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Inside One of America’s Last Pencil Factories
- exikyut 9y agoAs soon as I remembered pencils had graphite in them (duh) I was reminded of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YBwDNfOaxU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YBwDNfOaxU
- mrob 9y agoIs there any real use for high quality wooden pencils beyond nostalgia? A leadholder (a.k.a. clutch pencil) gives you the same flexibility and control with more consistent balance as you sharpen it. Cheap wooden pencils still have some use because they're the cheapest erasable writing implement, but the cost is unlikely to be competitive if they're made in America.
- pubby 9y agoI don't think artists will ever give them up.
- icantdrive55 9y agoYea, I don't know how to shade with a mechanical pencil.
- microcolonel 9y ago> but the cost is unlikely to be competitive if they're made in America. There are competitors which sell twelve-packs of № 2 of similar quality for about the same price, if Amazon is anything to go by. Pencils are also still basically indispensable in schools.
- yeukhon 9y agoNot really. I don't know anyone who use clutch pencil so I am not sure how it compared to wooden /mechanical pencils. Regardless, pen seems more dominant now in school. I was born in the early 90s, so both wooden pencils and mechanical pencils meant a lot to me. I still have two pencil lead left in my right palm because I accidentally stabbed my hands when I was a kid - pretty sure most of us who have used pencils regularly back then had experienced this. Eraser was also a big deal to me and my classmates. I owned regular plain erasers, fruit-flavor erasers, and animal-shape erasers before. But I preferred the slightly expensive Japanese brand called "Sakurafoam eraser" [1]. I am not sure when our future generations will stop writing by hand completely, but eventually pen and pencil will see the fate as scribe and Chinese brush pen which are uncommon now. [1]: https://imgur.com/a/g30c9 https://imgur.com/a/g30c9
- cultofmetatron 9y ago... did you say fruit flavoured eraser???
- Stratoscope 9y agoFruit scented anyway. You weren't really supposed to eat them, although I can't speak for GP. (I used to eat match heads when I was a kid, so I can hardly criticize anyone's eating habits.) You can still get them, for example the Lil Juicies: https://www.ooly.com/lil-juicies-fruit-scented-erasers-set-of-6/ https://www.ooly.com/lil-juicies-fruit-scented-erasers-set-o...
- davchana 9y agoIn india we call eraser as rubber too :) Fruit Flavoured Rubber will sound too NSFW in America :)
- Hextinium 9y agoI started using a lead holder/clutch pencil for schoolwork and I can't go back to anything else because of the knurled grip. Pencils slowly slip out of my hand after just 2 minutes of writing while my lead holder will write for hours with no repositioning.
- ghaff 9y agoThey at least used to be very common for drafting. I probably still have one or two somewhere. As you point out, you get a better grip and they're probably also easier to keep very sharp.
- mc32 9y agoJapanese labor is also expensive, also German, yet they both manage to have pencil factories. You can get your favorite brands here: https://cwpencils.com/collections/2-pencils https://cwpencils.com/collections/2-pencils Quality, specialization and marketing.
- forinti 9y agoThis made we wonder why there aren't more regional or local pencil factories or factories of other low tech products where a few people and the right machinery can be quite productive.
- jhoechtl 9y agoBecause shipping products from overseas where they are mass-made is cheaper than producing them next corner. An effect of globalization.
- wbl 9y agoScale matters as does brand. If you are just the regional pencil factory, and only distribute in a small area, you will have difficulty keeping the factory working all the time.
- hellofunk 9y agoWooden pencils are far superior and more versatile for drawing.
- mrob 9y agoWhat artistic technique is possible with a wooden pencil but not a leadholder? Leadholders let you draw with the side of the lead, and sharpen it to any shape you like. They're practically the same as wooden pencils except you don't need to cut the case to sharpen them.
