Exam prep: a note about pencils

Bring a couple of pens or pencils with you for the test. The exam may be optically scanned, so use a pen only if you are supremely confident in not changing your mind.

An extra pencil is affordable fault tolerance. If you want to splurge, the Palomino Blackwing 602 is considered by many to be one of the finest pencils available. The company advertises its key virtue as half the pressure, twice the speed. If that claim is really true, using this product might help you complete the exam quicker.

If you do not choose bring several extra pencils, you may want to bring a pencil sharpener. Palamino makes a companion Blackwing Long Point Sharpener. This is somewhat pricey at $22.50 (although it has been on sale recently for $19.47). For less money, you can get what looks like a clone: the AS2M Long Point Sharpener. Both of these feature two-step sharpening: one for the wood case and another for the graphite core of the pencil. A truly beautiful sharpener is the El Casco Pencil Sharpener, but bringing this to class may be overkill to spend clsoe to $300 on a pencil sharpener (or over $300 for the 23k gold model).

If you want to splurge and have a beautifully designed pencil with an integrated sharpener, then you want the Graf von Faber-Castell Perfect Pencil. The Anniversary Edition is over $500 but the $310 versions will work just as well.

Sadly, the only store in the New York City area that was dedicated exclusively to selling pencils, CW Pencil Enterprises, at 15 Orchard St on the lower East Side, closed their doors in 2021. You will have to either shop online or visit a store that sells other products and is unlikely to have any sales staff with specific expertise in pencils.

If you would like to learn the craft of pencil sharpening, there are several books available. The best of these may be How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical & Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, & Civil Servants by David Rees. I personally own a copy and recommend this if you want to take the time to learn this fine but often neglected craft. Do not be intimidated by the omission of “students” in the title. You can read more about it at artisinalpencilsharpening.com. You can also watch a video on the topic by David Rees. You are welcome to bring a full pencil sharpening travel kit to the exam but be aware that a proper sharpening routine may consume far too much time during the exam and may be messy.

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Last modified September 29, 2023.
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