D. All Of The Above

I ran an article a few months ago about a “tree trunk” Eversharp, which at first blush looks to be a match for the Waterman “tree trunk” pens.  But when I disassembled it, it turned out to be an ordinary Eversharp pencil with a custom made tree trunk cap:

Yeah . . . “ordinary.”  Like I wouldn’t trade a couple kidneys for it.

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

So That's What That Is!

At the Ohio Show last November, Rob Bader had a couple things of which he couldn’t make heads or tails. They were in such bad condition that they didn’t really have any monetary value, but he thought they were too neat to just throw away – so instead, he put them in a picnic basket and in the dead of night, he left them on the doorstep at Jon’s Home For Orphaned and Wayward Pencils -- a cigar box in my basement that is sort of a halfway house between the garbage can and my collection.

Sometimes, one of the poor souls at JHFOWP will donate their important parts to get another pencil back on the road, and what’s left goes into the trash.  But every once in a while, in cases such as this, one will be identified as something special, even in its current state, and will be paroled as is into polite society.  Thinking about the American Perpetual from yesterday’s article, particularly when I looked at it with the cap removed to reload it, led me to finally identify this one:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

All American

I’ve had this one for years.  It appears on page 19 of The Catalogue, and it’s one of the few pencils in my collection that Joe Nemecek has gently tried to get me to part with over the years:

This is a No. 26 “Perpetual” made by the American Pencil Company:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

Welcome to Pencil Island

“Do you have a Decat?”  Michael Little’s email asked.  When the answer was no, my Arizona connection hooked me up:

The faceted clip matches those found on Eagles, Majestics and a whole bunch of other lower-tier pencils, and is marked “Made in USA”:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

Two Mississippi . . .

It happened twice.  At the Chicago show in May, Rob Bader came up to me with that familiar look on his face, holding a pencil he knew I’d have to have.  In Raleigh a month later, it was if we’d rewound the tape (if anyone “rewinds” “tapes” anymore) and replayed the scene.  Bada bing.  Bada boom.

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

Bigger and Better Things

Without missing a beat after the Salz-Rite (‘Salrite) - Shur-Rite trademark fiasco that ended in early 1923 (see yesterday’s post), Salz apparently dropped the ‘Salrite name.  But it wasn’t long before Salz did something else with its clips, and since this innovation appeared on both pens and pencils, it became the most recognizable and distinctive feature of Salz writing instruments of the 1920s.   I call it the “window pane” clip, and it appears on great oversized Salz pencils like these:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

It's All Right . . . Mostly

I won’t say which of my pencil brethren was speaking ill of the Salz recently.  To each their own, and I’ll be the first one to admit that Salz made some really terrible stuff.  Then again, almost all of them did at one point or another (I’ve got more than a few Eversharps that only an Eversharp fanatic could love).

But Salz claims an important little corner in the pencil world, mostly from their spinoff company, “Pencil Products Corporation,” which turned out some nifty metal pencils which were offered as Diamond Point’s first pencils (marketed as the Autosharp – see “Auto-Confusing, More Like” on January 30, 2012 – http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/01/auto-confusing-more-like.html — and “Whew!” on March 2, 2013 at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/03/whew.html).  Others were marketed directly by Salz under the tradename “Sta-Sharp.”  Here’s a few examples that are worthy of note, taken from page 132 of The Catalogue:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.