Pondering cheap pencils
Jan 3, 2015 12:06:52 GMT -8
Post by flatline on Jan 3, 2015 12:06:52 GMT -8
Whenever my kids bring home a bag of party favors from school or a friend's birthday party, the bag always seems to include a brightly colored pencil, often with cartoon characters on it. We've accumulated about five dozen of these cheap pencils over the years which is plenty, I think, to get a basic idea of their characters.
As far as leads go, they seem to fall into one of three categories:
1. Unsharpenable. The lead breaks while you're sharpening the pencil, so unless you're willing to knife sharpen the pencil, you can't even use it. I figure about 5% of our cheap pencils have fallen into this category.
2. So hard that they barely leave a mark on paper. I figure between 5% and 10% of our cheap pencils fall into this category. These pencils all end up in the shop since they're useful for marking wood or tile.
3. Mediocre. Writes comparable to Dixon Ticonderoga (give or take).
The wood is always a little splintery, but they sharpen well enough in a sharpener. The wood is typically harder than a nicer pencil which makes knife sharpening a little more difficult. There is often a layer of plastic on the outside of the pencil with the cartoon characters that appears to be shrink-wrapped onto the pencil. This also makes knife sharpening more difficult and even in a sharpener, can leave a sharp edge.
The first place where the cheapness of these cheap pencils really comes through is the placement of the leads. Well over half of them have obviously off-center leads. Three of them have leads so off-center that the point tip is wood instead of lead when it comes out of the sharpener (I make these pencils writable by removing a bit of wood with my knife). The second place where the cheapness is obvious is that the majority of these pencils have wobbly ferrules (correctable with a pair of pliers or a scratch awl).
It's interesting to me that the majority of these write about as well Dixon Ticonderoga (arbitrarily chosen well known pencil used as a frame of reference) which seems to imply that getting lead that is "good enough" isn't very costly or at least it isn't where cheap pencils makers reduce their costs.
I would never purchase these pencils for myself, but they're mostly functional (assuming you can sharpen them).
--flatline
As far as leads go, they seem to fall into one of three categories:
1. Unsharpenable. The lead breaks while you're sharpening the pencil, so unless you're willing to knife sharpen the pencil, you can't even use it. I figure about 5% of our cheap pencils have fallen into this category.
2. So hard that they barely leave a mark on paper. I figure between 5% and 10% of our cheap pencils fall into this category. These pencils all end up in the shop since they're useful for marking wood or tile.
3. Mediocre. Writes comparable to Dixon Ticonderoga (give or take).
The wood is always a little splintery, but they sharpen well enough in a sharpener. The wood is typically harder than a nicer pencil which makes knife sharpening a little more difficult. There is often a layer of plastic on the outside of the pencil with the cartoon characters that appears to be shrink-wrapped onto the pencil. This also makes knife sharpening more difficult and even in a sharpener, can leave a sharp edge.
The first place where the cheapness of these cheap pencils really comes through is the placement of the leads. Well over half of them have obviously off-center leads. Three of them have leads so off-center that the point tip is wood instead of lead when it comes out of the sharpener (I make these pencils writable by removing a bit of wood with my knife). The second place where the cheapness is obvious is that the majority of these pencils have wobbly ferrules (correctable with a pair of pliers or a scratch awl).
It's interesting to me that the majority of these write about as well Dixon Ticonderoga (arbitrarily chosen well known pencil used as a frame of reference) which seems to imply that getting lead that is "good enough" isn't very costly or at least it isn't where cheap pencils makers reduce their costs.
I would never purchase these pencils for myself, but they're mostly functional (assuming you can sharpen them).
--flatline
