wall of pencils
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008
At Wallack’s in Ottawa. They are Faber-Castells.
Posts Tagged ‘pencil’
Bored grad students of 1928
Tuesday, September 26th, 2006also known as J B Seth et al’s paper The effect of moist air on the resistance of pencil lines.
try conderoga
Wednesday, June 14th, 2006Yep, another one about pencils. I do like the Dixon Tri-Conderoga, but I don’t think I could quite gush about it as much as Pencil Revolution did. It’s a nice writer, but the first one I tried was a bit gristly for sharpening with a knife. They do smell good. There’s a freshly sharpened one nearby, and it’s doing an excellent “walk through cedar woods” impression.
Just as well the six pack comes with a sharpener. Tri-Conderogas don’t fit a regular one.
writey
Wednesday, April 26th, 2006my review of the Noris Ergosoft at Pencil Revolution.
(I just got a lot nerdier than you thought possible, didn’t I?)
Staedtler Noris Ergosoft
Wednesday, February 15th, 2006
I like these pencils. And no image scaling tricks were used; the bigger pencil is the bigger, thicker Learner’s Pencil. At the back is a Lee Valley belt-clip sharpener.
I think I was supposed to review these for Pencil Revolution, but looks like someone beat me to it.
Pencils of 2005
Wednesday, December 14th, 2005My best music of 2005 list isn’t ready yet, so here are my Great Pencils of 2005:
- Faber-Castell 9000 — 125 years old, and still the smoothest writer out there. Still alarmingly expensive; I can buy 8 tri-writes for the price of two 9000s
- Ticonderoga tri-write — a great low-fatigue triangular pencil. Writes smoothly, sharpens cleanly, and keeps its point well
- Lee Valley HB — there are just nice British-made pencils
- Staedtler Mars Lumograph — the efficient German drawing-office pencil
- Dixon Primary Printer — meant for little kids, this chunky pencil works for big hands too. Unfortunately, it’s round, so it rolls off the desk.
The Papermate Mirado Classic just missed the cut. It’s a whole load of pencil for very little money, a sixth of the price of the Faber-Castell. Yes, it’s a yellow American office pencil with an eraser, but so’s the tri-write. Maybe I’m getting more used to this continent.
mmm, pencilly goodness
Wednesday, September 14th, 2005Just scored a nice Rotring 600 ½mm pencil from ypitko on eBay. It matches the fountain pen perfectly.
the pencils in my life
Thursday, September 8th, 2005in no particular order:
- Bohemia Works Special Drawing Pencil Toison D’Or : 1900 (BHB)
- Dixon Primary Printer (#1)
- Cretacolor 150 (HB)
- Faber-Castell Grip 2001 (HB/#2½)
- Paper-Mate Mirado Classic (HB/#2)
- Faber-Castell 9000 (HB)
- Prang (HB), by Dixon
- Staedtler Mars Lumograph (HB)
- Lee Valley (HB)
- Koh-i-Noor Hardtmuth 1500 (HB)
- Derwent Graphic (HB)
You want I should review them? Get thee to Pencil Revolution!
it’s a pencil blog
Saturday, August 27th, 2005It had to happen: Pencil Revolution.
like the constipated mathematician …
Sunday, April 10th, 2005I’ve just finished Henry Petroski’s The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. While the standard wooden pencil is indeed a marvel of economical mass production, and you know I’m all about the pencils, I found the book to be pretty slow going. Petroski’s To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design is much more fun, if perhaps due to its wider scope.
While packed with more pencil lore than you could ever hope to learn in a lifetime (like the Henry David Thoreau connection to modern pencil manufacture), some of Petroski’s observations didn’t quite ring true. The books is written from a very American perspective, and when he claimed that the whole world is using a yellow-painted No. 2 eraser tipped pencil, I felt that there was something wrong with his usually objective prose.
To me, a good pencil is red or blue, or occasionally dark green or plain wood. A yellow pencil is a scratchy and petulant thing, consigned forever to the grubby bilges of a school pencil case. Petroski repeats the anecdote of how a manufacturer produced a batch of pencils, and painted half yellow and half green. Consumers complained that the green-painted pencils didn’t write well, and broke frequently. Curiously, I remember reading the same anecdote in the UK, except the batch was one quarter each red, blue, green and yellow. It was the green and yellow pencils that broke in Britain.
And a rubber (eraser) on the end? It destroys the balance of the pencil, and at best produces a nasty smear on the page. Rubbing-out is what your Helix Colonel is for!
pencils, pencils, PENCILS!!
Sunday, February 27th, 2005Man, I bought a lot of pencils this week. There’s nothing quite able to cure that tactile jones than writing with a blade-sharpened wooden pencil on good paper. Let me see:
- 10 Canadiana Naturals bare wood pencils (which, with irony almost morissettian, are made in the USA).
- 2 Canadiana red marking pencils
- 2 Faber Castell 9000 pencils. These are almost worth the 5× premium over Canadianas, as they don’t have those semi-useless erasers on the end that destroy the pencil’s balance.
- a Staedtler 0.9mm mechanical pencil (which I’m never going to use the Opinel on, never fear).
So all I need now is a couple of non-photo blues and a bible highlighter or two, and I am the king of pencils!
I’m reminded of the “world’s biggest pencils” that were the coolest things an 8-year-old could have in a Scottish primary school. Brought back from exotic holiday locations, they were enough to win playground approval for a few days by letting your friends have a shot. I always wanted one of these 40cm überpencils, but it didn’t happen then.
When I did get one, it was three years later, and the cachet was gone. To compound the disappointment, the pencil I got depicted the staid provincial crests of Belgium on a cream-of-chicken-soup–coloured background. To write with it was to be a hamfisted infant again; it looped and swayed against my will. Its lead was narrow and the wood was tough, resisting all sharpening. There was no “sharkener” (as sharpeners were pronounced in my primary school) that would point the thing. It was soon consigned to the back of the cupboard.
National Mechanical Pencil Day
Wednesday, February 18th, 2004After reading leadholder.com, celebrate National Mechanical Pencil Day!
