Pencil Things

Search for "fantastic eraser" ends with Maped "Zenoa."

I once had this really fantastic eraser. It worked really well until someone stole it!!! I looked at a ton of places, but couldn't find it anywhere! I want to buy a replacement. Think you can help? It was a white round eraser completely inside a round plastic casing that had a sliding cover to protect the eraser from getting dirty. It was made by the Mapped company. If you find anyplace that sells it, could you tell me the place name or website? Thank you so much, I'm desperate!!!!

----- Mr. Pencil: The eraser you are referring to is the Maped "Zenoa". We have them in stock at Pencil Things, but haven't yet added them to our Web store at PencilThings.com. I'll ask the Webmaster to add them on Friuday, October 25th. The packaging says "New Formula".

_______________
Can you help further answer this question? If so, please leave your comment here.

Please send your question for Mr. Pencil to support@pencilthings.com. Please use "Ask Mr. Pencil" as your subject.

A thin pencil - Bridge, Stenographer, Notebook

I am looking for a thin pencil...its diameter is smaller than regular pencils.  It still has an eraser and you sharpen it, but it's a bit thinner in diameter. My teacher over 15 years ago had a bunch of them and I have not been able to find them since. They were multi colored, though that doesn't matter to me at all. I just want to find a thinner pencil. Help me please!

----- Mr. Pencil: You are referring to what are called “bridge pencils”, after the card game. People sometimes call them “notebook pencils” and, when they are sharpened at both ends, stenographer pencils. They are considerably thinner than the usual pencil, have erasers, and the barrels come in several different color lacquers. The leads are #2 HB (medium soft). They sharpen with a normal hand-held sharpener. We stock them at PencilThings.com.

----- Mr. Pencil: Update. We found that our supply of bridge and other small diameter pencils is vdery low -- too low to make available online. So, we ordered an adequate supply and will have them available online by late November.

_______________
Can you help further answer this question? If so, please leave your comment here.

Please send your question for Mr. Pencil to support@pencilthings.com. Please use "Ask Mr. Pencil" as your subject.

Pencil sharpener to use with a Caran d'Ache 3mm Fixpencil.

Jeb W., a Canadian student draftsman asks "What pencil sharpener will work well with my Caran d'Ache 3mm Fixpencil?"

..... Mr. Pencil: The Swiss-made Gedess sharpener works very well. It permits one to insert the tip of the pencil into the sharpener with about 1/5" of color lead or 2/5" inch of graphite lead exposed for sharpening.
_______________
Can you help further answer this question? If so, please leave your comment here.

Please send your question for Mr. Pencil to support@pencilthings.com. Please use "Ask Mr. Pencil" as your subject.

The great eraser race

I love our readers. The commenters we get from the pencil community are friendly, opinionated, and intelligent. And I'm not saying that just to butter them up -- since I've joined the Pencil Things blog, I've met other people who genuinely care about office supplies. I thought I was a freak. It's nice to know there are others like me out there.

One regular commenter and scribomechanica freak out there, Barrel of a Pencil, dropped me an email the other day. He said he ran across a vinyl eraser at a Dollar Tree in Lakewood, NY. It was sold in a blister pack of 8 for $1. Although it is comically generic, it erasers like a champ. (That's right, I used "eraser" as a verb. Anyone gonna challenge me on that?)

He wrote me this:

I post comments under the nom de pencil Barrel Of A Pencil.  If possible I would like to send you one of the little generic  white vinyl erasers I wrote about in my comment posted to Pencil Thing's ruminations on the timeless question Why The Pencil. (Check out the post here. -AW)  Ideally, I  would like to see you review this little gem either  on its own  merits or in competition with the usual name brand  suspects  (Staedtler, Pentel, Faber-Castell, etc.). I think its a  whiz-bang  of an eraser and a steal at 12 1/2 cents (8 for a  dollar).

Just so everyone knows, I usually prefer my eraser to be on the end of the pencil. It's easier to use, and I think the extra weight the eraser and the ferrule adds to the pencil helps me balance it. However, sometimes I just have to use my ferrule-less Palomino. That's when I want to keep an eraser by my side.

When I received Barrel's donation to The Cause in the mail, I did a little gleeful dance. Once I settled down, I opened it, and there was this somewhat comically generic little eraser wrapped in plastic cellophane. It said on it, "Erasers Extra Soft & Clean" and then, just in case we had no idea what to do with it, "Home • Office • School."

Whew! Now I have some direction...

I opened the cellophane, and was pleased by how soft it really was. It was sort of squishy, a little like those stress balls everyone has but never seems to use.

For the review, I pitted it against a Staedtler Mars plastic eraser (95 cents, Product Page), and just to shake things up a bit, an old purple Dixon rubber eraser I found at the bottom of my desk drawer (3 for $1.00 almost anywhere) just for contrast.

