Cedar Graphite Pencils, Pack of 12

Details

Twelve hexagonal cedar pencils, 176 mm long and 7.0 mm across the flats, with the core glued to both wood halves along its full length. First, the thing worth correcting rather than exploiting: there is no lead in a pencil. The core is graphite and clay, in roughly 68 percent graphite, 26 percent clay and 6 percent wax for an HB, and more graphite with less clay as the grade softens. The lead scare in pencils was never about the core at all. It was about the paint. Lead chromate made a cheap bright yellow lacquer, and that is the actual reason pencils have been tested for lead for a century. Plenty of listings quietly let the confusion run because it makes a free-from claim sound impressive. It is a misunderstanding, and it is worth clearing up. Second, these go into children's mouths, so the whole pencil is tested as a toy would be.

• Heavy metals tested on both the lacquer and the core to the migration limits in IS 9873 (Part 3), the Indian toy safety standard for migration of certain elements, at a NABL-accredited laboratory
• The lacquer is water-based, six coats, and contains no lead chromate and no added lead of any kind
• The core is graphite and clay and contains no lead. It never did. This is stated because the belief is genuinely widespread, not because the absence is an achievement
• Wood is cedar from a plantation source, with the mill's chain-of-custody paperwork travelling with every lot. We do not carry an FSC claim on this pencil, because our lots are not FSC chain-of-custody certified end to end, and printing that logo without it is precisely what the scheme exists to prevent
• Core is glued to both halves along its whole length, so a dropped pencil does not shatter internally and then step back a piece at a time in the sharpener. That failure is what most cheap pencils are actually doing
• Core centred within 0.15 mm, checked on a cut section. An off-centre core is why a pencil sharpens to a point on one side and a wedge on the other
• Hexagonal at 7.0 mm across the flats, so it does not roll off a slanted school desk
• No ferrule and no eraser. A pencil-top eraser is the first thing to fail and it forces a metal ring you did not ask for onto the end
• Sharpens in a standard 8 mm school sharpener and in a long-point sharpener
• The assorted pack is two each of HB, B, 2B, 3B, 4B and 6B, which is twelve. It costs more because the soft grades carry more graphite and run in smaller batches, not because the box is nicer
• Rs 15 a pencil in HB or 2B, Rs 21.67 a pencil in the assorted set