A regular request since the blog started has been for sources of all-black pencils with black varnish and black dyed wood. I’m not sure why they’re so popular, but I do believe that someone taking the time to write often represents a “tip of the iceberg” phenomenon. It might be the pure aesthetics – or maybe there are circumstances that require “low-profile” woodcase pencils.
Here are five possible choices:
Faber-Castell Design pencil. It looks like the Grip 2001, but the varnish goes over the grip dots. We previously looked at the pencil here. It is triangular with a finished cap.
The Nava pencil. Round, they are a very attractive pencil. We took a look at them in the blog’s early days. They also come in anthracite, silver, and white.
The Dong-A Black Wood. Unfortunately only available in Korea. Seen here.
The Biella Bundesordner. This is a pencil that comes with Canteo notebooks, but can also be purchased separately. It has a white vinyl eraser and silver ferrule.
The Graf von Faber-Castell No. 5 pencil – a Perfect Pencil refill. A very classy pencil that features an unscrewable platinum-plate cap housing a replaceable eraser. It is round and oversized with a ribbed pattern.
The Kirin Black Pal is a pencil that I wish was in this list – I just ordered some from pencils.jp, the new English language site from our friends at Bundoki. I’m sure that news of this site will delight some!
Overall, this is a really nice group of pencils. Probably 90% or more of modern quality pencils are hexagonal – yet this group is dominated by round and triangular shapes. The ones that can be found in North America or Europe are also on the more expensive side and harder to find.
As writers, all seem high quality. The Bundesordner has the softest lead, followed by the Nava. The Faber-Castell Design is the hardest, with the other two pencils falling somehere in between.
The dying of the wood has some effect, yet the results hard to quantify. In the Carl DE-100 sharpener, there were no sharpening problems with any of the pencils.
Do you like or use these pencils? Black dyed wood is of course not limited to all-black pencils:
Thanks for the pictures and the link, great. Does anybody know what type of wood is used in these type of pencils? And how is the process to dye them? Is it chemical or natural dye? Maybe could answer Mr. Woodchuck thank you for share your Information.
The discount/novelty section of the few Borders bookstores I often visit always have packages of 4 or 5 such all-black pencils for, yes, a discount price. I’m not particularly taken by them, but I could pick up a pack to send your way for a review if you are interested. My suspicion is they would act as a low end on the quality scale, but that’s useful for a ranged comparison.
I just received some Kirin pencils and they are quite nice, and seem physically lighter than most despite having a ferrule and eraser. The other all-black that I’ve tried is the all-black perfect pencil (the one with the plastic extender, also in black). They seem no different than those sold with the UFO version of the same, but they have a curiously silky finish to them. I’d really like to get some of the silver and black refills for the perfect pencil, but it seems you can only get them when you buy the whole package (which is available in only a few select places). I really like the black design pencil, but I find that the lead is just too light…the same with the current black design pencil.
On an unrelated note: do you think someday you might post a series of pictures showing us the extent of your collection?
Futural, good questions all. Faber-Castell trumpets their environmental credentials. I wonder what they would say?
CasualLead, thank you, if this were a full review, I’d welcome more examples, but the post is more just a quick look at a few representatives of the genre.
Sean, thanks for sharing those observations. You’ve reminded me that there is apparently also a lower-cost perfect pencil out there that I haven’t yet seen.
Pictures of my collection? If I had a collection that might be possible. It is more like an unwieldy accumulation at the moment.
“Biella Bundesordner”? What a weird name! Where can it be purchased?
Regarding pencils.jp: Wow! :-)
The name on the pencil is bilingual, and probably refers to the larger product line – I mentioned only the German name for the sake of brevity. In French, it is the Biella “Collection Classeur fédéral”.
It can be ordered from Papeterie Nota Bene in Canada, and probably other places. But that shop doesn’t offer Toblerone with their order. :-)
Thanks for the alert re pencils.jp
Thanks for the link to pencils.jp – I expect, to be bankrupt at the end of the month :-)
As for black pencils with black dyed wood – well, I like to be able to see and feel the wood, so I’m no big fan…
regards
Henrik
They look so lovely altogether! I love the original F-C Grip 2001 so I’ll be on the lookout for the Design all-black version. Thanks!
where can you get any of them?
Thank you for the comments. I’m surprised that no one has come forth with a usage case for this category.
“where can you get any of them?” Faber-Castell is the world’s largest pencil manufacturer. The question may be, “where can’t you get them?”