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Thanks from Pencil World Creativity Store

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank the growing numbers of Palomino Riders and fans of our other pencil items that have supported our product and efforts at our Pencil world Creativity Store @ eBay. We are proud that we continue to maintain a 100% Positive feedback rating and have a growing number of first-time and repeat customers who clearly appreciate good quality pencils. Jeanette has done a super job handling the store and I know she appreciates all the kind words of support from you. She continues to work as time allows to expand our offerings or to add special auction items and special promotions like our current Easter Pencil Promotion and we enjoy hearing back from you about your ideas.

Now here’s an update on 6 new listings we’ve added over the weekend. First, we have four new Inventory listings (shown in phot here) to expand our selection of KUM sharpeners, Golden Bear and Palomino pencil items.

The KUM Correc-Tri Sharpener with Eraser is a stylish new item from KUM which includes an integrated magnesium wedge sharpener for standard pencils with container storage for shavings and a high quality eraser integrated into the base. It’s a nice integrated tool for a desktop accessory. We’ve made our final selection of KUM sharpener items and will be adding them as received into our stock.

Our Golden Bear 2B grade graphite pencils are now available in our 40 count tube packaging format. This expands to two lead grades (HB & 2B) in our Golden Bear range for those who prefer a slightly darker mark than a standard HB pencil. The 2B will only be available in our orange lacquer-blue eraser combination. Though not quite the high standard of our Palomino graphite leads the Golden Bear makes a fine writing pencil ideal for home, office and school use The Golden Bear pencil uses a make a nice complement to the orange and blue

Two new package options are available in our Palomino Range. First, is our new Palomino Rainbow Set. This 6 pencil pack selects the vibrant colors of the Rainbow from our artist quality wax color line. Included colors are: Purple, Blue, Yellow-Green, Yellow, Orange & Red. This item provides the quickest, easiest way to sample our artist color pencils in 6 popular colors. If you like these we encourage you to expand your selection through purchase of Wax Color Variety or Aquarelle Variety in 6 packs where you can select your own mix of colors from either our list of Artist Wax Color or Aquarelle ranges. Or go for the whole range with one of our complete wood boxed sets.

The Palomino Graphite HB Wood box set offers a new option to provide a nice wood case to stable those Palominos on your desktop or workspace. This item comes pre-packed with 3 each blue and orange Palomino HBs. However, the box will hold up to 12 Palominos, whether graphite, artist wax color or aquarelle. It takes a bit less space than our color pencil 12 count sets.

Next, we also continue our Vintage & Collectables Series with two new auction listings this week.

The feature item is a pairing of Henry Petroski’s book “The Pencil: A History of Design & Circumstance” with a 40 count tube of our Golden Bear HB pencils. This particular book is a 1st edition hardcover printing and comes from the personal collection of my grandfather Charles, was a gift from a former employee of the company and includes an inscription to Charles. Petroski’s book is the pre-eminent history of the pencil, of a number of the leading companies that make up the industry and of the advances in technology and materials that lead to developing the modern wood cased pencil. A must reed for any new Pencil Revolutionary.

The final Vintage & Collectable series item is a second Auction of our Palomino Natural finish Incense-cedar cased Ball Point Pen. This pen is one of just a few dozen that were produced for premium gift purposes and only a few remain on hand. We have paired this item with one our popular Palomino 6 count mixed grade Graphite packs.

We hope you enjoy these new listings and will check back at PWCS @ eBay upon occasion for new items we continue to add to our growing selection. We do plan an expanded range of stock Inventory listings as well as running more Grab Bag or Vintage & Collectable auctions as time permits. We’d really love to do one or two of these a week, but time is limited to prepare and manage such one of a kind one time auctions. We do auction certain non-stock items on an occasional basis such as our ForestChoice Carpenter pencil 144 count pack or 18 Count Palomino artist color sets where a special buy can generally be made at below our Buy it Now! prices.

