I Get a Pixie Stick

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 5; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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It’s a saying around our house . . . when you finish the job, you get a pixie stick.  The turn of phrase comes from my wife, who remembers from her days in elementary school if you finished all the food on your plate at lunch, they would give you a pixie stick (those cardboard straws full of flavored sugar). 

I’ve been trying not to add to my enormous file folder called “pencil pictures,” in which are housed all of the images I haven’t gotten around to posting here.  Instead, when I started things back up at the blog this time, I resolved to take a large batch of pictures and then not take any more until I had posted all of them.  In theory, that would keep me from taking pictures I’d probably never post.

These are the last two shots standing between me and sugary goodness:

This tin of leads showed up in an online auction, and I was doubly impressed.  First, I hadn’t seen a tin of Conklin leads like this one before.  Second, I thought there was a very practical reason for that:

I thought maybe John Wahl and the Wahl Company had a lock on making metal tins for pencil leads, by virtue of patent number 1,428,195 awarded to John C. Wahl and Peter G. Jacobson on September 5, 1922.   However, note that dovetailed system which is present on Wahl containers – that is the special feature which was patented, not the idea of a metal box itself.  Still, it must have been a sufficient deterrent to most, since square boxes like this are not usually seen.

And in fact, I ended up seeing more than just one.  After I paid handsomely for this one tin, the seller contacted me to let me know he had the rest of the box, and he asked if I wanted to make an offer on the whole bunch:

Why yes . . . yes I did, thank you very much.