Scribe

Really? People don't like them?

Yeah, I think they're so pretty. I just wanna lick it.

Hello and welcome to episode 240 of The Erasable Podcast, which reminds me we're almost to 250, so Uh, are we gonna have a big like country state fair for our 250th? Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we'll celebrate episode 250 once we get there with something like that.

Well, for now, summer is upon us. And while I am not birdwatching or unfortunately not eating a delicious paleta to stay cool, I am enjoying this lovely August evening by hanging out virtually with two of my favorite people, Johnny and Tim. Hey guys. Cheers. Uh, if you, if you all could be a popsicle flavor, uh, which would it be?

Ooh. Okay. That's a very specific one, but also a quality, quality choice. Tim, what about you?

Ooh.

Nice.

Yeah. Oh yeah.

I, uh, I don't know. I think I would be like, we'll talk about this here in a second, but like the new Field Notes, uh, are like paletas popsicle themed and they have a, uh, mango and, and, um, chamoy flavor with like tajín on it. And that is one of my favorite flavor combos. So good. So, uh, either that or just one of those like just lime, lime popsicles that you like, the, the real fruit kind of lime popsicles are just very refreshing.

Also, there's some—

Outshine.

There's something else to be said for just a cheap-ass freezer pop. I love a, just a cheap freezer pop. I could eat like 10 of those. So anyhow, uh, tonight we're gonna be talking about popsicles all night.

welcome to the Eraser Pop.

The Meltable Podcast. So as promised, uh, from last episode tonight, we're going to get back into our pencil primer series and we'll be discussing the next stage of pencillery. Um, we're talking about woodcased, maybe ferrules. Uh, more about that in a minute. But meanwhile, um, we realized that last time we did not cover some of the summer releases. So we're going to just like briefly, uh, briefly chat about that. So. Before we get into the Field Notes, have— did you guys get the new Blackwing Volumes 458? The birdwatching Blackwings?

Yeah.

Johnny, I think—

It is very, very '80s spandex. I will say I do really like the, The, the eraser colors, like they introduced 4 different eraser colors.

And I just, I don't know. I just didn't care a whole lot about the, um, the colors, right? Like they're supposed to look like birds and I guess—

They don't look like birds. They, I guess colors of birds maybe, but it's, um, by the way, if you are a Patreon subscriber, uh, at any level, you can watch a video of us talking and holding up these pencils and these notebooks. And you can see Johnny, uh, pulling up Beastie Boys with his hat just now. Um, yeah. And his, his earlier, you could have seen me picking lint off the tip of my hat brim.

Eddies Field. Um, that's right. Yeah. Quality, quality content. You, you here, you get what you pay for. So if you subscribe and give us, uh, support at any level, you can see the video, and that's at patreon.com/erasable. So anyhow, uh, the birding, the birding volume pencils, uh, volume 458 is our tribute to birding. Each balanced graphite pencil features a gradient finish inspired by one of four North American birds: the Klarps Greb, the mallard, the green jay, and the black rail. The model number 458. The estimated number of migratory bird species that regularly travel through the United States and Canada is stamped on each pencil in black foil.

Well, they probably don't know every bird.

Yeah.

I mean, maybe we should get a hold of the, the bird, the bird watching society and maybe, maybe there's species which just didn't even know about. And so they have to make it say it's an estimate rather than an exact number.

Oh my God. Kind of flail around.

Or like, it was like a disease or something.

But it's a particular northern cardinal that experienced synchronized head molts.

So by the way, Synchronized Head Moults is one of my favorite bands. Yeah.

Yeah. So I saw a bald eagle.

So what were you gonna say, Johnny?

Oh, nice.

I like, I mean, they're a, they're a gradient, right? So like, yeah. Yeah. So they have gradients that I assume are represented by the, by the birds that they have. I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they're, they're another wrapped one and also like they, the kind of wrapped as, uh, there's definitely like a hard cutoff on the seam from like the gradient. So, um, not, not a super seamless., design there.

Um, I don't know. Was it, yeah, was it Golden Gate Bridge?

I don't know.

Well, if it was wrapped, if the Golden Gate Bridge was wrapped, it was a solid color. So, um, let us look on their website. Um, I, I don't know. I, um, but did you guys watch the video, the making of Blackwing pencil video? Okay. Actually, it was really good. I thought they, it looked very How It's Made. Um, which I, which I love. Um, yeah. So, so the video's nice. Uh, oh, there was the—

There was the Blackwing 140, which was the cooking pencil where everything was silver. That one probably, probably wasn't bad. I assume.

