STL355: Pencil Geeks Assemble! – FineWoodworking
In episode 355 of Shop Talk Live, Ben, Anissa, and Amanda open with a listener question: “Who is your greatest woodworking inspiration?” Instead of picking a single figure, they each share who’s inspiring them right now. Amanda talks about repeated visits to the Wharton Esherick Museum and the work of artist–woodworker Katie Hudnall, whose sculptural cabinet pieces have pushed her to think beyond traditional furniture. Ben gives an honorable nod to their boss, Mike Pekovich, and focuses on chairmaker Peter Galbert, praising his relentless refinement of process, generosity in tool innovation, and huge contributions to Windsor chairmaking. Anissa says she’s “easily inspired,” drawing ideas from everything from her son’s sushi tray design to recent Fine Woodworking shoots with makers like Doug King, Chris Schwarz, and Megan Fitzpatrick, as well as the philosophies of James Krenov, Hank Gilpin, and Chris Becksvoort.
This leads Ben to ask what single object each person would choose to iterate on for the next decade. Ben chooses ladderback chairs (if he couldn’t make baritone ukuleles). Amanda gravitates first toward cabinets and ultimately toward puzzle boxes. Anissa first says boxes, then realizes she’d love to devote herself to making lighting. They joke about opening a joint showroom for “puzzle boxes, ladderback chairs, and lighting.”
The second half of the episode features Grant Christensen, president of Blackwing Pencils. They discuss Blackwing’s history—from Steinbeck and Chuck Jones to the 1990s discontinuation and the brand’s revival. Grant explains how they reintroduced Blackwing using premium incense cedar and Japanese graphite, and how the pencils foster intentional, tactile creativity in a digital world. The group nerds out over graphite firmness, the new woodworking-themed Blackwing 21 (their first square pencil), limited-edition “Volumes,” and Blackwing sharpeners. The episode closes with Ben connecting the shared ethos between Fine Woodworking and Blackwing: a commitment to “chasing perfection.”
Every two weeks, a team of Fine Woodworking staffers answers questions from readers on Shop Talk Live, Fine Woodworking‘s biweekly podcast. Send your woodworking questions to [email protected] for consideration in the regular broadcast! Our continued existence relies upon listener support. So if you enjoy the show, be sure to leave us a five-star rating and maybe even a nice comment on our iTunes page. Join us on our Discord server here.
Show transcript:
note: ChatGPT couldn’t figure out that Mike was in the last section. Nobody reads this, it’s really just here to feed the robot overlords, so I’m not going to take the time to fix it.
Ben: Welcome to Shop Talk Live episode number 355. This is a great episode for those who go back to the time of—let’s see, I think there was an episode with Mike, Barry, and me in the studio. Remember the studio before COVID? We got to talking about pencils, and I can’t tell you how many pencil conversations I’ve had based on that episode.
Well, I can’t believe I’m saying this: Mike and I are joined by Grant Christensen, the president of Blackwing Pencils, to talk about pencils—to geek out about pencils and woodworking and all sorts of stuff. If you are a pencil head like me, like Mike, like Amanda, like Anissa, like Vic, like all the cool woodworkers, it’s an interesting episode.
Blackwing reached out. They wanted to share some pencils with us. We mentioned the podcast, and Grant listened and said, “Hey, I want to talk to these weirdos.” So yeah, we’ve got a fun episode.
Also, Anissa, Amanda, and I discuss some of woodworking’s unanswerable questions—like, who inspires us the most? And as with any conversation with Anissa and Amanda, it goes off the rails and we have a good time. So yeah, buckle up. You’re in for a ride.
Ben: Anissa, Amanda, Ben—are you ready for this? I know Amanda’s always game for this stuff, but Anissa, I think this stuff makes you squirm.
Anissa: It does, yeah. When somebody asks me my favorite season or my favorite color, I’m like, “Why do I have to pick just one?”
Ben: Well, that’s why. Okay, so Siggy asked on Discord—and we’ve already decided we’re not going to answer it exactly as asked. Siggy asks:
“Who is your greatest woodworking inspiration, craftsperson or designer? Why do they inspire you and how have they influenced your work?”
I mean, Siggy, wonderful question, but way loaded beyond all belief, right? It’s so broad. I can’t pin it down. And another reason it makes me squirm is because this kind of stuff comes up on the podcast invariably. Maybe it’s embedded in another question, or we detour into it, and I can’t remember what I’ve said in the past. That’s part of it. And there’s somebody sitting there indexing everything I say.
So we decided to turn it into: not “greatest,” but “a few people who have inspired us lately.” I’m literally reading from Slack: “I think we should do a take on answering this Monday. Maybe not ‘greatest,’ but maybe we should each talk about a few people who have inspired us lately.” I had three in my head all of a sudden, but I guess I didn’t write that part down, so I’m not going to hold anyone to three.
