Alaskan Punk-Rock Dad. Into analog stuff and trying to adult even though I'm kind of a child sometimes. Pencils, Investing, Travel, Thrift Stores, Music, The Outdoors, and Dadding it Up are kinda my thing.
Arriving in Surat Thani a few hours before my train was scheduled to depart, I had free reign to take in the local market a couple of blocks from the station. It was there that I happened upon one of the many tiny office supply shops I’d grown to love browsing during my stay in Thailand. And inside I found one of the more interesting pencils of my trip: the Lyra Groove Slim.
Although I picked up the Groove Slim in Thailand, where most pencils are locally-made, this isn’t a Thai pencil at all — it’s German! Lyra is a German company with a long history of making pencils. Today it’s owned by the FILA group, which also owns Dixon pencils among many others. Apparently the Lyra pencils are still made in Germany. A Google search for the company indicates that they’re most famous for their colored pencils, but here we have a graphite example. So let’s get to it!
One thing that’s ubiquitous in Thailand is the 7-Eleven convenience store. Almost every street corner in Thailand features a 7-Eleven. And almost every 7-Eleven in Thailand features small packets containing a few black-lacquered, unassuming pencils that can be yours for a handful of Baht: the Faber-Castell 1112.
Information on the internet is sparse, and the little packet they came in is long-gone (not that I could decipher the Thai writing anyway), but from what I can tell, these little black fellas are manufactured in Thailand, as are most of the pencils commonly found there. The flat-black finish with silver printing and ferrule, holding a white nub eraser, is nothing magnificent but is presentable, especially when compared to the typical schoolhouse yellow pencil. The quality of the imprint stands up just fine.
Sharpening the 1112 is a generally good experience, with the shavings peeling off smoothly in one long ribbon. The whiteish wood doesn’t seem to be the best quality; sharpening reveals pits and streaks, and the wood near the tip occasionally splinters away from the graphite. However the graphite seems to be uniformly centered in the specimens I picked up, and the wood does the job it’s assigned to do — hold the graphite — OK. [Update: having gained some experience with other Asian pencils, I now believe that this wood is Jelutong, a tree native to southern Asia. The species is known to be illegally harvested from rainforests in Indonesia, making Jelutong pencils controversial. That said, it is also grown commercially in tree farms, and is a protected species in Thailand; so I don’t necessarily have an ethical problem with its use…and it seems to work fine for making pencils.]
The wood of the Faber-Castell 1112 is slightly pitted
OK, so it looks and sharpens OK, but how does it perform? Pretty darn good. Writing with the 1112 leaves a nice, dark mark that really does it for me. One would expect the line left by the 1112 to be a bit more bold than the standard HB graphite, since this pencil is a 2B. However, I’d say the quality of the mark left behind is on par with the Palomino Blackwing Pearl (my pencil of choice when I’m feeling fancy).
While we’re comparing the two, let’s talk about smudginess: the 1112 smudges about the same — perhaps a little more — than the Pearl, and a little smudginess is to be expected of a 2B core. That said, it’s not nearly as bad as the Chinese HB Ticonderoga Blacks I keep on my work desk, so it’s definitely not awful.
The eraser on the party-end of the 1112 is soft and fully functional, stacking up comparably to the competitors I compared it against. The eraseability of the graphite mark itself is fine, also — not remarkable, but pretty good.
The feeling in the hand while writing is a bit scratchier than the silky Pearl, but is smooth enough for my tastes. Point retention isn’t this pencil’s strong point — you’ll find yourself sharpening several times a page, but again, it’s a 2B, so that comes with the territory. Supposedly it is “break resistant due to a special bonding process” (I am assuming that refers to the core) but I’m not sure that I’ve noticed anything remarkable about the break resistance, for better or worse.
The matte-black finish of the standard-hex barrel is actually a bit grippier than the slicker, glossy finishes on the Blackwings, Ticonderogas, etc. I have on hand. According to the Faber-Castell website, it is an environmentally-friendly water-based lacquer. It feels nice, looks good enough, and scores points with the Earth Mother? OK, I’m down.
The Faber-Castell 1112 is a solid workhorse of a pencil. It writes quite nicely while also holding its own in terms of aesthetics, smudginess, erasability, and feel. I’m definitely not a cedar snob, although I do think they could choose a better wood, as there are some pits and such that interfere with an otherwise-pleasant sharpening experience. However, that’s not annoying enough to turn me off to the 1112.
In fact, during my time in Thailand, I used the 1112 as a “daily writer” despite having numerous other American and Asian pencils readily available. The only problem? Getting your hands on them if you’re not Thai! There are a few sources on Amazon but it’s hit or miss and the price is relatively high.
But next time you find yourself in a Thai 7-Eleven, make sure you pick up a little packet of Faber-Castell 1112’s. You won’t regret it.
I just got back from two weeks in Thailand. I have so many blog ideas inspired by my trip! The most obvious being a multi-part travel guide to the country.
I also bought a lot of pencils over there. Like…I may have gotten carried away. I stumbled upon numerous tiny, cramped, labyrinthine office supply shops; and even the pervasive 7-11 stores had something to offer. Here’s a sampling of my haul (note that I bought multiple of each, an entire dozen when it was available at a good price, so this is just the tip of the iceberg):
I’m pretty impressed with some of the ones I’ve used already. Ideally I’d like to review all of these pencils, and track down suppliers for obtaining the good ones in the US. It seems like most of the are actually made in Thailand. They apparently have a pretty thriving pencil industry, which is awesome, and I’m glad to be able to add some fresh stuff to the pencil blogosphere, but I’m a little bit afraid that I’ll fall in love with a pencil that I have to go all the way back to Thailand to get!
And that’s not to mention posts about food, adventures, and good ol’ photo dumps. Plus some non-Thailand content to break it up.
That’s a lot of blog post fodder. We’ll see how many of these post ideas pan out!
I keep a journal on paper. I keep my to-do list on paper. I keep a hard-copy address book. I still use a written planner.
I hear the scoffs. “Why don’t you just use an app on your phone?” Sure, there’s an app for all of the above functions on the device I already carry around in my pocket. So why add more stuff to lug around?
I have burned through a lot of pencils in the last several months. This leads to an interesting paradox: I desire pencils that write well, but are also easily to replenish in terms of both money and effort spent to acquire them.
Before I got my hands on the very-hip Palomino Blackwing models, my intro (back) into the world of pencils was the classic yellow Dixon Ticonderoga pencil. I chose that one simply because it appeared to be the highest-quality one that the office supply store had available. I enjoyed writing with it so much that I decided to stop hassling with ink pens and make the switch to graphite for my daily writing needs.
But pencils still had a stigma attached to them — weren’t wooden pencils for little kids? So I did some reading, which eventually led me to Blackwing pencils. After using one of those, I realized how faint and scratchy the graphite in the Ticonderoga pencils was in comparison to the smooth, dark lines of the Blackwing. I was sold, and I was never going back.
Rad Dad AK 