Pens and pencils

[Joel OF]

Other than French chalk, what pens and pencils do you use in yout workshop and for what application? I.e hot work, cold work, precise marking out, colour coding...

[Alan Evans]

I use a 6mm Kaweco clutch pencil with 6B leads. Brilliant for sketching and drawing out full size, it also doubles up as excellent for point lubrication of things like locks and keys and anything where you do not want oil on because it gets hot.

I also use the Pentel correction markers, the ones with the metal knib that look a bit like a Bic lighter. I found them better than the paint markers I used to use…quicker drying, finer controllable lines and they seemed to last in both the bottle and on the workpiece just as well.

I was given a beautiful silver marking pencil by Claude and Amnon when we worked together at the forge-in in Forcalquier, Provence a couple of years ago. It has written on it ….Ada Products. Inc. Ideal for Marking Adamounts and X-Ray Film...

There is an excellent website devoted to pens and pencils based down in Devon called cult pens or similar, many happy hours browsing there. I had no idea there are collectors of such things. One of my old college Rotring drafting pencils is a collectors item now apparently! Very good links to sites where someone has experimented with the various eraser and lead manufacturers to find the best/most effective combinations…almost as nerdy as IFI!

Eclipse carbide scribers and home made silver steel ones of course, and sometimes have used brass or copper styli to leave a mark.

Alan

Edited February 28, 2015 by Alan Evans

[Judson Yaggy]

+1 for the white out type correction pen!  A line that stays visible up to high forging heats is a big aid to accuracy.  Also easy to follow when free hand torch or plasma cutting.

[Fatfudd]

I use silver welders pencils, there are a number of different makers but here is one-

Nissen® Welder's pencil in silver color is used to draw illuminating marks that helps welder during cutting and welding for easy operation. Pencil offers durable marks that will not melt/fade while using, sold as 3/Pack.

• Color: Silver
• Marks will illuminate when cutting or welding
• Marks don't burn off or rub off like soapstone
• Durable marks will not melt for the touch, or fade
• Pencils will not break like soapstone
• Can be sharpened with an ordinary pencil sharpener

[Joel OF]

Cheers for the replies. I'll tell the fabricator I work next to about the liquid tipex idea for plasma cutting, I've not seen him use it before. Those Nissen pencils sound great, but £70 incl shipping for a pack of 12 on Amazon...ouch.

[SpankySmith]

I'm gonna have to try that whiteout pen, I've not been happy with either soapstone or the silver pens I have, the marks are often thicker than I'd like and rub off too easily.

[Dave Budd]

i have used the tippex type pens for hot marking and marking out before gas an plasma cutting, but the trouble I have found with them is that they dry up around the tip if not used frequently, also unless the metal is slightly rough then the ball doesn't move and the paint doesn't come out.

 I've stated using the cheap acylic markers and glass pens that pop up sometimes in Lidles. They are coloured markes line fine liners or sharpies, but upon heating only the white dry component remains. So they still work for hot work as well as cold, but with the advantage that they are other colours when cold so a red or blue ink is visible on a bright bit of steel     Also very good for marking when grinding as they stay put and visible even when the grinder gets them hot. The only down side is that if gas cutting on cold (ie winter) steel, then condensation forms ahead of the flame and the ink lifts off (even though it is normally waterproof)

 

The other one is white pencils from the local art shop. Nothing special, but they are visible on black steel and work up to a fairly bright orange. A finer line than chalk and ulike the pens can be applied to hot metal too. couple of quid for a box of 12. 

For fine marking out I use either spray high temp paint or a permanent marker to apply a coloured ground before scribing a line in. Same as using a layout fluid but cheap and easy. 

[Dodge]

Soapstone

[VaughnT]

I'm definitely tired of using soapstone, but I haven't found a local supply of other pencils.  Someone told me that he silver/white pencils that artists use will work very well on hot metal, but I haven't been by the Hobby Lobby to see about getting some.

