A Pushmaster Tutorial

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.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy this article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

On page 54 of The Catalogue of American Mechanical Pencils, I mention the Esterbrook Pushmaster as an “Esterbrook variant to watch for.”  Recently I was able to pick up a red one from Eric Magnuson :

It joins the green example shown in the book

The model was introduced around 1941 – possibly earlier, as I found a black example commemmorating the New York Worlds’ Fair of 1939-1940 that I wrote about back in 2012.  Google wiped out the pictures, but I was able to find them on my hard drive:

What I should have done, either in the book or here at the blog, was show the Pushmaster next to its more common cousins for comparison:

The Pushmaster shares the longer nose from the earlier Dollar pencil series, and the trim band and clip of the later models . . . and the plastic from neither.  My favorite feature of the Pushmaster, though, is the top: these don’t have the name on the clip itself, but there’s a great Esterbrook logo in the place of a black plastic “jewel”: