A couple of months ago, I went with my daughter and six-year-old grandson to the Kita-Boshi Pencil factory in eastern Tokyo [1]. He is a first-grader at a public elementary school in Yokohama, and he is learning to write using wooden pencils.
We had watched many times a similar video [2] showing pencils being made at the Kita-Boshi factory. The production line wasn’t operating the day we went, but we still got a full introduction to the history and manufacture of pencils from the company chairman [3], who is very enthusiastic about the pencil business. The other attendees were all elementary school children and their parents or grandparents.
There used to be dozens of pencil factories in Tokyo, but Kita-Boshi is one of the few remaining. The larger Japanese pencil brands, such as Tombow and Mitsubishi, now source most of their production from places like Vietnam or China.
We came back home with a bag full of Kita-Boshi pencils that I bought there. I don’t use pencils much myself anymore, but when I tried writing with them they felt smoother and easier to write with than the wooden pencils I used as a child in the U.S. sixty years ago.
The details are all on that first page [1] in Japanese. Try asking an LLM for a translation.
The page says to contact the factory by either email or fax (!) to reserve a spot. If you write to them in English, I suggest you preface it with a translation of your message in Japanese by ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. If you prompt the LLM with an explanation of how you plan to use the text you want translated, it should produce a decent translation.
The explanations at the factory were entirely in Japanese, and I doubt if any interpreting is available. The chairman did tell me, though, that they get occasional visitors from outside Japan, and he seemed to welcome them.
Never tried Blackwing pencils, so can't speak about them.
I am going to be very very pedantic here so read on for entertain purposes....
I don't like the unusual shape of blackwing pencils' erasers. They break the symmetry of the entire pencil.
However, I like dixon ticonderoga the most since they are a good balance of quality and price.
But, I usually use mechanical pencils. And I am very particular about which kinds to use.
My favorite overall is "Autopoint". This company has been out of business for many years, perhaps decades so I only have a "vintage" collection of those which I use regularly.
Here is my criteria for a perfect (to me) mechanical pencil:
- retractable tip/nib
- always exposed eraser (there should be no cap etc.)
- replaceable eraser (should be as thick as eraser at back of wooden pencils)
- no fancy buttons
- pocket clip
The best mechanical pencil I have tried that feels just right and is balanced, is P209. However, it doesn't have a retractable tip and the eraser is not exposed. If it did have retractable tip. I wish it did.
The one that really comes close is Faber-Castell grip matic 0.7mm. It is almost perfect! It has retractable nib, and an always exposed eraser which also retracts! And a great grip!
Alas, it has two problems: the eraser is twist up type which is fine, but when you erase with it, it twists and retracts back inside. Also the eraser encasing is a flimsy plastic that gets loose over time. Ugh! You were so close!!!
I also happen to adore the now defunct Autopoint. Turns out there's a guy even more devoted than us - Jonathan Veley. When the factory in Ohio closed he bought all the remaining stock and now sells a modern version (modern plastics/design but the same otherwise) under the name Legendary Pencil Co. Highly recommend his shop, and he has both a blog and a book called Leadheads . Start here https://www.legendaryleadcompany.com/
They are not suitable for fine drawing (too waxy and soft) - those are either STAEDTLER, FaberCastell, or Tombow (Japanese brand).
The fancy tip eraser is also not very useful. The metal around it is so soft, it can't hold any pressure. Also extremely not child friendly, as the small metal part inside just fells out.
They're not really targeted at artists but for writing and taking notes. In my opinion, they have a nice smooth feel and work well for this purpose. But they're on the expensive side, so if you don't care about the looks, there are many other—wallet-friendly—options out there!
The eraser is infamous for being terrible. But it looks cool.
What does a pencil have over a mechanical pencil? Mechanical pencils never need sharpening, infinite supply of lead of various type and and they seem more environmentally friendly (assuming you keep using the same for many years).
In my experience, mechanical pencil tips broke too easily. I've had cheap wooden pencils where it felt that the let was shattered inside which meant the sharpened tip kept falling out. That's how I felt about pretty much every mechanical pencil.
The main thing that helps with lead breakage is a mechanical pencil with a sliding nose cone/tip. Even finer lead becomes fairly reliable as long as it is protected against sideways pressure. My personal favorite is the Kuru Toga Advance 0.3mm, though a larger lead size and a model purpose-built for break-resistance would be better if tip breakage is the main concern.
Try the Zebra DelGuard mechanical pencil - they have a sophisticated system protection the lead, with springs and whatnot - even in 0.3 mm version, it is actually quite hard to break the tip of the lead, even intentionally.