Does anybody—okay. This isn’t definitive, right? But I think it’s a good chance for us to talk about who’s inspiring us lately. Amanda, do you want to start?
Amanda: Sure. No pressure. So recently I went back to the Esherick Museum, and I don’t know if Anissa has been. Ben, have you been?
Ben: I have not.
Amanda: It’s incredible. Every time I go—this is like the fifth time—I discover more and more. Yesterday I saw on Instagram that Katie Hudnol won runner-up for Maker of the Year for Wood Review for the pieces she had at the Museum for Art in Wood.
That piece—the Cabinet of Lost and Found Things—and Esherick’s work kind of tie together for me. Esherick and Katie’s work go beyond the scope of furniture. It’s more of an art approach. That’s been really inspiring for me lately: not limiting myself to just furniture and exploring that a bit more.
So that’s just two out of many, but those two tie together for me right now. They’ve been a big inspiration.
Ben: You’ve been to the Esherick Museum five times and you’re still seeing new things—that says a lot. Once you go there, you understand just how dense it is. He made everything in that house. You could probably go 50 times and still pick up on the nuance of his work in just one piece, let alone the whole house full of everything he made. You have to go.
Amanda: I know. It’s incredible. If only I knew people to go with who lived nearby or worked there, right? I mean, Lissa still says she’s finding things.
But I don’t think that’s fair, because I’m pretty sure she’s pulling drawers out and looking underneath them, finding weird notes that nobody else would see. I think she probably gets more out of it because she has better access than anyone.
This time I went, my friend Casey—who actually lives on the compound—gave my friend and me a private tour. We were able to open drawers. I wasn’t touching anything, but he could. He’s able to look into stuff that doesn’t go on the typical tour. It’s just incredible.
Seeing Katie’s work too—this cabinet that won the award is made from things she picked up while traveling. We have a whole video on it that I’ll link in the podcast notes. I love the idea of taking woodworking beyond furniture. Having that “unlimited” view of woodworking in general has been really inspiring. I have a huge list, but those stand out lately.
Ben: I’ll go with one and buy you some more time, Anissa.
So I almost wrote down—well, I’m going to give him an honorable mention on the way to talking about somebody else. But since he is our boss, I thought, “You can’t say Pekovich.” One thing I’m inspired by in Mike’s work led me to my real answer.
I love it when people think about the tiniest detail of a woodworking process. Mike’s goal is always to dial in his processes so that his students are guaranteed success in a class. I think that’s incredible.
And someone else like that, who thinks about process and obsesses over it—and over guaranteeing success in the techniques they use—is Peter Galbert. He’s constantly thinking—like at 11:30 at night before bed—about how to improve a tool or process by one-tenth of a percent.
I don’t know of anyone who has brought more to—would we call Windsor chairs a genre?—to that world. He’s taken what Dave Sawyer and Curtis Buchanan have done and fine-tuned the processes more than anyone could imagine. And then, in the process, he’s invented tools and handed those designs off to other makers so they can create and sell them and make a living.
The way he does things like that just inspires me to no end.
Amanda: That generosity too.
Ben: Yeah, that generosity. Beyond making incredibly beautiful, original chairs in a world where you’d think every chair has already been made, he’s also doing it from a woodworking-technique standpoint. He opens his studio to other creators. He’s generous and thorough. So that’s my first one. I’ll come back around.
Well, that was kind of like two. Pekovich was on the way to Galbert.
Amanda: Honorable mention.
Ben: Yeah, but I couldn’t put him down because that would be kissing the boss’s butt, right? So I’m not going to do that. I’ll say something mean about him later.
Amanda: That balances the scales.
Ben: Pekovich, you don’t reply to emails consistently—and it drives me nuts. See? Right back down.
Amanda: I don’t think he cares if you’re annoyed that he’s not answering your emails promptly. That was very neutral. That’s me. That’s Amanda. Guaranteed.
All right, I guess the pressure’s on me now. I should preface this whole thing by saying I am easily inspired. It doesn’t take a lot for me to be inspired by something as simple as a birdhouse or a cutting board—if somebody makes me look at that piece in a slightly different way than I normally would.
For example, my kid made a little sushi tray, and he made the two feet on the bottom. He had a bit of contrasting wood in the tray and he oriented the contrasting wood on the feet in opposition to that. It was super cool. Very simple project, really well-crafted for what it was, but that extra little detail—the way the wood contrasted and was juxtaposed underneath—I thought, “Bam. That’s so cool. I don’t know that I would’ve thought to do it that way.”
Yes, he’s my son, so I’m biased, but my point is: it doesn’t take a lot to get me thinking, “Oh, that’s really cool,” and that starts me thinking about something else.
I’m also in a super privileged position: I’m around so many people doing such cool things all the time that I really do leave every shoot inspired and jazzed to go home and get back into my shop (which never happens). But I leave every shoot with at least four or five really cool tidbits that I’m fortunate enough to see in person.
