Over Engineered Pencil Sharpener

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

This pencil sharpener appeared on my Facebook feed.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1358356602516594

Beautifully finished and totally over the top engineering in Victorian elegance style.

I want one.

Bet the point is really sharp and well shaped.

Clive

[VicParticipant @vic]

There was a thread about old Pencil Sharpeners like that on here some time ago. Some lovely examples were pictured. I might be tempted to have a go at making one myself if plans were available.

Edit: Here’s the thread.

Pencil Sharpener

[old martParticipant @oldmart]

I would like one too, but would tend to keep breaking the points off and not doing any writing if I had a sharpener like that.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

A wonderful machine!

I wonder if its main intended customers were drawing-offices and perhaps artists. I can’t think of anyone else who’d need such accurately sharpened pencils.

 

Incidentally, I use ordinary pencils for preliminary marking out on hot-rolled or other rough-surfaced metal, having fist cleaned the steel and spray-can coated it with grey or white primer.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>In a drawing office you normally used a chisel point on your pencil. Roughly shaped with a knife, then finished/kept sharp with a file. You didn’t get a new pencil from the store without trading in the stub of the previous one. Even 60 years ago there were clutch pencil which had a sort of spring loaded collet arrangement holding a lead about 2.5mm diameter, then Staedtler came along with 0.5, 0.7 and 0.9 mm leads. All swept away by CAD of course</p>

[Nigel BennettParticipant @nigelbennett69913]

The diameter of the Staedtler clutch pencil on my desk is 2mm. We used all sorts of different grades for use on paper and draughting film. Using “plastic leads” on paper was dreadful and using graphite leads on film was a recipe for appalling smudges. Rubbing out the plastic lead lines on film required a special yellow eraser, which didn’t always work very well.

I think it was Pentel rather than Staedtler who came out with the 0.3, 0.5 and 0.7mm leads; I still have a couple of the 0.5mm and a single rather battered 0.3mm one to hand.

I recall a friend of mine who made up a small “lathe” in his bedroom – effectively a powered headstock with a small drill chuck attached. “Look at this!” he exclaimed one day as he was showing the device to me. He grabbed a pencil, stuck it in the chuck of his lathe and set it going. He picked up a conventional pencil-sharpener and gleefully applied it to the rotating pencil. In an instant he had reduced it to a pile of shavings and a vestigial stump hidden inside the chuck. It was, I learned, the last surviving pencil in the household…

[Bo’sunParticipant @bosun58570]

I remember those yellow erasers.  I think they were made by Rotring, and appeared (to me at least) to be impregnated with some form of solvent, presumably to dissolve the special drafting film leads.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, a while ago I bought a set of NicPro mechanical pencils, similar to this set from Amazon 

(other suppliers also sell this make) I’ve found them to be very good, and there are many different sets available.

Regards Nick.

[Nigel Bennett]

On Nigel Bennett Said:

The diameter of the Staedtler clutch pencil on my desk is 2mm. We used all sorts of different grades for use on paper and draughting film. Using “plastic leads” on paper was dreadful and using graphite leads on film was a recipe for appalling smudges. Rubbing out the plastic lead lines on film required a special yellow eraser, which didn’t always work very well.

 

I’ve no idea if they’re any good?

 

[Bo’sun]

On Bo’sun Said:

I remember those yellow erasers.  I think they were made by Rotring, and appeared (to me at least) to be impregnated with some form of solvent, presumably to dissolve the special drafting film leads.

The yellow one was, if memory serves me, actually for erasing their drawing ink…

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

Aha yes, Rotring pens on plastic  film. You thought about what you were going to draw before nib touched film with those. Changes were a right pain. The CAD jockeys have no idea….

Robert.

[Neil AParticipant @neila]

Andy_H is right, the yellow Rotring erasers were for use with the ink. We used a special polymer lead made by Pental on the plastic film, it did not smudge like the graphite leads and was easy to erase without a trace.

If anyone thinks that ink on plastic film was a pain, they have forgotten just how difficult ink on the linen drawing sheets was to alter. You could rub away as much as you liked and still have an faint image of the old lines.

Happy days!

Neil

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Manual drawing has not disappeared entirely.

Drawing-boards and accoutrements are still being made. It’s possible most go to the art sort of “designer” rather than the engineer or architect, of course.

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

What’s wrong with the “art” sort, exactly?

[Clive FosterParticipant @clivefoster55965]

The 2 mm Staedtler clutch pencil with a B grade lead has been my go to default temporary, rough and woodwork line marking out tool for more years than I’m prepared to admit to. Pretty much whatever the substrate. Even brick or concrete! I keep three of the beasts about the place to have an even chance of finding one. My favourite, the first omni bought, went missing for about 7 years which was annoying as the shape is subtly different and nicer to use.

Moving over to the long nose fine line felt tip makers for roughing metalwork these days as the smudge risk is noticeably lower. Blue’n scribe is still the king for accurate work tho’

Clive

[John Haine]

On John Haine Said:

What’s wrong with the “art” sort, exactly?

Nothing. Just a different style of working for a different job. Shape rules rather than the everywhere dimensional accuracy essential for engineering and, allegedly, for architectural work. Although my property consultant mate Rodney has shown me a fair few architectural productions that were functionally unbuildable. 12 ft ceilings downstairs, 4 ft upstairs anyone! Passed planning and got building regs too.

Clive

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Quite right it was Pentel who introduced the small diameter clutch pencils. The plastic drawing sheets were brilliant, if they got dirty you could wash them and not lose the lines.

The way we used to make minor mods to linen drawings was to used a fibre glass scratch clean pen to get the varnish? off, fill in the hole with tippex and then use Rotring ink pens to over write. For a bigger mod we would get the print room to produce an ozalid and alter that, but I can’t remember what we used for eraser

[Mark RandParticipant @markrand96270]

I have a number of Pentel Graphgear 1000 pencils, including 0.4mm which they don’t seem to sell now. They have a robust looking metal shell, that you’d think would be safe in a shed/workshop environment. Trouble is that the metal shell is split into a top half and a bottom half with the inner, plastic’ lead-holding tube holding them all together. If They get dropped from any height (a shirt pocket!!!), they snap in two. I’ve got four that are held together with wraps of 50mm wide parcel tape. 😮

For the 30 years between my late teens and when handwriting became irrelevant, I used Rotring pens as my day-to-day writing tool. It wasn’t for any pretensions of being a drafty, it was because I’m cack handed and none of the many fountain pen styles I tried could cope with me pushing the pen nib into the paper instead of dragging it along. Didn’t have this problem when using mirror writing though. 😀

[David AmbroseParticipant @davidambrose86182]

Where I worked we had electric erasers.

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