About a decade ago I bought a metal mechanical pencil (rotring 800, 0.5mm). Best pencil I’ve ever owned. It will last so long I’ll leave it to my children.
Wooden pencils are available in softer cores that have a very different feel from mechanical pencil leads. A 0.7mm 2B or 4B lead will break easily, so they're polymer-infused, and will feel very different (slippery?) compared a regular 4B graphite + clay core.
2mm mechanical pencils are more versatile that way, but also generally heavier, unless it's something like a Faber-Castell TK9400 or Kitaboshi Otona no Enpitsu.
Even the Blackwing sharpeners are not that great. A pencil plane works just fine for almost all pencil sharpening I've ever needed to do and making your own isn't very hard.
I also enjoy my Blackwings, though my normal pencil of choice is the Mitsubishi Hi-Uni HB, which is cheaper than the Blackwing but is still an awesome pencil. I think my supply of pencils will last at least a decade. I take a lot of handwritten notes when doing research, and I prefer pencil over pen when working in computer science and math.
This. When in Japan for work, I always buy a couple of boxes of Hi-Unis (mostly 2H for me, HB for the kids)
I started using them a couple of decades ago, but things escalated once my kids started school, seeing as I just sent them off with a couple of Hi-Unis.
Teacher noted she hardly ever had to help my kids sharpen their pencils, wondered why, asked me if I could get her those for the entire class...
Next thing I knew, I peddle in the pencil business - currently bringing in ~240 pencils a year...
(The lead is nigh on unbreakable, and it holds its point very well.)
These pencils are sort of an “industry standard” for folks who write (or annotate) music because you can be fast with low effort due to their softness. And also easy to erase since you didn’t damage the paper, there’s no need to press hard to leave the mark
Terrible tool for drawing possibly; but among musicians they are widely considered the standard for marking scores. There’s always a Blackwing on my stand.
I use pencil/paper extensively for notes/planning while I'm in front of the computer. I prefer softer grades because of speed and low effort. I avoided buying the Blackwing for a long time because of the hype surrounding it, but eventually caved in. Their Blackwing Matte is an excellent pencil, similar to the others I like - Musgrave News 600, General's Layout 555, Golden Sword, Eyeball Cedar Calligraphy, Mitsubishi Kohitsu Shosha, and those Triangle pencils sold at Daiso.
I'm not sure where the Blackwings are made. Definitely not the Kitaboshi factory. Probably Eyeball in Tokyo?
It's so fascinating to me that the graphite cores start out as long floppy strings of graphite. Looks kind of like cooked black spaghetti. I wasn't expecting that.
Maybe it's unique to Japan or to this brand but I'm surprised by how manual the process is. I wonder how much of this is done due to nostalgia/inertia vs economics or the desire for humans in the loop.
I was a private equity analyst in the 90's and we owned Berol - one of the classic American pencil companies. Their classic wood pencils were made the exact same way - batch oriented and quite labor intensive.
Their next gen process was a fully automated continuous process co-extruder that extruded a core of hot graphite surrounded by a cellulose/wood mixture. That continuous string of graphite/wood composite was pulled down a two hundred foot line where it was cooled, sealed, painted twice, varnished, cut, capped with erasers and boxed. The whole line could be operated with two people.
I was a gradeschool student in the nineties, and I just want to close the loop for you.
All of us young people knew those bendy, half-plastic, scratchy-lead pencils were trash. (The graphite would even break inside the barrel). They were barely fit to play the role of tinkertoys.
I hope the PE firm did something magnanimous with the money it saved.
Lead grades vary across the manufacturers. A Faber-Castell or Staedtler 4B is closer to a Japanese 2B. The four Blackwings are closer to Japanese 4B, 2B, B, HB.
This is great. The amount I've learned from threads like this is wonderful. Fountain pens AND chalk. We are so spoiled by the ubiquity of paper and writing tools that we tried to eliminate them with typing on glass.
For those HN readers who are not stationery junkies: The “real” Blackwing pencils went out of production... I don’t know when, but it must be at least 15 years ago, probably longer. (I have only been watching this from the outside, so don’t ask me for details. =) ) Those sold now come from a different production line at a different company, even though the maker is trying to make them as close as possible to the original. Ever since they showed up, pencil aficionados have been debating whether they are better, worse, or about the same. Originals seem to sell for over $20 a piece on eBay (actual "sold" prices, not asking prices).
Thank you! I should have explained more in-depth what I meant. I forget sometimes this is Hacker News and not, everyone has exactly the same interests as me news. I did have quite a few of the originals till I used them and there is such a difference that I had to switch entirely as I just found the new ones weren't that close to allow me to use them in the same way. So I would prefer to completely change method.
