Longtime readers know the rule: no stencils, no exceptions, the manifesto has five clauses and four of them are about how right I am. Clause 5, added in 2023 under protest, allows for exceptions used sparingly, by tired people, at 11pm. Today I'm exercising clause 5 in public, and I want it noted that I'm not happy about any of it.
It's the brass alphabet stencil set. 1970s, yard sale, $4, in a wooden box with a sliding lid that works better than any drawer made since. Every letter is a small brass plate with the character knocked out of it, and the letters are — this is the part that ruins everything — slightly crooked. Not aligned to some inhuman grid. Whoever cut these letters had opinions and a hangover and, I have to assume, a hand like mine.
Why it doesn't count
My problem with stencils has never been the object. It's the promise — same mark, every time, forever, no human required. The brass set makes a different promise. Using it feels like borrowing a stranger's handwriting. The crooked letters come out crooked. Paint bleeds under the edges unevenly because the plates are hand-cut and slightly warped, and brass has the decency to be heavy, so it sits still and lets you be the variable. The tool makes room for your wobble instead of erasing it.
Modern mylar doesn't do that. Mylar wants you to believe the result was inevitable. Brass admits the whole enterprise is hand-made and slightly questionable, which is the honest position, and frankly more than I get from most people.
Where I actually use it
Twice a year, roughly. Once for the zine covers — Wet Paint & Grievances issue numbers get stencilled, because printing numbers 1 through 40 freehand at 1am turns me into a liability. And once in December for workshop signage at the community centre, because the hall radiator is decorative, my hands are cold, and clause 5 was written for exactly this. Both uses happen tired and after dark, which I believe is legally required.
The rest of the time it lives in the wooden box on the shelf, where it functions mostly as a conversation piece and a test: visitors who pick it up and say “oh, this is nice” get invited back. Visitors who ask if I've “tried the new laser-cut ones, they're so crisp” get the tour of the burn barrel.
The resentment, itemized
Here's what annoys me, and then I'll let it go: the yard sale guy in 2023 (full love story in the archive, October of that year) sold it to me as a curiosity, and it turned out to be the best lettering tool I own. It has survived fifty-plus years, one drop on concrete (the Q is dented, the Q wears it well), and a near-miss with the burn barrel last July — I pulled it back out, which is the closest I've come to weeping at the party, and I would deny it under oath.
So: one stencil is okay. This one, specifically, with its dented Q and its hangover letters and its $4 provenance. If you find one at a yard sale, buy it, use it sparingly, and tell no one I sent you. And if you find two, the second one is a gift for me. The box says so.
Harriet J. — May 21, 2026
My grandfather was a draftsman and his brass stencils smelled like pencil shavings and Pepsi. Thank you for the flashback. The Q wearing its dent well is exactly right.