The lost art of pencil sharpening has been found

by Grant Hamilton

I just spent $15 for a pencil. Actually, I spent a little more, since the Canadian dollar is kinda down. Plus, I promised to pay more if shipping to Canada proved extra — though I hope it’s not usurious.

Why did I do this? Because the pencil is artisanally sharpened — by hand.

You read that right. Fifteen bucks for a pencil because it has been sharpened by hand.

The man behind this service is David Rees — you may know him from his popular “Get Your War On” comic strip. Now, he bills himself as the John Henry of pencil sharpening. Every day, he pits himself against the best automatic pencil sharpening machines devised by science. I’d like to believe he comes out on top.

I’ll confirm that when I get my pencil.

After reading about his service in the Guardian and the LA Times, I finally thought to myself, “Heck, I spend $15 on beer or crap all the time without even blinking. Why not support someone like Rees in this quixotic venture of his. After all, it’s amusing, but it’s also real work. Would you want to spend day-in and day-out sharpening pencils by hand? If I recall correctly, that used to be a grammar-school punishment!

Better than just sending you a pencil, Rees will stuff it in a plastic tube to protect the point, hand-label it with a sharpness rating (determined by micrometer!) and send along the bag of shavings, plus a certificate of sharpness. Here’s a pic that happy customer Tom Warburton took:

And that’s not all — if you read the three-question “interview” that Rees did with Details magazine, you’ll see he takes this sharpness business seriously:

The whole point is that I’m going to have an authentic, honest-to-God encounter with your pencil. I’m not going to be absentminded. I want to get these things fucking sharp as shit. And when you get it back, you’re like, ‘Whoa. It’s actually vaguely menacing how sharp this thing is.’”

I love that this man cares. Fifteen bucks is expensive for a pencil, sure. But I’ve spent more money in worse ways. This is worth it.

You, too, can buy an artisanally sharpened pencil right here: Artisanal Pencil Sharpening. And, actually, if you spend $50, you get a cool poster, as well. But that’s like $35 for a poster. Limited-edition or no, too steep for me.

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Pencils good enough for Woody Guthrie

by Grant Hamilton

I am in love with these pencils, stamped as they are with the slogan made famous by Woody Guthrie’s guitar. It’s $22 for a box of 10 at You And Me The Royal We, which is temping, seeing as how it comes with that cool box, too.

Sadly, I so rarely use pencils that this would be a purchase for image purposes only.

Ret3, commenting at Boing Boing points out the irony: “it’s basically a bundle of sticks.” Tee hee.

Still, any excuse to post some Woody Guthrie!

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Vintage $40 cult pencil vs. modern reproduction vs. cheapo desk find

by Grant Hamilton

The legendary Eberhard Blackwing (the top pencil, above) commands a devotion among artists and writers that, frankly, seems unmatched.

It had the slogan “half the pressure, twice the speed” which, if true, would make a great deal of difference to people who use a lot of pencils. But even still, it’s just a pencil.

At any rate, in 1998, production on the famous pencil was discontinued.

Until now, when Palomino Blackwings are about to hit the market.

Pencil loving Mark Frauenfelder, of Boing Boing, got his hands on a pre-production model, and he broke out an original Eberhard to test-drive them side by side. (That’s his picture, above.) This is no mean feat — the originals go for as high as $40 apiece on eBay, that’s how much they are loved.

Frauenfelder’s impressions? The new Palomino Blackwing isn’t bad — but it is different:

• (New Blackwing) is softer and darker than (Original Blackwing).

• (New Blackwing) is quieter on the paper.

• (Original Blackwing) holds a point longer than (New Blackwing).

If the new version is cheap enough — under $2, he says — he’ll use it. Otherwise, no dice.

Interestingly, he also picked up a cheapie pencil that he found in his daughter’s desk — and found that it was pretty good, too.

My take is that people form attachments to things for all kinds of reasons. The original Eberhard Blackwings are distinctive for a number of reasons — their writing ease just one of them — and I could see myself getting sentimentally attached to them. Then, when they were suddenly unavailable, I could see myself rationalizing why I needed them — for real, actual reasons.

But watch me poke the pencilati here — I don’t think the Eberhard Blackwings are, really, that much better than other top-quality pencils. They’re certainly not $40 better.

But of course, I’ve never used one.

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