Though I will do a Timberlines post now and then about new listings the best way to keep notified on what’s new is to sign up for our e-mail mailing list by adding Pencil World as one of your favorites while visiting our store site. If you have thoughts and ideas on new items or auctions you’d like to see added just let us know by commenting here. Again thanks for you business and we hope to see.

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Making a Pencil Revolutionary out of an Environmentalist: The Finale


Part 1 of this series set the stage addressing the parameters to be used to address the question “What arguments would one use to convince an environmentalist to use wood cased pencils?”

In Part 2, I provided some detailed information from a former environmental life cycle study conducted in 1993 comparing three forms of casing materials for the typical cased pencil: wood, plastic and a recycled fiber composite material. Certainly, some generalizations had to be made to adapt the information from this study to answer the question at hand in relating the results to alternate writing instruments such as pens and mechanical pencils. I also indicated that relative enviro0nmental impacts may have changed since 1993 due to changes in technology and other factors. I also pointed out the study didn’t look at all issues that might be considered important by enivornmentalus rabidus extremus.

Coincidentally, about the time I was writing my first post on this subject I received a phone call from a true blue environmentalist working actively in the area of forest management issues in our own California Sierra Nevada range. This individual was trained as a Forest Ecologist and is currently working as a consultant to the Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign. This group is a coalition of nearly 100 local, regional and national conservation organizations with the mission to protect and restore the ancient forests, wild lands, wildlife, and watersheds of the Sierra Nevada through scientific and legal advocacy, public education and outreach, and grassroots forest protection efforts.

This group’s historic tactics have been to present legal and public relations challenges to timber sales and Forest Service policy initiatives and timber harvest; clearly a group traditionally at odds with the forest products industry. The interesting purpose of this call was that this person was working on a project for the Campaign to address market opportunities for fire damaged timber on public lands and was interested what opportunities there may be for pencil material. Much of the recent discord has been on treatment of fuel build up in public forests that have had restricted harvests over the past 10-15 years due to changes in public policy and increased challenges to harvesting. Higher fuel loads increase the risks of fire and disease. Interestingly, it now seems that there is some growing recognition among environmental groups that wholesale restrictions of harvesting accomplished historical tactics don’t necessarily lead to healthier forests overall.

Learning that our Forest Ecologist was in fact a fan of wood cased pencils I took the opportunity to ask this Forest Ecologist’s assistance on how to convince environmentalists to use wood cased pencils over other writing instruments. His first comment was that he would personally favor wood as a renewable resource over writing instruments produced from plastic and metal. He pointed out that generally the environmentalist movement however values “critters” first, water quality, second and trees themselves a distant third. When I asked about examples of well managed forests in California he indicated he has personally visited a number of private forests that demonstrate superior natural habitat from a wildlife and water resource perspective than most public lands. He also mentioned that while he would consider himself originally more of what I refer to as the rabidus extremus environmentalist, that with his experience closely involved in these issues he has moved him more towards the middle. Generally, those private forests he mentioned were FSC certified forests. Thus from his personal perspective he would favor FSC pencils such as our ForestChoice pencils on purely environmental considerations with non-FSC Incense-cedar pencils being second. Although he agreed other performance factors for pencils are certainly important considerations when deciding among a wide choice.

Perhaps, the most wary environmentalists out there may be skeptical and disbelieving of these arguments in favor of the pencil as a sound environmental writing choice. To this all I can say is to try riding that Palomino, feeding the Golden Bear or select the ForestChoice if you feel you must nurture the conscience by choosing solely on the basis of FSC wood. If these or other fine writers out there don’t convince you about the benefits of a good high quality pencil, then unfortunately I’ll have to admit failure at this task.

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New Tack for Those Palominos


We’ve been hearing from many of you that while you’re having a great time riding those Palominos bareback your comfort would benefit from a bit of additional accessorizing in the tack department. Well, we listened and here are some of our first accessory offerings includes two new unique Palomino items with erasers now available at our Pencil World Creativity Store.

