The Blackwing 602: The Pencil That Takes You Back

Pens are useful. That’s about as nice as I can say it. Pick up a pencil, though, and it’s a different story. Especially when you get that smell of cedar. One sniff and I’m back in school, sitting at a wooden desk with a freshly sharpened No. 2 pencil and a clean sheet of paper in front of me. You probably have a similar memory. There was something satisfying about sharpening a pencil, watching that little curl of wood fall away and knowing you were ready to write or draw. It was simple, it felt good in your hand and you didn’t need to plug it in.

If you’re going to get nostalgic about pencils, you might as well go with the Blackwing 602.

The Blackwing isn’t your average pencil. It has developed a following that makes you wonder if we’re talking about a writing instrument or a vintage guitar. Writers, artists and animators have been using them for decades. Chuck Jones used Blackwing pencils while creating some of the characters and animated films that became part of our childhood. Disney animation veteran Shamus Culhane was so attached to his Blackwing 602 that, according to animation historian Charles Solomon, he wanted to be buried with one. Then there’s John Steinbeck. His son Thom said his father sharpened 24 pencils before he started writing, and some days he went through more than 100. That’s a serious commitment to stationery.

There is a surprisingly involved process behind that little piece of wood and graphite. According to Blackwing, the graphite starts in Kofu, Japan, where powdered graphite and clay are combined to create the different grades. The mixture is extruded, dried, fired at about 1,000 degrees Celsius and treated with hot wax before being inspected. That’s quite a trip for something that will eventually end up in somebody’s desk drawer.

The graphite then heads to Tokyo, where the incense cedar body is made. The cedar is cut into slats and grooved so the graphite can sit inside. Another slat is glued on top, the pencil is shaped into its familiar hexagonal form and then lacquered. The Blackwing name is added before the pencils make their way across the Pacific to California. By this point, the pencil has already traveled farther than most of us will manage this year.

In Stockton, California, the final work is done by hand. The flat metal ferrule and replaceable eraser are fitted, each pencil gets another quality check and the finished pencils are hand-packed. All that work goes into something that, when you really think about it, is still just a pencil. It doesn’t make coffee, connect to Wi-Fi or tell you that your storage is almost full. It writes.

The 602 has firm, smooth graphite, which is a big part of what makes it different from the pencils most of us remember from school. It has enough resistance to feel controlled without being scratchy, and it moves across the paper without much fuss. There’s no great mystery once you use one. You sharpen it and start writing.

Nobody really needs a fancy pencil when a cheap one will do the job. The Blackwing is about enjoying the tool itself, and there’s something nice about that. We spend plenty of time surrounded by things designed to be replaced, upgraded or thrown away. A Blackwing feels like something you’re supposed to keep using, and maybe that’s why people get a little obsessive about them.

We’ve also managed to make writing far more complicated than it needs to be. We have keyboards, phones, tablets, apps and enough notifications to keep you busy all day. A pencil doesn’t care about any of that. You sharpen it, put it on the paper and get on with whatever is in your head. I like a tool that doesn’t need an instruction manual or a software update.

That’s probably what keeps the Blackwing 602 interesting. It takes something we all used as kids and turns it into something we still enjoy as adults. The cedar smell is still there, the pencil still needs sharpening and the paper is still waiting. You pick it up, make a mark and keep going.

For something as ordinary as a pencil, that’s not a bad trick.