Closing It Out: The 2024 "Best" List Is Complete! Now With Woodcase Pencils

As part of my “10 Years” of TGS retrospective, I wanted to overhaul and fill out what I’ve called the “Best Pens” list, though by adding mechanical pencils and woodcase pencils to our comprehensive list of recommendations I probably should try to name it something else. (Another project for another day!) As of this morning, the list now features a series of woodcase pencil recommendations. These aren’t necessarily lists of “my favorite” pencils, but rather the pencils I’m comfortable recommending to those looking for an everyday user, or for those looking to try out quality pencils for the first time. You can check out the full list here, but the pencils that ended up in the pencil section include:

• The Tombow 2558, which I consider the best all-around “yellow/orange No. 2 office pencil,” with an outstanding eraser.

• The Caran d’Ache “Edelweiss” series, which comes in either HB or 3B hardnesses and costs less than $1.

• The Musgrave Tennessee Red or Tennessee Round, which is the only pencil I’m aware of currently made from Eastern Red Cedar, and certainly the most “aromatic” of the group.

• The Blackwing 602 or Blackwing Natural, which feature the “firm” and “extra firm” graphite formulations that probably work best for most people.

• The Uni Hi-Uni 2B, which I consider the premiere Japanese graphite pencil in terms of wood, graphite core, and lacquer finish. If you’re a fan of lacquer-capped (no eraser) pencils, it doesn’t get much better than this.

For an interesting comparison, see this “Top 5 Pencils for Everyday Writing” list I did back in 2016. There’s still some overlap, but a few of the pencils on this original list are either no longer widely available or have experienced a manufacturing change.

A note on Recommendation lists and how they relate to the T.G.S. Shop

For each entry on the list, I typically link to a review that I’ve done of the product, and then provide a link where the product can be purchased. For many of the pens and pencils that appear on the list, that link is now to our own store. I do want to clarify: This list predates the shop by many years (you can see link to prior versions at the bottom of each rendition), and has provided the blueprint for how we’ve built out our shop, not the other way around. Back in 2020, I set out to create a curated retail experience as an alternative to the referral link and ad-supported revenue model that was prevalent at the time. My goal has always been to sell directly only those things that I’d recommend myself, so some overlap is inevitable. For those items that we don’t sell, our primary retail partner is Vanness Pens, or I’ve linked directly to the specific maker.

The Gentleman Stationer is supported entirely by purchases through the T.G.S. Curated Shop and pledges via the T.G.S. Patreon Program.

2024 Update to the "Best Pen" List: Top 5 Mechanical Pencils

Or maybe I should now say “Best Pen/Pencil” list? Earlier this month I teased some impending updates in the form of Mechanical and Woodcase pencil categories, and the “Mechanical Pencil” category is now live. I was waiting on an initial shipment of this favorite shown below to arrive before I launched, but overall there shouldn’t be too many surprises on the list! Enjoy!

If you don’t need the automatic lead advancement mechanism of the Kuru Toga Dive, the Pentel Sharp Kerry gives you a capped mechanical pencil option at a more reasonable price point.

My Five Best Pencils for Everyday Writing, Five Years Later

One of my most popular posts on the blog is a short writeup of five of my favorite “everyday” pencils, which I wrote exactly five years ago today. (Seriously, I didn’t plan that. I had the idea to update this post last night and when I went to look back at the original date of publication I nearly choked on my coffee.) I commented on how pencils were exploding in popularity, and at the time I had my suspicions that the whole pencil resurgence might turn out to be a fad. Thankfully, it has not, and five years later, not only are the pencils discussed in my original post still readily available, but the market has expanded even further and offers graphite lovers many new choices.

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You will see that I’ve reworked this list a bit. While I continue to use all of the pencils in the original “Top Five”, and most remain favorites, I have removed some or relegated them to “Honorable Mention”. For example, because pencils are consumable products, you can churn through a lot of them if you write a lot, and the rising price of high-end pencils like Blackwings make them difficult to recommend for general office supply or student use, especially where there are exceptionally good offerings from the same maker at lower cost. With that said, I give you the 2021 Top Five:

1. Palomino HB. The first pencil for which I ever paid more than $10 per dozen, and it remains my favorite workhorse of all time. Featuring an incense cedar barrel with dark HB graphite and an insanely comfortable smooth coating, you can’t do much better as an all-around everyday writer. My one knock on the Palomino is that the erasers and ferrules tend to come loose over time, but since I like to use a stand-alone eraser like a Pink Pearl or Pentel Hi-Polymer, it’s a minor issue for me.