We had watched many times a similar video [2] showing pencils being made at the Kita-Boshi factory. The production line wasn’t operating the day we went, but we still got a full introduction to the history and manufacture of pencils from the company chairman [3], who is very enthusiastic about the pencil business. The other attendees were all elementary school children and their parents or grandparents.
There used to be dozens of pencil factories in Tokyo, but Kita-Boshi is one of the few remaining. The larger Japanese pencil brands, such as Tombow and Mitsubishi, now source most of their production from places like Vietnam or China.
We came back home with a bag full of Kita-Boshi pencils that I bought there. I don’t use pencils much myself anymore, but when I tried writing with them they felt smoother and easier to write with than the wooden pencils I used as a child in the U.S. sixty years ago.
[1] http://www.kitaboshi.co.jp/pencil-lab/
[2] https://youtu.be/Lk_57TP6RFk
[3] https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/local/tokyo23/feature/CO100007/202...
The page says to contact the factory by either email or fax (!) to reserve a spot. If you write to them in English, I suggest you preface it with a translation of your message in Japanese by ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. If you prompt the LLM with an explanation of how you plan to use the text you want translated, it should produce a decent translation.
The explanations at the factory were entirely in Japanese, and I doubt if any interpreting is available. The chairman did tell me, though, that they get occasional visitors from outside Japan, and he seemed to welcome them.
[1] http://www.kitaboshi.co.jp/pencil-lab/
I am going to be very very pedantic here so read on for entertain purposes....
I don't like the unusual shape of blackwing pencils' erasers. They break the symmetry of the entire pencil.
However, I like dixon ticonderoga the most since they are a good balance of quality and price.
But, I usually use mechanical pencils. And I am very particular about which kinds to use.
My favorite overall is "Autopoint". This company has been out of business for many years, perhaps decades so I only have a "vintage" collection of those which I use regularly.
This is what they look like: https://www.newegg.com/autopoint-inc-all-american-ink-lead-r...
Here is my criteria for a perfect (to me) mechanical pencil: - retractable tip/nib - always exposed eraser (there should be no cap etc.) - replaceable eraser (should be as thick as eraser at back of wooden pencils) - no fancy buttons - pocket clip
The best mechanical pencil I have tried that feels just right and is balanced, is P209. However, it doesn't have a retractable tip and the eraser is not exposed. If it did have retractable tip. I wish it did.
The one that really comes close is Faber-Castell grip matic 0.7mm. It is almost perfect! It has retractable nib, and an always exposed eraser which also retracts! And a great grip!
Alas, it has two problems: the eraser is twist up type which is fine, but when you erase with it, it twists and retracts back inside. Also the eraser encasing is a flimsy plastic that gets loose over time. Ugh! You were so close!!!
I had heard rumors somewhere that someone bought the rights and the machines but that’s about it!
I’m surely going to buy a few!
Thank you so much!
(review -> https://www.instagram.com/p/CrD5KRnuLnh/?img_index=2&igsh=cD... )
They are not suitable for fine drawing (too waxy and soft) - those are either STAEDTLER, FaberCastell, or Tombow (Japanese brand).
The fancy tip eraser is also not very useful. The metal around it is so soft, it can't hold any pressure. Also extremely not child friendly, as the small metal part inside just fells out.
Tombow Mono - de-facto standard eraser.
The eraser is infamous for being terrible. But it looks cool.
2mm mechanical pencils are more versatile that way, but also generally heavier, unless it's something like a Faber-Castell TK9400 or Kitaboshi Otona no Enpitsu.
I started using them a couple of decades ago, but things escalated once my kids started school, seeing as I just sent them off with a couple of Hi-Unis.
Teacher noted she hardly ever had to help my kids sharpen their pencils, wondered why, asked me if I could get her those for the entire class...
Next thing I knew, I peddle in the pencil business - currently bringing in ~240 pencils a year...
(The lead is nigh on unbreakable, and it holds its point very well.)
I'm not sure where the Blackwings are made. Definitely not the Kitaboshi factory. Probably Eyeball in Tokyo?
Their next gen process was a fully automated continuous process co-extruder that extruded a core of hot graphite surrounded by a cellulose/wood mixture. That continuous string of graphite/wood composite was pulled down a two hundred foot line where it was cooled, sealed, painted twice, varnished, cut, capped with erasers and boxed. The whole line could be operated with two people.
All of us young people knew those bendy, half-plastic, scratchy-lead pencils were trash. (The graphite would even break inside the barrel). They were barely fit to play the role of tinkertoys.
I hope the PE firm did something magnanimous with the money it saved.
I find something "restorative" (ha, ha) for the soul—watching a thing made (or restored).
Glad to have them back for note-taking and sketching.