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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the official sixth episode of the Erasable Podcast, the only and therefore supreme podcast about pencils. This is Tim, one of your hosts, and I'm joined by two fellows who always provide half the pressure and twice the speed, Johnny Gamber and Andy Welfle.
Glad to be of service.
Tim can always rely on you. I thought it was a group effort.
I think so.
It's a place to speak. Great.
Well, how are you guys doing?
Excellent. How are you?
I'm doing all right. I am in the throes of preparing for a long trip with a large group of people.
Well, not just people.
Children, adolescents, teenage people.
Yeah, they're not people yet
they were people and now they're not people. And then they will become people once again.
Someday they will be people.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, today I'll just kind of preview. Before we get to our fresh points, we are going to be approaching the topic of pencil sharpeners, which we've gotten tons of questions on basically since we started the podcast. It's one of the most common questions we get. In fact, the two most common questions I get personally relating to pencils and the podcast and the blog are about sharpeners and pencil caps. And we're going to tackle one of those. We're going to talk about sharpeners. The way we'll do that later on is that each of us will go through and talk about some of our favorite sharpeners, which, of course, there's going to be some overlap between the three of us. And then whenever we approach the topic of a new. Or, sorry, we approach a new style of sharpener, like, say, hand sharpeners or burr sharpeners. We'll discuss it at that point. But before we get to that, we want to start, as usual, with our fresh points. Andy, would you get us started?
Absolutely. So, you know, it's funny, we're just talking about, you know, high schoolers, or I guess in your case, middle schoolers. Right. So I. Eighth graders. Eighth graders. Yeah. So I actually just on last Friday, spoke to a high school class about blogging, mostly about, like, it was a journalism class, and we were just talking about writing online and. And writing for a niche. And I, of course, used, you know, my Wood Clinch blog about talking about pencils, and I was super surprised that pencils are alive and well among high schoolers. I figured that, you know, everybody was, you know, using pens or, you know, there were a lot of iPads in class, things like that. But, you know, people talked about some of their favorite pencils. They talked about sharpeners. It was a little bit off topic because we were mostly discussing blogging specifically. But I had a lot of discussions about pencils themselves. So I was, I was pleased to see that. I don't know if your students, Tim, like pencils because you like pencils or you know, if they come to it with kind of a natural interest
actually. I think with middle schoolers, they're still at the age where they think they have to use pencils. So I probably had 10 kids who would ever use pen in class and the rest always had pencils just because they're know they're still young, they're coming out of elementary school and they don't realize that they have free will and can choose to use pens if they want to. But they are picky about pencils for sure. And like not all of them, but some of them are especially about mechanical pencils for them just because that's what they prefer for the most part. But the ones who do use wood pencils are also really picky about sharpeners and they hate bad sharpeners. They don't understand why they're bad sharpeners, but they hate them.
So that's cool.
Which is good. Yeah.
So that was fun. It was my youngest sister's class. So of course being, you know, a big brother, I had to show a picture of her as a baby to everybody, my slide deck.
So that was fun.
But yeah, so now I have immemorialized myself, memorialized myself as the pencil guy among another graduating class.
So there's worse things to be known for.
That's true. I also, speaking of pencils, this past month there was a feature about me. And this isn't a humble brag, but I just wanted to point it out. A feature about me and a local business People magazine. I don't exactly know why they chose to have me for this article because I'm not your traditional business person. I guess I work at a business. But you know, usually these kind of pictures are those ones where, you know, you cross your arms and there's like a blurred out background of an office setting behind you. Yeah, that's the usual picture they put with that. But I wanted to have a little fun so I just brought like four cigar boxes worth of pencils and the photographer and I just kind of stood in front of a, you know, a clean wall and just, you know, at one point I had dozens of pencils kind of fanned out across my face. And the, the one we ended up going with was I took a. One of my, my favorite triangular golden Bears and put it on my upper lip like a mustache and kind of held that out. And that was. Yeah, that was the one. Yeah, he did a really good job on that. That's the one we. He went with and was nice enough to let me use for my various nefarious purposes.
So did he send you any of the other.
He did. And they just. Yeah, they just didn't look like they're the best. One of me with the pencils fanned out made it look like one of the pencils was sticking out of my nose. Just the perspective of it. So we. I assume that's why we didn't use that. But it was. It was a lot of fun. So I have a link in show notes for that. How to read that. And by the way, show notes are going to be@ erasable us6 and that's where you can find the episode itself as well as, you know, notes and links for the. For the show. Kind of. My last, last fresh point is actually a little bit of heresy here. I was in contact with a guy named Cary who's really cool and organizes something called Fountain Pen Day. Do either of you remember this from last year? No, it was. Yeah, it was. It was something that I think was pretty small. This is 2014 is going to be the third year. But basically what he does is on the first Friday of November he gets a whole bunch of fountain pen retailers to put their stuff on sale and they get a lot of like pen bloggers to write about it. And actually I got in contact with him and they just got a new logo this year. He sent me a button, a really cool Fountain Pen Day button.
So that's a good looking button.
