The Right Tool for the Write Job

He brought out a yellow nickel tablet. He brought out a yellow Ticonderoga pencil. He opened the tablet. He licked the pencil.

Douglas licked the yellow Ticonderoga pencil whose name he dearly loved.

Like Douglas in Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, I have loved yellow Ticonderoga pencils, especially the Ticonderoga No. 2 Tri-Write, which is so comfortable in the hand.

For serious writers and animators, however, only one pencil will do--the pencil--the Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602. (Its motto: "Half the pressure, twice the speed.") Sadly, Faber-Castell USA ceased making the Blackwing in 1998 and urged customers to buy the Prismacolor Turquoise Drawing Pencil 4B instead. For professionals, the Turquoise simply won't do. Instead, people are still buying old Blackwings where they can find them, such as on eBay for about $33 a pencil.

Pencil bloggers, however, have found a new, promising pencil. In a pencil quality test, Ninth Wave Designs identified the California Republic Palomino HB and 2B as the winners.

Pencil Revolution (a pencil blog) also gives the Palomino pencil high ratings, as well as the KUM Automatic Long Point Sharpener produced by Palomino.

I've bought both the Palomino Graphite HB (with eraser . . . I make a lot of mistakes) and the long point sharpener, and I love them and recommend them without reservation. They are available online only from California Republic Stationers' eBay store (Pencil World Creativity Store).

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Sidebar: Blackwing 602s are so coveted that one fellow in Burbank--MrDailyBread--is conducting a treasure hunt for them. He bags up a pencil, hides it in the Burbank area, and then posts clues for treasure-hunters. You can read about the hunt on his blog.

You can read a Boston Globe article about the demise of the Blackwing and the fanatical devotion it attracts on Tech Observer.