First, our new Eraser Tipped Palomino HB is available initially as a 6 pack similar to our other Palomino items. Next, our new Palomino Deluxe Mixed Grade 12 Pack doubles up on the pencil count in our normal 6 count Mixed grade pack plus adds two new features: a hand held art eraser and our Deluxe hinged plastic case which provides a sturdy permanent stable for those Palominos and new accessories such as a sharpener and eraser. Quantities of both items are somewhat limited in these first offerings on eBay, but we have more replenishment stock on the way which is scheduled for arrival here in the US during March.

We also now have our first KUM sharpener offering at Pencil World, the KUM Metal Wedge Magnesium 2 hole sharpener. This simple classic wedge sharpener offering from KUM provides the option to sharpen both standard and jumbo sized pencils whether round, hexagonal or triangular in shape. This item comes courtesy of a barter arrangement on some GoldenBear pencils with our new trade partner PencilThings.com who has taken on the full line of KUM sharpeners and soon will be adding a selected mix of California Republic pencils as well. During the Frankfurt fair I also met with our new friends from KUM and we have a few additional special sharpener items we will be adding in the coming month or so including some interesting bundled items. Although our KUM sharpener selection will be much more limited than the full range selection now available at PencilThings.com we do think those sharpeners we will carry should complement our pencil range well.

We’re always looking at other Palomino breeding opportunities including more interesting tack items to add to our stable of Palominos and other California Republic offerings. While we we can’t offer today the breadth of range in tack items you might find here, we promise if you keep riding those Palominos and sharing your experiences with your friends we’ll be listening to your ideas and requests and working away at what we think makes sense for the long term.

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Moleskine & Palomino

I’ve been travelling overseas to Frankfurt Paperworld show and now to our pencil factory in Thailand. Too tied up to get down to the detail in writing Part 3 on making a Pencil Revolutionary out of an Environmentalist. There’s also some interesting new pencil items I plan to write about from the Paperworld show. All this will need to wait till I get back home though.

In the meantime I thought I’d treat you to a few of the increasing associations between Moleskine and Palomino I’ve been finding on blogs, Flickr and the like. Thanks to A.E. Baxter for this first Palomino-Moleskine “glam” shot.

Nita’s talent is visible on her InkTracks blog where she drew this Moleskine using her Palomino Pencils. We’re glad she digressed from her wonderful color efforts to work in graphite for a few sketches last month. We’d love to see more.

I found this next link just today from The Fountainhead on the Flickr Moleskinerie pool. I don’t actually know yet if any of our California Republic color pencils were used in this drawing, but I couldn’t resist pointing this out. The pages include an interesting write up on the brief one month history of the republic and the mistaken design of the original flag of the California Republic which was supposed to be a pear, not a bear. Fortunately, we’ve outlasted our first month unlike our namesake. However the spirit of Captain Bartlett and those original California revolutionaries remains an inspiration for us here at California Republic Stationers. You may have already noticed that we’ve also encorporated this spirit into our Golden Bear brand which we think works out much better than the Golden Pear would have. Not sure the “Pear revolution” would have lasted even a week back in 1846.

Oh yeah, I’ve commented recently on the Pencil Revolution, but will mention this here also. Upon return from my current travels in about a week we will be listing on Pencil World Creativity Store our newest item the Palomino graphite HB with eraser which many of you have been asking about. Here’s a sneak peak.

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Pencils: An Environmental Profile

Or Part 2 in my continuing series on “How to make a Pencil Revolutionary out of an Environmentalist.”

In Part 1 of this series I set the stage by indicating my defining parameters to answer the question, “What arguments would one use to convince an environmentalist to use wood cased pencils?” I’ll say in advance please excuse the length of this post as environmentalus rabidus extremus is a wily and cagy creature and so the foundation and evidence for my arguments must be well constructed.

