pencils | CW Hawes

My Favorite Pencils

I love pencils. Pencils with soft, creamy leads. The kind that flow across the paper as though they were ink: 3B to 6B work best for me.

It’s a bit difficult to find such in the sea of No. 2 (HB) pencils.

Why did the HB pencil become the standard? I have no idea. It’s a hard lead and leaves a faint, light line; unless you press the heck out of it. And who wants to do that? Tendonitis and carpel tunnel, you know.

So if one doesn’t use the old No. 2, what does one use? Good question, that. And I have a few answers.

Woodcased Pencils

The woodcased pencil dates back to the middle of the 1500s. But the pencil as we know it today was simultaneously invented in the 1790s by Joseph Hardtmuth in Austria and Nicolas-Jacques Conté in France.

There are dozens of pencil brands available, but only two are made in the USA. The companies are General Pencil Company and Musgrave Pencil Company.

Both companies make excellent pencils that are very easy on the wallet and whose quality matches or surpasses most of the foreign competition. They are the pencils I use almost exclusively.

Of the two companies, I prefer the pencils from Musgrave because I find their lead has a softer and creamier feel to it. It flows onto the paper like ink.

The 600 News and the Test Scoring 100 are my favorite Musgrave pencils. The lead in those two is soft and dark. Easy on the hands. No writer’s cramp. And I find them to be superior to the newly reintroduced and highly talked about Blackwing pencils, which are Japanese made. And run $2.50 per pencil compared to the 600 News at $1.17 and the Test Scoring at 85¢.

You can buy Musgrave pencils direct from the company: https://musgravepencil.com

Mechanical Pencils

I’m a big fan of mechanical pencils. They are very economical. Much more so than woodcased pencils. And their length never changes, so the feel is consistent in the hand. Plus, the pencil will last several lifetimes when given reasonable care. And the lead sticks are dirt cheap.

My go to pencils are a vintage Sheaffer and a vintage Mabie Todd “Fyne Poynt”.

They use .046 inch/1.1mm leads. The same size found in woodcased pencils.

Both pencils twist to push the lead forward. To load the pencil, simply retract the pusher a bit, insert the stick of lead, then retract all the way.

The Sheaffer and Mabie Todd are my favorites out of the small collection I have. The Sheaffer has a beige-yellow base with red, gray, and black swirls; a black end cap; and silver-colored clip and front cone. The Mabie Todd is black, with gold-colored clip, mid-ring, and front cone. Both are very stunning pencils.

Occasionally I’ll use a lead holder. My interest in them goes back to high school drafting class.

To load a lead holder, you press a button at the back of the pencil body which extends the “claw” from the front. You then insert the lead and let go of the button. The “claw” holds the lead in place.

What’s especially nice about lead holders is that they are about the same length as a new woodcased pencil — and they never get shorter!

The Joy of Pencils

Pencils are a cheap alternative to pens. They produce a fairly consistent line, won’t skip or blob on the paper, won’t dry up, will write at any angle, will always start (I hate when a pen won’t write), and they don’t leak (making them great to use on airplanes, and safe to put in your shirt pocket).

I love pencils and find that I reach for them more often than a pen these days.

Find yourself a good vintage mechanical pencil on eBay and you’ll have a companion for life.

Or visit the Musgrave website and pick up the best woodcase pencils available today.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

CW Hawes is a playwright; award-winning poet; and a fictioneer, with two bestselling novels. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a cup of tea. Thanks! PayPal.me/CWHawes

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This Guy

This week, I’m honored to be the guest on Lisette Brodey’s Writers’ Chateau. If you don’t know Lisette, she is a fellow multi-genre author. She writes Literary Fiction, RomCom, and YA.

Head on over to the Chateau and while there explore what Lisette has to offer in the way of fine reading on her site. She’s a lovely person and well worth getting to know!

I met her on Twitter through one of my favorite writers, Richard Schwindt.

Since you’ll learn quite a bit about me in the interview with Lisette, I thought I’d share a couple things about me that didn’t make it into the interview. A couple things I’m rather passionate about.

I love writing instruments. All manner of pencils: woodcased, mechanical, and lead holders. I also love all manner of pens (except ballpoints/biros): dip pens, fountain pens, rollerballs, and gel pens.

