Musgrave Pencils

Musgrave Pencil is a family-owned and operated pencil maker in Shelbyville, Tennessee that’s been making pencils since 1916. The Musgraves began by selling Tennessee Red Cedar slats to European pencil makers; remember that, it’ll be important later.

Musgrave’s Heritage Collection

While Musgrave Pencil Company makes a wide variety of custom and specialty decorated and branded pencils, I’m going to focus on their Heritage Collection pencils. Most of these pencils have been made and sold by Musgrave for decades, or perhaps more accurately, generations. I don’t think you can go wrong buying any of these pencils, but whether a pencil will work for you is very much dependent a writer’s personal preferences, and the writing task at hand. I like the fact that Musgrave has its own Pencil Variety pack, which is a great way to try out a number of individual pencils rather than buying them by the dozen. You can also buy singles of most Musgrave pencils via CW Pencils.

Musgrave 600 News

I’ve written about the Musgrave 600 News before, so I’m going to cheat and repeat myself, with some minor changes. The Musgrave 600 News 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 600 News suggests, this thick-cored dark pencil feels about like “3B/4B and looks a bit darker.” Musgrave 600 News 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 600 News is a great pencil for writing, despite its tendency to smudge. I especially like it for note-taking, and on-the-fly writing. I’ll probably buy a couple more so I can always have one on hand because Musgrave 600 News smooth writers, produce a thick line, and are very dark. I’m thinking that they might work particularly well for handwriting practice. If you go to Musgravepencil.com, you can buy a dozen Musgrave 600 News for $6.25.

Musgrave Bugle 1816

The Musgrave Bugle 1816 is a round, eraserless, light toned (Bass wood?), natural finish pencil with an HB/#2 graphite core. The body of the pencil is coated with a clear glossy lacquer and has a white text imprint reading “Musgrave Pencil Inc. Shelbyville Tenn.” and “Bugle 1816,” flanked by an image of a bugle on either side. This pencil feels light weight in my hand, and the graphite seems a mite softer and darker to me than a standard #2. You can see some indications of grain and natural striations in the wood, and while the base color of the wood is lighter, the Musgrave Bugle 1816 is otherwise very similar to the basic pencils made by Henry David Thoreau and his family, as CW Pencils notes.

Musgrave 909 Ceres

The Musgrave Ceres pencil looks like a yellow-painted classic hex American school pencil, and that does seem to be the market it’s meant for. The graphite is standard #2/HB. It has a black imprint and the classic pink eraser, with a gold ferrule. It writes smoothly, and is perhaps a shade darker than the Bugle, but that might just be me. Based on pencils I’ve seen in collections, they used to make the Ceres in #1 graphite too.

Musgrave Harvest 320

The Musgrave Harvest 320 is another yellow hex body with a brown stripe in the ferrule, and a pink eraser. The imprint is in gold foil script (sorry it’s such a poor photo). The Harvest 320 is a reasonably smooth, perfectly pleasant pencil, a reliable #2/HB. The Harvest 320 also comes in a #1 graphite, and has a new sibling, the Musgrave Harvest 320 Pro. I haven’t yet tried the Harvest 320 #1, but I plan to.

Musgrave My-Pal 2020

Musgrave’s My-Pal 2020 is a black round-bodied eraserless pencil. Descriptions, including Musgrave’s call this a “mini Jumbo.” It’s not all that mini; it’s 7” long, and 5/16″ in diameter, so it’s a little shorter than a standard pencil, and a little thicker, but not as jumbo as the standard thick red pencils I learned to write with in Kindergarten. If you look at the flat end, you’ll notice that the core is substantially thicker than a standard pencil. This pencil’s black body appears almost navy in some lights. The imprint “MY-PAL” and the Musgrave pencil name and “Shelbyville Tenn. – 2020” is in white paint. Musgrave’s My-Pal 2020 pencil was intended for young children, but I can see it being used for handwriting practice or drawing, and it might be an easier-to-use pencil for arthritic hands as well.

Musgrave Test Scoring 100

The Musgrave Test Scoring 100 is a silver-bodied pencil with a silver ferrule and pink eraser has an electro-bonded artificial graphite, designed to perform well on machine-scored scantrons. It isn’t rated, but it does feel a little more like a B than an HB, a 1 than a 2. The Musgrave Pencils Co Shelbyville Tenn is in tiny black print, and it’s a little crowded looking. In larger text, also in black, the pencil also shows two test boxes, one empty, and one filled in, Test Scoring 100″ with two empty test boxes before the 100. I would absolutely use this pencil for a scantron form or ballot that accepted graphite, but this strikes me as a decent writing pencil for long form writing, too, even if you do need to keep a sharpener close by.

