The Problem with Adam Savage's Favorite Pencil

hey everybody Adam Savage in my cave with a sad story a sad story um in the making of things in the in the specific bandwidth of making things that I occupy which is a generalist bandwidth sort of a theater bandwidth um the early stages of this kind of making involve a lot of tool acquisition sorry I've got like dust all over here that's grading on my arms the early parts of the the the the at the beginning of a young Maker's uh uh uh uh Explorations tool acquisition um is super important and you don't know what tools you need I mean you have a hammer and a screwdriver and a hacksaw and some other things but there are all these tools that that you got to learn about forcer bits and speed squares and needle-nose pliers and uh really specific little tools like alligator uh alligator uh uh uh forceps and things like that um so at the beginning you are a too we are a tableau rasa and and we are looking for information from the outside world and that is like the whole early part of making is learning about tools from other people interestingly enough so is the latter part of making so at this Advanced time in my career where I've been doing this for decades um it's no longer it's rarely new tools that I'm learning about but it's what I what what makers are trading at the at at I feel like I'm being really inarticulate here but let's just let let me I was trying to frame this in an old maker new maker kind of thing um because it seemed remain old makers are always sharing with each other their favorite versions of tools that's what I wanted to say the beginning is just what tool do I need at the end it's what is your favorite version and why because we all have all sorts of different parameters for the tools we like um I did a whole set of videos about how much I really really rever the Stanley workmas series screwdriver handles and part of that is because I part of that is specifically because I had one left over from my dad's toolbox and it was one of the things that got stolen when I got when our production got robbed on Savage builds um I'm not broken up about it it's just you know it has a Sentimental as well as a form factor value so yeah old tool old model makers uh uh advanced advanced makers love love going into great detail on their favorite this or that their screwdriver their saw blade their hacksaw blade their air retrieval system L we have opinions on everything and it's it's so much fun to share and to find out about one that you didn't know uh because there's only so much that research can give and the rest is this web of of compared experience um and for for for the uninitiated it may be surprising to you that pencils are like this really important thing um the maybe one of the most famous pencils is the Blackwing uh half the pressure twice the speed uh Palamino made these and these this is um the Blackwing 602 pencil was revered among Disney animators and other animators when I worked at Colossal pictures in the '90s uh a lot of their animators Loved These they went out of production they became very sought after um original packages on eBay can go for like a lot of money per pencil uh I've told this story on the channel before but years ago I was uh at Jeff Tweety's Loft in Chicago having lunch uh and his loft is a marvelously cacophonous place where I feel right at home and I looked over behind him on one of his electric pianos he had a pencil cup and I saw a Blackwing and I was like oh a Blackwing pencil and Jeff yelled out pencil nerd and if there was a bell to ring he would have rung it um I am a pencil nerd I do have a bunch of these I have some vintage Originals that uh one of tested's uh patrons sent me and I have some of the Repros they're delightful these are not my all-time favorite pencil uh for I am uh I I draw in a different kind of way I have different needs than an animator might um and my personal personal favorite is this the uh papermate sharp riter number two so many of you have have tried to convert me to the beautiful world of high-end mechanical pencils don't get me wrong there's some magnificent constructions within that frame but for me I would lose them constantly constantly constantly constantly it does not matter I would so I need a for me and pencils it goes all the way back to second grade my teacher Mr sorin uh would give you a pencil and if you needed another one he'd give you another one but he'd mark it on the board and uh for every number of pencils you got a mark and it was like you know they were keeping track that you were like using up too many pencils so you got like a red mark If you use 10 pencils this semester and you got a green Mark if you Ed like 20 pencils I had a blue Mark and the blue mark my teacher told my mom that's means the pencil monster is following him and eating every pencil we hand him so I'm always losing pencils which is why I love this um it's not a dis it is a disposable option um sharpwriter number two Paper Mate I love this pencil I learned about this pencil when I first got to industrial Light and magic in 1998 it is it was sort of the institutional pencil in the model shop uh along with the institution of the checkbox which changed my life there's this whole chapter in my book about it um and I have loved this pencil ever since then I have been buying it in bulk ever since then so that is uh 1998 26 years 26 years I have been uh giving my love to this pencil I wanted some shot in a custom color cuz all the pen companies do some of their pen models in custom colors that you can order but not this one and I even went so far as back when back when Twitter OG existed I managed to get a hold of like somebody in a in a place to know at papermate where they were like oh yeah we can introduce you to our corporate team for custom stuff and I was like can you do the sharp writer number to in white with my logo on it and they were like absolutely not um and look I totally understand that too it's when when a company is making pen pencil when a company is making a product like this um they are making they are running them through a tool that probably shoots 20 of these at a time maybe 40 maybe 60 who knows but it's shooting a whole bunch of them uh and that means that there's like a vessel of hot plastic pellets being mixed to be this exact color formula that's at the factory those are heated up and sent through these pipes into these big tools which heat and cool and Rapid