That was a good one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, um, I don't know, maybe, maybe it's just the simpler colors are like the way to go, Blackwing. Like they're, they're very like clear into a theme. Need to have a simple theme, but yeah.

Yeah.

Well, well, speaking, speaking of the, the Field Notes edition. So, uh, this one is the Paletas edition and they are named after a, um, well, a tribute to a neighborhood in Chicago, uh, the Pilsen neighborhood where there's a fairly large, uh, Latino population. And, uh, there is a paleta shop, a popsicle shop there that, um, has been around for a long time and. They, uh, made a series of Field Notes there. They made 3 packs, 3 packs of 3, so 9 different varieties. And each one has like, um, just like a print of a Field Notes of like a popsicle, um, on the COVID And each one has like some interesting, like, it's kind of hard to see here, but like if you can see that shine, there's like some selective UV coating on there. So it kind of looks like it's melting a little bit. Um, I don't know. I can see why people don't like them because they are like, I don't know, they're kind of melty looking. They're kind of globby.

But yeah, but I think they're great. Like I love this green one right here. This, um, this is the, is this Kiwi? No, this is, uh, uh, where is that one? Um, well, whichever one that is. Uh, yeah, that's my favorite pack.

It's not kiwi. It is, I know, I've wanted kiwi before. It's lime, I think.

Um, it is, uh, uh, limón. Yep. Lime. Cool. So I think that's fun. I think it's fun that it says Notas de Campo on it. Field Notes in Spanish. Um, yeah, I, I like this one a lot. I'm so, mm-hmm.

Like, yeah, yeah.

You know, America is not really a melting pot, but it is a melting popsicle.

Yeah.

So I'm just like, ah, that's a good one too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, and some of it is just the nature of the beast. Like I think you have a lot more room for design, being able to make design decisions on a notebook than you do on a pencil. Like you're pretty, pretty constrained on a pencil design, but yeah. Yeah.

I do love. The little, um, kind of the, the back, like where the barcode is, there's like a little plastic back thing, um, with a very cute little like illustration on it, which I love that.

That would have been good.

Um, there you can get a, um, what do they call it? Like the poster. That's the, the press, the offprints, like, yeah, an offprint, like press sheet from from this, this pack, which is pretty cool.

Yeah. I never have either, but like, cuz they're not cheap, but it would be fun to, if I had the wall space for it, that'd be fun to kind of like hang up across.

Yeah.

The Cherrywood would be good. Um, before we jump into the pencil primer, did anybody celebrate Stationery Day in any way? Yesterday or this, this past weekend?

Okay. I did not. I followed, uh, Brad Dowdy's, uh, Instagram posting that was, uh, pretty intense. It seemed like he was just going and going and going all weekend. So good on you. He went up to, to New York and did some of the like Stationery Fest things up there with like Yoseka Stationery and a few other places. Look like also, I think our friend Caitlin was, was hanging out too. She, yeah.

Oh, good. Okay.

Ooh.

Hmm.

Like, if you have a jewel tone demonstrator, doesn't that defeat the purpose? Because it's gonna change the color of the ink, so you don't know what ink you have.

What is that for you?

I've been using one of the Narwhal, like the little plastic ones that they have now. Hey, those are good.

Yeah, these are really nice. I have this full of the, one of my favorite colors, which is the Iroshizuku, um, Fuyu Gaki, which is like the persimmon color. It's like that kind of like orangey reddy kind of springy color, which is really nice.

Oh, nice.

I mean, you have to, right? At that point you have no choice. The more you spend, the more you save.

All right. You guys wanna prime some pencils?

Okay. So, um, yeah, so tonight, um, we're gonna continue our pencil primer series with, with part 2, um, the case of Yonder Pencils. So if you remember from part 1, which was in episode 237, we talked about the discovery of graphite, like the lump of graphite. At the Borrowdale Mine, um, in the, um— oh, Johnny, you put here 17th century. I think it was the 16th century.

Fake news. Uh, yeah, so around— yeah, around the, the 16th century. So I think we'll— let's, uh, yeah, kind of jump into the next stage.

Yeah.

It was some anniversary edition. Yeah.

What?

Was there anything up the other end?

Um, yeah.

Badass eyepatch.

That would be a really good, sorry to interrupt. That'd be a really good like costume. Like not too hard, not too hard to do. Just let me, curly hair. Wig and like the eyepatch and nobody would know who you were.

And a pencil.

Jacques-Antoine tattoo.

Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, thus, you know, the modern pencil was born. So, uh, I think nowadays, especially, um, pencils are just mostly defined by their wooden cases. Um, you know, it's kind of the first thing you see before you, you know, you don't really see the graphite core, you use it, but you know, you see the wood, you see the paint, you see, you smell it, right? Um, a lot of species, um, have given unto themselves for pencils. Um, just like at, at first, um, when people were crafting, like handcrafting them and later to a more industrialized, uh, creation of it. So, um, I think that generally speaking, the world settled on a species that was plentiful in, uh, North America. Uh, the California incense cedar, a fragrant wood that we all recognize, but we may not—

Sorry, Eastern red cedar. Eastern red cedar. Getting ahead of myself. Um, I think we all, we all recognize, especially, uh, you know, um, anybody who lives in like a hot climate with a bunch of mothballs, um, something like that. Uh, I sure do. So yeah, they, uh, they started using the Eastern red cedar, which is very fragrant, uh, but something that we probably don't usually associate with pencils.

Oh yeah. Hamster.

yeah.

If anybody's picked up a single barrel 106 from Musgrave, you probably know that. Yeah.

Yeah.

So that, that, um, graphite is one of those elements, the minerals that sort of like flake off, right? Like they have the layers and I feel like, yeah, you could easily like break off a piece of that and like do the sandwich, right? So get it in between there. But I know on the way to go turning into a diamond, that's like the first level of like compression that carbon goes through, right? It's like a graphite. So that's why it's, it's very like, I don't know what the right word is, like leveled like that.

Yes. Um, so yeah, there was a rumor of course that Henry David Thoreau, um, one of our other favorite pencil characters, um, actually designed a drill that could hollow out a piece of wood. Um, just like, right, like that, which a graphite rod would be inserted. That's not, you know, that's not actually the case at all. That's just, wait, okay, pause. I think I'm reading this wrong. That's not the magic. In fact, there's no magic to it at all. Just careful engineering. Okay. Sorry, I should have read this ahead of time. So let me rewind where I was. So Um, cool. So, uh, there is a rumor, um, often that Henry David Thoreau, whose family of course owned a pencil factory, one of our favorite people, uh, a rumor that he designed a drill that could hollow out a piece of wood and just kind of like bore through it, uh, into which a graphite rod could be inserted. Um, that's, uh, it's pretty, pretty good engineering, especially for the time. But the, you know, that something like that still carries through today when you, when you take the cedar slats, like the kind of thin flat pieces of wood, there's little grooves that they put inside them. Actually, if you watch that, the making of the Blackwing video, which we'll put in the show notes, you can kind of see this in action. They're still doing it today. So they, they groove, they put a groove in the middle of those slats. And then they, lay down, uh, they put some glue in there, they lay down the pencil core and they put another sled on top in the groove and then they press together. So the, well, the, the glue cures. So that is, uh, the sandwich that is a pencil. Um, after that happens, uh, oh, nice background, Tim. Uh, if you are, uh, watching this, you see, uh, Jacques Conté is in his background. I really, I really wanna see his amazing eyepatch.

I can't lift this up.

This man has a big head.

So I know.

Uh, so anyhow, uh, once, once those panels, those, those pencils are sandwiched together, um, they're cut apart., before they're shaped and sanded down to a circle or a hexagon or whatever into the shape that we would recognize. So, uh, fun fact, the, uh, the leads, uh, the, like the lead cores only became round, uh, after the pencil sharpener was invented. They used to be square cuz it was a lot easier to just kind of slot them in. So I don't know how far back you would see a pencil with a, like a rectangular core.

So if you see one of those, it's probably an old pencil.

God bless pencils.

That's right.

Yeah, man. I need to break out the Cedar Pointe. I have a bunch of them, but they, they, they smell and feel so good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Either a pencil or toothpick.

Lathe.

Well, unfortunately, as with many things, um, there are a lot of shortages, um, for pencil makers, uh, with incense cedar, not only shortages, but also like, you know, they're grown in Northern California. So sometimes it's really hard to ship that internationally. Um, and. Uh, people have started to replace their cedar with, uh, some other species. So I think basswood is a very common one. Um, basswood is, it's a little bit greenier. It's a little bit lighter weight. I think it's a little paler and it has a little speckle to it, doesn't it? Yeah.

Yeah. It's very soft. It's a little, little softer than incense cedar. And I feel like it just doesn't have the smell. Um, the smell of the cedar.

Yeah.

No, no Swisswood, but you know, which they discontinued. A friend of the show, Toffer, who loves the Swisswoods, told me that apparently they have discontinued them. So yeah, I don't know where they're going to get their Swisswood fix, but to save the rest of us from smelling that stuff all over the place.

