Reviews by Wirecutter: An eraser has one job: to correct your mistakes cleanly, without leaving any residue on the page. If it fails at that, what’s the point?
That’s why Ralph Nader, the legendary consumer advocate, whom we previously enlisted for pen testing, is peeved about what he considers the “planned obsolescence” of pencil erasers.
6 comments:
I’ve always found it weird that the erasers on pencils are so small. What do they want us to do?? Buy more erasers?? (this is probably exactly what they want us to do.) As an art student who uses erasers a LOT, no one eraser is superior. They all have their uses. Plastic? WONDERFUL at getting dark lines to fade. I’ve used Blackwing pencils myself and the precision of the eraser tip is really good. (Although, I’ve found the best eraser ever to be Japanese Tombow precision erasers, which are plastic. You get precision, longevity, and effectiveness all in one, on a 2.3 millimeter surface.) I suppose this is a good note to never leave it out in the sun, so if I find myself in a sunny studio one day I’ll watch out. I love plastic erasers so so so so so much, they work SO much better than anything else.. Mitsubishi comparatively looks like an awesome pencil eraser compared to the two others; I don’t know how it didn’t win easily.
I am also someone who is very picky about my erasers. I have one brand of erasers that I use and swear by. To be perfectly honest I also thought that erasers were getting worse, especially the ones on the backs of pencils. I was pleasantly surprised when the author wrote that they found that erasers are getting better. I love when an experiment’s hypothesis gets proved wrong. When I looked at the other article that showed which eraser the kids liked, I was surprised to see the Staedtler brand. I used this brand before in my high school art classes and they work quite well, but they were never my favorite. I felt like they still left smudges and you had to use it in a specific way for it to work. They also like the Paper Mate Pencil Cap Erasers and while I agree that those are the best pencil cap erasers, they still are not the best eraser especially since once you use them too much, they fall apart. Personally, my favorite eraser is from Pentel.
I’ve always found that the erasers on most pencils leave much to be desired. In fact many of the nicest pencils I’ve used simply forgo the eraser presuming that you will have a separate, dedicated eraser. I always had a feeling that the lackluster quality of pencil erasers was due to cost cutting but I didn’t expect there to be this much to it. This is what I find interesting about the manufacturing world. To the average person the eraser on the back of a pencil is just an eraser, there’s not really anything to think too in depth about. But from a manufacturing perspective that eraser must be chosen specifically for your design, you need to consider cost, size, etc. And, of course pencils are often sold at a low cost meaning that in order for profit margins to be maintained the cost of every component of the pencil must be brought down. I really enjoyed this little glimpse at the design behind something so simple that I often don’t think of it as even something that you would ever think about.
I was gripped by this article in a way I didn’t expect from the title. Like yes erasers are awful and I’d like to know what pencil the children destroyed the least. I’m not surprised Faber Castell made it onto the final three list–from an illustrator POV they are one of the best pencil brands out there. I agree it is unfortunate that erasers are made a size that is grippable, but also a size that you often cannot use up before it dries out. I think pencils with no eraser on top are aggravating and I don’t know why I’ve never looked into ways to replace the eraser on wooden pencils once they're gone. In my experience, erasers on the end of pencils often fall off as an entire nub leaving only a jaggedy squat mound that lasts a month. I am a fan of the gummy eraser (it definitely has a more official name I cannot think of at the moment but it is the gray lump you can massage) because it does not turn into little pieces of waste, it does not go bad overtime as long as you keep it in a container, and it is fun to fidget with.
Ok so I have so many options on easers. As someone who journals, draws, and make a lot (like so so many) mistakes, easers are my best friend. What I really appreciated about this article was that it went over the history as well as the material properties of the different easers on the market. However my biggest complaint (and I’ll be honest and say this is more of a personal grievance than an actual crisis of the article) about the article was that they didn’t talk about my two favorite types of easers. Ok so gum and kneaded easers rock. I literally love my gum easers so much, they are so incredible and you couldn’t pry them from my cold dead hands. I like kneaded easers less because they are less versatile but they are super great for drawing. Also people who use the Dixon yellow pencils are weird and I will not elaborate. Also another random easer rant. The easers on the Pentel drafting pencils are so great but why can’t they be a bit longer. Like I love how thin they are but they run out so fast when I am making dumb mistakes when drafting. Also easer shields have complete changed my life and I don’t think I can live without them now.
My new knowledge that the little flakes that come off of erasers are called crumbs will become everyone else' s problem. I will be mentioning the ‘crumbs’ that people accidentally get on my desk quite often from here on out. Aside from that I love the analytical approach the author, Annemarie Conte, took in assessing this seemingly innocuous problem. I love learning little facts about things that I will likely never need, so the section on eraser history was super fun to catalog into my brain. In correspondence with Ralph Nader, I find it amusing that he knew the term ferrule, specific to the metal piece which attaches an eraser to the end of a pencil. I had assumed that his gripe with drying erasers was something that annoyed him just a bit, but he seems to be very knowledgeable on pencils all around. I hope to learn more of these tidbits in the future.
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