Please keep in mind that this is not a test of different eraser types — vinyl vs. rubber vs. mouldable, etc. That's for another review. For the purposes of this post, I tried to keep my subject narrowed to these particular erasers.

Both the Brand X and  the Staedtler Mars came in a cardboard sleeve, which doesn't really serve any purpose I can gather except to keep the rest of the unit from getting dirty. It's kind of like the little sleeve they put on ice cream cones. Eventually, you have to take it off when you start to use it up. In the meantime, they do make the erasers look nicer, don't they?

My test was conducted as follows (see picture below): I wrote on a piece of notebook paper in heavy HB graphite marking, "This is a test.". Then I erased it with each eraser, drawing the unit over the words exactly five times. I tried to take care to use the same amount of pressure for each. Take a look (and please excuse my crappy lettering and my equally crappy camera):

For 13 cents, I have to tell you and Barrel of a Pencil that the Brand X eraser worked like a charm. He definitely got his money worth. I usually gravitate toward plastic erasers because, unlike rubber erasers which get debris all over the page, plastic/vinyl erasers (which are both the same, aren't they?) just leave one little scrap, or roll, which can be picked off and thrown away. It was a smooth glide across the paper, and perhaps my only objection is that it is too soft. It did leave a bit of a mark left over, but after another couple swipes across the words (done after I took the picture), they were completely gone.

If price is no object, though the Staedtler 95-cent eraser was the best. Check out the fact that there is almost no mark left over. It was just as smooth as the Brand X, and it was firmer. I wasn't afraid the eraser would crumble off onto the paper.

The Dixon, as I expected, wasn't great. I can still almost read "This is a test" left over on the page. To be fair, much of this is due to the fact that the eraser is probably a couple years old, and dirty. I only put it in the test to make a comparison to most of the erasers out there.

To be fair to the Brand X pencil, the Mars is a good one-and-a-half times longer. Even if I were able to buy it smaller,  the eraser-to-price ratio would make it about 63 cents, nearly five times the price of the Brand X.

In a nutshell: If money is no problem, and/or there are no Dollar Trees in your area, get a Staedtler or another quality name-brand. However, pound for pound, Barrel of a Pencil's little find is worth it. You're sacrificing a bit of quality, but it erasers very cleanly, and you get all the benefits of a vinyl eraser -- no debris!

A note to our readers: Anyone recognize that Brand X eraser? Do you have any manufacturer contact info?

Thanks, Barrel of a Pencil! Anyone have any finds they want to pit against the name brands? Let me know!

-Andy Welfle

Ask Mr. Pencil

Ask Mr. Pencil to answer your specific questions.

Every day we get many specific questions about pencils, sharpeners, leads and other pencil things. It's time to share our research and answers with all who may be interested.

Here's the place for you to ask a specific question whose answer may be of broad interest. Many questions do require research, so expect an answer several days after you post your query.

Please send your questions to support@pencilthings.com. Please use as your subject line "Ask Mr. Pencil".

Customer Comments & Feedback

Each week we folks at PencilThings.com get lots of comments via email, and a few by mail (really! - and oftentimes written in pencil . . .). We like to recieve them. The comments have always been polite. Some are amusing, some are touching and many are informative. Even when critical, they have been written in a helpful tone. You just wouldn't believe how people are rooting for PencilThings! Many persons have asked to leave a public comment about our service, selection, prices, shipping policy, etc. Our eCommerce system at our primary Web site does not permit "freelance" comments, so we're initiating that capability right here. Oh yes, and if you want to write about something that just doesn't fit one of our other BLOG categories, do it here. We'll find a proper home for it!
We look forward to reading your thoughts.
Don Bell  |  Proprietor, PencilThings.com.

The Plight of the Pencil

Shannon South of the Dallas Morning News wrote a great editorial last Sunday about the pencil. Here's an excerpt:

Don't touch my pencil.

I mean it.

You can cut me off on the highway, and I won't flinch. You can go through the "Cash only" checkout line holding a checkbook in your hand, with nary a complaint from me. You can disparage my mama's intellect, physical appearance or army boots, and I'll just ignore you.

But if you mess with my 100 percent premium cedar pencil with a premium eraser – or any other version of wood and carbon fashioned into a writing tool – you may discover that tampering with elements that have born witness to historical genius carries consequences.

If you haven't done so in a while, hold a pencil. Grip it between your fingers and feel the pulse in your fingertip mingle with the wood, graphite and clay. Inhale the scent of cedar.

Make some marks on a piece of paper; listen to the soft scratching sound. This is the same sound that van Gogh heard while he sketched.

Henry David Thoreau knew the importance of that quiet harmony. At one point, Henry, who was raised in his family's pencil-making business, embarked on a search for a pencil that would make his words cling to the page with just the right value and hue in its line. He invented a grinding mill for his own mixture of clay and graphite, producing a superior pencil that made a softer and darker mark.

