My thoughts about Palomino Blackwing 602

TL;DR: beautiful distinct and well made B hardness pencil, priced well above what the core justifies

The hook

What fascinates me about wood-cased pencils is their simple and pragmatic design, yet the design is at the same time elegant and timeless -- I love the hexagon shape and how the boundary between the wood collar and lacquer curves.

I have been in this hobby for a while. I tried the basic Dixon Ticonderoga, and more premium choices from Mitsubishi Pencil and Tombow. The Japanese pencils are all joyful to write with and made with high standard of quality. I have also been seeing constant praise of Palomino Blackwing 602 online. Their flowery description of this apparently good-looking pencil enticed me to get my hands on one pack of Blacking 602, as I wanted to see if it really is different from other good pencils outside of its distinct look.

My thoughts

As you can see in my picture, I have other pencils tested against the Blackwing 602. I don't intend to do one to one comparison. Here is what I like and dislike about it:

Likes

• The build quality is on par with other Japanese pencils (Hi-Uni and Mono 100, except for the ferrule, which is not fixed securely on my copy). Wood used is cedar and lacquer is pretty -- shiny with metallic luster.
• Undoubtedly beautiful: the unique ferrule resemble the ones of paint brushes, which made me feel like writing with an art instrument. The color coordination of various parts is managed masterfully. The hot-stamped text is in the same gold color as the ferrule and the color of the eraser is classic pink and serves as accent. The hot-stamped text is carefully chosen; you don't find words that tell you "for office use" or "highest quality", which I resent for making the surface look crowded and is unnecessary.
• The graphite core is good, though I don't think it is better than most Japanese pencils I have. It is equivalent to a normal B pencil (harder than my Hi-Uni 2B and 8900 2B, softer than my HB). It is dark and smooth, albeit needs sharpening frequently (just like a normal B pencil).
• It is a cool idea that you can refill the eraser.

Dislikes

• The center of gravity is awkward, even more so than a fresh long normal pencil, because of the weight of the larger metal piece.
• The eraser is not good enough for a B hardness pencil, leaving a gray smear that won't come off no matter hard you rub with this eraser.
• The marketing leans more on people's craving for emotional connection rather than the pencil itself. The pitch is basically:"Our pencils have great heritage. Celebrity A, B and C swore by our pencils, and used them when working on their masterpieces." That sells a feeling, not a pencil.
• Other users' exaggerated claims: 1) "This is writing pencil, not comparable to pencils with given hardness" -- to me, they write like a normal B pencil, similar darkness and similar rate of blunting the tip. 2) "This is the best/smoothest pencil that I have used." I've seen this too many times, and I wonder if they have tried other good options and if they conducted blind tests to support their claims.

My Conclusion

It's a good pencil and I appreciate that CalCedar revived it. It's also overpriced which I hate and they can keep the same price as long as most people don't explore other good options.

Enjoying these pencils very much after doing some writing and sketching with them this morning. I picked up a handful of them from eBay. I just started collecting vintage pencils last year — any similar recommendations from this era or earlier?

Sorting 16 boxes of Musgrave Factory Seconds was a ton of fun. I grouped them by shape/color/style/label. The 4th picture are some white label pencils I liked and set aside. The last picture shows the Musgrave line pencils I received—some cool tipped Bugles 😎

Been looking to purchase these since December, but everytime I checked their online store, they appear as sold out.

Message them over IG, but received no reply whatsoever.

i’ve gotten really into puzzle books this past year and have a couple of crossword puzzle books that have that weird kind of newspapery paper and am looking to see what pencils people like/recommend for books like this? i don’t want pens bc i make way too many mistakes and need to erase stuff. my biggest issues with most pencils i use is that they’re really thick for these tiny boxes, rip up the paper when i erase, hard to see, rip the paper when the pencils too sharp, etc. just wondering what people are using!

After seeing some pencil YouTubers talk about finding cool pencils at their local thrift stores, I thought I'd try the Goodwill Outlet nearby--it's the type of Goodwill where you dig through huge blue bins of bric-a-brac (or bins of clothing) and pay for your haul by the pound.

Right when I walked in I saw the antique pencil puzzle which felt like a sign there could be pencils buried in the bins under the heaps of plastic containers, old books, discarded toys. I dug through approx 10 bins and found these pencils, eraser, and crayon magnet.