For example, I was recently in Montana with Doug King. He was doing a glass-top end table that’s coming up in an issue. He had so many iterations of this table. I got to see either photos or finished pieces of each version and see the design evolution in person and how excited he was to go from here to here to here—and then how efficient he made construction of the final piece based on everything that came before. That inspired me, and his excitement inspired me.
A couple of weeks before that, I was at Lost Art Press with Chris and Megan doing the “Smalls” article that I think might be in the same issue—I’m getting them all convoluted. Just seeing them bang out these projects with a hammer and nails, tacking together these really cute, super functional designs—that’s going to be a great article too. That inspired me.
Then I restarted reading Krenov’s books. That’s super inspiring.
I could go on about all the different people. Hank Gilpin—holy cow. When you go in his shop and see the way it’s set up, and when you pour through the drawings he does to get to a finished piece—the technical excellence and complexity of what he does, plus the original designs—that’s inspiring.
Then Chris Becksvoort—he’s managed to be the Shaker guy, but even in his original work you can see it’s an original piece that still holds to that Shaker ethos. That’s inspiring.
When I’m scrolling Instagram and see somebody who just started woodworking and how quickly they’re evolving—that’s inspiring. I should stop now.
Ben: I love that you went from “this is an icky question” to answering it in the best way possible. It’s very, “My name’s Anissa, and everything in the world is inspiring to me.”
Anissa: I mean, it is. It comes back to why I’ve been in the job so long and why I still really like the job. I’m just the biggest woodworking nerd out there. It’s really cool stuff.
Ben: Can confirm: big woodworking nerd. Though I have a hard time saying “biggest” when you’re on screen next to Amanda, because Amanda’s a pretty big woodworking nerd too. Trust me.
All right, I’m going to derail this now, because you said something that made me think. I’m on record as really only making one thing and iterating on baritone ukuleles. You two though—like Doug King iterating on a project—what would your “one thing” be?
You have to take your woodworking and commit to one thing to iterate on over the next ten years. What would that be?
Anissa: Oh man. I’m a Libra. I’m not playing this game. I don’t know. That’s a hard question. You’re stressing me out. Now I’m anxious.
I mean, boxes are really cool, right? They’re great to give away, you can store all kinds of little stuff in them. A box could be a box on a stand, it could be a dresser—
Ben: She’s Pekoviching it.
Anissa: Oh God, I am, you’re right. It could be a bookshelf. The box. A box. The world is a box. The world is inspiring…and a box. Box me in.
Ben: Okay, Amanda, you’ve had time to squirm.
Amanda: I’d lean cabinet. I’d lean wall cabinet. Wall cabinet or cabinet-on-cabinet. It’s a box also.
Ben: That’s again too good of an answer. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say after that. A cabinet. Maybe not necessarily wall, but some form of cabinet.
I think you both picked “something that holds things.” You both dodged it, and this is going to come back up. I want a real answer sometime. This sucks.
Are you talking about a very specific—like, I think it needs to be more specific. Like Schwarz’s coffer—that style of box, where it’s: “This is what I make. I make coffers.” Or Cullen with his bandsaw boxes. There needs to be more specificity.
I don’t even make other ukuleles. I just make baritones.
Amanda: So that can’t be your answer. You need to come up with something else.
Ben: No, I have my answer. I already said it: baritone ukuleles.
Amanda: Yeah, but that’s what you already do. You’re making us commit to a different style.
Ben: Yeah, because I’m the host.
Anissa: Oh, really? Then I’m sticking with box. I’m making boxes.
Ben: Fine. What if it were like what Craig Thibodeau does—like puzzle boxes?
Amanda: Oh my God. You know where my brain’s been. If I had the time and capability, I would totally do something like that. Someone swoops in and says, “Here’s a living stipend,” blah, blah, blah—that’s what I would lean into: puzzle boxes.
Ben: Moving parts. I never saw that coming.
Amanda: Really? I thought you would totally see that.
Ben: Now my new goal is: Amanda gets to just make puzzle boxes.
Amanda: Yes.
Ben: And I would set aside a living stipend for Anissa to make boxes.
Anissa: Unpuzzle boxes. Easy-to-open boxes. I don’t want to step on Amanda’s puzzle-box toes.
Ben: That’s what Krenov did too, right? He refined that cabinet-on-stand form.
Anissa: Yeah.
Ben: But wouldn’t his refinement really be the handplane?
Okay, question number three: at the end of the day, do you think his handplanes have had more impact, or his cabinets on stands?
Amanda: I think his pieces.
Anissa: Yeah, I lean that way too.
Ben: You’re right. And woodworking tooling is its own category.
