Day 184: Today's Pick — The Blackwing 602 Pencil

The Blackwing 602 is a pencil, and like all great pencils, it has a small mythology.

The original Blackwing 602 was made by Eberhard Faber, an American pencil company, starting in 1934. It was an unusual pencil — a soft-graphite core in a black-painted cedar case, capped at the end with a flat brass ferrule and a square, replaceable rubber eraser that slid in and out on a small slide. The motto printed in gold along the side read "Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed," which is more or less what the pencil delivered: the soft graphite required almost no pressure to leave a clear, dark line, and that meant you could write for hours without your hand cramping.

The pencil developed a serious following among writers, illustrators, and composers. John Steinbeck, who used hundreds of pencils in his life and was famously specific about them, wrote in a letter that the Blackwing 602 was the only pencil he would ever use after he discovered it. Stephen Sondheim used them. The American animator Chuck Jones used them. The novelist John Hughes — yes, that John Hughes — kept a box of them on his desk. The pencil acquired a reputation as the writer's pencil, and stayed in production until 1998, when Eberhard Faber was acquired by another company, the manufacturing equipment broke, and the line was quietly discontinued.

For a brief, weird stretch — roughly 2000 to 2010 — original Blackwing 602s became collector's items. The remaining stock, mostly hoarded in writers' desk drawers, started selling for $40 a pencil on eBay. There were forums devoted to the question of whether the pencil could ever be brought back. Cycling through the pencils in your father's desk to identify a real Blackwing was, briefly, a small Brooklyn pastime.

Then, in 2010, a small company called Palomino — a high-end pencil maker out of California — acquired the rights to the brand and released a revived version. The original Blackwing was, technically, dead, but the Blackwing 602 lived again.

The modern Blackwing 602, which is what I am here to recommend, is a careful and well-loved revival. The graphite is a Japanese-formulation core in a cedar case, soft enough to glide on most papers without bleeding through, hard enough to hold a point for a meaningful number of words. (Palomino now sells four different graphite hardnesses: the original Blackwing — the softest, intended for sketching — the Pearl, the 602, and the Natural, in roughly increasing hardness. The 602 is the version that most closely matches the original midcentury hardness and is the right pick for general writing.) The ferrule is the same square brass eraser holder, with the slide-in/slide-out replaceable rubber eraser, which is one of those small details you do not fully appreciate until you've used the pencil for a few weeks and then started reaching for it instead of a separate eraser.

A few notes on use. The 602 sharpens beautifully — Palomino sells a long-point sharpener that I would also gently recommend, because the pencil is at its best with a long, slightly tapered point. Soft graphite means more sharpening than a Ticonderoga; the trade-off is a more pleasant writing line. The pencil is excellent on most papers; it shines on Field Notes, Rhodia, Moleskine, and Strathmore drawing paper, and is acceptable on cheaper printer paper. The eraser slides out for replacement; refill packs run a few dollars.

A note on the Volumes program, which is one of the genuinely fun things Palomino does. Every quarter, the Blackwing brand releases a "Volume" — a limited-edition pencil dedicated to a writer, artist, or cultural figure, each with a distinct color, ferrule treatment, and small thematic essay tucked into the box. Recent volumes have honored Octavia Butler, Pelé, the Apollo program, and a particular Joni Mitchell album. They are ridiculous, in the best way. Subscribing to the Volumes program is a small, affordable pleasure for the writers in your life.

Pricing: $25 for a dozen 602s. Roughly $2 per pencil, which is more than a Ticonderoga ($0.40) and less than a Caran d'Ache ($5). The 602 is, in pencil terms, mid-luxury. They are not extravagant. They are not cheap. They are the right pencil for the kind of small daily writing that you want to feel slightly serious about.

This has been Day 184. The pick is graphite, slightly soft. Sharpen one. Write something.