I tend to accumulate writing instruments as Midas did gold. I don’t say “collect”, because that implies some thought to the process. I don’t have a collection, per se. It is an accumulation of items that please the eye or that I like using.

Favorite woodcased pencils include those made by the General Pencil Company, because the are very good quality and made right here in the USA. I also like the pencils made by Staedtler. They’re from Germany and also very good quality.

My favorite rollerball is the Pilot Precise V5, and my favorite gel pen is the Pilot G-2. Although Pentel’s Slicci is also very nice.

My other great passion is tea. Ever since I can remember I’ve drunk tea. I have my paternal grandmother to thank for that. She also gave me my love for classical music. Which is my third great passion. The joys of drinking tea and listening to classical music have enriched my life beyond measure.

I mostly drink black tea, although I occasionally have green tea in the afternoons.

Growing up, the tea was Lipton, with Bigelow’s Constant Comment on Sundays or special occasions.

These days, I still buy Lipton, mostly for nostalgia, but loose rather than tea bags. Although my tea palate has expanded to specialty teas since those early days of my childhood.

My favorite way to make tea is the two pot method, because I think you get the best flavor that way. The loose tea is steeped in one pot, and then decanted into the second pot for serving.

Once again, I invite you to take a look at my interview on Lisette Brodey’s Writers’ Chateau.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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O Wondrous Machine!

I’ve written of my love for the woodcased pencil and the mechanical pencil. When it comes to writing instruments, for me, these are great loves indeed. But an even greater love is that which I have for the Wondrous Machine, the term Henry Purcell used for the king of instruments, the organ, is the one I use for the king of writing instruments: the fountain pen.

The fountain pen, the Wondrous Machine, was the 19th century’s attempt to make the steel dip pen an easily portable tool.

In the 19th century and earlier, if you wanted to take your pen along on a trip, you didn’t just shove it in your pocket. You packed a traveling writing desk with ink, paper, quills and pen knife, or steel pen and holders. The box was not a small affair either. A Google search gave me two boxes 14x10x5 inches, or 35x25x12 cm. It’s no wonder Anthony Trollope used a pencil when taking the train to work.

And just imagine trying to write with the box on your lap (yes, the first lap desk) and an open bottle of ink. Speaking of disasters waiting to happen!

The history of the reservoir pen goes all the way back to the 10th century. However, none of the early attempts to create a reservoir pen were overly successful due to the messy process of filling the pen, clogs due to sediment containing corrosive inks, and leaking.

In the 1850s, the first fountain pens appeared which had iridium-tipped gold nibs (for durability) and hard rubber bodies (for ease of manufacture). The first free-flowing inks also appeared in the 1850s. By the 1880s, fountain pens were being massed produced. However, they were still very prone to leak and had to be filled with an eyedropper. An often messy instrument with which to try to write.

By 1908, the leakage problem was solved by using a screw-on cap with an inner cap that sealed around the nib. The self-filling pen appeared around 1900. The most popular was Conklin’s crescent-filler (beautiful pens) until W.A. Sheaffer patented the lever-filling mechanism in 1912.

From the 1920s through the 1950s, the fountain pen was king. But we humans are never satisfied. Even the self-filling fountain pen with the safety cap proved to be occasionally messy and would sometimes leak. Then in the 1950s the first viable ballpoint pens were introduced and in the next decade the fountain pen was finally dethroned as king of writing instruments and in the 1970s relegated to a very distant second place.

So why write with something that could be considered as obsolete technology? That is a very good question. I write with a fountain pen for these reasons:

A fountain pen works best using a light grip and with light pressure on the nib. Capillary action transfers the ink from the nib point to the paper. A ballpoint pen requires pressure to get the ball rolling, so to speak.
Fountain pen ink has superior writing qualities to the petroleum-based paste used in ballpoint pens. Fountain pen ink helps make the entire writing experience a smooth one.
The variety of ink colors strains the imagination compared to what is available in ballpoints.
I have much less occurrence of tendonitis using a fountain pen than I have using a ballpoint, or even a pencil for that matter.

I prefer vintage fountain pens because by and large their nibs are superior to those on modern pens. My favorite pen is a 90 year old Conklin crescent-filler. The nib is butter smooth and has a slight spring to it which gives an eye-pleasing line variation.

I encourage you to give a fountain pen a try. If you are interested in doing so, check out the Fountain Pen Network. You may also write to me via the comment or contact forms.

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