of like playing with Cloud Code and vibe coding. So, you know, there's vibe coding. There's a lot of like generate some crap code. So I don't think I would want my, you know, Social Security Administration website being vibe coded, but for something like this, you know, some little dumb thing, I think it's fun. I've been doing that. I also, this is again, not very analog, but Tim, I think you might appreciate this. Have you heard of this? Tiny, tiny little ebook reader called an XT-E Ink. It is this Chinese, like, ebook reader, e-ink reader that comes with really crap software. And you— somebody made like a community-driven, like, OS that you can put on it. But it is so cute. It is a tiny little— look how thin this is— uh, tiny little ebook reader. And you can just like throw it in your bag or like your pocket or something like that if you don't want to carry around your Kindle.

Like he's talking about, like, like, that's right.

It's a tiny little thing. Yeah. This is, uh, silly and, and it's like $60 on Amazon. So I bought one and you can like mess around with it and load. It's a little bit more difficult than a Kindle to put books on, but like it's nice. Because I don't usually carry my Kindle around in my bag, but like, I can just throw this in my bag. And if I'm waiting, if I'm on the bus or like waiting in line for something, I can pop it out and read it. So I've been reading some, some books of like short stories on this thing. And then I have like a longer kind of a thing on my Kindle that I keep at home.

Amazon. It's a, it's, it's called an XT Ink is the name of the brand. X4, which is the name of the model. And yeah, it's, it's very, it's very silly and it's in every way inferior to a Kindle, except that A, it doesn't, it's not locked into Amazon and B, uh, it is so tiny. So that's pretty nice. It's so tiny. I love it. Um, and you can do stuff like you can tinker around with it and like put your own images as like your lock screen. Like I put a picture of my cat on there, which is fun. So.

Is that it for Fresh Points, Tim? Do you have any that you wanna share?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's jump into, uh, the topic. So yeah, again, we're gonna be talking about just sort of the basics of pencils, which I don't think we've really done since the beginning. Um, so, uh, this time around, you know, we, we on Erasable, we talk about a lot of pencil things. We talk about wood, pencil anatomy. Industry trends, things like that. And so folks routinely ask us to, to pause, to kind of like talk about what we're talking about. Like we have kind of a lore on the show that we built up when we launch into our Amazon SEO speech. Like you can use it on a plane, you can use it in a bathtub, you can use it, you know, inside, inside jokes as many good podcasts have. So we wanna step back and we thought we'd take the time this episode to, um, just have a little apithyprimal about Pencils. So yeah, let's jump into it. So Johnny, do you want to kind of like kick us off with what you're thinking?

Just the core of the situation.

Nope, I can do that. Yeah, um, so yeah, um, start from the beginning. So, uh, graphite was discovered one, one dark and stormy night, uh, in 1564, uh, in Borrowdale, England, which is still a source of graphite. And I think that Derwent Pencil Company is positioned there, right?

I would love to go to it. I, um, it's funny, Rebecca, who, uh, used to be the marketing person at Derwent and like worked kind of like in the museum We have a mutual friend, just kind of randomly, this person I know from working at Adobe back in the day. She went to this pencil museum with her friend Rebecca, and it's just like, oh, do you know, I know this guy is a pencil artist named Andy. And she's like, oh yeah, I know Andy. Anyhow, so lightning hit a tree, kind of tore up the tree, and there was just like this kind of like greasy black stuff that farmers found underneath it. And they dug it up and initially they used it to kind of like mark their sheep. So like, you know, they would intermingle their flocks of sheep and they would just like kind of like swipe the sheep with the stuff. Sometimes they would wrap it in string to kind of keep their hands clean. They called it plumbago, which is a name that we adopted to use with our zine that we did several years ago on the show, Plumbago Magazine. So plumbago was the Old English word for black lead. Because of how soft it was, like lead, which I think is what kind of carried through and why we still call it a pencil lead to this day. But we know, we know now that graphite is not lead or even metal. It's closer to a form of carbon, or it is a form of carbon that's closer to diamonds. So it's something that, like carbon, it's one of the stages carbon goes through before it hits diamonds. Like when you compress lead, at some point you're compressing it down into sort of like flat sheets, which is when it's graphite. And then it sort of like recrystallizes like this horizontally too, and then becomes, becomes diamonds. So I know that like, you know, I've joked around before because, because you can like if you're cremated, you can take your remains and turn them into diamonds. And I have joked that I would actually rather. Yeah, because, you know, all you need is just pressure and time, right? Like you can turn yourself or whatever with enough money and time and pressure into diamonds. And I want them to stop halfway through and just turn me into graphite and then turn me into a pencil.

Yeah. It's just real gross. And then pass it on to my, you know, my poor nieces and nephews and be like, oh, hey, like you could have like your, this is Uncle Andy.

If Blackwing is still around, just like turn me into graphite, send me off to Blackwing and turn me into a special edition.

Yeah, I don't know.

Ultimate personalized pencil.

So eventually they took these like pieces of pure graphite from Bardale and they started sticking them into like wooden dowels or sticks or sandwich them in sort of like pieces of, of, uh, pieces of wood. And, uh, that's where you get the kind of modern, modern day pencils. So, so an interesting fact, these pencils had square leads because they would use knives to sharpen them into points. So if they needed to point at all, so I think the oldest known pencil in the world belonged to a German roofer, uh, that had a wide rectangular core in a flat, flat piece of wood. I think they just kind of carved out like a shear of of graphite to do this, to mark down the, like, where to put tiles. So that was pretty fun.

Carpenter pencil people, take note.

We have lots of glossary terms that the world is not, that the world has not yet adopted. We're looking at you, Blackwing. Blackwing graphite. MMX is still, you know, still on the table.