Anissa: That says something though—that his Krenov-style handplanes are a monument in the woodworking world, but his work itself still stands on its own. You’re creating a tool that helps you create beautiful furniture, boxes, whatever. I think that appealed to a lot of people: making a tool you’ll then use to make another beautiful piece of woodworking, art, sculpture, whatever you want to call it.
That also feeds into a lot of his philosophies. I think that’s why it was so well received and resonated with so many people.
Anissa: So what are you making, other than what you’re currently focusing on, Ben?
Ben: No, no, I’m not answering.
Anissa: Oh, right, because you’re the host.
Ben: All right, let me think. One thing I’ve accepted is I’m an iterator—is that a word? That’s what I enjoy about robots so much: really fast iteration. But then I realize, “Oh no, I’m on ukulele number nine right now, just iterating.”
If I had to—and if I couldn’t iterate on those two things—I think I’d be drawn to maybe ladderback chairs. You’ve got stylistic things you can always work on. Comfort things you can always work on. You’re always trying new elements: is it more comfortable with the lean this way, or the play that way?
There’s functional stuff too. A cabinet on a stand is wonderful, but it’s not something you interact with as much as a dining room table or a chair. A chair is part of your daily life. So you’re interacting with it on multiple levels beyond aesthetics: it needs to be comfortable.
And with ladderback chairs, there’s lots of room for honing and dialing in your processes. I enjoy that more than anything: figuring out new processes, like Peter Galbert.
So if I couldn’t do baritone ukuleles, maybe it would be—well, the easy answer would be alto or concert ukulele. Or parlor guitars. But if I couldn’t do that, I’d do ladderback chairs. That’s my answer.
Amanda: I like that.
Anissa: Okay. I’m going to change completely: I would do lighting.
Ben: Oh my gosh. That’s a really good answer. You have inspired me. This is what I’m talking about—just hearing you talk about ladderback chairs…
Anissa: I think I would do lighting.
Amanda: Great answer. Now mine’s lighting too. I’ve been inspired by you.
Ben: All right. So Anissa: lighting. I can see you doing really cool lighting. That’s a really good answer. Okay, you get a living stipend from my lotto winnings too.
Anissa: Okay, cool. Thank you.
Ben: So: lighting, puzzle boxes, ladderback chairs. Here we go. I like it. We need to get a joint showroom somewhere.
Amanda: Maybe just a website.
Ben: We’ll have to think of a good name for it: lighting, ladderback chairs, and puzzle boxes. I’m going to come up with something.
So, Anissa, you know what the rest of this episode is about, right?
Anissa: Pencils.
Ben: Yes. Talk about obsessing over one thing. It ties into refinement. All right, we’re going to take a break. When we come back, more pencil talk than you could possibly stomach—and it’s great.
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Ben: Now for the hard-hitting questions from the journalists at Fine Woodworking magazine. We want to know… why is it a 602 and not a 601?
No, I’m kidding. I started thinking about all the ways people geek out on things most people go through life never thinking about. There’s somebody obsessing over the fit of a woodworking joint you don’t even see. There’s somebody obsessing over the gap in the door of a Porsche 911 that nobody else cares about—they just want to go fast or get from point A to point B.
One of my favorite geeky obsessions is pencils. At Fine Woodworking we’ve always thought we were a little over the top. It happened organically—we just started obsessing over pencils, then we kept buying each other pencils, and it became a thing.
And somehow we have the president of Blackwing, Grant Christensen, on the podcast right now. It’s wild to me that not only is there somebody out there geekier about pencils than even Mike Pekovich, but also willing to come on the podcast and talk about pencils. This is a woodworking podcast, but we’re going off the rails today.
Grant, thank you so much for joining us.
Grant: No, thanks for having me. I’m a listener and a fan, so it’s great to be here.
Ben: You’re a woodworker, I hear?
Grant: I am, a little bit. I grew up with my dad always making things in the garage. He built cabinets for our house, Christmas toys, furniture—he was always doing stuff—but I never had the interest. I was always playing sports or playing music.
A few years ago, my wife and I bought our home, and we had a formal dining room. We’re not really formal dining room people. I said, “This would be a really cool spot to build a bar.” We got some bids for an L-shaped bar, and my dad came in and said, “Oh no, we can do that.”
I thought, after all these years, that’d be a really cool father–son project. For that first project, I bought a chop saw and a drill press—those were my first two tools. We built that bar together and I was hooked.
Ben: That’s awesome. Two great tools. The drill press is often overlooked. I don’t know if your father pushed you to get the drill press, but that was a wise decision.
Grant: He absolutely did. I’m lucky to have it in my blood. My dad was a very successful custom home builder. My grandfather ran a local lumber yard. So it’s kind of in the blood, but it never really hit me until my late 20s, and then it clicked.
It’s funny: it happened about the same time we brought back the pencil. As we were talking about before we started recording, I’m a musician as well. I’d stopped making music for years. Right around the time we brought back the pencil, I started making music again—writing and playing guitar—and I started getting into woodworking again.
