Editing The Pen Addict 635/transcript (section)

== Shift from pens to pencils and personal usage preferences. ==

* But we had gotten into, I'd gotten myself into like a 90, 95% pen usage range when I'd prefer to be more like 70, 30. You know, I'm not going to pretend it's like 50, 50 between pen and pencil usage around here. But I wanted to use more. And I put in the effort to every day so far this month, I've chosen a pencil to be my primary writer for the day. Whether that's filling in, you know, my task list, to-do list, writing notes, doing a few different things like that. So there were a few favorites I've had so far. So I want to talk a little bit about wooden pencils in the beginning because that's kind of been my daily drivers here. And then you and I are going to get into my top 10 mechanical pencils list. And then you have a list as well.
* I did want to bring up the Tennessee Red, which I just reviewed on the blog, which is several years behind the launch of this pencil. So pencil nerds will know that, hey, they have pencil hype too, right? And then you get the hot new thing out there. And this was one of them back in 2020, the Tennessee Red. And it was kind of a limited edition. This was something Musgrave was doing, kind of revitalizing the Eastern Red Cedar, which was the wood slats they were using for this pencil. They had stopped using those back in the 70s, just reading up on their site. And this became a really popular pencil. It wasn't really my jam because the core was really soft. But like I've changed a little bit in my fountain pen usage to where I'm not just absolutely going to only use extra, extra fine nib fountain pens. I've kind of changed a little bit in what I enjoy the most. So with a fountain pen, I am getting closer to like a Japanese fine line as my stock line, maybe even medium sometimes, which, you know, for the European nibs, that's like fine at the most, mostly extra fine, sometimes fine. But I like the reason why I've kind of morphed into that is because I enjoy the look on the page a little bit better. I enjoy seeing the ink characteristics of a pen that I'm using or how the nib performs if I have a nib grind on a wider nib. So there's all kinds of different ways you can look at this stuff. And with the pencils, I was using very hard graphite cores. I preferred almost like a 2H, which is just a little bit into the hardness scale based on, you know, we can put a link. We can find a link. I'm sure it's a Wikipedia link of the pencil graphite hardness scale where you have like your HB in the center. HB hard, B being, but it's usually I say it's black, but it's because softness, like the darker. The Mohs scale?
* Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what it's called. But yeah, it's right in the middle is your HB, right? That's your number two pencils, the most common grades. And then it kind of goes out in two directions. It'll either get the hardness will either increase or the softness will increase.
* And I usually dabbled on the hardness side of the scale just because that's how I always wrote, you know, really small, really tiny. It works really well. But it turns out if you go a little bit over to the B side of the scale, you can get some line edges and some shape to your writing, which I enjoy. There's trade-offs between each, right? With the H side of the scale, the hardness. It's harder to read. The cores are not as dark. Over on the B side of the scale. You get the darkness, but you wear down the tip faster. So you have to sharpen more if you like a sharp point. So there's all kinds of balances here. But back to the Tennessee Red. This is definitely, they market it as an HB, which should be right in the middle. But this has been a, through my experience, an extremely soft pencil. Very much on the B side of the ledger, if not like all the way into 2B. But each company kind of does things a little bit different. And I don't know how universal these grades are, right? They vary between companies. What's one company's HB is another company's B is another company's H, right? It just depends. So Tennessee Red, this Eastern Cedar. This is a gorgeous pencil. Like that plays a role in what I choose to use for wooden pencils, right? We are spoiled, just like in the pen world, with choice. And using a beautiful pencil, it's easy to find something beautiful to use. So I just wanted to put that out there. I really liked it. This could not be my daily driver pencil. It's a little bit too soft for that, even though it says it's an HB.
* I use some 2B pencils that are like firmer, firmer than this. But it's just a beautiful pencil. I enjoy using it. I have tried to use, well, I think I've succeeded. Using a different pencil every day. Some of my favorites so far, again, I'm sticking with some of the B grades.
* I've had a Caran d'Ache 3B Eidlweiss that I've loved. I have a Tombow Mono, which the Tombow Mono 4B is the unfortunately named KM-KKS is the model that I love. And I don't understand the naming. Not only is it one of the most beautiful pencils I've ever used, it has one of my favorite cores ever. And it's all the way in the 4B range. But it doesn't wear down as quick as some firmer core pencils to me. I love that one. That one's a great one. Breaking out my pencils again, I found some silly pencils that people sent me. So I got some Agretsuko pencils. I don't know if you're familiar with the cartoon. The heavy metal karaokeing Red Panda, Retsuko, is a great Japanese character. So I got some Japanese character pencils. And I forgot I had those, right? So until I got out my pencil box. Yes, I have a pencil box. I was like, oh, there's my Retsuko pencils. And I've been using, I've probably used that one the most because it's silly. And like, it's something I shouldn't be using. It's like, oh, there's no way this, you know, this, this guy, this old guy is using these Retsuko pencils, but it's actually my favorite. So I've been enjoying those. And today I'm writing with probably, I'm not doing a wooden pencil ranking today. But if I were the Blackwing Eras, this model, which model is, I think it's just called the Eras. They have done some different ones around there. This is probably like a top three pencil I'm using today. It uses the Blackwing 602 core. And it's designed after one of their vintage, you know, like colors, like the painting on the barrel is a really, really dark graphite and they have a muted gold stripe and a red eraser and it's just killer. So design matters to me a lot on the pencils as much as, you know, the core, the core has to win out at the end of the day, which are actually we're writing with, but the design goes a long way for me to pick up a pencil.
* And this is the Blackwing Eras. Between the Eras and the 4B, that's definitely two of my top five wooden pencils. If not, if not in the top three, I don't know what's number one. We can maybe look at that later down the year. This, it wouldn't be as long a list as the mechanical pencils. I have, I'm a lot more opinionated on the mechanical pencils, which we're about to find out. But why does it include Eras?