Musgrave Heritage Collection 2019 Releases

In late 2019 Musgrave announced some new releases, including three new pencils. This was an unexpected treat, and all three of the new pencils have been roundly welcomed.

Musgrave Harvest 320 Pro

Musgrave says of the Musgrave Harvest 320 Pro that “It features the same classic Harvest design, but it’s now made from California incense cedar with an upgraded core.” I say this is a really nice pencil. It looks very much like the Harvest 320, including an identical gold imprint and pink eraser, but the Musgrave Harvest 320 Pro lacks the brown ferrule stripe that the standard 320 has. Like the standard Harvest 320, Musgrave’s Harvest 320 Pro is a perfectly good, reliable, smooth-writing pencil, with a slightly softer, darker graphite core. Honestly, if you handed me one to use and didn’t tell me it was HB/2, I’d think it was 1/B. I really like this pencil, and plan to buy another box.

Musgrave Tennessee Red Cedar

Musgrave began as a business by selling Tennessee red cedar slats to pencil-makers, before creating their own pencils. They found a new (albeit limited) source for red cedar slats, and thus, produced this Musgrave Tennessee Red Cedar pencil. This Musgrave post explains some of the issues about making Musgrave Tennessee Red Cedar pencils with slats that weren’t prepared with pencil production in mind. The cores aren’t perfectly centered. Some of the seams on these pencils are iffy, and some seams aren’t joined. That said, these pencils are truly beautiful; the natural red cedar colors and grain are lovely, and there’s a lot of variation from pencil to pencil. The wood bodies of these pencils is not stained, just sealed with a transparent lacquer. They have a gold ferrule, and a white eraser, with a red ink imprint that says Musgrave Pencil  company, an M in a diamond, and Genuine Tennessee Red Cedar. The Tennessee Red Cedar is in a script face, followed by a tiny red circle with three stars, a nod to the Tennessee flag. The poor point on this is my fault; I forgot to finish sharpening it. I’ve had good luck using an Apsara hand-held sharpener on these. This pencil I sharpened with the Kum/Blackwing two-step, and it’s not as satisfactory, in my opinion, as the point from the Apsara.

Musgrave’s Tennessee Red Cedars  smell like red cedar when you sharpen them (think about the way your grandmother’s cedar chest smells). Each pencil is different in appearance. Some are darker red than others, some are striped with a combination of Red Cedar’s natural light and darker striations. But all of them are lovely,  and they write very nicely. The graphite in these Tennessee Red Cedars reminds me of the graphite in the Musgrave Harvest 320 Pros; smooth, a little darker and softer than a standard 2 maybe, but wonderful to write with. Sharpening these has been a challenge for some; I’ve had great success using an inexpensive Apsara Longpoint Sharpener, free with boxes of Apsara Pencils, or 20 Apsara Long Point Sharpeners for about $5.00 on Amazon.

I really love these pencils. They’re a treat, and were particularly welcome companions on dark days this winter. I’m going to buy more when I can, so that I can share the joy.

Musgrave Single Barrel 106

The Musgrave Pencil Co. catalog page says this about these pencils:

At the end of the 1930s, Colonel Musgrave sent his final export of Tennessee Red Cedar slats off to Europe’s pencil factories. Somehow, a small number of burlap sacks filled with slats missed the boat. Years later, the sacks would be discovered in the wreckage of an ill-fated storage building that had collapsed.

These Musgrave Single Barrel 106 pencils are a genuine limited release, one that’s limited by the availability of materials. These hex pencils have a natural finish over the lovely grain of the antique Red Cedar, a black end-cap, and a smooth #2/HB core. These are very limited, and priced accordingly; two for $18, or $10.00 each, but they are truly lovely to hold and great for writing. It is a dark graphite, but to me it feels a little harder than it looks. The graphite is not as nice as say a Blackwing Natural, but the pencil is lovely to use and feels good in the hand, with a perfectly good core. The 106 is a reference to Episode 106 of the Erasable Podcast, which you should absolutely listen to because it features Henry Hulan III, of Musgrave Pencils.