From day one, we set out to give people an outlet: a way to use a different part of their brain and get in touch with their senses. I’m on a computer screen all day, as a lot of people are. The pencil is just a tool that does that. It’s not a coincidence that I got into woodworking and back into music around the same time we started this Blackwing adventure.
Ben: That’s awesome. So, listeners have heard this story before. Mike definitely has. I went to school for musical arranging, and we would geek out about pencils. Everybody would search for the “greatest” pencil. One arranging teacher said, “Yeah, but you’ll never know the joy of using a Blackwing 602.” That immediately got implanted in my brain.
He went on about how it was the perfect lead, the perfect everything. When you’re writing charts all day, a Blackwing 602 is as good as it gets. He had a stash, and he’d let us use one. It was a thing.
Years later, I was on eBay and found a charity auction where someone was selling a box of ten 602s. Starting bid was $100. That’s a lot of money for me today; it was a lot for me back then. I came closer to draining my bank account than I should admit.
When you all reintroduced the 602, as soon as I found out, I went hunting for one. Can you give us a little backstory about Blackwing—the brand and the resurgence?
Grant: Sure. It had this cult following dating back to the 1930s. John Steinbeck famously hand-wrote the first draft of Grapes of Wrath with a Blackwing pencil. Chuck Jones used it to create Bugs Bunny, and he went on record saying that without quality tools like a Blackwing, he didn’t know if Bugs Bunny would exist.
It was still very niche, though. Small business. In the mid-’90s, one of the machines that made the clip inside the ferrule—the thing that allows the eraser to be extendable—broke. A large corporation (who I won’t name) owned the brand at that point. They didn’t know the backstory, and it was such a small piece of business on paper that they just discontinued the brand. It disappeared.
Around 2010, pencil bloggers started reminiscing about Blackwing pencils. The family that owns our company has been in the pencil industry since the 1800s. The Barrel family are literally pencil royalty. The core of their business then was wood supply—specifically California incense cedar, which is the best wood for making pencils. People talk about the smooth finish on Blackwing pencils and the centered leads; that’s driven by the high-quality incense cedar grown in Northern California and Southern Oregon.
Because we had the best wood and the family had been in the industry so long, we knew where the best graphite was and we knew the best artisan woodworker in Japan who could make pencils to the quality of Blackwing. It started as a fun project more than anything: “Can we bring back the Blackwing pencil?”
The first pencil we made was what we now call the Blackwing Matte, as a proof of concept. It took off. That’s when we got serious and said, “Okay, let’s look at the tradition. How do we bring back the Blackwing 602?” It started as, “How do we bring these pencils back?”—not even knowing if people would care—but we wanted to see what a new generation of creative people would think.
From there, it’s grown into a culture of people looking to slow down. The pencil is a tool, and we make journals and other high-end stationery products too, but really we’re trying to get people to slow down. Everyone’s on screens, and that’s not going to change. But if we can get people to use a different part of their brain and tap into different senses—even the smell of the graphite, as well as the feel of pencil on paper—it’s a way to bring balance to life and live more intentionally.
Ben: I think “intentional” is a good word for it. Mike, you’re probably the most protective about pencils, the most pencil-minded person I know. What does the intentionality of a good pencil mean to you?
Mike: First of all, I have many idols and mentors in woodworking. I’ve talked to many of them. I’m rarely starstruck. But I am today.
Pencils are huge for me. Like everything in my life, I tend to be very particular: the pants I wear, the T-shirts, socks, shoes—it all has to be exactly the same, exactly right.
One of my jobs at Fine Woodworking as art director is doing a little chicken-scratch thumbnail sheet of every single article in every single issue for probably the last 20 years. This is my brain, and it all happens with a pencil.
For a long time, it was a Ticonderoga No. 2, made in Mexico with a cedar core—not that punky white wood you get in a box of 24 pre-sharpened pencils at Staples. That was my go-to forever. I always had a couple of brand-new, very sharp ones. During editorial meetings, if anyone touched my pencil, they kept it. “Do not touch my pencil.”
Some years back I was teaching at a kind of woodworking event, and Michael Cullen, one of my heroes, was teaching as well. He gave me this short, stubby silver Blackwing and said, “Here, Mike, try this out.” The first thing you notice is the eraser—square and long, which is pretty cool—but the minute you write with it, you think, “Okay, this is very different. This is a pencil.” Plus, it was given to me by someone I really admire. That emotional connection meant everything.
I bought a box of the silver pencils, and now all my articles are laid out with that pencil. In the shop, I use the clear-finish natural one. I think it’s the hardest lead you have, but it’s still not “hard-hard”—it feels like a really good No. 2. Then of course I had to get the two-stage Palomino sharpener to get the exact point I want.