To accomplish this I will today address a range of environmental impacts with results drawn from an independent third party study performed by Arthur D. Little during 1993. This study was performed on behalf of our former Incense-cedar pencil stock supplier and sister company in our family group, P&M Cedar Products, Inc. P&M operated several sawmills cutting cedar logs harvested in California and Oregon forests into pencil stock and other lumber products and was later integrated back into CalCedar. The pencil stock is converted to pencils slats by our company California Cedar Products Co. for distribution to pencil manufactures. This study, entitled “Pencils: An Environmental Profile”, was designed to develop an improved understanding of the environmental related strengths and vulnerabilities of the Incense-cedar pencil as compared to extruded plastic pencils and to pencils with a recycled paper casing. By recycled paper pencils we mean pencils produced from pencil slats made from compressed recycled paper products, such as the Sanford American EcoWriter pencil produced during the 1990s.

This was a quite extensive study which was complicated by the wide range of manufacturing inputs used in each case. The report references over 75 resource materials used in addition to extensive interviews and on-site investigations and discussions with manufacturers involved in various processes involved through the 5 stage lifecycle. Additional experts in areas of plastics and pulp and paper production were also consulted along with in depth data collection that is all summarized in the report running approximately 100 pages.

The environmental analysis focused on evaluating resources consumed and pollutants produced by each of the three pencil casing types during five life cycle stages including:

Raw Material Acquisition – harvesting of timber and production of pencil stock for incense-cedar pencils, oil and natural gas extraction and processing for plastic pencils, and collection and sorting waste paper for recycled paper pencils.

Slat/Resin production – pencil slat production for incense-cedar and recycled pencil production, and plastic resin production for plastic pencils

Pencil Manufacturing – production of pencils from slats for incense-cedar and recycled paper pencils and from plastic resin and wood flour for plastic pencils, including the graphite-plastic extruded core vs. the traditional graphite-clay kiln fired cores used in pencils produced from slats.

Use – consumer use of pencils

Post consumer disposal – disposal of pencil materials, such as pencil shavings and stubs, including landfill and incineration alternatives

The results of the analysis indicated that each of the three pencil products has comparative environmental advantages and disadvantages. On the whole, the incense-cedar wood cased pencil was found to be superior to the other two forms of pencil across a greater number of the dimensions analyzed in terms of reduced impact on the environment. The resource inputs and environmental outputs considered across each life cycle and the key conclusions for each are summarized here:

Environmental Impacts on Resource Inputs
Raw material consumption – Wood pencils require four times more raw materials than the plastic pencil and more than twice the raw materials of the recycled paper material. However a much higher proportion of raw materials used in wood cased pencils are recyclable and the wood pencil consumes less than half the non-renewable resources as either the plastic or recycled paper pencil.
Water consumption – The wood cased pencil consumes approximately 60% of the water used by plastic pencil and approximately 10% of the water consumed by the paper pencil.
Energy consumption – The wood pencil requires approximately ½ the energy required by the paper pencil and a similar quantity of energy as the plastic pencil. The Incense-cedar wood pencil utilizes significantly more renewable energy sources than the plastic or recycled paper pencil.

Environmental outputs
Atmospheric emissions – The wood pencil results in emissions less than or equal to those of the plastic and paper pencil for carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, culfer oxide, and particulate matter. The wood pencil emits from 5 to 6 times more carbon monoxide than either the plastic or paper pencil. The wood pencil emits more than three times the organic pollutants emitted by the paper pencil, but only about 10% those of the plastic pencil.
Waste water effluents – The wood pencil emits insignificant quantities of waste water pollutants; emissions of BOD and suspended solids are greater for plastic and paper pencils.
Solid waste – The wood pencil generates less net process solid waste requiring disposal and less post consumer waste than the other two pencil types. While the wood pencil generates more solid waste a greater proportion of this solid waste is later recycled into various products. (See my prior post “Wood Manufacturing Byproducts” for more on CalCedar’s efforts in this area through the years)
Hazardous waste – The wood pencil generates significantly less hazardous waste than either the plastic or recycled paper pencil.