2. Palomino Forest Choice HB. Though they’re not as inexpensive as they used to be (come on, did you really think Palomino could continue to sell these at $2.95 per dozen?!), the FSC-certified ForestChoice #2 is an uncoated, incense cedar pencil that is also available by the gross (i.e., a box of 144 pencils). Yes, I bought a gross of these.

3. 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.

4. Uni Mitsubishi 9850 HB “Smooth Writing Pencil for Office Use”. Similar to the Tombow 2558 and Palomino HB, this Japanese office pencil writes a smooth, dark line, and the cedar wood sharpens well. The glossy dark burgundy barrel MAY have been the tipping point for me here….

5. Musgrave “Tennessee Red”. The only pencil I know of that’s made from red cedar (the wood traditionally used to make pencils), the unique smell, dark core, and attractive price point propelled the Tennessee Red onto this list. While some people have had issues with off-centered graphite cores, I’ve gone through two dozen Tennessee Reds and only had 1 or 2 pencils that I would consider hard to sharpen. Also, it feels as though Musgrave has softened the edges of their hex shape on this pencil. It’s still more pronounced than your standard hex pencil, but I find it more comfortable to use than other Musgrave releases.

One thing I do love about all five pencils is that the graphite sharpens to, and holds, a nice point.

Honorable Mention

If you don’t mind spending the money, or don’t use pencils to the point where you are burning through a dozen or more per month, the Blackwing Natural (which features the extra firm graphite) is a gem. Ever since the release of the Blackwing Volumes 211 limited edition, fans have clamored for a natural finish Blackwing, and they delivered. The grey eraser is killer. General Pencil Co. also makes a good standard yellow No. 2, though I’ve gravitated away from the Semi-Hex to the round “Goddess.” Finally, I still use a lot of Caran d’Ache Swiss Woods. Though the premium nature of this pencil keeps it on the “Honorable Mention” list, the quality craftsmanship and the fact that the harder graphite allows the pencil to last a long time makes up for it (or at least that’s what I tell myself - I’m not giving them up!).

Off the List Entirely

I’ve now dropped the Dixon Ticonderoga from my list of recommendations. The most recent packs I’ve purchased have been inconsistent in quality, and I found the graphite a far cry from the dark, smooth version that was used in the Chinese-made Ticonderogas being sold at the time I wrote my original review. With Musgrave, General, and Forest Choice both making less expensive pencils appropriate for office and school use, there’s just no reason to go here anymore.

Disclaimer: This post does NOT contain third-party affiliate links, though I do sell certain pencils referred to in this post via the T.G.S. Curated Shop. If you enjoy the content on The Gentleman Stationer, please consider purchasing directly from us, where possible, or supporting us on Patreon. My goal is to make this website entirely independent and self-sustaining going forward.

The Best Truly American Pencils: New Releases from Musgrave Pencil Company

The Musgrave Pencil Company is located in Shelbyville, Tennessee (“Pencil City”), which sits just down the road from my hometown of Franklin. Several years ago I reviewed some bulk pencils I had purchased from Musgrave, and came away impressed with the quality at the price point. Musgrave, however, had not updated their website in years, and the company appeared to rely heavily on advertising and specialty pencils, as well as white labeling (i.e., making pencils for other brands). In 2018, things changed, as Musgrave hired a new marketing team and started development on a new product line. You can hear more about Musgrave’s transformation on Episode 134 of the Erasable Podcast, featuring creative directors Nicole and Tim Delger, the team behind the Musgrave rebranding.

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The Musgrave Harvest 320 “Professional,” shown here atop a Write Notepads Reporter Notebook (now available in an eye-popping red). Write Notepads and Baron Fig remain my preferred paper for pencils due to the texture and slightly tactile feel.

So What’s Behind the “Heritage” Tagline?

Musgrave has been making pencils in Shelbyville since 1916, so they’ve witnessed multiple shifts in the pencil industry during their more than a century in business. These changes included the move in the 1960s-1970s from traditional Tennessee Red Cedar to California Incense Cedar, which today remains the preferred wood for making pencils (though companies have shifted to other sources as even Incense Cedar has become scarcer and more expensive). The new Musgrave website features a comprehensive company history, including a bunch of unique photos from the pre-WWII era.

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Musgrave’s new “Heritage” collection is headlined by the “Tennessee Red,” made from the same Tennessee Red Cedar used in American pencil-making all those years ago. Apparently, Musgrave discovered a source for Tennessee Red Cedar slats, which they used to create these gorgeous, highly aromatic wood-grain pencils that, to me, smell like cedar should. If you’ve ever been inside a cedar closet or stuck your head inside a wooden chest made from red cedar, you’ll know which smell I’m talking about. Musgrave also updated their signature “Harvest” yellow No. 2 pencil to include a “professional” version made from Incense Cedar, and even released a “Single Barrel 106” pencil made from vintage (i.e. 1930s) Red Cedar pencil slats.

