Favorite Things

Bullet to bullet: the Midori brass pencil vs. the bulk, blank “umpire pencil”

/ Andy Welfle / 12 Comments

This winter — I tell you what. It’s really kicked my butt so far. Between a record-setting month for snowfall, and several days of -12° (or less) weather, I’m ready to leave Indiana behind.

Being stuck at home has given me ample time to work on a big writing project, however, and that writing project has given me an opportunity to test out a few new products for review!

three-pencil-comparison-2

Top to bottom: Midori Brass Bullet Pencil, bulk “blank” umpire bullet pencil, and antique Fort Wayne Johnston Stock Yards bullet pencil (not reviewed)

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Aaron Draplin is coming to speak in my town tomorrow

/ Andy Welfle / Leave a comment

Tomorrow is an exciting day for me — designer and Field Notes inventor Aaron Draplin is coming to Fort Wayne to speak about his “cosmic wit and wisdom on design”! This is his only tour stop in Indiana in 2013.

DDC vs FTW: A Night of Graphic Design Straight Talk with Aaron Draplin » 

A draft of the limited edition poster of Aaron Draplin for Kickstarter backers.

It all started as Kickstarter campaign, and quickly met its funding goal and eventually, more than doubled it. Fort Wayne, though not a big city (we’re the second-largest city in Indiana, with just under a quarter-million people) has a talented, tight knit graphic design community. In fact, two of my best friends who form the creative partnership pye,brown are the main sponsors of this event.

As a pledger, I’m getting a super-cool limited edition poster designed by a friend of mine Josh Tuck of Rustbelt Co (you may remember him from his review of Gridbooks), as well as a ticket to the event.

And what an event! According to the event page:

Let’s just say that Draplin is a colorful speaker whose passion for design and the work ethic of the American Midwest and its history shows though in abundance. Once you hear him speak, you will leave the premises fired up to create and make cool things.

I’m definitely going to bring some of my first-edition Field Notes cahiers to get signed, and hopefully — hopefully — there are some DDC branded bullet pencils that will be on sale with the other merch he’ll have.

Why do I think this? Following up my post about Pencil Revolution’s interview with Draplin about bullet pencils, I tweeted him to ask if he ever made them for his prodigious merchandise catalog. This tweet back from Aaron Draplin in September:

And then, as I was reading about XOXO, the big tech fest in Portland that just finished its second year, I found a photoset about it in the Flickr feed of Glenn Fleishman, owner of The Magazine. Draplin was there, and Glenn took a picture of the merch table he set up:

XOXO 2013 Marketplace

Wait, what’s that? There, in the mid-left of the photo:

Could those be DDC bullet pencils?

Could that be? Bullet pencils?

No. It’s too thick and blunt-ended. After scouring the Merch section of the website, I realized it’s a Toothpick Canister.

As you know, I’ve been kinda obsessed with bullet pencils for a while. I’m definitely going to snag some of these puppies if he has them.

In any case: Be jealous, internet, because I’m going to meet The Man tomorrow!

Great pencil discussion going on at Lifehacker

/ Andy Welfle / 1 Comment

Walter Glenn, a contributor at Lifehacker, posted a new discussion thread over there yesterday (I can’t believe I missed it until now!), called “Show Us Your Favorite Pencil“:

There are a few innocuous little things in the world on which people harbor disproportionately strong opinions. Maybe it’s your choice of operating system, the best paper notebook, or your favorite pen. Then again, maybe it’s your pencil—the feel of the barrel, the way it holds a point, or even the way the eraser doesn’t choke you when you get too carried away thinking about those beautiful words you’re going to write next. Whatever it is, snap a pic of your favorite pencil and share it with us below.

There were lots of mechanicals mentioned, of course, but wooden pencils had it’s day. And it wasn’t just all Blackwings and Ticonderogas, either — the Chinese Chung Hwa was mentioned:

Chung Hwa pencil

(I know I reviewed the Chung Hwa before, but it may have been lost on the Pencil Things blog before I started Woodclinched. I’ll try to find it and post it here.)

A day late and a dollar short (quite literally on both counts), I threw in my vote:

I love the Palomino Blackwings, too, but the best performance for the money is the Palomino Golden Bear, by the same manufacturer, California Cedar. They perform pretty solidly, slightly better than a Dixon Ticonderoga, I’d say, and they’re less than $3 per dozen. And they’re gorgeous — look at this blue with an orange eraser! They have an orange one, too. And they’re made in the USA! 

Here’s my post recently about the Golden Bears, now made in the US.

Go on over to Lifehacker and weigh in!

Show Us Your Favorite Pencil | Lifehacker.com

This article has forgotten more about the Trapper Keeper than I will ever know

/ Andy Welfle / 5 Comments

There’s a fascinating article in Mental Floss published last week with an exhaustive history of the Trapper Keeper. Because I’ve written about Yikes! pencils before, and I used Trapper Keepers around the same time as Yikes, this is definitely relevant to my interests.

Trapper Keeper

I definitely learned things from this; facts that make me feel dumb that I didn’t know it before. Like: did you know that a “Trapper” is Mead’s name for their pocket folder with vertical pockets rather than the horizontal pockets in most folders? Therefore, a Trapper Keeper is the binder that lets you keep all of your papers together.

