Mechanical Pencil Month – Day 7: Pentel Sharp 7
Most modern fineliner pencils come in a range of different lead sizes within the same basic chassis, typified by Pentel's P200 range which are identical in design except for the…
Mechanical Pencil Month – Day 5: Rotring ArtPencil sets
It's Monday and we all probably need a bit of cheering up, so today's post is completely free from obscure patents, overcomplicated mechanisms and wacky design features (unless you count…
Mechanical Pencil Month – Day 4: The Eversharp 4 Square
Day the fourth be with you! On that note, it's hard to think of a more quadratic pencil than the Eversharp 4 Square. This was a mechanical pencil of square…
Mechanical Pencil Month – Day 3: Nestler’s German silver screws
As promised, today's entry brings together Slide Rule Saturday and Mechanical Pencil Month in the hope of fostering a new spirit of love and cooperation between the two rival kingdoms.…
Mechanical Pencil Month – Day 2: The life cycle of the pencil
Today's post follows our plucky lump of graphite as it embarks upon the long journey of metamorphosis into a fully-fledged pencil. Issued by the Cumberland Pencil Co. Ltd. of Keswick,…
Mechanical Pencil Month – Day 1: Borrowdale Plumbago
Object number one is not actually a pencil at all, mechanical or otherwise, yet without it the history of drawing would have turned out very differently. Said to have been…
Mechanical Pencil Month
While digging around in the Repertory of Arts for Brunel patents, I came across a familiar design from the early 19th century. Granted to civil engineer John Isaac Hawkins (inventor…
Stanley vulcanite railway curves
I recently came by a set of W.F. Stanley railway curves made of vulcanite (also known as ebonite or hard rubber), included almost as an afterthought to an ebay listing…
Sketchy calculation
As a bit of weekend fun, here's something called a Rechenstift - German for "calculating pen" - by the venerable Hamburg firm of Dennert & Pape, erstwhile inventors of the…