Editing The Pen Addict 9/transcript (section)

== Fountain Pens ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' But, you know, one of my weak areas, like we've talked about fountain pens and fountain pen ink specifically, that, you know, I don't have a lot of experience with. Another area that is really popular that I do not have a lot of experience with is your traditional woodcase pencils. And, you know, your Ticonderogas or, you know, whatever you used growing up in school. Your number, you know, go to take your test, you need your number two pencil. Well, it turns out the people that are into woodcase pencils are as fanatical about that product as I am about certain pens. You know, and I've only had experience with a few. The one of them is the new remake of the Blackwing 602, which is a famous pencil going back decades and decades that went out of production. I won't profess to have all the dates right, but it went out of production. I want to say in the 90s, I could be wrong. And then a company called Cal Cedars came by and picked up that product and is now remaking them. I think the formula is a little bit different. The looks are a little bit different. But it's tried to keep this – it's tried to get it as close as possible to the original Blackwing 602 from Eberhard Faber. It was such a beloved pen that people are fanatical about it and, you know, you can look up – I read a blog called Blackwing Pages. And the guy that runs that blog, you think I'm nuts about pens? He is over the top about the Blackwing, sometimes a little too much so in his theories. But most of the time he's right on point. But there's a love for this pencil and the new Blackwing 602, which is the only thing that I've tried. I've never tried a woodcase pencil that has been that nice. It is – it's weird in a good way.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' A lot of woodcase pencils, when you write with them, you feel – you can feel the graphite, right? When you write, it's like almost – you can feel like the grit. This thing is so smooth. It's ridiculous. I don't even know how to describe it. It's like butter going across the page. It is strange in a good way. So that's just something I wanted to throw out there. I know there's a lot of Blackwing fans. And I think if you – I haven't looked on eBay in a while, but there's still some original Blackwing 602 pencils floating around. They go for a lot of money.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So the original maker was Iberha Faber. Right. And who makes them now?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Cal Cedars. And they're branded as the Palomino Blackwing and the Palomino Blackwing 602.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, Palomino comes first.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's the Cal Cedars brand.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, I can see that now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So there's some visual differences. I think there's some formulatic differences in the lead. But I think they tried to get it as close as possible to the original, and I certainly can't speak on that. I've never used an original. But I will say that I've never used a woodcase pencil like the 602. It is way different than anything I've ever used and quite impressive.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The eraser is very interesting looking.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The design is great. The functionality, in my opinion, is poor. When I reviewed the pencil, that was the one knock I had on it. I love the looks of it. It does not erase very well. I clean that up for our sponsors. Speaking of which, you want to get into our second one? Because I think that's about all the pencil talk I wanted to cover. I just want to kind of throw some things out there because I've been asked from time to time. And those are kind of my go-to pencils, the ones I keep around and keep handy. Cool.