- Broken_Hippo 9y agoA cheap paintbrush is practically the same as an expensive one, but I'd not trade my $70 watercolor brush for a cheap one. In art, practically the same can get weirdly different results. Simply changing a brand in the same category (paint, for example) can mean color differences and some mixing issues if mixed with some other brands. With this, it is more issue of price, availability, personal preference and practicality. Some folks will seek out such a thing, but most wont. I found one from Faber-Castell (generally available brand of art pens/pencils). [1] The hardness isn't marked on the outside of the pencil (good for looks, bad for pencil changes) Though it comes with 14 different hardnesses of lead, refills only come in 11 (You don't need such a wide variety most times though). Oh, and they are $11.50 each. I'd use at least 3-4 different graphite hardnesses in one picture, usually a few more. $45-$60 with hard to find replacement leads for a small benefit that doesn't seem to improve things the way a good paintbrush does. After all, you can just buy Faber-Castell wood pencils (a set for around the price of one) and get the same quality lead. Now, more to the point, the concerns I would have switching as an artist: some mechanical pencil lead isn't quite the same substance as the pencils, and it is obvious when one erases and blends. Not only that, but I'm pretty sure that even though you can use the side of lead, the shape of the tip is different sort of support than the wood against the pencil. I can see how folks would prefer one sort over an other, so it might not work out. [1] http://www.fabercastell.com/products/more-products/mechanical-pencil/ClutchpencilTK94002mm0H/139420 http://www.fabercastell.com/products/more-products/mechanica...
- 9y ago
- totalZero 9y agoSome standardized tests don't allow mechanical pencils.
- bitofhope 9y agoPencils are cheap, good leadholders are not. A decent pencil costs 0,50€, an amazing one 2€. Good 2mm leads alone are in the premium woodcase pencil price range. Pencils can be quickly swapped for different hardness. Swapping the lead grade in a holder is much more involved. Some artists may even find subtle differences between brands of pencils and may prefer to quickly swap. Leadholders are almost invariably quite thick. The feel in hand is very different from the slim woodcase pencil. Whenever I write by hand, I tend to prefer a fountain pen, a mechanical or a woodcase pencil. Writing with a Mitsubishi Hi-Uni or Tombow Mono 100 pencil, for those who can appreciate it, is a cheap luxury. Pencils are higly versatile writing instruments. I'm left handed and heavy handed and prefer H or 2H pencils to prevent smudging. Writers like Vladimir Nabokov praised the Eberhard Faber Blackwing (about 2B on a typical modern pencil scale, although these aren't standardized) for its smooth, almost pen-like glide. American manufacturers can't compete in lowest price, but they might in best quality. The Germans and Japanese already do.
- aninhumer 9y ago>Pencils can be quickly swapped for different hardness. Swapping the lead grade in a holder is much more involved. But surely you could just between multiple holders with different leads in them, which would be equivalent to swapping pencils?
- bitofhope 9y agoYes, but at a price and space disadvantage. A set of leadholders to match the gradient of a good art pencil set will cost at least tens, more likely hundreds of dollars. They will also take more space. Clutch pencil leads are not as readily available everywhere, especially in different hardnesses.
- mrob 9y ago>smooth, almost pen-like glide I have a Mitsubishi Hi-Uni 10B woodcase pencil, which is the only 10B rated pencil I could find. As you said, pencil hardness isn't standardized, but it's a very soft pencil, and it does feel smooth compared to other woodcase pencils. But it does not feel as smooth as a 0.5mm mechanical pencil with Pilot Neox 4B lead, which is the smoothest mechanical pencil lead I could find. The Mitsubishi does however write a little darker.
- beisner 9y agoIt’s weird, just mentioning non-mechanical pencils brings me back to how coveted Dixon Ticonderoga pencils were when I was in grade school. The Crayola of pencils, standing out in a sea of Roseart.
- fern12 9y agoI was a huge fan of Dixon Ticonderoga pencils. They were lightweight, and I could sharpen them to perfection using my cheap manual sharpener. I had to google the name to remember, but Eberhard Fabers were my least favorite. Very clunky, the barrel always felt coarse, and the tip always broke in the sharpener.
- jeffwass 9y agoOn a slightly different note - does anyone have any suggestions for a good pencil sharpener? The screwed-into-a-tabletop ones we used to have at school in the 80’s and 90’s were great, with the crank and rotating blades. Was easy to make razor-sharp pencil points. At home, with my kids, we only have those common cheapo sharpeners with a single angled razor blade. They sort-of work, poorly. With those it’s too easy for the pencil point to break off, often the planed curl of wood will snap at the boundary between the two wooden halves of the pencil. It’s not smooth, and very hard to get a nice sharp point with them.
- bmsleight_ 9y agoKnife ?
