Another Batch of Pencils for Writing

When I refer to “Pencils for Writing,” I’m making a distinction between pencils suited to writing vs pencils better suited for drawing. There are far more high-quality affordable wooden pencils than I ever realized. I’ve tried four more for more pencils since my first post about wood-case pencils. I’d happily use any of these four pencils for writing, but I’m particularly pleased with the Staedtler Norica, the General’s Cedar Pointe #1, and the Musgrave News 600 as reliable, pleasant to write with, attractive, affordable pencils.

Staedtler Norica

These Staedtler Norica pencils came from Office Depot; I saw them mentioned online as a back to school bargain. They were $10.00 for 36, or 0.28 each. I like the glossy black body, the silver print and the white eraser with the silver ferrule. They feel good in my hand; the finish is super smooth. The first pencil I used was great for the first page, and then I hit an unpleasant gritty section for a second. This repeated a couple more times, but by about an inch into the graphite and several pages down the road, the writing was consistently smooth and pleasantly dark. The Norica writes a little on the dark side of #2/HB. The eraser is not great, but not unusable, either. At .28 each, I’d definitely buy these again. If I were shopping for a school, I’d get this pack of 50 Staedtleter Norris pencils with 50 eraser caps for $6.00 from Amazon.

General’s  Cedar Pointe #333 – 2HB

The General’s #333 Cedar Pointe 2HB is another natural finish pencil, made of unvarnished cedar with a dark eraser and an aged or bronzed looking ferrule. While the General’s Cedar Pointe #2 is a perfectly reasonable HB #2 pencil. It’s not a favorite. That said,  I’d buy it again because it’s a great pencil, just not for me. A single General’s Cedar Pointe #333 – 2HB pencil is $1.00 at CW Pencils.

General’s Cedar Pointe #333 – 1

I really like this pencil. It’s definitely darker than the Cedar Pointe HB/2, with  the same natural finish cedar body, ferrule and eraser. I like this pencil very much; enough that I’m tempted to buy a dozen. It’s a solid, attractive dark-graphite pencil for writing. A single General’s Cedar Pointe from CW Pencils is $1.00. A dozen Cedar Pointe #1s with free shipping from Amazon is a bit under $10.00.

Musgrave News 600

The Musgrave News 600 is a round, glossy black eraserless pencil with prominent san serif white print. I purchased it from CW Pencils for $0.50, and it was a bargain. As the CW Pencils description of the Musgrave News 600 suggests, this thick-cored dark pencil feels about like “3B/4B and looks a bit darker.” Musgrave News 600 isn’t terribly durable in terms of general hardiness (all that graphite is fragile) or point retention, but it produces a thick dark and very smooth line. Musgrave News is a great pencil for writing, despite its tendency to smudge. I’ll probably buy a couple more so I can always have one on hand because Musgrave News 600 are extremely smooth writers, produce a thick line, and are very dark. I’m thinking that they might work particularly well for handwriting practice.