Episode 237: Pencil Primer, Part 1

About this episode

The episode begins a new series on pencils, exploring their history and significance.

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…

People in this episode

Hosts: Tim, Johnny, Andy

Topics covered

• pencils
• graphite history
• stationery
• book tracking
• art
• writing instruments

Keywords

• pencil primer
• graphite
• pencil grade scale
• Thoreau
• stationery
• Bill Frisell
• book tracker

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Cumberland Pencil Museum, Guild of Book Workers, Erasable

Books & works: Beautiful Dreamer, Excellent Advice for Living, Automatic Noodle, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, The F Bomb

Places: Borrowdale

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• Episode 234: Bearded and Abroad · February 25, 2026
• Episode 233: The Dark Side of STEM (with special guest Ian Schon) · January 25, 2026 · 1h 15m
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