Johnny, do you want to talk about some of the next, next pieces of this? Sure.

Oh geez.

So candle and a writing instrument.

Was that like, oh no, I have to go back and find our, our episode. But we, we did an episode about Nick Jacques Conte and there's an image of him there and he's pretty badass looking. Yeah, he is with that eye, just a giant head.

An eyepatch.

Yes.

But so you're saying that pencils are really pottery?

Yeah, just holding crap.

Yeah, yeah, he, he wasn't, wasn't just living on a pond. He, uh, did other stuff too.

Tim, do you want to kick us off in the next section?

What did we decide? What did we decide the Blackwing— what do we call it now? The mat, the Blackwing mat. That's a, that's like a 4, 4 or 5B, right? Ish.

Blackwing does not use grading scales for their, their things. They, you know, they call it, they have 4 different cores and, uh, they kind of just call it soft, medium, or balanced and firm. But yeah, I think it's, I think it's like between 4 and 6-ish. B. Yeah.

So there, and sometimes you might say they have a very, uh, they were very thorough with their, uh, with their, their scale, developing a scale, or they weren't thorough because it's only 4 or whatever. Yeah, that's true.

They weren't very thorough.

But what are we even doing here?

We need to do a Pi pencil that's like number 3.14.

I think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll have to find that.

Yeah, that was, that was all the way back in 2016, uh, episode 57.

Poison.

What now?

So, or if you're left-handed and you just like are writing just anyway and just get like a giant smear on your on your hand. Just—

Whoa, man.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, we've covered a lot of ground. Any other pencil trivia that we want to kind of COVID here? Just the basics of the core.

There's, there's also, um, I think it's mostly Japanese pencils, but they have like this lead that is— I can't remember I don't remember the name of it, but it's supposed to have little microscopic pieces of diamond in it to make it just harder. I think there's a few. Yeah. I don't know if that's any good or not. Yeah. There's a lot of like mechanical pencil leads that they sell have that just to make it harder and harder to break off. I don't know if that actually, if that's a gimmick or if that just, you know, is what they say, but that's something that's supposed to make, make lead harder without being less dark. You see sometimes, and then—

Those are different. That is a piece of metal that has an instantaneous oxidization layer.

So it's like instantly rusting. And so you're really just smearing rust onto your page is what that, what that's doing.

Yeah. Um, we had, gosh, what was it? We were, I remember in the Erasable group, we got one of those pencils and is it, Is it Keith McCleary? Like, is it him who is like a— he's like a chemistry professor? Yeah. So, so I think like Heath, who's a— God, what's his Instagram? Random Things.

He's also a really good 3D printer. You should check him out. He's really great. He was talking about this and he's saying it's like an iridium nib or something like that. And it just instantly develops a molecule thick layer of rust and you rub that off and it forms instantly as fast as you're writing and that is what just keeps on going. So eventually that, uh, that pencil will wear down, but probably not in our lifetimes. And that's why they call it like a lifetime pencil or whatever. But it's also not very good. Like, it is— yeah, it, uh, it looks like, like an 8H, 9H kind of pencil. Like, it—

Oh yeah, one thing we, we didn't talk about with cores is, uh, Johnny, do you want to tell us about a Wopex? That monstrosity?

Yep.

Someday, like, I don't know, that's gonna be just the only thing. Like, the nuclear holocaust happens and it'll just be like cockroaches and Wopex pencils will be what's left.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. Any, anything before we wrap it up that we wanna make sure we mention.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think so.

Well, just use it.

Well, and that's, I guess, one thing to mention real quick is what makes a really nice pencil is a pencil that manages to be smooth and dark while also having good point retention, because like, generally speaking, those things are on opposite ends of the spectrum. And so like regular pencils, but if, if you're just like applying like really thoughtful chemistry to it and using really good materials, you can get a relatively, you know, dark, smooth, buttery, uh, point while still retaining a point without just like instantly dulling it. So that's kind of the challenge. That's the chemistry challenge of pencils.

Yeah. So we'll get into like those pencils that we think those are, are really good in future episodes. So yeah. Should we, should we button it up for now?

Cool. Um, so yeah, you've been listening to The Erasable Podcast. This is episode 237. If you want to see the recording, if you want to grab like show notes or anything like that, go to erasable.us/penciloftheweek. /237. And if you want to see a video of our lovely faces as we've been doing this, you can see Johnny's magnificent luxurious hair just like flowing down the side of his, of his head. I have his giant head. If you want to read the, if you want to read the individual titles on his bookshelf, watermelon on a toothpick. Join our Patreon at any level. So we have many levels from $1 a month to $10 a month. That is patreon.us/erasable. We have a really great community. We've, you know, we have it on Facebook and on Discord. In the show notes, we have a link to the Discord invite. But if you want to check out facebook.com/groups/erasable, I gave up Facebook early last year, and but I assume it is still still going strong. I'm hoping we have some moderators over there who's keeping that community going. So, and so speaking of Patreon, we have a bunch of people at the producer level who we'd like to thank at each episode. So a big thank you goes to PDXJ Morris, Reiko Henning, Chris Berry, John Schroeder, Ellen, Dana Morris, Liz Rotundo, Melissa Miller, Angie, Aaron Bollinger, Ida Umfers, David Johnson, Phil Munson, TK_UK, Andre Torres, who makes some amazing bags, Paul Moorhead, John Cappelluti, Steven Fansali, Aaron Willard, Millie Blackwell, Michael Dialosa, JAFX in the Midwest, Mary Collis, Kathleen Rogers, Dr. Hans Nudelman, and John Wood. Thank you all so much, and we will see you next time for Pencil Primer number 2. Get it? Number 2.

Thanks for the pity laugh.

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