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.
My pencil haul from my Thailand trip was mostly composed of obscure makes and models that most readers are likely to be unfamiliar with (outside of any Thai friends…sawadee krab!). However, I picked up one type of writing implement that every pencil-lover should be aware of, because it’s the one that kicked off the Japanese pencil industry over 100 years ago. I’m talking about the Mitsu-Bishi 9800, the oldest pencil that the company currently manufactures. This general-purpose pencil has since been overshadowed by the more fashionable offspring of the Mitsubishi/Tombow office supply arms race, including its own younger sibling: the Hi-Uni. However, this venerable mainstay continues to roll off the production line, and given the reputation Japanese pencils have for punching above their weight class, being relegated to a second-string utility role is hardly an indication of quality.
But first off, semantics: it it “Mitsu-Bishi” or “Mitsubishi”? The hyphenated version seems unusual to those of us who are used to seeing the household brand name spelled as one word. The company’s name is officially unhyphenated, and the brand written on the dozen-box of these same exact pencils is written in contracted form. But I’m going to go with Mitsu-Bishi. That’s what it says on the pencils, and that’s how I started writing this review, so I’m not going to go back and change them all now that I’m nearly finished. I’ll also talk more about the Mitsubishi brand and how the pencil-maker fits into that scheme later on in this blog post. Now, let’s talk about to the pencils!
I won’t be satisfied until I’ve reviewed every pencil ever manufactured in any country the world-over. India, your time is near!
I plan to do a write-up on these bad boys soon. I have about 38 other half-baked pencil reviews in the works, and I should probably push some of those out — and write about something else, I guess — before I get to these, but it’s gonna happen soonish. I’m stoked.
Today I’m going to test my hypothesis that an “art pencil” that you write with is a writing pencil. The Prismacolor Turquoise, a pencil widely known in the sketching community but rarely seen in the hands of a writer, is today’s review subject. Let’s take a look at both the HB and the 2B grades; the ones likely to be most relevant to writers.
The very first thing I noticed about the Prismacolor Turquoise pencil is how damn good it looks. The barrels are finished in (you guessed it!) a silky turquoise lacquer that really pops on the shelf against all of the black or nearly-black paint jobs surrounding it in the high-end pencil section. I was debating about which of the usual suspects to pick up for my next review when the Turquoise caught my eye the next shelf down. It had me thinking, “whoa, what’s that?” Closer inspection revealed an impeccable silver imprint with the usual information (brand, model, grade and such). There are some perceptible tool marks near the top ends of the barrels but it’s not really a turn-off. And to top it all off — literally — this pencil features neither an eraser tip nor a dipped end, but a unique aluminum cap with a single red stripe. A very smart, attractive look indeed.
Ignorance is bliss. Once your office supply third eye is open and you discover that there are wooden pencils out there that don’t suck, the agony is finding them in regular supply. Most office supply joints and big-box stores carry a few different kinds of pencil that range from garbage to “pretty decent”. But rarely will you find one that’s squarely in the good category.
So then it becomes an issue of brainstorming places to look beyond the most obvious. I’ve had good luck at art supply stores. The problem is, they have so many damn pencils, in all shapes and sizes, with all manner of weird core material, and they tend to be marketed, packaged, and organized in a way that makes sense for artists (as opposed to writers). So it feels like they don’t have that much to offer to those of us whose whole lives aren’t a dark room or whatever.
But allow me to state the obvious…any pencil can be a “writing pencil” if you, ya’know, write with it. Still following me? Here’s one that will blow your mind: a drawing pencil with a HB/B/2B/etc. core is exactly the same as a writing pencil.
I write that with sarcasm but I’m not judging, because it took me a while to figure this out…and when I did, I felt a mixture of wild giddiness and complete embarrassment. I felt dumb for having walked past so many fun pencils that were hiding in plain sight, but super stoked to have so many more options at my fingertips. All kinds of models brands I’d heard of but thought I’d never find in town — Tombow Mono, General’s Kimberly, Koh-i-Noor, and more.