So when I say I like your pencils, it’s not “Oh yeah, I like pencils.” It’s: this is integral to my professional art direction career and my woodworking. It’s the pencil I use. So thank you very much. I’ve said it.
Ben: I always find myself talking about good tools in general. With a box of 50 cheap whatevers, I can lose ten and not care. But I can tell you exactly where, generally, I have a 602 on my desk, and another on my back bench wall. One is for my notebook stuff, one is for woodworking.
I also have—I believe it’s an Eras—another firm-lead pencil. A buddy gave me half a box and I love it. I even go so far as: my wife got me purple erasers, so I put purple erasers on my Eras so I can identify them quickly.
All of that to say: I don’t lose these pencils. I don’t just leave them lying around. When I pick up a good pencil, I’m more intentional about what I’m doing. I sharpen it, make sure I’m getting a crisp line, maybe sharpen it a little too far and then blunt it just so.
Have you found that most people are the same way with your pencils? In my head, I could probably survive the rest of my days with—going out on a limb—four boxes of Blackwings. I have more than that in the shop right now. Whereas cheap pencils, I could probably go through 400 in my lifetime. Is that something your fans talk about?
Grant: Yeah, it is. One of the cool things about how this whole thing has spread is: yes, we put resources into marketing and so on, but I think if you tried to pinpoint the one main way people learn about Blackwing, it’s from a friend—someone gifting them one.
It’s a really amazing community. Someone will buy a box of pencils and share half with people they think will enjoy them. That’s how it spreads. That communal aspect—what it means, and the way people use them all the way down to the nub, like you said—people don’t throw them away. They keep track of them, yet they’re willing to give them to anybody they think will appreciate them.
Ben: That’s a strange but cool distinction. It’s something you cherish, but it’s also one of the first things I’d give away in a heartbeat to anyone who expressed interest.
I had one stuck in my hat one day. I was at the hardware store and the clerk said, “Oh, Blackwing pencils,” and I realized he’d heard of them. I brought him a few and one of the two-stage sharpeners because I have a few too many around here. If you express interest in a Blackwing pencil, I’ll probably give you a few.
Grant: I met someone once—pretty successful in the music industry—who said, “Oh my gosh, Blackwing Pencils!” He told me he’d been at a show, talking to this musician friend of his, Willie Tea Taylor. Willie had a Blackwing in his hat, pulled it out, gave it to him, told him the story, and said, “You look like somebody who’d appreciate this.” That was how he discovered Blackwing. There are all sorts of stories like that. It makes this movement that much more satisfying.
Mike: Yeah, I’m definitely the Johnny Appleseed of Blackwing pencils. I teach a number of courses throughout the year. I’ve got three or four pencils in my apron, and whenever they get too short to stick out of the pocket, I give them to a student.
Because of the podcast, my reputation is beginning to precede me. I’ll be teaching and students will say, “Is that the Blackwing pencil you use?” And I’ll say, “Yep. Here, have a little shorty on me.” Same thing with my daughter, who’s a potter, not a woodworker—she even knows about Dad’s pencils: “Do you think Dad would give me another one of his pencils?”
I wasn’t really aware of Blackwing before you brought them back. I don’t know if there’s a debate among diehards, like pre-CBS vs. post-CBS Fenders. Is there any debate about perceived quality of old versus new?
Grant: Not really. Maybe at the very beginning, when some traditionalists were detractors just because they were traditionalists. But as more people tried them, most said they’re at least comparable, and a lot say they’re actually higher quality.
The process is so intricate. The entire process—especially the woodworking and shaping—is extremely detailed. It starts with two pencil slats: rectangular pieces of wood. Beads of graphite go on top, then another slat on top, like a sandwich. They get sliced into squares, and from there they’re shaped into pencils. They have to be perfectly milled, perfectly fine-tuned, to take the finishing—like a 602 has 11 different coats of lacquer as part of the finishing process.
It’s a very intricate and expensive process. That’s why it went away: these pencils are difficult and expensive to make. They sell for $35 a box, not $2. That’s the only way they’re viable. A lot of people didn’t have the know-how to make pencils at that level of quality, and even if they did, they might not be willing to make them and sell them at the price they’d need to.
We were lucky to have a family who knew how to make these pencils. From there, it was about faith and a little bit of insanity.
Ben: You mentioned perfect centering of the leads—that’s not something I would’ve thought about, but it absolutely affects the overall use of a pencil. The core has to be perfectly centered.
What’s the reject rate on a batch of pencils? Are you tooled up so everything just comes out perfect? Because I’ve never had an off-center pencil from you.
Grant: Every pencil is touched by hand at our facility in Stockton, California. Every pencil that comes in is hand-inspected. It touches somebody’s hands. We’ve had a pretty good rate so far—not to say something couldn’t slip through the cracks, but we do all we can. Literally every pencil is handled before it goes out.
