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The lead is dark and rapidly crumbles. It certainly isn’t the quality of the old HB. It is perfectly usable, and I find this lead preferable to the anemic grainy lead of many no name pencils. State of the Art: Filling a Sketchbook | Comfortable Shoes Studio on Review: Handbook Trav-e-logue Series For Tennessee natives, you’ll recognize the red circle with three stars from the Tennessee state flag.
To me, the most interesting aspect of this pencil is Musgrave’s disruption of the pencil supply chain. They have found a way to circumvent the cedar slat supplier CalCedar. Did you read the pencil’s imprint? “Genuine Eastern Red Cedar”. Wow. That is to me a very clear shot across the bow directed at CalCedar’s “Genuine Incense Cedar”. (They aren’t the first to rework this phrasing to make a point.) This pencil is also a statement about the pencil supply chain. The pencil writes very nicely (the lead seems to be a step up from that of the Tennessee Red), with a dark line, nice glide, and minimal crumbling. Round pencils, they have gold coloured ferrules, with white erasers. All have dyed wood – red, green, or yellow, with corresponding varnish. These are my favorite pencils for working in my garage, woodworking particular. I find that the red is really easy to see against any shade of wood and, being a pencil, it erases almost as well as a standard grey graphite so you get better visibility. The only downside of these pencils is that they have a fragile graphite so you need to keep them blunt and not push too hard when using them.Private companies of course don’t reveal their internal business, but in some countries (including the US), there are public customs records that show import activity. Records from Import Genius show that in the last two years, Musgrave’s imports include: Item Dry and Semi-Dry Media for adding Color to Thermal Prints from Instant Print Cameras and Thermal Printerss
Tombow 2558 “For General Writing”. I had to have one yellow No. 2 on here, right? Over the years, I’ve used this pencil in B, HB, and H grades, and frankly, they’re all excellent. Even Tombow’s “H” graphite maintains legibility without sacrificing point retention. The eraser is also ridiculously good, and the ferrule firmly attaches to the barrel to the point where I’ve never had one come loose, much less fall off. 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 The name was more of a no-brainer, as we’d internally called the pencil prototype “The Tennessee Red Cedar Pencil” for months. By the time we came to the design phase, the name “Tennessee Red™” just came to us. It is worth noting that we did not give this pencil a customer-facing number. Just like the greats who go by first name only, we believe this one and only pencil needed no number to be differentiated from its pencil contemporaries. And while it’s not technically a mononym (á la Beyoncé, Madonna, or Prince), perhaps we could dare call this hardworking American classic “The Boss” of pencils. Using these almost century-old slats, we worked closely with the company chairman, Henry, and their manufacturing team to give these slats life as the pencils they were milled to be. This vintage wood now has a top-of-the-line graphite core and distinctly modern imprint and end cap. They are a piece of American pencil manufacturing history and a joy to write with. And once this limited run sells out, they are gone.
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 Musgrave 909 Ceres Technically, the lead isn’t off centre between the slats – the issue is more that one slat is twice the height of the other.
On the scale, a couple of dozen pencils ranged from 5.3g to 6.3g, with a mean weight of 5.8g. Compare this with the Castell 9000 (3.9g) or the reference Mars Lumograph (3.8g). This pencil weighs 50% more than the European competitors! The distance between the sides is the same as a Lumograph (maybe a hair larger) – about 7.47mm. So where is the weight? Some must be in the ferrule and eraser. I’m also comparing unsharpened to sharpened pencils.Buyer's Note: Because of the nature of the wood - the delightfully aromatic Eastern Red Cedar - some cores may be slightly off-center and wood may have modest visible wear.
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