So if you’re looking for an upgrade for the writing sticks in your pencil bag, try an art supply store. Don’t be discouraged if they only have a few offerings in the “writing pencil” section; keep walking. When you get to the million cubbies filled with a cornucopia of pencil varieties, stop! Then narrow down your choices by filtering out the “hardcore drawing pencils”– look for the sections for graphite cores, and then cubbies for the most popular writing grades like HB or 2B (unless you wanna get wild and try an 8H charcoal or something — in which case do you, Boo). They’ll likely be sorted in theory but in practice lazy shop clerks and indecisive patrons have probably mixed them all up. Eventually, though, you’ll find what you’re looking for: a cool new writing pencil.
Sorry to write a post about something so obvious, but I sure wish someone had told me this when I was on my pencil honeymoon and all bummed out that my local art supply store was sold out of Blackwings.
Just a quick “review”/rant of a product I decided to try: the Möbius & Ruppert “brass bullet” pencil sharpener. I’ve been looking for a good, basic hand sharpener. I have about a million of them kicking around but they all seem to last about a week before the blade goes dull on me, and have weird blades that I can’t find replacements for. So, I’ve been in a market for a sharpener for “hardcore” pencil pushers.
I swung by the art supply store and found a jar of these, going for $4.25 each. Not a bad price, they looked solid, and I’ve heard good things. Also, they had boxes of M+R replacement blades available, which I figured would be great if the bullet sharpeners were as good as I’d heard. Sadly they just didn’t live up to the hype.
My gripe with them is that, well, pencils never seem to actually get sharp. Which is kind of the point of a pencil sharpener. You can sharpen them to a blunt, squared-off tip and then…snap! I managed to get a Blackwing 602 sharp, so maybe this is only for people who write exclusively with fahhhncy pencils. But I tried several other makes and models of pencil and the M+R bullet sharpener repeatedly broke the cores off every single one until I gave up and used a different sharpener. Am I doing something wrong? Do I really want to use a sharpener that I need special instructions to use? Did I get a lemon?
I don’t know, but I’ll be moving down on the list to the next candidate in my quest to find a great sharpener.
People always bring back souvenirs from their travels, and I’m no different. What did I bring back from Thailand, you ask? Tee shirts? Shot glasses? The clap? No, I brought back five horses. Horse No.2200 HB pencils, to be precise.
Dad jokes! OK, that intro didn’t turn out as funny as I intended, so I’ll just forge ahead with my review…
Two of my nerdy passions formed a perfect storm this weekend when I realized that Goodwill sells bags of donated pencils for $1.99. This was, like, life-changing for me. Of course I bought a bag. I probably would have bought more if I didn’t still have a lunch sack worth of Thai pencils to review (and actually use up).
The best part? A lot of the pencils in the bag I bought are old…dare I say, vintage?…and no longer being manufactured, at least in the same location/form/etc. that they are today. I’m pretty excited to pick up some high-quality pencils for a good price, and to take a trip down memory lane back to a time when my favorite type of writing instrument sucked significantly less in general.
I plan to put these to good use for blogging fodder! What should I write? A standard review wouldn’t be very useful but I’m thinking of doing a series of “old vs. new” comparisons where I can; for example, doing a shoot-out between these old-school, made-in-U.S.A Ticonderogas and the newer models from China and Mexico.
I did do a preliminary paper test just to see how they wrote. I also compared them to two of my favorite contemporary pencils. Here’s how that looks:
First impressions? Most of these pencils write pretty damn good, even though back in their day they were probably all “just pencils”. The Ticonderoga was great (as expected) but the Berol Integrity was surprisingly good as well, and I don’t think I disliked any of them.
Must have been nice to be able to just pick up any old pencil off the shelf and know it was going to be a solid writer and not frustrate the hell out of you!
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!
Rad Dad AK 