This report is certainly quite helpful to demonstrate the relative environmental superiority of the wood cased pencil versus the two other pencil types. However an objective, intelligent review from the viewpoint of our target consumer environmentalus rabidus extremus would likely yield the following objections:
– The report does not address impacts of graphite production as well as production of other components common to each of the three pencil types. Nor does it address alternative forms of writing instruments.
– The study is now 12 years old and manufacturing processes and relative environmental impacts may have changed due to various improvements in different industries.
– The report focuses on Incense-cedar as a surrogate for all wood casings. Environmental control standards may not be as high or as consistently enforced in other parts of the world where alternative pencil woods now more commonly used in today’s pencils are grown, harvested and processed into lumber, slats and pencils.
– Finally and probably most importantly to rabidus extremus this report does not address wildlife and ecosystem impacts other than the perspective of raw material and water resource consumption in unit volumes.

While in Part 1 I narrowly defined the convincing to be done as limited to selection among cased pencils, some generalizations might be made about comparisons between plastic writing instruments vs. wood cased based on results of this study. These wood favor wood over plastic. Impacts of common cased-pencil components such as graphite, erasers and ferrules were not analyzed in this study since they would have no relative impact in a comparative analysis. How graphite might compare to the vast array of inks used in pens and how ferrules and erasers compare on environmental impacts to other pen or mechanical pencil components is unclear.

As far as time gone by since completion of this study, my only comment is that all things progress in time and improvement could be expected on all fronts maintaining the relative comparative advantages and disadvantages. As to the implication that other wood casings commonly used may be less environmentally sound than Incense-cedar, this is a complicated matter and perhaps a good subject for a future post. In the meantime, all the more reason to purchase genuine Incense-cedar pencils.

On the relative wildlife and ecosystem impacts across the raw material sourcing component it’s correct that this report doesn’t seem to assess this dimension. When it comes to timber harvesting the report does makes note of existing protections under the strong forest practice laws in California and Oregon and indicates the mixed use of selective vs. clear cutting harvest practices according to site specifics. So while I’ve clearly made a cogent argument for the wood cased pencil’s environmental superiority on many dimensions that comunus citizenus may very well accept, it appears I haven’t quite convinced rabidus extremus of this and there is yet work to be done.

As chance would have it I recently received a phone call from a real activist, environmentalist type who had questions about cedar use in pencils. So for Part 3 of this series I’ll go right to the source of our target consumer to get to the bottom of his thinking and make my final effort at conversion of rabidus extremus to Pencil Revolutionary.

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Paint that Palomino


Vibrant colors and more variety in selecting your own personal mix of Palominos are our theme today for new listings at Pencil World Creativity Store.

First, some of you have been requesting other color lacquers for our Palomino graphite pencils after seeing the beautiful array of colors in our Artist Color and Aquarelle Pencil. While our Palomino orange is our standard we do have a blue Palomino we’re now making available in a 6 pack.

Next, based upon a number of requests we have received sufficient stock on hand here in California to support adding our new Palomino Graphite Variety Pack. This 6 pack allows you to choose any mix of our Palomino graphite pencils from 2H to 2B including the HB in blue or orange according to your own taste.

As a number of fellow Revolutionaries have shown interest in alternate package options for color pencil range, we are introducing the Palomino Artist Color Pencil Variety Pack and the Palomino Aquarelle Pencil Variety Pack. These new items give you the ability to select your own 6 pencil mix from the 24 color range in each line as a means of personalizing your collection to your individual tastes and preferences. You can now replenish your supply for your full wood box sets at a discount or perhaps this will allow you to sample the color and aquarelle ranges at a good introductory price. We’re convinced you’ll love our color range and will be looking to add one of our wood box sets to stable your Palominos.

As a final color flash for the week, celebrate in red, white and blue with our Spangle Stars and Stripes 40 count tube.

