“The yellow pencil basically became a Chinese commodity,”

This is a quote by "Jim Weissenborn the CEO and owner of General Pencil company in an article posted on Bloomberg this week. I am sitting here with a box of made in the USA General's SEMI-HEX Pencils sitting in front of me on the desk and I am wondering if these gems will go the way of the Ticonderoga?

If that is the future of the SEMI-HEX pencil I may need to stock up on a rather large supply of them before this happens. After all, if nothing else I'd like my grandkids to know the pleasure of a quality Made in USA classic. What do you think? Should I buy a few gross of them and set them aside? You can still get Made in USA pencils from a couple of other companies out there.

Palomino Blackwing 602 Eraser Shootout

I started out with 3 pristine examples of the Palomino Blackwing replacement erasers. One of each color respectively.

Gentlemen, start your engines...

I began by setting up a test page on Stenographer's paper. The first test I ran for each eraser was on the heavily shaded block. The shaded block was created with a Palomino Blackwing 602. Each eraser first did an up-down (on left) then an up-down twice (in the middle) followed by an up-down three times (on right).

Just after the e-race.

Then each eraser was challenged by erasing completely the words Palomino Blackwing. This did not require a set amount of passes, I simply erased it as completely as I could. The erasers were mounted in a new 602.

My reasoning behind the two separate tests was to see which eraser performed the best with the fewest swipes and which was the best at getting the paper the cleanest overall regardless of the number of passes.

The black eraser was the best performer in the quick use test. Three passes left the paper very clean.

The black eraser does quite well.

The white and pink erasers seemed comparable to each other. The white eraser seemed more prone to smearing than either sibling.

Note the white erasers tendency to smear.

The pink eraser did not do as well as the white in this test yet it did not have the smearing issue that the white one did.

You can see that the pink eraser leaves quite a bit of graphite in it's path on the quick use test.

Under a magnifying glass the black and pink erasers appear to have a high amount of what I believe to be diatomaceous earth. (Can anybody confirm this for me?) If the white has any of this it is not visible. The white eraser is very similar to the Pentel high polymer erasers.




Hard to see but this picture does show the semi-reflective specks that I found in the pink and black erasers.

Semi reflective specks.

It is hard to be a fair judge when you clearly have a favorite. I am happy to say that the pink eraser seemed to be the best performer in the second test. It cleaned up the paper very well in comparison to the others.

Pink eraser seemed to leave the least behind overall.

The final verdict? I think the black and pink erasers are winners each with their respective strength, the white eraser is still a nice eraser it just didn't perform as well as the other two.




I know that pencils.com would be glad to send you a pack of each color replacement eraser if you'd like to hold your own grand prix. If you decide to have such an event let me know how it goes and watch out for Amy!

Go speed eraser go...

When I was in first grade, the teacher rewarded my entire class with Pink Pearl erasers. I cannot remember what merited these precious gifts but I can still remember that day. I sat in the desk behind Amy. The reason I remember that I sat behind Amy is she stole my eraser. I was playing with my Pink Pearl on my desk. I imagined it was a very fast and sleek race car. As you may be aware, Pink Pearl erasers don't have wheels so my little "car" put the brakes on and rolled when i took one corner too fast. The accident was horrible and I never got a chance to see if the driver (picture speed racer in pink) made it out alive. Just as the bouncing and flipping stopped on the classroom floor under my desk, Amy (with her snarled, twine like, blonde braids) swooped down and grabbed my Pink Pearl. I could hear the driver screaming for help and I immediately shouted at Amy, upsetting the teacher. Instead of coming to my aid, the teacher hollered at me and asked Amy what had happened.

I could not get my protests out soon enough. Amy told the teacher that I had taken her eraser and that she had just taken it back.

To this day, whenever I see a pink pearl eraser I think of Amy with two of them. I imagine she still carries mine around with her. If you see her, could you check on my driver? Tell him I haven't forgotten that day and I hope he is well.

Palomino Blackwing 602 Review - Part 2 of 2

So begins part 2 of this pencil review. You can see in the image above that I have run my normal test comparison with the Turquoise 4B. Darkness on the Palomino Blackwing 602 pencil is nearly identical in tone to my test pencil. For lead performance excels in retaining it's point. In the next photo you can see that the tip is not nearly as worn on the pencil on the right (the PBW) as on the pencil on the left (the Turquoise 4B) I know it is not a great photo but in somewhat illustrates the point (no pun) I am trying to make. Each of the pencils was tested with a brand new point on them that was created by a Helix Metal sharpener. I used this pencil for some sketching last night and was very impressed with how easily it works the gradients. I can ease up on it and really get a smooth lighter line or get a nearly black grey when I really work it.