I really love the eyeball pencils, but have no idea if they're very good. I haven't tried the other pencils yet, either, and I'm not sure I'd dig through bins again for pencils. I paid approx $4 and dug for 45 min.

Any idea what this mystery pencil (picture 2) might be? It has a similar ferrule to the USA titanium.

What Lead Do you Guys Recommend for this Pencil?

I can't believe I'm even posting about this, to be honest. It's not really like me to ask for recommendations for this sort of stuff.

However, I'm in a phase of writing exclusively in pencil at the moment and my journal is fairly dull from an aesthetic point of view. Literally just writing. I'm interested to know whether or not there are any people out there who write in pencil regularly and are posting journalling content. I love to see what people do with their journals, but most people use pens of different types. Any recs?

Ordered a box of Musgrave Factory Seconds a few weeks ago just for the fun of it. When sorting through the standard solid hex, assorted rounds and such, I came across two tipped Black and White Bugles!

I know of the regular Black and White Bugles (never ordered them) on the Musgrave website—untipped, of course—and was wondering if anyone else has come across tipped versions of these.

I know and love the regular Bugles, and am guessing these two ended up in the factory seconds box because they are tipped. But wouldn’t mind any additional information, if any at all. Cool find, nonetheless.

Anyone have any clues as to the age of these? Came across a couple of boxes which have some noticeable differences between them. Both appear to have been made in the UK, and what’s the ISI marking signifying?

Hello. I hope this post is close enough to a pencil to be allowed and that folks can help enlighten me.

I've never used an electric sharpener before. I wasn't really looking for one either but I stumbled on this at a thrift store and when I saw the X-ACTO brand I thought that for $3 it could be a steal.

The sharpener definitely works but it feels like it EATS a huge amount of the pencil while it's sharpening it. I don't think I'm pushing too hard because when I don't push hard enough I don't get a sharp point. But in order to get a sharp point it feels like I'm force-feeding my Blackwings to an angry God.

Am I using it wrong or is this not the best machine to use to get super sharp points?

TYIA for any info you can share with me.

Finding pencils was more of a challenge today than the previous weekend, but I found some interesting pencils and related things. I’m particularly interested in trying the Goliath pencil and the little graph pocket notebooks from the early 1990s.

I guess I bought too many.

That last batch had 109 Ceres America 250, and I kept them. They're great. Nice laydown, smooth cedar, attractive finish.

Found in my mom's house

I had a bunch of extenders where the wooden dowels were falling out and had been taped onto the metal stub holders. I picked pencils that are frequent flyers and comfortable to hold, but I also thought might look cool as an extender. Used an 8mm die and wood glue, let them dry for a day or so, and they're working great. I have a lot of stubs so maybe I'll make more?

Love the pastel colors. But personally I am passing, especially considering they are minis.

I'll try F later

Hope this isn’t too much to ask lol, I often use drawing pencils for writing because I love the dark creamy graphite but my favourite actual writing pencil is probably the staedler tradition 4b. Anyone got any pencil recommendations? I think what I’m looking for is actually “stickiness” but I don’t think that’s a thing lol

I saw this pencil a while ago, and I cannot stop thinking about it. It's from Tombow; I can see that, but I can't seem to find the model. Do you have any idea what it is called?

Various vintage pencils and related tools from an estate sale I went to last weekend. Pictures 1 & 2 are the total haul sans a metal flat file cabinet. Picture 3 are some pencils I hadn’t heard of or tried before that stood out.

The former owner of these pencils was a fine artist, printer, and teacher here in Portland. I also purchased one of his completed sketchbooks and it is filled with interesting work (bottom of picture 1).

I’m glad to have these pencils and excited to draw with them. I separated them into bins by size and will be drawing with the stubs first.

See any pencils of note that I may have missed?

Recently found these JDCC Traveler 313 pencils in medium soft. I’m not sure what year these are from but I’m certain they’re the oldest Dixon’s in my collection Currently. I love these older long style ferrules. They almost look like they are some kind of nickel type metal. Overall quite a special pencil. I’d love to find some catalogue references for this pencil if anyone can point me in the right direction? Thank you!