succession so they can knock out as many pencils as possible and changing the color on a line like that is a huge cost you got to you take the whole thing offline you got to clean out the whatever's I don't know exactly how it works but I know you got to clean out the whatevers and then you got to put in a new color and then you got to go through the whole thing again at the other end this is this is why they allocate certain portions of their line so that they have so that they can accommodate and it's plausible that this was such a a a hot item for them such a regular seller they had no impetus or or Reason to break the line and shoot it in a custom color so I understand the manufacturing reasons why they didn't shoot me a custom color that's fine I kept on buying them in fact um so badly did I want my logo on it that actually my old shop assistant Freddy Shram I bought a hot foil Stamper and Freddy ordered me my logo in hot in a metal and we hot foil stamped a whole crap ton of these I might have given you one who knows um there's hundreds of these in my shop alas alas there are hundreds of these in my shop I again this is my favorite pencil I love the way the line feels I love the way the line erases I love how much utility I get out of these I drop them all the time the lead inside rarely breaks so many things about this are ideal so what is this video about this video is about my God 9 Minutes in I apologize for taking so long to get to the point uh the point of this video is that recently Dave fogler was over here at the shop and he said have you seen the new papermate sharp writer number twos and I said I don't know what you mean and he said they're shooting them in a different color and they changed the formulation on the Eraser and the lead and I ordered some from three different sources hoping that he was wrong and that maybe he had gotten some counterfeit paper mates from Amazon but no no uh it would seem that they have changed okay so first up it would seem oh they've changed everything okay we're going to get some b-roll of this but um first up clearly they changed the color old old color new color the old color the old color look at this old color look at how how much they were working on that taond Roa color profile all that red and that yellow look at that that is a great color that [Music] trying to make sounds that demonstrate my disdain for this color it's a fine yellow but it's not okay it's not the biggest problem with this pencil let's get a piece of [Music] paper okay uh line there we go all right the lead lead feels like it's actually going to be pretty similar let's see here lead feels the same lead feels the same all right uh let's try the Eraser [Music] here [Music] okay the Eraser seems to be wearing down a lot faster number one this isn't a scientific test by any measurement and just yeah the Eraser is going away a lot faster and it does not erase as cleanly as the old one um further the writing has changed they're not doing quite the same stamp that doesn't really matter again the lead being the same it's fine I okay let me collect myself I guess my biggest problem is that the new one is ugly it's that's my biggest problem it's it's it's hideous and it makes me sad it looks cheaper it looks cheaper it it it looks like its materials are less good uh its colors are more washed out they have less of the old pencil has a point of view on being a pencil the new one is like a simulacrum of a pencil and that makes me sad it's again I've been buying these for 20 years I have never noticed a color variance in them ever ever and they've just changed it now that could mean all sorts of things it could mean that the die for this one got expensive or they realized they could save a penny per X Whatever by going with this color but they've changed the color the tip the color of the body and the Eraser type um my guess is these are all strategies for um and cheapening the product to increasing the profit um which again late stage capitalism I understand Commerce and all that um but it is sad when I consider a pencil an institution like this and now I have one that's ugly they'll they'll work in my shop they won't go to waste but they're ugly now and that makes me sad it's not really a huge rant it's not like they destroyed my childhood or something like that it's a small one but slowly inch by inch Choice by choice our stuff gets cheapened and that makes again yeah that makes me sad you know what talk to me in the comments about products you are sad aren't as good as they used to be yeah let's have that kind of rant together okay cool thank you guys Adam out uh before we let you go before we wrap this video let me just say it's not a scientific test at all it's completely emotional one I am heavily biased towards the more beautiful pencil in my opinion and so my assessment of both the Eraser and the lead should be suspect because my bias is towards the object I find more compelling and I'm not going to go through the double blind I'm just it's just not worth my time right now uh but also I just wanted to be honest with you about my bias don't trust my assessment of these pencils go ahead if you like these buy some new ones and uh work on them on your own like I said these won't go to waste here they'll just be I'll just be sad a little bit set when I used them that's all thank you so much for watching that video your support allows us to make more of this great content if you'd like to help us on a deeper level even head over to tested dstore docomo in Japanese follow the process not the plan it's not a process it's not a problem to solve it's a process to manage other aphorisms that have come from my mouth um and we have just made a full set of our Demar badges in sticker form so you can cover your toolbox with all of your screw-ups and celebrate it with other makers thank you guys so much see you next time

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 645,043

Keywords: tested, tested adam savage, adam savage, adam savage tested, adam savage tool recommendations, adam savage favorite tools, favorite tools, inside adam savages cave, best tools to have, adam savage tools, favorite pencil, best pencil, adam savage favorite pencil, best mechanical pencil, paper mate pencils, paper mate pencils mechanical, did paper mate change their pencils, paper mate new pencils, adam savage rants

Id: bLwo1kOcwxs

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 05 2024