Finally, for those of you looking to stock up on good quality general writing pencils we’re running a special promotion through February 15th in which you can get a free Golden Bear Mini Sharpener with purchase of any four 40 count tubes in Golden Bear, Prospector and now go ahead and add the Spangle Stars and Stripes pencils to that group.

Been looking for Part 2 on my new series, How to Make a Pencil Revolutionary out of an Environmentalist? It’s coming as soon as I can get to it over the weekend. I hope you’ll be riding and painting with those Palominos in the meantime.

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How to make a Pencil Revolutionary out of an Environmentalist: Part I


Recently John at PRevo forwarded a question from a fellow Pencil Revolutionary that he felt might better be answered by me. The question: “What arguments would one use to convince an environmentalist to use wood cased pencils?”

Initially, I couldn’t resist offering a quick, sarcastic and typically glib “industry think” response by questioning the lack of common sense in the decision making skills of the stereotypical environmentalist. Who can’t see that the use of a well managed, renewable resource is favored over writing instrument casings from alternate materials derived from petroleum based plastics or metallic compounds which involve mining? This of course assumes the Environmentalist chooses to use a hand held writing instrument as opposed to some alternate method of recording and communicating information. This would complicate comparing environmental trade-offs so for the purposes of simplification I’ll assume we’re discussing choosing among alternative writing instruments.

I’ll also overlook the implication in the question that papermaking seems not to be an offensive use of trees (since you have to write on something) while somehow use of a wood cased pencil may be perceived more damaging by some. Given the amount of paper consumption generated by legal proceedings driven by environmentalist appeals of timber harvest plans this is probably a reasonable simplification of the matter.

Of added concern before answering such a question is to define the context of what an environmentalist is, since I need to know who it is I’m trying to convince. Are we referring to the environmentalus rabidus extremus subspecies who views timber harvesting as an affront to all forms of life on earth. For example, someone who might also be a member of PETA an organization that is now even attacking fishing as an activity that causes pain to fish.

Or instead are we more concerned with the evironmnetalus commonus citizenus subspecies. Here we see less on an activist, one who simply wants to be sure their consumption decisions are not overly harmful to the environment. Someone who might purchase a small car or a hybrid SUV over a Hummer or be concerned about forest practices so that the water quality supports fish and other habitat and has no objection to and may even participate in fishing or hunting activity.

For a little help I went to Merriam-Webster for the following clarification.

en·vi·ron·men·tal·ist 1 : an advocate of environmentalism2 : one concerned about environmental quality especially of the human environment with respect to the control of pollution
en·vi·ron·men·tal·ism
: advocacy of the preservation or improvement of the natural environment; especially : the movement to control pollution

This definition seems fairly benign and can be generalized to imply that just about anyone with a concern for environmental preservation is an environmentalist. However given the use of activist word of advocacy and I’m up for the tougher challenge I’ll try to go from the standpoint that we’re dealing with the rabidus extremus variety. Now that this is all worked out, I’ll start building my case.

More to come later in Part 2 …

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Who’s got that Palomino?


It’s been fun to learn about the growing list of Palomino fans. What a diverse and interesting group of people we are. Clearly we all have a common interest in pencils and in my view PRevo has done a wonderful thing bringing us together. But it’s clear there are many more links than an interest in pencils and the outlet to wax philosophic about our chosen tools of choice, how we use them and what might be done to improve them.

Appreciation of a finely crafted product is clearly a common denominator. Whether it’s a Palomino, a Moleskine sketchbook, a Ticonderoga, a Faber-Castell Grip 2001, or whatever. Though it’s clearly deeper than a simple appreciation of quality. An emotional connection gained from use of these items and how we feel about ourselves when we’re engaged in that activity.

Certainly there is the sense of community. But there are thousands of on line communities and I would assume that many who have joined the Pencil Revolution are active in other communities as well. As a group I’ve found beyond pencils we do have other common interests such as bird watching and photography, reading, drawing, etc.

