Letts diary pencil

When I was young, quite often pocket diaries came with little pencils that fitted into their spines. I seem to remember I had a few of these. This type of pencil also came with the sort of ‘policemans notebook’ pads.

In my mind, the diary brand that sticks in my mind coming with these pencils would be those from Letts.

The company

Well, the diary company Letts started in, wow, 1796! But, I’m not sure they will be making their own pencils.

The pencil itself

This may be the smallest pencil in my collection. It looks to be made of probably cedar. Here it is next to a ‘normal’ pencil for comparison:

The tail cap of the pencil is plastic, slightly tapered to make a snug fit into the spine of the diary, with a little cap to stop you pushing the pencil in too far.

As it was, before I started using it for the test, the tip had been sharpened by a penknife I reckon. I thought I was going to have trouble sharpening a pencil this thin, but it actually fitted OK into my normal spiral sharpener. You have to make sure you hold it centrally whilst sharpening, but its not too hard.

How does it write

It writes OK. I think I’d probably grade it as a bit softer than an HB maybe. You’d think the very thin and short body would be a problem, and athough not as easy to hold as full size pencil, it was ultimately fairly useable.

Sourcing

Initially I looked around to see if you could buy these from Letts or elsewhere. Initially my search was not too successful, but then I spotted you can buy 10 of them for £8 from ebay, so maybe they are available, and not silly money. Pound for pound though, you definitely won’t get a lot of pencil for your money.