Everybody likes pizza, and perhaps old-fashioned wood-burning stoves and hearths, but the EPA doesn’t. For years I have figured they were increasingly illegal and wondered what good pizzerias located in the middle of cities actually use.
If you do it wrong, you might easily break the point, then have to start all over again. What a waste! Speaking of mechanical crank sharpeners, though, I was always impressed by those Jupiters; with them you know you have a serious piece of hardware on your hands, they can kill people.
I’ve got one of them old Berol crank jobs mounted in the garage. It’s got Gopher traps and damaged tie-downs hanging on it right now. Not used too much.
As a high school and middle school math teacher I made a pretty big production out of pencils, especially wood case pencils and the sharpening thereof (I had that “How to Sharpen Pencils” book and the kids loved it).
My point (heh) was to suggest that even the most mundane objects could be enjoyed and appreciated if you take the time to learn about them. I had a set of cedar blanks from each step of the wood case pencil manufacturing process to show kids how they managed to get the graphite into the middle of the wood. Of course, the usual conical shape of the sharpened tip came in handy when talking about mathematics - conic sections and all.
And as yet another former draftsman, learning about the variety of hardnesses and their uses seems intrinsically fascinating to me.
That book dares to declare a particular mechanical sharpener as “the best in the world” so naturally I had to get one in order to blow the kid’s minds (the rotary blades formed a slight concavity in the sides of the cone, which exposes more of the graphite core). Just for fun I found a second one on Ebay that was gold plated. I ended up giving that one to one of my favorite colleagues when she moved away.
I’ve since found a much less fancy product with the same feature and it works just as well (I think it’s called “Shark Tank”).
I still enjoy a good soft pencil on paper with just the right tooth.
I see he’s a lefty, like me. I used to hate writing with pencils until I discovered the IBM Electrographic. Something about the graphite in those just seems to dance when used lefthandedly—I think it has to do with the magnetic field in the Northern hemisphere—if I ever travel below the equator, I’d be interested in seeing if there’s a difference.
It is good that folks are remembering pencils and how to sharpen them, it is a dying art.
I use red pencils to write on my patterns as I’m stitching because that’s how I’ve done it since forever. I also use a certain brand, but that is not the point.
A few months back, I was traveling and one afternoon realized that I had broken the tip of my red pencil and lost my sharpener. Not really wanting to get in my car again, I took my pencil to the front desk and asked if one of them could sharpen it for me.
They looked at me like I was asking where to plug my rotary phone into the wall, and told me that nobody used pencils like that anymore and offered me a mechanical pencil or a brand new red crayon. I started trying to make my retreat at that point, it was getting pretty hard to not die laughing when one of them paged their maintenance guy who took my red pencil outside and sharpened it with his pocket knife.
I prefer a mechanical pencil, and I am rather particular about them. I use a Pentel GraphGear 1000 in 0.5 mm when I’m doing math. I’ve yet to find a perfect one for regular text and crosswords.
It’s not the shape of the lead tip that I’m after. When I’m writing or doing a crossword, I like a pencil with an eraser on the opposite end. But, I don’t want that to advance more lead out of the pencil. For those cases, I want the lead advance to be on the barrel of the pencil, not the end.
Not an issue when I’m doing math, since I keep a separate eraser on standby.
The several Kuru Toga models I gave all have replaceable erasers under the end cap. First thing I do is take off that cap and lose it. Then I erase with impunity.
Not unless I really bear down. Average-pressure erasing works fine without advancing the lead. And even if I get overzealous and apply too much pressure, I suppose I’d just tap the lead back while holding the advance down.
I heard an amazing artist speak, and he put up a pic of a beautiful pencil drawing. Someone asked him what pencil he used. He said “I have no idea… a yellow one?” And followed up a similar question about pen recommendations with “I used to think a lot about that, but then I decided not to romanticize my tools.”
That hit hard. I’m clearly in the camp of “Spend an hour researching tools, getting them just so; and ten minutes creating.”
I sketch for a living, and as part of “de-romanticizing”, I’ve pared down so that I can carry everything in a pocket and work in diners and bars.
I ditched my fussy Blackwings for a tiny [shudder] mechanical one.
I have some mechanical pencils, but i really prefer the old fashioned wooden ones. I’m a fan of Dixon Ticonderoga. The wood shaves neatly, and the erasers work well.
