Recently I received an email from a US reader, enquiring if I knew anything about some pencils his father (a US Marine in WWII) gave him in the early 1950’s. Pencil photograph and description:-
Well, I don’t know anything about this pencil but offered to post something on my blog to see if anyone out there does know about them.
They are obviously modelled after a WWII torpedo, weigh almost an ounce, and are about 4.5 inches long. The brass propellers spin, they still have pencil lead
and work well. They have absolutely no identification, manufacturer’s marks or
numbers anywhere on them. They are unbelievably sturdy, massively machined from solid brass components and chrome plated.
Obviously, they are uncommon but there are also a substantial number of them around (eBay), and they are all made with the same with interchangeable parts. That leads me to believe that there must have been some sort of a commercial production source somewhere at one time as opposed to a half dozen produced by a single bored machinist during WWII. The fact that they are completely un-marked makes me wonder if there was some wartime production (maybe a torpedo manufacturer) enterprise that made a bunch of them specifically for their employees.
Well, I don’t know anything about this pencil but offered to post something on my blog to see if anyone out there does know about them.
Normally my pencil reviews are written about pencils I like or thought had something to offer. I am not in the habit of deliberately choosing a piece of junk as my review pencil. However, I felt some obligation to test and review this claim of The Worst Mechanical Pencil in the World. I hoped to give it fair hearing, but I must confess to some bias. I like mechanical pencils and I look for the good aspects, but this time I was starting from the opposite end of the spectrum. This pencil was expected to be bad, not good. Anyway, I tried to give it a shot at a fair review, so... The Papermate Write Bros. is a lightweight all-plastic pencil, clearly made as an economy grade item.
My first few minutes of use were bad. The tip wobbled, squeaked and carried on. It appeared to be loose, but didn’t really want to tighten. So, I unscrewed it fully and then screwed it back up good and tight which made an immediate improvement. I am assured by the sender that the pencil was like this straight out of the pack, although on further inspection the others seemed correctly tightened.
Putting that bad start aside, it is still fair to say that the body of this pencil is not particularly rigid and does flex under hand pressure. You can actually see the tip flex when you press hard. From comments and contacts I’ve had with readers, I know that many of you out there have some rather extreme ideas of lead positioning precision. Well, this pencil is your worst nightmare.
This mutilation was such that the torn abraded parts of the eraser then continued to shed eraser dust like a bad case of dandruff, e.g. when it was touched to activate the lead advance.
The grip zone of the body it a series of moulded concentric bumps which are reasonably successful.
On the other hand Tombow WX has HBB, HB, and HHB with HBB being “darker” and HHB being “harder” (not “lighter”).
How the heck was I supposed to ignore this? More to the point, how come I didn’t really know about them already? Basically the answer is “I don’t read Japanese”. See, they don’t really make it that obvious. No big HB3 or HBB on the front.
Just some Japanese characters, which are fairly clear to your average Japanese person, but are meaningless to me. Now I think about it, I think I had seen pictures before but never grasped the significance of those few Japanese characters. I probably just saw HB and that was the end of it. Buried somewhere in the fine print, usually over on the label on the back, though we have… 
Obviously money had to be spent and leads acquired. Food for body and mind.
Maybe I’m just not a sensitive discerning person, but normally I have to skip a lead grade to find a significant difference. By that I mean 3B to B is a difference I can tell, but 3B to 2B is pretty hard for me to tell apart. Thus I had my doubts about these HB’s, but you just can’t ignore the challenge.
You can see a gradual change along the series, but there’s not a lot of difference between any one individual and its neighbour on either side. In any one individual test it’s not too hard to convince yourself you can tell the HB's apart, but when you try and repeat it, well it all gets confusing. I didn’t spend hours doing all sorts of tests, but whilst a lot of the results were contradictory I think overall if I was doing some statistical analysis on my results then I suspect it would show that HB3, the harder of the HB’s was a little different to the other two HB’s and was “statistically different”. But HB to HB1, that’s a little more confusing. Plenty of times though I’d pick up HB1 and HB3 and not be able to tell the difference.
Anyway, here’s some old Atlas leads I recently acquired. Brand new old stock still in their original boxes. The leads are ‘super fine’ size, that’s 1.18mm diameter, which isn’t exactly super fine by today’s 0.3 and 0.2mm standards. There are 12 sticks per tube. The tubes are glass with black plastic stoppers.
Things weren’t so voluntarily standardised in the old days, when there was quite a selection of lead lengths. My two boxes are two of the common older lengths. The long ones are 100mm (4 in.) long, and the short ones are 32mm (1 and ¼ in.) long.