Like, like the old Blackwing office, uh, cuz it's owned by California Cedar Products, their old office was on the like plant where they would like actually do the, the lumber milling and turn those into slats. And that just kind of shut down. They use part of it to do the Duraflame stuff, but they send the rest of it to China, um, to get turned into slats and then, then bring it back. Well, then I think they send it, I think it's, they send it from Japan, from China to Japan to actually do the, the smushing, right? Because they're formulating the graphite there. But yeah. Hey, once again, I keep bringing up the How It's Made Blackwing video. Uh, but I, you learn about all of this there. So, um, yeah, so still premium pencils like Blackwing and a lot of German brands and a lot of Japanese brands, um, they are continuing to be made out of incense cedar. Um, but despite that, I think the good smelling pencils are becoming less common all the time. So, um, yeah. Yeah.

When they stopped. Somewhere I have a, yeah, I have a few packs, like 12 packs of cedar Ticonderogas in it. It is really, um, remarkable how much heavier they are than like Blackwing pencils. Like I just like, this is heft, this is a hefty boy. So.

Really?

I wonder what they're using.

Yeah. Well, fortunately our friends, uh, the Musgrave Pencil Company, um, the last, as Johnny said, the last folks from Pencils.com, um, they make a pencil, um, that we love, that we've talked about here on the show quite a bit called the Tennessee Red. And it is made of the Eastern red cedar, um, and covered with a clear lacquer as, as, uh, Johnny mentioned. So it is glorious pencil, smells really good, looks really good. Um, yeah, I think somewhere, I don't know where, I still have that t-shirt that says Tennessee Red on it.

Yeah.

You know, if I wasn't—

Oh, that's a good one.

If I wasn't really allergic to wearing like a red hat, I would suggest that like they make a Tennessee red hat. That'd be a really good one.

But I'm not wearing, not wearing red hats.

Oh God. Uh-huh.

So, so I guess, I guess there's a couple schools of thought on that, right? Like there is one that is, has kind of a racist undertone, which like, oh, it's from Asia, it's yellow. Uh, but also, and like Chinese royalty really did wear a lot of like yellow, like robes and like saffron robes and stuff. And so it, is it referencing the sort of like royal yellow robes that shows that it's like, you know, very fine quality and like, like important? Uh, or is it referencing something that's a little bit more—

Yeah, yeah, I mean, that too. Yeah, these are still a bunch of like, you know, capitalists from the 1800s, so probably there is racism as part of it.

Yeah.

It is a very iconic kind of American color now, right? Like Just like, oh, it's a yellow pencil. I mean, other countries have yellow pencils, but I feel like America is like specifically like a yellow pencil.

And then there's like, yeah, then there's like the, you know, like the Office Depot pencil that's just sort of like the really just like dehydrated urine yellow.

Yeah. I don't like that one. So quick note on pencil shapes, uh, before we wrap it up.

You know, you've been outside all day. You haven't had much water.

So pencil shapes. Um, so generally speaking, pencils, um, have cross-sections that are either round, hexagonal, or triangular. I feel like hex and round ones are kind of the most, most popular there. Hex pencils have the benefit of promoting— they have a really good grip. They have like flat faces that you can hold a little bit easier. You can stamp imprints a little bit easier on it. It's, it also helps like it doesn't roll off the desk quite as easily. And yeah, but also one of the reasons that they're more common than round pencils is that the manufacturer can get more hex pencils out of a slat. So from a pair of slats than they can with a round pencil, cuz you have to shave off more with a round pencil. Um, it reminds me of when, um, we were talking to the Baron Fig guys about the rollout of the Archer pencil and they were talking about how they, uh, could fit hex pencils into the like round container, uh, a much smaller round container just because they fit together much easier. They had to do some like trigonometry in order to like get that to fit.

Yeah, they fit, fit great. Um, it's so Yeah. So triangular pencils, they do all those things that hex pencils do, but they have a big drawback, which, uh, is they're weird. Um, I, I love a triangular pencil. The Ticonderoga was my first sort of like favorite start, starting out, um, pencil. Like when I started—

Oh, that's a good one. Yeah.

Nice soft triangle.

Uh, another, another thing is like there's different levels of sort of like the corners on the hex and the triangular pencils. Like there's really hard hexes, uh, that kind of hurt your fingers if you hold it wrong. And then there's like the Semi-Hex, the General's one is really good. And just, just, just different hexes of all, all shapes and sizes. So, um, yeah, so triangular pencils, kind of weird. You don't see those very often. It's a little bit harder to kind of like make those slats and fit them together because they're not sort of like symmetrical. Uh, you have to like, they're, I can't even describe 'em. They're just sort of like reversed in a certain way. Mm-hmm. Um, so they're, um, yeah, they're different than what we're used to. Uh, when you're, you know, the same feels like a gimmick. Um, but it does have a really good grip on it. Just helps, helps, especially children who are like learning how to hold a pencil or to write with them.