Duh. I knew that all of my Trapper Keepers had folders with vertical pockets, but I had no recollection of them being called “Trappers”. Doesn’t this seem like something I should know?

If I would have seen this commercial, I would have known that:

Turns out, this commercial is older than I am. Which brings me to my second facepalm moment:

Trapper Keepers are way older than I thought:

Launched in 1978 by the Mead Corporation (which was acquired by ACCO Brands in 2012), Trapper Keeper notebooks are brightly colored three-ring binders that hold folders called Trappers and close with a flap. From the start, they were an enormous success: For several years after their nationwide release, Mead sold over $100 million of the folders and notebooks a year. To date, some 75 million Trapper Keepers have flown off store shelves.

That’s at least a full ten years before they ever entered my consciousness (Well, and a full five years before I was born, in 1983). I don’t recall trapper keeps ever looking like this:

The Trapper Keeper Prototype: one with the logo and one without. Photo by E. Bryant Crutchfield and from the original article. The Trapper Keeper Prototype: one with the logo and one without. Photo by E. Bryant Crutchfield and from the original article.

I remember the ones that looks like they were designed by Commander Mark from Imagination Station: like this or this or, famously, this one featured prominently in “Napoleon Dynamite”:

It's pretty much my favorite Trapper Keeper.

I had this exact Trapper Keeper.

Oh, and I had this one too:Red dots IN SPAAAAACE

You don’t know how thrilled I am to have so many things in common with Napoleon Dynamite.

I had a very close relationship with my Trapper Keeper. It was with me six hours a day, five days a week, and kept m life organized. Eventually, I moved onto other binder organizers that were more collegiate-looking and less youthful. Gone were the lasers and psychedelic 90s spacescapes, replaced by navy blue fabric.

If you, like me, had a Trapper Keeper, you should definitely check out the full article. It’s fascinating, and brings back so many memories.

The History of the Trapper Keeper | MentalFloss.com

Bullet pencils: Pocket-friendly utensils from a bygone era

/ Andy Welfle / 24 Comments

Agricultural bullet pencilsFor reasons I can’t explain, I usually only talk about half of my pencil collection on here. I talk about new products, mostly — pencils available to most everyone that is for sale now.

But I also have a lot of advertising and souvenir pencils. Probably ten cigar boxes worth. They’re not particularly known for being good quality pencils, but they appeal to me in their uniqueness. Many of them are decades old; and I can only imagine that there are not many left in the world.

One subset of that collection are several agricultural bullet pencils. A good friend of mine gave them to me a few years ago after her grandmother died and my friend was in charge of cleaning out her farmhouse in Illinois. There was a drawer full of these old pencils — given to her by salesmen from seed supplier, feed yards, stockyards, and more.

I love these things, but they're pretty old.

I love these things, but they’re pretty decrepit.

I treasure them, though I never use them, mostly because they’re so old. The erasers have petrified and often, the pencil barrel has run down to no more than a nub . And I don’t have dozens and dozens like Aaron Draplin, perhaps known best among this community as the designer of Field Notes. Pencil Revolution interviewed Draplin back in 2011 about this very subject. Draplin loves these little guys. And for good reason:

First off, it’s the compact quality. I love having a tight little drawing tool in the front pocket at all times, and I’m here to tell ya, these little sonofabitches have saved my butt many a time…on airplanes, in meetings, in a pinch, wherever. I always keep one in the front, left pocket of my 501s.
…
What I love about them the most, is how banal they were back in the day. Simple, cheap advertising tools given away at local businesses. Feed-n-seed joints, car lots, insurance agents, what have you. Just crappy little promo items that packed a real wallop. I’ve got a couple old salesman sample sets. Old and beat up, and a look into what it was like to have a guy sit down and say, “Here’s what we can do for your company.” So good.

(See his entire interview on Pencil Revolution, in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2)

They are indeed so good. One of my few issues with wooden pencils is that when they’re new, they don’t fit easily into a pocket — they’re too long! If I need to easily carry around a pencil in a shirt pocket or pants pocket, and I don’t have a pencil halfway through its life, I’ll turn to the Zebra #2 mechanical or even — gasp — a Fisher bullet pen (though I can’t find mine as of late! I think it fell into the depths of the couch).

From a utilitarian perspective, bullet pencils are great. They’re really no more than 4 or 5 inches long when sheathed, but they extend out to full pencil length when in writing mode.

The trouble is, I don’t think you can get them anymore. (Pencil Talk doesn’t think so. Neither does Field Notes.) A friend of mine who owns a company that makes promotional products says that she was looking for those a couple of years ago, and came up dry.

From JetPens.com. Click image to follow the link.

From JetPens.com. Click image to follow the link.

JetPens.com has something similar, the Midori Brass Bullet Pencil, but to me, it doesn’t count. It’s $21, and made of brass. This isn’t the vintage, plastic cheapie thing that is given away free. (On the other hand, though, the description says that the brass develops a patina after multiple uses, which is pretty cool. And you can buy replacement pencils and erasers to go with it)

If the promotional bullet pencil is just a relic of the past, so be it. While they’re far from the main course of my pencil collection, they’re a delicious, delightful appetizer. Whenever I see one, I’m thrilled to run across it. And if they are becoming more and more rare, I have all the more reason to treasure the few that I have.

I love these things, but they’re pretty old.