![]() ![]() (Dixon didn’t respond to our request for comment.) Yet it has effectively edged out many of its competitors by retaining a distribution center in the United States and successfully lobbying the federal government to impose a steep tariff on Chinese pencil companies-more than doubling costs for some rivals. They’re really not great pencils anymore.”ĭixon was acquired by an Italian company in 2005 and now manufactures most (if not all) of its Ticonderoga pencils in Mexico and China, according to a 2018 investigation by the Washington Post. “The leads inside are often broken, or they’re not well-centered so they don’t sharpen well. That means they’re not the same pencils you may have used as a kid, even though they look the same. “It’s actually been quite a long time since Ticonderoga pencils were made in the United States,” she says. And the reason is that Ticonderogas have changed. What the expert saysĬaroline Weaver, author of The Pencil Perfect and Pencils You Should Know, says she has never stocked Ticonderogas at CW Pencil Enterprise, the pencil shop she owns on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. For something that often gets used several hours per day, 180 days of the year, a pencil shouldn’t just be adequate-it should be good. But they still have a special place in modern life, especially for K–12 students who use them to draw, take notes, do their homework, and fill in bubbles for standardized tests like the SAT and ACT (which require No. In an increasingly digital world, pencils are less commonplace than they once were. You can buy them pretty much anywhere school supplies are sold, and year after year teachers specifically request them for their classrooms.īut are Ticonderogas really “The World’s BEST PENCIL,” as their packaging loudly proclaims? In a word, no. When you think about the pencils you wrote with as a kid-blonde wood, yellow paint, green metal cuff, pink eraser-you’re probably picturing a Ticonderoga. ![]() In Japan, consumers tend to prefer softer darker leads, so an HB lead produced in Japan is generally softer and darker than an HB from European producers.įinding what works best for your own artistic and writing needs is generally a matter of personal preference and experimentation with different brands of pencils.Dixon’s Ticonderoga pencils are iconic. Most pencil manufacturers set their own internal standards for graphite hardness grades and overall quality of the core, some differences are regional. Thus, a #2 or HB pencil from one brand will not necessarily leave the same mark as a #2 or HB pencil from another brand. In reality however, there is no specific industry standard for the darkness of the mark to be left within the HB or any other hardness grade scale. Generally, an HB grade about the middle of the scale is considered to be equivalent to a #2 pencil using the U.S. For example, a 4B would be softer than a 2B and a 3H harder than an H. Historically, pencil makers also use combinations of letters - a pencil marked “HB” is hard and black a pencil marked “HH” is very hard, and a pencil marked “HHBBB” is very hard and really, really black! Although today most pencils using the HB system are designated by a number such as 2B, 4B or 2H to indicate the degree of hardness. ![]()
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