That, although apparently the number 2 doesn't mean that, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Which I don't know what smudging, but yeah. If all of you like know this, but like if you've taken standardized testing in the US and it says like you must use a number 2 pencil, like that's not the number. The graphite grade really has nothing to do with like the, uh, ability for the Scantron to read it. It's mostly just a standard from which they don't have students going off and buying some like weird pencils, right? Like they're not—

Yeah.

Well, if you're listening to this podcast, I hope that you're, you know, Yeah. Yeah.

That, that melted in the car.

Yeah. It's very like, which pencil primer part do we get to when we start talking about the Wopex is what I wanna know. Like we're gonna just start making them out of like the Wopex.

Uh-huh.

Womp womp.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

We're gonna play a game of piggybacking. Yeah.

Wopex.

It's like those Nokia phones that they say are just like, you know, just completely indestructible. Just, you know.

Wopex is the IKEA of, or Nokia of of pencils. So, well, that's about it for pencil barrels. Um, you know, next time we do a part 3, um, you wanna talk about ferrules and erasers and kind of the top parts of the pencils? That'd be really fun.

So, um, I might have to do a little like kind of, um, research down, just go down a rabbit hole of like different ferrule designs. 'Cause there are some really cool ones in the past and I feel like nowadays there's just wild, the wheel erasers and stuff like that. Yeah.

Yeah.

Somewhere I have a couple of pencils, um, that were made during World War II, um, with a plastic ferrule. Cuz—

And it, like, I wouldn't dare touch it cuz that plastic is like ready to crumble, but they, they look really cool.

What are you gonna say?

Back when Johnny was a kid.

Yeah.

Get a crouton on it.

So yeah, that is it for this Pencil Primer episode. Do you have anything else to add before we button up, guys?

Because they're so awesome. They're really great. And if you—

So, um, speaking of the, I guess we were talking about the Single Barrel 106, um, slightly off topic. I got, uh, on Instagram generally, so if you message us through Instagram, generally I'm, I see it. Um, and somebody who has a really great YouTube channel called, uh, Pencils of the Past and Present, um, where he reviews old antique pencils and new pencils. Um, he, I think he is going to be reviewing, uh, Single Barrel 106 and, was just kind of asking about like what influence, uh, we had over the name, the naming and like design of that. Uh, spoiler, it's just, we had influence over the naming of it. They named it after that episode that Henry Hehlan was on. But, um, yeah, go check out that YouTube video. I'll put it in the YouTube channel, I'll put in the comments. But, um, I guess we'll get a little shout out here in the, in the near future.

So yes, that has been, uh, you've been listening to The Erasable Podcast, uh, coming at you every 2 weeks-ish, 3 weeks-ish sometimes. Uh, if you're on the internet, um, you can find, uh, show notes for this episode, recordings and past episodes at erasable.us. Um, this particular one is erasable.us/240. Uh, you can, uh, come join our community on Facebook. Uh, I assume it's still going. Is anybody still in that group? Still going strong, guys?

Oh wow.

I deleted my, my Facebook.

If someone out here is in the Erasable group, uh, please tell me if it's still active. We still have active.

Yeah. Is it still running? Sorry, you won't see us there. Uh, it's at facebook.com/groups/erasable. Uh, I also started an Erasable Discord server, something that I am, um, a little bit more present on. Uh, there's an invite for that in the show notes. Uh, and we have an Erasable Patreon. So if you go to patreon.com/erasable, um, you can see the video for this. We post some extra content. Sometimes we do some like swag giveaways, uh, and we have various levels of support, um, that you can, you can give us. It keeps us in, in Blackwing and Field Notes and web hosting. Um, and I would like to read, um, some of our $10 a month supporters, um, who, uh, Um, have been supporting the show for a while. So a huge, huge thank you to Chris Berry, John Schroeder, Ellen, Dana Morris, Liz Rotundo, Melissa Miller, Angie, Aaron Bollinger, David Johnson, Phil Munson, TK_UK, Andre Torres, Paul Moorhead, John Cappelluti, Steven Fanzali. Remember, remember that Tim Fanzali. Aaron Willard, Michael Dialosa, Mary Collis, Dr. Hansa Noodleman, PBX Jay Morris, Rayko Henning, Ida Umphress, Millie Blackwell, Kathleen Rogers, and John Wood. Thank you all so much for supporting the show. And for the rest of you, we will see you in a few weeks. Do you like our podcast? Most people like our podcast. But if you like our podcast, maybe we'll turn it off.