[Macca]

I keep an engineers chalk pencil in my fob pocket, and a sharpie in shirt pocket all the time. Although, it must be said, be xxxxxxxxxx if I can see any of the marks when I'm welding nowadays...it appears my 'Peter Pan' syndrome maybe coming to an end.

[jeremy k]

I also favor the silver artists pencils, although be warned ....they are like tape measures, you can have many but never can find one when you need it. I keep a box of the silver pencils in the shop for when I can't find the single one I had been using.

[Frosty]

Don't forget red pencils for white metals like aluminum, stainless, etc. You just never know what you'll need to mark you know. but yeah silver pencils from the colored pencil shelf at Wally World work just fine. In fact just as well as a Silver streak, red streak or blue streak, the expensive REAL metal shop marking pencils.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Alan Evans]

i have used the tippex type pens for hot marking and marking out before gas an plasma cutting, but the trouble I have found with them is that they dry up around the tip if not used frequently, also unless the metal is slightly rough then the ball doesn't move and the paint doesn't come out.

 

The pentel ones do not have a ball in the nib like the paint pen markers, I think it is a little needle thing, like in a Rotring drawing pen. I resurrect them when they dry out by dipping and tapping the tip in a cap full of gun wash or paint thinner.

Soapstone

Yes but, no but...

Lost in translation?

Soapstone = French Chalk = Welders' Chalk = Tailors' Chalk

OP was "Other then French Chalk…." I guess that was presumed to be a given….

Alan

[Quarry Dog]

  I always have a "writing kit" (cordura pocket protector looking doodad, need to make a leather one) in my back pocket at work, and around the forge.  In it I keep a tungsten scriber, a sharpie, an automatic centerpunch, and a 1/4" round soapstone holder.  You'd be surprised how close you can get to the sharpie mark with a torch before it disappears (even if the millscale is popping off), and it's easier to see on painted/shiny metal than just about anything else.

  I like the pencil idea, as I've seen ones that handle forging heat, but I'd break them in five seconds.  As it is I break off the tip on my soapstone at minimum twice a week from climbing around on stuff or stuffing myself into small places.  I guess I'll have to stick with the autopunch for that stuff.

[ThomasPowers]

I have a brass point I like for cold work marking of old steel

[Frosty]

I have a brass point I like for cold work marking of old steel

I'll have to give that a try. It'd sure be a LOT healthier than Dad's practice of filling out a deer tag with a bullet. The lead writes a lot easier if you give it a lick first.

I think brass sounds pretty good.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ianinsa]

I'll have to give that a try. It'd sure be a LOT healthier than???????? The lead writes a lot easier if you give it a lick first.?????????????????????????YES I KNOW IT IS GRAPHITE! BUT JUST WHERE HAS THAT PENCIL TIP BEEN.

I think brass sounds pretty good.

Frosty The Lucky.

Different Taste Maybe??????

I often use the 'carpenters pencil' that has a red and a blue end, cheap, cheerful and effective. i have also found that the Pentel pens that look like a shall bottle lasts longer than the long slim ones.

 

[Dodge]

The pentel ones do not have a ball in the nib like the paint pen markers, I think it is a little needle thing, like in a Rotring drawing pen. I resurrect them when they dry out by dipping and tapping the tip in a cap full of gun wash or paint thinner.

Yes but, no but...

Lost in translation?

Soapstone = French Chalk = Welders' Chalk = Tailors' Chalk

OP was "Other then French Chalk…." I guess that was presumed to be a given….

Alan

Must be a local colloquialism as I have never heard of French Chalk. In the 25 years of welding and fabrication, I opened copious boxes of the stuff and they were all simply marked "Soapstone" so I suppose my ignorance should be presumed a given...  Curiously, when I googled it Wiki  (and I know about all of its shortcomings) yielded this for "soapstone" but mentions nothing of French chalk  . Furthermore, a search for "French chalk" simply yields the result of "Talc" which is what quarried soapstone or seatite is primarily made up from. However, all of the definitions I found for French chalk seem to define it as talc or a soft granular variety of seatite. This sounds like something that is processed rather than simply quarried such as soapstone (at least evident in the uniformly cut but somewhat irregular grain and grade of the stuff we used. Thank you, however for the clarification.

