Pencil

Notice how you’re seeing ads for $400 fountain pens? This is a triumph of modem marketing. Bulky, messy, clumsy, old-fashioned fountain pens are good for one thing: signing you’re name. I have one. I use it to sign my name. I’m out of ink at the moment, have been for three months. Why don’t you see ads for a useful, reliable, elegant, though even older-fashioned device — the pencil? Because it’s easier to impress with what’s in your hand than with what’s in your head; all it takes is money. If you are writing with a $400 pen then you must be writing $400 thoughts, right? So now every moron and ASU graduate (experts can tell the difference with 80% accuracy) has a fountain pen.

Have you used a pencil since high school? Thinking people use pencils. Einstein used pencils; Hemingway and Steinbeck used pencils; Thoreau manufactured pencils. To encourage their use among all you thinking types we offer this primer.

What are pencils made of?

We’ve all heard that “lead pencils” are called that because they used to contain lead but nowadays contain graphite. Wrong. Pencils never used lead. The wooden pencil was developed in the sixteenth century specifically to hold graphite, a form of carbon. Graphite was then called “black lead”, which is where the “lead" comes from. (The word “graphite” wasn’t coined for another 200 years; it comes from Greek graphein, “to write”, since that’s what the stuff was used for.)

The graphite used to be pure. But good pencil graphite ran out long ago. What’s in the pencil now is basically a mixture of processed graphite and clay. The manufacturers’ exact formulae are secret. The wood in most good pencils is incense cedar from California. Florida cedar used to be used until it, too, ran out.

Why are pencils yellow?

Although there is evidence that even some sixteenth-century pencils were painted, until this century they were usually just varnished; natural cedar was “the” color for pencils. But when it became easy and cheap to paint pencils color became a marketing gimmick. In the nineteenth century the best graphite came from Siberia, which was thought of as being in the Orient. Koh-I-Noor pencils were painted yellow, supposedly an “oriental” color, to suggest the origin of their graphite. Others copied it, and yellow stuck as the accepted color of writing pencils.

The “oriental” names used then also stuck; the Koh-INoor, Mongol and Mirado names are still used. What’s a "Mirado"? It was ‘Mikado” until December 8, 1941. “Koh-I-Noor” — Hindu for "Mountain of Light" — was the name of a famous diamond, i.e., a well-known piece of carbon.

Other names are also graphite-related. The Dixon Ticonderoga pencil was originally made by Dixon in Ticonderoga, N.Y. from local graphite.

How are pencils made?

Take a slab of wood as long as a pencil, six (or eight) pencils wide, and half a pencil thick. Cut six (or eight) parallel grooves in it and glue the graphite “leads” in. Then glue an identical piece of wood on top, sandwiching the leads in between. You now have six (or eight) raw pencils fused side-to-side. Shape them (hexagonal is traditional; round is better but wastes more wood), slice them apart, paint them, and stick the eraser on.

What does “bonded” mean?

Most pencils say “bonded,” "chemi-bonded," “heat-bonded,” or something like that. This means that special processes have been used to bind the leads firmly to the wood. This is not to keep the lead in the pencil (glue does that), it’s to help keep the point from breaking. Without bonding, the pressure of writing can cause the lead near the point to bend and snap.

What do the numbers mean?

Most people use a “number two” pencil. The number is arbitrary and means only that its lead is harder than a number one pencil and softer than a number three. (The degree of hardness is controlled by how much clay is mixed with the graphite; harder leads contain more clay.) There are a dozen different grades, few of which are readily available, but most are for artists and engineers; artists’ pencils are softer than writing pencils, engineers’ harder. The degrees used to be identified by letter codes; art and engineering pencils still are. Writing pencils adopted numbers to simplify things for consumers, who might not immediately know the difference between, for example, an ‘HB” and a “BB” (a.k.a. “2B”). Some writing pencils are marked both “2" and “HB” (the equivalent of 2) to suggest that they are as good as artists’ pencils. They aren’t.

Are all pencils alike?

That's like asking “Are all cars alike?” No, they’re not, but how much you notice the difference depends on how much you care.

Cheap pencils (freebie golf pencils and such) are short and the wood may not be cedar; the "lead" is coarse and gritty, is not impregnated with wax (wax helps the pencil write more smoothly), and is not bonded; the paint may not be waxed; the lead may not be centered properly in the wooden case (making the pencil hard to sharpen); and there is no eraser. The lack of an eraser is no big deal but the rest of the stuff is important; trying to do serious work with these pencils is like trying to type your motion with a 1911 Royal Standard rather than WordPerfect.

Standard yellow writing pencils differ in the quality of the lead and of the exterior finish. Each manufacturer sells various qualities for various prices. Generally, pencils with the best lead also have the best finishes. The differences in both are subtle, though, unless you use pencils a lot. Most pencils used in offices are mediocre.

What are the best pencils?

A good pencil writes smoothly, sharpens easily, and its point doesn’t break. The Mongol has long had the reputation as the best. The Velvet pencils (Velvet and Velvet Deluxe) seem equally good. The Velvet is better-looking than the Mongol. The Mongol’s paint looks faded and doesn’t go well with the brown bands on its ferrule (the metal thing holding the eraser); the Velvet is a rich yellow with a blue ferrule band. (The Velvet Deluxe is an odd red color that is waxed so thickly that it’s slippery, but its lead is very good.) The Mongol and the Velvet used to be competitors; now both are made by Eberhard-Faber (which also makes a lesser grade, the American, commonly found in office supply stores). Generally, you get what you pay for. The American can be had for about six cents, the Velvet Deluxe for twenty-five (and an artist’s B for eighty). The Dixon Ticonderoga calls itself ‘The Best Pencil’. It is a pretty good pencil but perhaps not the best.

Mediocre pencils are easy to find but good ones you have to look for. Don’t expect to find them at Office Max, et al. Strangely, the electronics store Best Buy sells four good pencils — the Mongol, the Velvet and Velvet Deluxe, and the Mirado.

What about mechanical pencils?

If you look in the pencil section of a big office-supply catalogue you will see several pages of mechanical pencils, two pages of colored pencils, and maybe half a page of woodcase writing pencils (the kind we are talking about). Three guesses which carry the best profit margins. Some mechanical pencils are themselves expensive; others are razor-and-blade items: the pencil is cheap but you keep paying for the leads. Mechanical pencils leads are good but fragile, since they are thin and unbonded. We don’t recommend them.

Politically correct pencils??

Various manufacturers now sell “natural” pencils, in varnished cedar without the yellow paint. Paint used to be the gimmick; now its lack of paint. These generally aren’t very good pencils. If you don’t like yellow use the Velvet Deluxe. The Mirado Classic may be an exception -- we haven’t used it but Mirados are usually fairly good pencils. “Mirado Classic” is a classically ignorant name since, as we mentioned above, classic Mirados were yellow. Then there is the Eco-Writer, which claims to use recycled wood. Maybe it does, we don’t know. But pencil cedar isn’t endangered; it is farmed. The non-renewable resource in a pencil is the graphite.