- bitofhope 9y agoThose crank operated or electric tabletop sharpeners are great. For a portable sharpener, my personal favourite is the KUM long point automatic two-stage sharpener. The way it works is that it first sharpens the wood leaving a round core and then points the lead inside. The longer point stays pointy a little longer than standard. The only downside is it's a little hungry and uses up pencils a little quicker than normal. Jetpens sells them in the US and Cult Pens in the UK. I can highly recommend both. Good pencils help too. I tend to prefer German and Japanese brands like Staedtler, Stabilo, Mitsu-Bishi, and Tombow.
- GeorgeRichard 9y agoGreat photographs: it's really difficult to make a good photo of a black subject against a black background. The first three images in the photo essay---in particular the third---show that, with skill, it can be done.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoMost of this comes down to putting the camera on a tripod, then using a button that keeps the shutter open for a long period of time. Drop the ISO way down and then hold it open for 0.5s. Features like that aren't really available in smartphone form, and it felt like a loss. Lighting is just as important, of course, but you can achieve some interesting effects just by giving light more time to enter a physically stable camera. EDIT: I changed my mind. If you look at the photos carefully, you can see most of the effect is from a fill light behind the camera. If that light source doesn't exist, no amount of holding the shutter open will make it seem like it does.
- munificent 9y ago> If you look at the photos carefully, you can see most of the effect is from a fill light behind the camera. Yeah, I was going to say what's really going on here is the photographer has a nice big soft box behind the camera (or maybe even just a diffuser on an on-camera flash). That way all of the flat surfaces facing the camera show pleasant highlights and then the dark areas define the edges of those.
- rangibaby 9y agoI would say it’s at about 1/60. The guy is still sharp but the pencil leads have some motion blur. Slower than that you will start to get motion blur in human subjects if you are unlucky. 1/30 it is still possible to get sharp portraits but some will have motion blur.
- overcast 9y agoThese shots are most certainly flash. The dark ambient background is achieved by stopping down the shutter. Shutter controls ambient, aperture controls flash exposure. Assuming of course you're not setting it faster than your cameras sync speed (which now can be alleviated by high speed sync) on high end cameras. So now you have a well exposed subject, with nearly dark background.
- Stratoscope 9y agoOne really charming bit: They make one color of pastel pencils each week to keep the colors from cross contaminating. Maria, who works on the pastel pencil line, does her nails to match the color they will be making and picks shirts to match too. There's a picture of her hands and that week's pastel extrusions in the article.
- ezequiel-garzon 9y agoDear native English speakers: Does the following excerpt make sense to you? “Packing graphite, which is the consistency of sand, ...” I would have expected “which has the consistency of sand”. Thanks!
- stevula 9y agoSounds fine to me but I can see why it would be confusing. In proper prose it would be as you have it or maybe "which is of the consistency of sand". You'll also hear people say things like "it's the same difficulty as ___" instead of "it has the same difficulty as ___".
- Stratoscope 9y agoEither of those sounds fine to this native English speaker. I would probably go with "is" like the author, but it's pretty much a toss-up.
- paublyrne 9y agoGood spot. I would prefer has. Thinking about it now, I would never use is in this context. I suspect it may be more common in American English.
- omgbananas 9y agoNative English speaker from America here, I would have said "has," but I can imagine others with bad grammatical habits saying "is" instead. For example, many people will "graduated college" instead of "graduated from college". Reading comprehension is abysmal as well. I actually read instructions to stuff, but that is culturally-demonized - that probably doesn't help. At least it makes it easier for the people that care to have a better chance at succeeding. When others lower their standards, it doesn't take much effort to rise to the top.
- yorwba 9y ago> For example, many people will "graduated college" instead of "graduated from college". Some people will even verbs from their sentences. But comprehension > grammatical "correctness" always. In time, grammar will adapt.
- saagarjha 9y ago> Ferrules — the metal bands that cinch around the bases of erasers — are loaded onto a conveyor and sent to a tipping machine. I always wondered what these were called.
- Broken_Hippo 9y agoJust to give you another use for the word: The metal bit that holds paintbrush bristles to the handle holds the same name.
- dboreham 9y agoUm, that's not "another use for the word" : it is in fact the exact same use as all the other examples. Perhaps you meant "another place where a ferrule is used".
- dingaling 9y agoIn French it is a bout ferré, literally a 'shod tip'. From the verb ferrer, to shoe a horse, from which common source English takes farrier.