The one gripe I have about this pencil and rest assured this is a small gripe is with the gold-foil lettering. I really want this to be the very best pencil I have ever used. I want this pencil to be the pencil that replaces all others for me (ok that would be a bit drastic) I want this to be the pencil that I buy everybody I know for Christmas... but it isn't. The gold lettering wipes off so easily I startled myself with a single rub along the side of the pencil almost the entire logo came off leaving gold flecks all over my finger. I noticed that the stamping on the original Eberhard Faber 602 was much deeper into the pencil and that seems to form a valley of protection for the lettering. I know it is a small gripe, not a big deal. But I am the sort of guy who blogs about pencils and I cannot ignore this fault. Some may see it as a positive attribute.The slogan on the back has thus far held up better but I am convinced that one swipe of the thumb would remove it from the pencil entirely as well. This always bothered me with my Tombow's and Faber Castell 9000's when the markings wipe off with my finger. I was thinking it is actually kind of funny that the markings wipe off with "half the pressure and twice the speed" of other markings from CalCedar. I would be curious to know if it has anything to do with how glossy the paint is.



The wood portion of the pencil is nearly perfect. The lead is absolutely centered, the grain is smooth and uniform in color and the further I got down sharpening this pencil I find that the cedar is much more aromatic than I experienced the first few times sharpening it.



This review covers the replacement pink eraser. Yes I am glad I bought the upgraded pink erasers of course that added about 30 cents to the per pencil price but I can live with that. I have decided that at a later data I will write a comparison of all 3 eraser colors, white, black and pink. I will have an eraser showdown. I am hearing from other pencil folks that the black eraser out performs the pink or white.



I am not disappointed at all with the pink eraser's performance, it is about what I expected. Like I said I will give the eraser a separate workup against it's siblings in a later post.



The wood has a really nice smooth grain. The shavings are more likely to stay intact that fall apart. I am saving them for the compost bin.



Here are some more photos of the ferrule that is identical to the original Palomino Blackwing with the minor exception that this one is slightly crooked and the gold lettering does not line up with the ferrule flats. I am not bothered one way or the other I just noticed that the original is lined up and always perfectly straight.



If I were to use some sort of a rating system, I'd give this a very high score. Like a 95% or something like that. The crooked ferrule and the gold lettering are the only marks against this pencil. It is a pleasure to write and draw with and it is a very good looking pencil.

Palomino Blackwing 602 Review - Part 1 of 2

This part of the review will focus on the user experience of using the new Palomino Blackwing 602. The second half (I plan to post that tomorrow) will focus on the technical and performance aspects with line samples etc.

Social Pencil
I have been using this new Blackwing for a full 24 hours now. Several meetings taking notes, some journal writing last night and even had it out for a study early this morning. I have actually had people who never seem to notice anything notice my pencil was different. The funny thing is I always have pencils that look different than your standard yellow no2.

Graphite
I am really impressed with how it writes. It is very smooth but a little scratchier than the original Palomino BW. I am impressed with how dark it writes. the lead seems to last like a xx but the darkness is like a 2B or 4B. Of course that experience proves to be very similar to what other pencil bloggers are saying.



Paint
I mentioned yesterday that I was immediately impressed with the paint on the pencil. It goes from being steel colored to grayish to blue then even sometimes having a purple tint to it. It is a really beautiful paint. Placing it beside my Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602 (circa 1960's) the paint has a similar tone but the luster of the new pencil is brilliant and more metallic. My EF 602 has an almost green lettering on it and the lettering on this one is gold. I have noticed that the lettering is very weak, it takes almost no effort whatsoever to scratch the lettering off. Minor disappointment there but that is probably the OCD perfectionist in me.



Eraser
So there has been a lot of discussion going back and forth about wether this pencil should have the pink or the black eraser. I have mostly stood on the side of it being a pink eraser and I immediately swapped out the black eraser for one of the pink replacements I purchased. Afterwards, I felt a tinge of guilt over wasting the brand new black one by sitting it in the pouch with the other replacements. In tomorrow's Post I will definitely stage a comparison of the eraser performance. The pink replacement eraser was very powdery feeling and dry. I am guessing there is some sort of baby powder in there with them. The pink eraser erases nicely and I am guessing that many connoisseurs of the EF 602 may find that they can replace the dried out erasers on their pencils with new ones from CalCedar. That would feel like using a brand new EF 602. I know it is not nice to mess with vintage but maybe you had a similar thought. Would that be like refinishing an antique dresser that you should have left as is?

Wood
The platinum grade incense cedar in this is very nice. it has a light aromatic quality that is not overpowering and frankly a little weaker that I prefer. I believe that the cedar of the pencil is like the flavor of a cigar. This one is good but very mild. There is no explosion of aroma when sharpened and that could simply be this pencil. Alas I have 11 more!

This pencil is quite an achievement. In all likelihood it will become a go to pencil for me. It is the sort of pencil that despite any flaws it could be used to evangelize pencil converts.