That's hilarious, Chuck.

As some of you probably know the Holy Grail of pencils was the Eberhard
Faber Blackwing 602. They are round, not hexagonal. You have a chance to
get a box of 8 on eBay right now, if you like:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/8-BLACKWING-602-VINTAGE-EBERHARD-FABER-PENCILS-
WITH-ORIGINAL-BOX-/331315141490">http://www.ebay.com/itm/8-BLACKWING-602
-VINTAGE-EBERHARD-FABER-PENCILS-WITH-ORIGINAL-BOX-/331315141490

They routinely bring $40-50 each.

Well recently a company called Palomino is trading on the name:
http://www.amazon.com/Palomino-Blackwing-
Pencils-12-Count/dp/B006CQWILK">http://www.amazon.com/Palomino-Blackwing-
Pencils-12-Count/dp/B006CQWILK
They get good reviews, but it is not clear to me if they are really the
same formulation, but I think I'm going to give them a try. I recall my
dad, who was an assistant manager at a Safeway store (before they closed
down the whole central U.S. division) bringing home pencils that (I seem to
recall were branded IBM) and they were, I believe Eberhard Faber Dark Wing
602s. Writing or sketching with them was BLISS, not like the hard graphite
crap in pencils today.

Just wondering if anyone else remembers these wonderful old tools.

Darren Addy
Kearney, Nebraska



A man understands one day that his life is built on nothing, and that's a
bad, crazy day. - Cosmo Castorini, Moonstruck

On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Chuck Taylor  wrote:

> Steve in Kokomo wrote that he
>
> > prefers round wooden pencils to the
> > hexagonal variety and [has] trouble finding them
>
> The Galootish thing to do would be to just buy the hexagonal ones and turn
> them round using a pole lathe. Or pound them through a dowelling jig. Or
> what about a Stanley #77 doweling machine?
>
> Cheers,
> Chuck Taylor
> grinning, ducking, and running north of Seattle
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