We kick off the Pencil Primer — a new series for anyone who wants to start at the beginning of pencildom. This installment traces graphite from the legendary Borrowdale lightning strike of 1564 to Nicolas-Jacques Conté's clay-and-graphite breakthrough during the Napoleonic Wars, plus the Thoreau family's role in standardizing the American pencil grade scale and a tour through HB-to-9B. Plus, Tim's into a Bill Frisell biography, Johnny's writing with a sparkly Narwhal "raspberry cheesecake" pen that looks like, uh, something else, and Andy debuts booklet.lol — a vibe-coded book tracker. Patreon subscribers can watch the video version.

For this episode, we recorded video, available to Patreon subscribers! If you’re a patron, head over to see our faces and visual examples of many of the things we discuss. And if you’re not a patron, join us at any level and you can see this and other supplemental content at any time!

Show Notes & Links

Erasable

Read a transcript of this episode at Erasable Scribe

Erasable Patreon

Erasable Facebook group

Erasable Discord invite

Episode references

Episode 57: “The F Bomb”

Podcasts / media

Drug Story

r/pencils

Letterkenny

Books

Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer

Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

Pencil / stationery / book arts

Cumberland Pencil Museum

Nicolas-Jacques Conté (Britannica)

Henry David Thoreau (Britannica)

Guild of Book Workers

General’s Layout Pencil

STAEDTLER WOPEX

Derwent

Photography / camera stuff

Micro Four Nerds

PetaPixel

Apps / sites / companies

booklet.lol

People / artists / companies

Willie Nelson

Charlie Crockett

Bill Frisell

JHS Pedals

Your Hosts

Johnny  Gamber
Pencil Revolution
@pencilution

Andy Welfle
Woodclinched
@awelfle

Tim Wasem
@TimWasem