I like the idea of how the box for the long tubes has had its cardboard base cut and flaps folded in to act as dividers and protectors for the tubes. You can see the flaps between the tubes in the photo below.
“Atlas”, The Best Quality Refill Leads, Made In England.
I like the looks of my PG1005. A serious no nonsense technical look that says this is the tool of a competent professional designer, yet with those long lean straight lines and black satin sheen finish it is equally at home in a business boardroom meeting. Classic style. A pencil for all situations.
In the hand the Graph 1000 is quite lightweight and neutral feeling.
The grip zone of the Graph 1000 consists essentially of a round metal pipe section with rubber inserts. The rubber inserts are rectangular with rounded ends, about 10mm long x 2mm wide. The insert sticks though to be slightly raised above the surrounding surface. When I say slightly I mean about 0.1 – 0.2mm. There are six inserts spaced evenly around the circumference of the grip, and three rows of inserts up the body. It is all black on black so a little hard to show photographically but I’ve mucked around with the photo below so hope you will get the idea.
We all know rubber grips are not my favourite but this one is an attempt to give the best of worlds - a rubber grip that isn’t too rubbery. It does work reasonably well, although I would suggest a little less distance between the rubber inserts might be an improvement. Seven or perhaps eight inserts spaced around the circumference rather than six.
Printed onto the upper barrel area is “GRAPH 1000 For Pro 0.5, Pentel PG1005 Japan”. I am always in favour of such clear full markings – no problems identifying your pencil make, model, etc. Convenient for people with hundreds of pencils!
Overall then this is an excellent pencil and a worthy addition to any collection. 
A different type of cool?
Somehow I suspect the Graph 1000 Limited is actually a Special Edition rather than a Limited Edition in normal writing instrument parlance. The term Limited Edition usually means a limited number of items will be produced, whereas a Special Edition usually means the item will be produced for a limited period of time without any quantity limit.
It’s 12ct rolled gold 95mm long mini pencil with tassel attached. “Rolled Gold Life-Long” is engraved into the top piece, and the instruction sheet clearly identifies it as Junior Cubic Model 3122. Overall, it’s quite an attractive little thing, for a golden-oldie.
Twist top screw mechanism with 1.18mm leads as one would expect. As usual, refilling the lead takes a tiny little bit of effort and mechanical aptitude.
Engraved rather badly into the body is the word “CANBERRA”. At first I thought this suggested it was probably a souvenir from the capital city of Australia, but I would have expected it to say Canberra Australia or something rather than just Canberra. When I took the photo of the engraving and enlarged it I realised that the bad engraving was actually because it was engraving over the top of some existing engraving. 
Beneath the letters NBER you can see the original letters THAY. Suddenly a light bulb turned on. The SS Canberra was one of the well known P&O Line cruise ships that sailed the Australasian route in the 1960’s to 80’s. Another P&O vessel was the lesser known SS Cathay, which was sold by a P & O subsidiary in 1978. So, I vote that originally this was a souvenir pencil for sale in the gift shop on the SS Cathay, and when the Cathay was sold, the pencil was re-engraved Canberra over the top. At least the first two letters match and by blacking in Canberra they hoped the THAY underneath wouldn’t be too obvious.
Here’s a recent acquisition. Sterling silver, 124mm long x 8mm barrel diameter. Twist tip mechanism to advance or retract the 1.18mm lead. It takes those old short style leads, 35mm or 1 3/8 inch long. For comparison, most modern leads are 60mm long. The main body is guilloche pattern engraved, which is a pattern I generally like. 
Overall the pencil is in pretty good shape, although it has a pinhead dent in the top cap, and the tip has a little bit of damage as if it’s been dropped onto a hard floor once or twice. But nothing to get too concerned about.
Again, at the risk of making a fool of myself, I believe the hallmarks on this pencil indicate it was made by E. Baker & Son (the E.B), and certified by the Birmingham Assay Office (the Anchor) as Sterling Silver (the Lion) in 1960 (the L in that specific font type, inside that specific shield shape).
Whilst some vintage silver can go for stratospheric prices, you can also pick up some great bargains, like this pencil. It weighs 29 grams, so taking a little bit off for the internal non-silver mechanism, let’s say there is 23 grams of actual silver in the pencil. At US $11.50 per ounce, that means there is about US $9.40 of silver metal. That’s its nominal value as scrap metal. Well it only cost me a couple of dollars more than that, including delivery. A pretty good bargain. 