Ben: Okay. So I have in my hands… I guess this is how it all started, right? Do you want to talk about the 21?
Grant: Sure.
Ben: What is the 21? It’s a new… it’s a Volumes pencil, right?
Grant: Yes. About ten years ago, we started what we call the Volumes program. It plays off the Blackwing 602 being a model number. Nobody knows why it’s 602; it was just a number.
So in Volumes, four times a year we put out a limited-edition pencil tied to something that we as a creative community think is an important person, place, event, or topic that we want to shine a light on.
The very first one, ten years ago, celebrated the anniversary of Bob Dylan plugging in at the Newport Folk Festival. We made a pencil with a sunburst finish like the guitar he played that year. That was the first one. It was limited, and they were gone in a week. We thought, “Okay, maybe we’re onto something.”
We release four a year, and once they’re gone, they’re gone. We never bring them back. There’s a collectibility to it. We’ve done some really cool ones over the years.
The one I’m holding right now is a tribute to the 75th anniversary of Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. It brings attention to baseball scoring by hand.
We’ve always wanted to do a woodworking pencil, and this latest edition is our first tribute to woodworking: the Blackwing 21. Every Volumes number has significance; in this case, it’s an ode to the old saying “measure twice, cut once” (two and one). It’s also our first square pencil. All our pencils are hexagonal, except for the Guy Clark pencil we did a few years ago, which was round. This one is square, with nicely rounded edges.
Ben: I was wondering if it was square to keep it from rolling off workbenches, because I’ve noticed this one just stays where I put it. So why square?
Grant: That was part of the inspiration, absolutely. We felt it fit, and we hadn’t done it before. It took us a couple of years to get the tooling and everything right—the perfect shape and feel. A couple of early prototypes had corners that were too sharp. It took a while, but we’re excited it’s out. People seem to really dig it so far. It’s been really popular in the first week.
Ben: So this is limited as well?
Grant: It is, yes.
Ben: Huh. Well, you took most of them, Mike, so don’t come looking to me.
Mike: I only grabbed three or four.
Ben: I felt the square and thought, “This is different. I don’t like different.” Then I picked it up and it’s super comfortable in a different way. It has a unique feel. Now I’m thinking, what if I really like this and I want to switch over, and I can’t? I need to temper myself.
These are for sale on your website still?
Grant: They are, yes.
Ben: Mike, you were excited that they went with the firm lead, right? Want to talk about the woodworking aspects of a firm lead pencil?
Grant: Sure. We basically offer four types of lead: soft, balanced, firm, and extra firm. We started with three options and called the middle one “balanced” because it was between the other two. The firm one is probably closest to what most people would recognize as a No. 2 in terms of hardness, but it’s quite a bit darker.
Then people started asking for something firmer. The first time we did that was for a pencil that paid tribute to Steinbeck. We met his only living son and daughter-in-law. He helped us design what he thought would have been his father’s ideal pencil. He said, “This firm pencil is great, but my dad would like it a little firmer. He liked a really sharp point.”
We experimented and made the first extra firm pencil as a Steinbeck tribute, and people loved it. Now we offer it in our regular line.
So there are four options, and it’s really just preference.
Ben: So that would be the Natural?
Grant: Yes, in our core lineup, the Natural pencil is extra firm.
Ben: So the firm is normally the 602—the silver one?
Grant: Right. The Matte is the softest, the Pearl (white) is balanced, the 602 is firm, and the Natural is extra firm with that Steinbeck core. A lot of people like that.
There are people who, when we make something like the woodworking pencil in firm, say, “Great!” But a few say, “I wish it were softer.” It’s all personal preference.
Ben: What’s the silver? That’s the 602?
Grant: Yes, the firm lead.
Ben: Okay. I always equated “602” with black. That’s cool to clarify. For me, in the shop, always wanting a sharp point, I really like extra firm. But for all of my thumbnailing and layout work, I like that next step down—the firm 602. So thank you for putting both out.
It’s also cool that sometimes a student brings in a box of mixed-color Blackwings. I’m guessing those are from the Volumes subscription, right?
Grant: Yes. The program started as a subscription. We do sell them individually now, but subscribers pay annually and four times a year they get a box of pencils. We keep them secret until they arrive on their doorstep. We ship to subscribers before we publicly release and announce the edition. Those people get them first, they get a discount, and every edition has a bonus tied to the topic.
Like this time, we put a little speed square in subscriber packages and talked about what a great utility tool it is for woodworking. It wasn’t meant as a full-on product, just a fun tie-in.
Ben: I was about to jump on eBay if there were a “Blackwing speed square.”
Every now and then a student will bring in a box of mixed-colored pencils for me because they know I like Blackwing. I’ve got a few boxes like that. They’re super cool, but I never quite knew what the lead firmness was. So those are usually equivalent to the 602—firm?