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My favorite thing about the Tennessee Reds is the variation in the wood grain. And the Tri-Star logo. As a Middle Tennessee native and (mostly) lifelong resident, I’ll buy anything with the Tri-Star.

The core that Musgrave uses is perfect for my style of writing. While it’s labeled a “No. 2” (at least on the Harvest), to me it writes more like a 2B or a No. 1, my preferred grades of graphite. Both pencils have excellent point retention for graphite this dark, and while one drawback is that Musgrave’s cores can have a tendency to smudge, that’s a trade-off I’m personally happy to make.

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These three Musgrave pencils all write a similarly dark line. Writing sample is on a Write Notepads Dot-Grid Spiral Notebook.

Both the Tennessee Red and the Harvest 320 Professional are “home run” products for Musgrave, and I’m ecstatic to see this iconic American company stake out a piece of today’s expanding market for high-end pencils. My sole wish would be for them to devote additional time to quality control (discussed further below) and to consider softening the hex shape, especially on the Harvest series. I mentioned in my prior review that Musgrave’s signature hexagonal pencil can be a bit uncomfortable to write with for long periods of time - those edges are sharp. I know that Musgrave is capable of smoothing things out a bit because they have made a series of extremely comfortable incense cedar pencils to accompany Write Notepads’ “In the Pines” and “Telegraph” limited edition pocket notebooks. I’d love to see them do this on a standard release, and given how much I love Musgrave’s core such a pencil would easily become my primary writer. (For some reason, probably due to the texture of the wood, the Tennessee Red feels less sharp.)

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Musgrave pencils sharpen very well. The Harvest 320 is shown here with a point carved by a NUK single-stage long-point sharpener, possibly the best I’ve used, that was featured in this quarter’s C.W. Pencils Pencil Box Subscription. I hope they sell these sharpeners soon, because I want to buy a bunch!

A Note on Sharpening and Quality Control

The release of the Tennessee Red Cedar pencil has not been without minor controversy, which I feel I need to address briefly. The Musgrave website states that the supplier of the Red Cedar slats “wasn’t used to prepping slats for pencils,” and if the slats aren’t uniform, it can result in off-center cores. Musgrave’s site suggests that off-center cores are a purely aesthetic issue, but they’re not: an off-center core can affect a pencil’s ability to sharpen (though once you get them sharpened, they’re perfectly usable).

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The pencil on the left had a badly off-center core, but I was still able to get it sharpened to a super-long, concave El Casco point. The Tennessee Red on the right had a centered core and sharpened just fine in the Carl Angel-5.

My entire order of 24 Tennessee Reds only contained 2 “bad” cores, and I was actually able to get both of these pencils to sharpen, though it took running them through my El Casco sharpener as both the Classroom Friendly and the KUM Masterpiece kept giving me an uneven point nearly covered by wood on one side. Personally, I think Musgrave should inspect these pencils before they ship to remove the duds. It was fairly easy for me to look at a handful and quickly spot the off-center cores. To their credit, from what I’ve heard Musgrave is more than willing to work with customers to make things right if you receive an order containing multiple unusable pencils. They have excellent customer service.

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Twenty Musgrave Tennessee Reds. The controversy over “off-center cores” is somewhat overblown - of this fistful of pencils, only one is badly off-center (top center), which isn’t uncommon but when you are selling premium pencils, it’s a legitimate issue for customers.

Visit Musgrave’s New Online Shop

You can purchase the pencils featured in this review directly from Musgrave. As I mentioned above, Musgrave has redesigned their website, including their online store. While Musgrave manufactures a vast catalogue of pencils, both standard and novelty/promotional, the new retail strategy focuses on their “Heritage Collection,” such as the Tennessee Red and the Harvest 320 Professional, both of which you can purchase by the dozen, or in an engraved (and highly aromatic) red cedar box. Overall, these are excellent pencils made by a classic American stationery company, and pencils always present an opportunity to purchase quality stationery at relatively minimal cost. Both Tennessee Reds and Harvest pencils cost a whopping $9 per dozen (compared against $24.95 for a dozen Blackwings). If you’re a fan of darker pencils with an awesome story behind them, grab these now because they have received a lot of attention and I suspect there may be a run on them in the future.

Disclaimer: The products featured in this post were purchased with my own funds for my own use. I was not compensated in any way for this review. This post (and content linked to in this post) contains affiliate links and links to my own retail store.