Walt Whitman, O. Henry, Thomas Wolfe, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway – they all listened to that same elemental whisper as their stories first drew breath.

Link. (Thanks, Notebookism!)

-Andy Welfle

Why the pencil?

To write is to put clues about your mind, heart, and soul on paper or similar medium, to share yourself with the present and future through the unique combination of words and handwriting.

The act of writing is a sensual experience; the smoothness of the pen or pencil's glide across the page and the appearance of letters that form words that form sentences can be intensely satisfying, while any scratchiness of graphite, point, or nib offends the senses.

Writing is a form of magic that connects our brains and hands in a way that typing cannot equal. When we type, at least part of our brain is unconsciously distracted by the mechanics of the action. "Where's the backspace key?" "How do I get an umlaut?" "How do I magnify the page view?" Using the combination of hardware and software disrupts the flow of thoughts in a way that a pencil doesn't. It may need sharpened once in a while, but we can rotate it to obtain the best point without giving it a thought.

There is also the question of where to write. You can take a notebook computer almost anywhere if you don't mind carrying the weight, straining to see the screen in the glare of daylight, wondering how long the battery will last, and worrying that it may rain. It's easier—and lighter—to pack a pencil, eraser, sharpener, and small notebook. (You can even find a waterproof version if you don't want to be deterred by the rain.) Whether you find your intellectual and creative inspiration at a library, cafe, park, forest glen, or beach, the pencil is always ready to channel your thoughts, ideas, and feelings.

Like the computer with its "Delete" key, the pencil is forgiving. A good pencil writes darkly without smudging, and a good eraser allows you to tweak your words as much as you like without making a mess. When your pencil point no longer suits you, you can sharpen it to your own personal taste.

Just as you can choose "skins" for your computer applications to customize their look and feel, you can choose pencils whose appearance appeals to your taste and makes a statement about you. They can be round, hexagonal, or triangular, or flat in the case of carpenter pencils. They can be thin, regular, or large, especially for children. Pencils can come in virtually any color or pattern conceivable, including natural wood. Some are adorned with cartoon characters, while others sport animal patterns—striped like snakes, spotted like leopards, or dotted with the "eyes" of a peacock's tail. Others are painted a signature color, such as Rhodia orange, while some, like the Faber-Castell Grip 2001, are metallic. There is, of course, always yellow, the established standard if you don't want to stand out in the crowd.

The wood, eraser, and ferrule offer you other opportunities to show off your preferences and personality. The unusual black wood of the Rhodia and Ticonderoga Noir are sure to attract attention, while the distinctive painted brass ferrule of the Mongol indicates simple elegance. Erasers can sport interesting colors as well. The Rhodia and Ticonderoga Noir feature black erasers, while the Helix Oxford and Musgrave Natural are topped with white. Of course, many art and European pencils dispense with the ferrule and eraser, an option you may prefer for its clean lines and style.

The Faber-Castell Grip 2001 comes with its own grip in the form of raised dots along the sides of the triangular barrel. For other pencils, you can go without a grip, or you can choose one that suits your fingers—triangular, round, edged, or ergonomic like the Stetro. Some are hard and solid, while others are a soft gel. Some grips even double as an eraser.

Erasers come in a variety of sizes, shapes, materials, and colors. Those designed for children (and the young at heart) tend to be playfully colored and/or patterned, for example, Papermate's Expressions line, while pink and white seem to be the standard for adults. Materials include pumice, vinyl, and plastic, among others. Practical shapes include rectangles, squares, and triangles, but there are novelty erasers that emulate everything from food to sea life. Some are designed to be collected as much as used. Yikes, a line of pencils and erasers designed in the 1990s for schoolchildren, is remembered nostalgically by young adults for their cool appearance that separated them from ordinary pencils and erasers. Some teachers even banned Yikes as a classroom distraction!

For the writer or artist, society's observers of life as it happens, nothing compares to capturing the moment with jotted notes or a quick sketch. Whether for writing or drawing, completing a crossword or sudoku puzzle, or marking up papers or carpenter's wood, the pencil is not only a useful tool, but a statement about who you are and your tastes. If you see someone on the bus working the New York Times crossword with a generic office supply store pencil, you can guess that this is a utilitarian person willing to use what comes to hand. If, however, you spot someone wielding a Palomino, Tombow, or Faber-Castell, then you've seen an individual willing to search for a quality tool of the trade, the low-tech equivalent of the best, fastest computer processor.

Jeep lovers have the "Jeep wave," given to anyone passing by in a Jeep as an acknowledgment of camaraderie and shared interest. Perhaps pencil aficionados need a nonthreatening equivalent when we see someone who takes pencils as seriously as we do. What might that be?