For me creativity is the strongest and most common link. Whether it’s writing a 50,000 word novel in a month in pencil, exploring and designing unique symbology, or simply keeping our own blogs about a broad and diverse group of subjects. In fact it’s the link as a creative outlet that inspired me to get going with Timberlines and begin to offer Palomino pencils on eBay where perhaps I have helped a few others with the tools to. Since then I’ve even taken up notetaking, writing and drawing in a Moleskine myself when I haven’t drawn in a number of years. And I’m not the only one.

Finally, a very special congratulations to Cyberlizard. I see you are a winner in 2005 National Novel Writing Month contest and we worship you for writing the whole thing in pencils and using Palomino pencils at that. For the sake of our eBay store we’re kind of hoping you’ll just keep on going month after month. Can’t wait to learn more about your novel.

Pencil World Promotional Note: We’ve now added aquarelle pencils to our Palomino range and have great offer going on for Christmas pencil stocking stuffer bonus giveaways with a purchase of any of our Palomino pencils.

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How the Palomino Escaped the Corral


Wow. Hard to believe a full month has passed since my last post. I have been quite busy with annual budget planning process, a trip to our China facility, board meeting preparation and such that Timberlines has fallen down the priority list. Of course as is typically the case I still have a heavy weekend of preparation prior to our board meeting Monday and find myself spending a few hours last night listing some new items in the Pencil World Creativity Store. Now here I am, back at it too early this morning without enough sleep feeling like I really want to focus first on this long overdue Timberlines post. I wonder is there some correlation between sleep deprivation, work avoidance and blogging? I guess some times your brain just needs to take a break and focus on something a bit more creative.

I’m appreciative of the developing support we seem to be getting with our “experiment” at the Pencil World site on eBay. This has been an effort to make some of our fledgling California Republic Stationers brand range available to pencil enthusiasts on a limited basis here in the US. I really must thank John over at the Pencil Revolution for his encouragement and support. His review of our ForestChoice graphite item got things started, Frank C. Became the first to purchase pencils as a result of John’s initial Revolutionary Review and the Revolution was underway. In fact Frank seems to be the earliest adopter in the pencil arena as he buys every item from every Revolutionary Review. I have visions of Frank at a desk surrounded by hundreds of different pencils, a hand sharpener, pencil shavings and a Moleskine scribbling and sketching away.

After that initial ForestChoice review I sent some samples to him with a few Palomino pencils and some other items from our California Republic range which we only had introduced formally in the Russian market of all places (that’s another story). John loved them so much he pressed me to make the Palomino HB available somehow even if it was just as an auction item on eBay. Anyway, the Pencil Revolutionary had recently gone viral thanks to Armand’s support at Moleskinerie, his simple post at Metafilter and some other links from some other blogs.

So with a sum total of 15 purchases and no selling experience on eBay I decided to give it a go and launch the Pencil World store mainly as a creative outlet to compliment my Timberlines effort and just to see what might happen. No business plan. No strategic analysis. Definitely not typical me. Also not the easiest route since I could have simply added the one Palomino item to our ForestChoice sales site and been done with it. Of course, after about 10 sleepless nights since you can’t have a store without multiple items and a promotional You Can Create! Program and a bunch of other support pages and I told John we were up and running.

The Revolutionary Review of Palomino graphite HB pencils came out at September 16th and that same day who else but Frank C. Became the first Palomino pencil customer that very same day along with five or six other revolutionaries through that first weekend. The Palomino was now lose and running free and we’ve developed a small but growing group of fans for our Palomino graphite writing and drawing pencils. You’ve provided some wonderful feedback on the extremely smooth finish and writing performance. John described the product as “smooth as a new Mustang” and some have even compared the Palomino HB favorably to the famous Blackwing 602. Now Ninth Wave Designs has even become our first US dealer for Palomino and will soon be offering some Palomino and ForestChoice items as gift set combinations with various Moleskines. We look forward to seeing those offerings.

