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15 essential writing tools for Pencil & Pen lovers with an expeditionary mindset

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wtf is an expeditionary mindset?

When I was in the military, I walked a lot. An expeditionary mindset is one that always asks the question: am I willing to carry <whatever> for 20 miles? – before packing it into a rucksack. This page is a very short list of writing tools that I own and love, assembled for my friend Dave.

Pencils & Pens

Featured
Blackwing Pencils
Blackwing Pencils

If I had to buy one: Blackwing 602

  • Reasonable cost, American-made, high quality product with a cult following

Where to buy:

Differences between the main 3 Blackwings

  • Black (standard): softest and fastest to dull: ~4B

  • White (aka: “Pearl”): next softest: ~3B

  • Grey (aka: “602”): hardest tip, but still soft: ~2B

Mechanical Pencils
Mechanical Pencils

If you had to buy one: Pentel GraphGear .5mm

  • Extremely durable, high build quality, reasonable cost, and looks pretty good – not as good as Alvin or rOtring though 😄

Two others to buy:

  • Alvin Draftmatic – the best pencil in my opinion (if you ignore durability); tips will bend if they got tossed around, or fall on the floor

  • rOtring - amazing beautiful pencil, really stunning. I was turned on to this pencil by a Swedish friend. Mine is not pictured because it broke a few months after I bought it 😢

Other thoughts:

  • Never pay less than $10 for a mechanical pencil, and always get one with a knurled tip

  • The biggest consideration is the diameter of the lead (see below)

  • Always buy HB lead unless you know what you’re doing

  • Small neat lettering: (.3mm - .5mm)

  • Normal lettering: .7mm

  • Large lettering: .9mm

Pens
Pens

If I had to choose 2 pens:

OHTO “The Dude” ($15)

  • WRITES LIKE A DREAM

  • High quality, made in Japan

  • Technically, a ballpoint pen, but this was sold to me as a rollerball. It certainly writes like one. I love this pen!

Le Pen ($2)

  • AWESOME – Felt tip, various widths available

  • Excellent for illustration, jotting down notes, or diagramming

  • Pretty easy to find, and not too expensive – available in lots of colors and different tip sizes

Paper (for writing)

First off, MLK wrote his Letter from a Birmingham Jail on scraps of toilet paper. So if you think that buying fancy paper is going to make you into the next Hemmingway, it’s not. With that said, here are a few sensible tips you can bank on.

In general:

  • Avoid artisanal pulpy-looking paper that looks fancy

  • Use acid-free paper of any quality – there’s no need to agonize over the hundreds of possible variations

What to buy (fancy & cheap)

Do pencil marks degrade over time?

Not as much as you’d think – below is a penciled journal entry from May 1998.

Penciled journal entry from 5/25/1998 (on acid-free paper). This was written with an Alvin Draftmatic .5mm mechanical pencil using HB lead.

Notebooks (various sizes)

The teeny tiny one is small enough to fit inside the top left breast pocket of my winter jacket.

I use a combo of cheap and fancy notebooks.

Canson (cheap)
Available at any Blick or Pearl. These are durable hard cover sketch books that can be beaten up and treated roughly. The largest one is a 14” x 11” (108 sheets). The next size down is 8” x 11”. I fill them up with lists, diagrams, pseudo code, and doodles.
Blick link

Moleskine (fancy)
For the 2 smaller sizes, I go fancy with Moleskine’s notebooks (hard cover). I love the quality of the paper, and the smallest one (3.5” x 5.5”) is just a bit shorter than a mechanical pencil, and is compact enough to fit inside my winter jacket breast pocket.
Amazon link

Pencil Sharpeners

Hands down, the Carl Angel 5 is the best pencil sharpener I have ever owned. If you’re the kind of person who gravitates to expensive Swiss or German made tools, the Carl may strike you as a cheap looking Chinese knock-off , but compare the $19 Carl to the $195 Caran d’Ache butterfly sharpener, try and think like a person who earns $20/hour, then answer the question which one is the right sharpener.

Thoughts on pencils – from Henry Petroski

“✏️ The pencil, the tool of doodlers, stands for thinking and creativity, but at the same time, as the toy of children, it symbolizes spontaneity and immaturity. Yet the pencil’s graphite is also the ephemeral medium of thinkers, planners, drafters, architects, and engineers, the medium to be erased, revised, smudged, obliterated, lost – or inked over.”
— Henry Petroski

The above quote is taken from The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance – a book I cannot recommend highly enough.