- billfruit 9y agoOne more meaning the stub at the pointy end of an umbrella is also called the ferrule.
- Zhenya 9y agoAs are the little metal caps that are clamped onto the end of cables of a bicycle. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrule https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrule
- dekhn 9y agoI use ferrules at the end of jumper wires to make a stronger connection when I put the wire into a spring terminal.
- jihadjihad 9y agoThe ferrule is also the name for the joint between the tip and shaft of a pool cue.
- danmaz74 9y ago> Pastel extrusions, used for colored pencils, are laid by hand onto grooved wooden boards, where they will dry before being placed in pencil slats. It blows my mind that they do this manually... I wonder how often, if at all, they update their production line.
- lunchladydoris 9y agoFor anyone interested in rekindling a passion for pencils, I would highly recommend checking out the Erasable podcast [0]. A podcast about pencils sounds impossibly dull but somehow it works. [0]: http://www.erasable.us/ http://www.erasable.us/
- jakecopp 9y agoI couldn't help but think of the wonderful essay "I, Pencil" [1], and how no one person knows how to make a pencil. [1]: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html
- dekhn 9y agothat's a nicely written story but none of it is really true. You can make a straightforward pencil manually with a little effort. It's all documented, because this stuff was figured out and documented hundreds of years ago. Having a degree in chemistry or physics helps, but it's not necessary.
- Noumenon72 9y agoIs this true? When I Googled "how to make a pencil" the video started "Wrap a piece of paper around the lead..."
- dekhn 9y agoyes. just read the patents.
- jdietrich 9y ago>You can make a straightforward pencil manually with a little effort. Step 1: Find a graphite mine. Making anything without the benefit of the market is staggeringly difficult. Knitting a sweater is easy. Raising your own sheep, shearing your own wool, washing, picking, carding, roving and spinning your own yarn is immensely difficult.
- bluntfang 9y agostep 1: create the universe
- jasode 9y ago>You can make a straightforward pencil manually You're inadvertently moving the goal posts. A "straightforward pencil" isn't what that 1958 essay is about. It's talking about the modern manufactured pencils[1] commonly used in schools. It's very unlikely that a single person on Earth knows how to make such pencils from raw materials. The person who knows where to find graphite and how to mine for it will not be the same person who knows how to formulate the paint. Neither of them knows how to chop down raw trees and make small hexagon shaped tubes to hold the pencil lead. Then there's the steel or brass ring coupling the eraser to the the wood. There's also the chemistry and materials science to make the synthetic rubber for the eraser. No single person on the planet knows how to make that type of pencil. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=no+2+school+pencil&source=lnms&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=no+2+school+pencil&source=ln...
- jeffwass 9y agoMy daughter just quoted this Spike Milligan poem to me last night : “Said Hamlet to Ophelia, I'll draw a sketch of thee. What kind of pencil shall I use? 2B or not 2B?”
- b0rsuk 9y agoWhat will happen to pen plotters and other cool geekery once all pencils are gone ?!
- jhoechtl 9y agoIf you ever wondered how to sharpen a pencil? https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/how-to-sharpen-pencils/ https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/how-to-sharpen-pencils/
- kenbolton 9y agoThe author of the article and this book write and perform comedy together.
- Finbarr 9y agoTotally fascinating. Reminds me of this NYT piece about an artisanal pencil shop: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/fashion/a-pencil-shop-for-texting-the-old-fashioned-way.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/fashion/a-pencil-shop-...
- goldenkey 9y agoDamn, now I want that IBM pencil! https://i.imgur.com/BFUL4I6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/BFUL4I6.jpg
- kenbolton 9y agoToo funny, this article was written by Sam Anderson, the comedy partner of David Rees, author of How to Sharpen Pencils, http://www.artisanalpencilsharpening.com/ http://www.artisanalpencilsharpening.com/.
- owenversteeg 9y agoThose photos are absolutely gorgeous. If anyone's hoping for TLDR, the article is mostly incredible photos: go take a look.
- SubiculumCode 9y agoI bought 2 packs of their cedar pencils. Very nice quality pencil that don't disintergrate in your sharpener.
- jimnotgym 9y agoI am intrigued that they are made of cedar. I thought pencils were made of tulipwood which is poplar. Maybe just in Europe. I wonder what kind of cedar, guessing it's western red cedar?