Thanks to all you Pencil Revolutionaries for your support so far and especially to John for your encouragement and continued leadership of the revolution. Of course in the big picture of our overall business and the industry this whole Pencil World thing is the proverbial “ant on the elephant’s arse” with a sum total of 40-50 sales so far but it’s been fun and I’ll continue as time permits to press forward with new items and posts and hope you’ll continue to spread the word. We have several new items I listed last night and more on the way in the next week or two. If you’d like to be kept up to date with new items or promotions as they are added I now have an email Newsletter list you can sign up for on the sidebar to the store site

So back to the original purpose of this post. A number of you have been asking about additional graphite grades to complement the Palomino HB. I had not planned to introduce these until seeing how things go with the HB item given costs of having carrying additional inventory, etc. However, during a recent inventory review I found that we did indeed have a small initial run of several other grades produced which were not showing on our reports properly. These additional grades include 2H, H, B and 2B. So I now have a small sample shipment in and have been able to list a new item the Palomino Graphite Mixed Grade 6 pack. Hope you like it.

Sorry for all the historical rambling as this post went a totally different direction than I had originally planned. I even had to change the title of the post. I guess each revolution needs it’s historian though.

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Incense-cedar: A Growing Resource

The second in a series of posts on California Incense-cedar, its historical and current use in the pencil industry; it’s conversion to pencil slats, finished pencils as well as other products; and important aspects of it’s growth and management as a timber resource in U.S. western forests. My last post covered the key reasons for the transition from Eastern Red Cedar to Incense-cedar as the premier wood species used for pencils. Today I deal with the growth and abundance of Incense-cedar in our forests.

Incense-cedar is a hearty, drought-tolerant species that grows in a variety of soils in abundance throughout it’s natural growing range of the inland forests of central and northern California (as Calocedrus decurrens) and in southern Oregon (as Libocedrus decurrens). Though widely distributed in elevation it flourishes within the 2,000 to 6,900 foot (610 to 2,100 meter) elevation range.

Unlike species that occur in groves, Incense-cedar can be found scattered among Douglas-fir, Jeffrey Pine, ponderosa pine and other species that dominate the mixed-conifer forest. Within the state of California, Incense-cedar generally comprises about 5% of the trees in a stand while just 1.5% in it’s southern Oregon growing range. Despite it’s popularity in a range of uses, Incense cedar has never become a mono-cultural plantation species as with other commercial western softwoods. As a prolific seed-cone producer it readily regenerates and proliferates throughout it’s growing range aggressively repopulating any available site on the forest floor. It’s germination and survival rate are excellent relative to other softwoods.

Given historical tendencies to manage for more commercially desirable species on private timberlands the greatest abundance of Incense-cedar is found on public timberlands in our National Forests. However, due to it’s aggressive growth and increasing trends towards selective harvest methods and multi-layered forest canopies, Incense-cedar has experienced a growing importance on private timberlands in second and third growth forests. As a result there is more Incense-cedar growing in California forests today than at any time during the past 50 to 70 years based upon data from the US Forest Service mandated Forest Inventory and Analysis Project.

Despite the strong natural regeneration of Incense-cedar and the fact that it is not typically considered one of the more important commercially managed species, managed reforestation of the species is also practiced by both governmental agencies and private interests. In California and Oregon there are numerous nurseries which grow Incense-cedar saplings for reforestation purposes. Significant research has also been carried out on such issues as genetic diversity, adaptability, insect resistance and survivability with respect to Incense-cedar. The application of the knowledge gained through years of research assures improved forest health and a continued sustained availability of Incense-cedar.

My next post in this series will cover the specific regulatory issues for National Forests and within the state of California that provide further support to assure Incense-cedar and other western species remain part of a healthy, sustainable, diverse and multiple use forest ecosystem.

(Note: Most of the information for this post was sourced from “A guide to Incense-cedar” published in 1992 by P&M Cedar Products, Inc. following extensive research into a wide range of data and information resources about the species.)

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