Grant: Right. And about a year ago, we started blind-stamping most of our pencils with the name of the lead on the barrel—“soft,” “balanced,” “firm,” or “extra firm”—so it’s easier to tell.
Ben: I did notice that. This is the first time I’ve seen that on a pencil. Most of my stash predates that, so that makes sense. Learn new stuff about pencils.
Do you want to talk about sharpeners for a minute? I know I’m a huge fan of the two-stage sharpener. There are other sharpeners in the Blackwing arsenal, though. Do illustrators go for one point type versus others? What’s the point of having multiple sharpener lines?
Grant: The two-stage sharpener you mentioned—the first hole sharpens the wood, the second sharpens the graphite and gives you a long point. Some people think it’s too long; it’s not as strong and can break if you put a lot of pressure on it.
So we also have a one-step sharpener that sharpens the pencil to a more scalloped, shorter point that a lot of people like. It’s a little stronger.
The most recent addition is a desktop sharpener we spent about three years developing. Our product developer, Alex Poirier, put a ton of work into getting the tooling and everything just right. For those watching on video: it looks like a box; you insert the pencil and it pulls the pencil in on its own as you crank. For audio-only listeners: it’s a manual sharpener, not electric, and it’s very quiet.
There’s a little dial on the back where you can choose the point length—from a long point like the two-step sharpener to a shorter, more scalloped point.
We’re also working on a sharpening knife that I’m hoping will come out next year. It’s another project we’ve been working on for a while. We’ve got some really cool prototypes.
Ben: Sharpeners. All right, I’ll buy that later—this is turning into bad podcasting as I shop.
There was a book that came out a few years back—Artisanal Pencil Sharpening. Were you familiar with that? Did that play any part in a resurgence in handcrafted pencils?
Grant: David Rees was the name of the guy who wrote that book. Before the book came out, we’d seen what he was doing online and we did a little promotional video of him sharpening a Blackwing pencil and how to sharpen a Blackwing.
We were so small and so young—probably only a year into the Blackwing relaunch—and suddenly the video got something like 100,000 views overnight. For us, that was off the charts. It was really cool in those early stages to show off what he did. He definitely helped bring attention to pencils.
Like I said, a lot of people don’t get it. They give you a puzzled look: “You do what with a pencil?” But for those who do get it—that’s our community. It’s as much a culture and lifestyle brand as it is a product. David was one of the first people to help shape that culture.
Ben: So you’ve got that particular cedar you use, plus finishing expertise—you mentioned 11 coats of lacquer on the 602—and the tooling that goes into it.
Earlier (maybe before we started recording), I joked about trying to find the graphite recipe. You said you don’t know it. Is it a family secret kind of thing?
Grant: We use a graphite producer in Japan—a very small, very artisan house. I’ve been there, I’ve seen it. I know what it feels like, and I know the quality. As for the exact ratio of clay and graphite, they know it, and people a lot smarter than me know it. I don’t.
But I know what it should feel like when we test pencils during QC, to make sure everything is on track. Basic pencil lead is essentially clay and graphite—those are the two main ingredients.
Ben: All right. What are the other Volumes coming out this year—or you can’t say?
Grant: Can’t say. Subscribers will know first; that’s literally the first time anyone knows what a new Volume looks like—when it arrives on a subscriber’s doorstep. A few days later we announce it and offer others the chance to buy that edition. We do four a year, basically once a quarter.
Ben: Cool. Thanks for coming on and geeking out about pencils and all that. It’s something we’re passionate about, and it’s kind of turned into an inside joke among ourselves and the listeners.
When your team reached out to the Fine Woodworking account and said, “Hey, we’ve got woodworking-inspired pencils,” I thought, “You have no idea how excited we would be.” The idea of you coming on—half the staff is freaking out right now. So thank you, from our little pencil-nerd culture to yours.
Grant: It’s great. Thank you. Somebody on your staff—Liz Knapp—once called it chasing perfection. At Fine Woodworking, in the things you build and the magazine and everything you do—whether it’s furniture or media—you’re always chasing perfection. Obviously at Blackwing, we share the same affliction.
Ben: Most definitely. Cool. All right, that does it for this episode of Shop Talk Live. Thank you so much for listening and engaging and all of that.
Thank you big time to any subscribers and/or Unlimited members out there. I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it: Unlimited membership, especially, is the best way of supporting the show. Think of it as a Patreon that comes with a magazine and 50 years’ worth of woodworking information—and on top of that, you get to support Shop Talk Live.
So thank you so much to all the subscribers and Unlimited members out there. If you’re watching on YouTube, click that thumbs-up button if you feel called to. A five-star review on iTunes—or whatever the kids are calling it these days—is really appreciated. Join us over on the Discord server; link in the doobly-doo.
We’ll be back in two weeks with another episode. Have a great one.
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