"Draughting" Pencils Compared

The Eagle Pencil Company (originally founded in New York City in the 1850s) has produced a "Draughting" pencil since at least the 1930s.  But in the 1980s and 1990s, there were a lot of pencil company mergers, and the company wound up in the hands of Sanford, which continued to produce the beloved "Draughting" pencil.  Another round of mergers, and the company wound up in the hands of Newell Rubbermaid, which did not keep the "Draughting" alive.

Prismacolor is an operating subsidiary of Newell Rubbermaid, and they might be an ideal company to continue (or revive) manufacture of the "Draughting," but they probably don't see how the "Draughting" fits in or contrasts significantly with their many other graphite art pencils, including the similarly-beloved Ebony, Design, and Turquoise pencil lines.

My father recently lamented that the "Draughting" was his favorite drawing pencil, and that it is now extinct.  Technically, the problem is that the company that made them no longer exists.

This distinction is relevant because a different company has decided to manufacture their own "Draughting."  The General Pencil Company (in Jersey City, New Jersey) is almost as old as the Eagle Pencil Company, but General is still making pencils, now including a "Draughting" pencil.  But is it a suitable replacement for the original Eagle "Draughting?"  Is it worthy of the "Draughting" name?  Fortunately, I have an Eagle "Draughting" stub, probably from the 1970s or 1980s, and I purchased some new General's "Draughting" pencils, so I can (ahem) draw comparisons.

I placed these pencils on a 1/4" grid for scale.  I needed a granule of Turbinado (brown) sugar to keep the very round pencils from rolling off my desk.  

The pencils are similar in shape, with 5/16" (7.5mm) thick round wooden barrels and 1/8" thick leads.  I used precision calipers; the Eagle has a 0.295" barrel, whereas the General's barrel is 0.298".  The General's also clearly has a darker paint job, though my photo may not properly indicate how similarly warm the color of the General's lacquer is to the Eagle.  General claims the barrel is incense cedar, and the Eagle's barrel wood appears similar.

With each pencil I have drawn a picture of a draft (draught) horse enjoying a mug of draft (draught) beer over a game of English draughts (checkers), sitting next to a shiny icosahedron and a shiny ball.  With the shiny icosahedron, I held the pencils at an angle to generate varying flat shades of gray.  With the shiny ball, I used the pencils with a blending stump to smear the graphite into the tooth of the paper.  The paper is 65-lb. Canson Universal Recycled Sketch.

I used the Eagle pencil first.  As the drawing shows, the Eagle performs very well with sketching, doodling, writing, and both pale and dark shading.

I used the General's pencil next.  The General's is simlarly capable of sketching, doodling, writing, and mild and dark shading.

The Eagle felt a little smoother and softer.  The lead felt like it glided on the paper more smoothly than the General's did.  On the right side of the icosahedron, the shading somehow looks a little darker.  I assume that the Eagle has a higher graphite content than the General's.

In contrast, the General's felt a little firmer.  Not painfully hard, not really scratchy, but a little scrubby or charcoaly, so that it grabbed the paper just a little more.  Again, going back to the icosahedron, I had to press a little harder to achieve that darkness on the right side with the General's.  The pencil might be as much as a grade harder.

Although it may be a noticeably different pencil, I consider the General's "Draughting" a capable and worthy inheritor of the "Draughting" name.

Also bear in mind that even the same brand and model of a pencil can vary from year to year, so it could be that my General's "Draughting" more closely matches a different year of the Eagle (or Sanford) "Draughting" model.  This variance in quality has been noted when comparing the Eberhard-Faber Blackwing 602 and the Palomino Blackwing 602.  As a result, duplicating a historical pencil means hitting a moving target.

I plan to update this posting with my father's reflections on the General's "Draughting" pencil, as soon as he can review the pair I send him.