Scott

[Frosty]

Not a pencil Ian, I mean an expanding bullet, a hunting round with an exposed soft lead tip. Real lead writes better if you dampen it first, I used to spit in the palm of my hand rather than lick the bullet. We were hunting and didn't carry anything as silly as a pencil. Seriously, what's with you guys down there?

Oh that's right marking metal. Pentel works well as do paint sticks intended for hot work. they're just kind of expensive. I was pleasantly surprised how much heat a Sharpie mark takes before it disappears.

A Sharpie is a good way to gauge annealing temperature on Al. I believe it's al, I may be enjoying a brain fart and thinking of another metal. Whatever the metal is you make a mark with the Shaprie and when it disappears it's at temp. I've noted a series of color changes before it's gone. Poof, gone.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Alan Evans]

This seems to be a work around to the problem of not being able to post a reply, maybe one of the mods could add this to the pens and pencils thread...

I have been trying to post this on the thread for the last few days but keep getting a "you do not have permission" notice…

@ Dodge
You've got me worried now Scott! I always understood them to be interchangeable.

If Wikipedia is the arbiter, this is from the Talc (redirected from French Chalk) entry….last sentence...

...powder), as a lubricant, and as a filler in paper manufacture. Talc is used in baby powder, an astringent powder used for preventing rashes on the area covered by a diaper. It is also often used in basketball to keep a player's hands dry. Most tailor's chalk, or French chalk, is talc, as is the chalk often used for welding or metalworking.

Used as a filler in paint. French chalk is very high quality, fine powder.Magnesium Silicate HydrateMg3Si4O10(OH)2 Synonyms: Soapstone; Steatite

 

So either my memory was okay or or other people are making the same mistake!   Soapstone and French Chalk seem to be the common names used to describe Steatite / Talc Schist / Magnesium Silicate…a natural product containing between 30 and 80% talc used for the same purposes by the same trades on either side of the Atlantic…reminds me of that saying about if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck….  

I wonder what the French call  it? 

I will have to call a friend…Ah mercy monsieur Googlé... soapstone = Stéatite!

Alan

 

[Frosty]

You're on track Alan, different places and trades, different names. However, you won't find talc in body powders in the US anymore. Asbestos is Magnesium silicate with a slightly different molecular water content and they're all not so good to breath.

Soapstone is still available at the welding supply but I don't know for how long.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ianinsa]

So Frosty , is what you are saying is soapstone and asbestos are virtually the same yet totally different?

Edited July 4, 2015 by ianinsa

[ThomasPowers]

Exactly!  Just like glass wool and a drinking glass may have a similar chemical content but one is easier to drink out of than the other!

Talc is the mineral and soapstone is a massive form of it with various impurities, (including unfortunately asbestos in many cases)

I have some soapstone laboratory bench tops I make into drop spindle whorls; but I clean and seal them before I pass them on to others.

[Frosty]

So Frosty , is what you are saying is soapstone and asbestos are virtually the same yet totally different?

Yes but neither "virtually" nor "Totally" in either sense, it's literally different forms of the same material. Asbestos is crystalline: soapstone, JADE, etc. are monolithic formations, talc is manufactured, molecularly bounded water being the major difference. You pick these things up when your Father was a rock hound and as a lad you're eager to prove him wrong. He encouraged us to "prove" him wrong . . . Sometimes, it was usually a sucker bet.

Using "Virtually" and "Totally" in the same sentence would mark you as a Valley Dude over here. Like TOTALLY MAN. However seeing as you were attempting a pithy oxymoron to elicit further explanation I'll cut you a little slack.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

Edited July 5, 2015 by Frosty

[ThomasPowers]

talc is also a mineral (which is a naturally occurring inorganic crystalline solid)