Yeah, it's really cool looking. And I'm thinking about. I don't know, I'm thinking about writing about a fountain pen or something on Woodclinch come November. I can't decide what yet. I have a couple that I really like and I'm thinking about just, you know, maybe just telling their stories.
Did you see my. I commented on your Facebook post about that. I don't know if you saw about. Diamine has an ink called.
Oh, yes, yes, I saw that. That's a really good idea.
Yeah, I'm looking into that. I thought that would just be kind of a. A cool thing is I usually carry. I have a fountain pen with me. I'm taking a Lamy Ale star to dc. Thought that would be fun to put. It's an ink that's supposed to look like graphite. I'm not sure if it's the best one. There's some other grays that are a lot better.
Yeah. Maybe it has a little bit of, like, a metallic look about it, perhaps.
Yeah, a little bit. It's a little. I got a feeling it's going to be a little watery. It won't look like a rich pencil lead, which, you know, an ink never will, right?
Yeah. Ew.
Never.
Someday I need to educate myself more about fountain pen inks because I have a couple and I really like them, but I just don't know anything about, like, you know, if they're watery or if they're thick or what. So I need to find some good articles about that.
Yeah, yeah.
They usually just end up all over my fingers and clothes, so they'll still do that. Yeah. So, yeah, that wraps up my fresh points. Johnny.
I'm next. Awesome. Speaking on pencil sharpeners, I learned a valuable lesson the last week or two, and that's that sometimes if you ask for something on Twitter, you will get it. I was joking with Dixon. It's like, hey, why don't you send me one of those sharpeners? They were like, hey, send us your address. So it came really some yellow and green glory.
That was fast.
Very pretty. Yeah. My UPS guy came, and I wasn't expecting a box of diapers or wipes. What's going on? So I haven't actually used it yet. I opened it. It's very heavy and very yellow and very green. It's pretty. I like it a lot. Yeah.
Does anybody hear that noise real quick?
Yeah, there's like a tapping noise.
Is that you, Johnny, fiddling?
Oh, that could be. I'm sorry. No problem. I'm actually fiddling with my next sharp point.
Oh.
I found a cool sharpener at a big box store called the Stanley Bow Stitch Twist and Sharp, which is. I think it's identical to the. To the ratchetta sharpener that reviewed a few months ago. And they have on jet pins with a notable difference that this doesn't have a little door that covers the pencil hole. Oh. But it's a really cool sharpener that. I don't know if you can hear it. It's sort of. It. Ratchets.
Yeah. Is that the. Is that the noise being made by that little dial on the bottom or is that a pencil in. It is ratcheting.
This is the ratchet. I don't know if it's coming through.
Yeah, I can hear it.
It has a little dial for, you know, long point or short or not short point. I guess like sharp point or dough point. It was like less than three bucks.
Yeah. I have to get one of these.
They're cool sharpeners and they actually have better colors than the ratchetta. They've got a really good blue. It's very cool.
How long can you make the long point?
It looks like it's about maybe a comb wedge, maybe even a little longer. The downside, obviously, is the blades not replaceable, but they're pretty neat.
Dollar sign.
Yeah. But actually, can you take the blade out or is it like pretty much secured in there?
It comes out, but it's one of those ones with notches in the sides instead of the sort of shovel shaped one that Kum uses. I don't know. Maybe it's the same size as one of the Staedtler ones. That could be cool.
The reason I asked is I was very briefly looking into what it would take to sharpen those little blades instead of buying them.
Mm, I don't know.
It was just kind of on a whim and I sent a message to David Rees on Twitter about it and he responded with a very concise answer of, you can, but it's too hard. Just buy new ones.
You heard it from the expert.
Yeah, I trust him.
I love it when he randomly. He must just have a Twitter search for, you know, pencil sharpening or something like that. And he just retweets, like people saying the most ridiculous things.
Yeah.
But speaking of colors, my next fresh point, if I can get that word out.
That was a great segue, by the way. Sorry.
They did those neon pencils, but they're not, quote Dixon pencils. They sell it back to school time. It's like really junky. They're actual Dixon Ticonderoga pencils, and they have ones that come in a 10 pack of blue, green, red, purple, and orange. But they're like, you know, full Dixon quality. They're really, really cool pencils. I just picked them up as an add on last time I bought a case of wipes and they're like four bucks, something like that. But the green is like deliciously retro with the green and yellow feral. And the stamping is in silver. They're really pretty. So if anybody needs, you know, something to get your 25 or $35 for shipping on Amazon, definitely check those out.
Can you send them in a store? Can you take a picture and send it to me and I'll put it up on the post?
Yeah, absolutely. Very cool. I think I meant to put them on Instagram and I Think I lost them. My daughter took them. No, there was purple in there, so she thought they were for her probably.
Oh, purple is one of the 15 colors in here. These must be for me. Purple's my favorite color too, so I might have done the same thing.
Kid Logic.
A box of vintage pencils once from someone and there was a pink one in there. Like, oh, are those for me?
Back off, kid.
Back off. Yeah, I wouldn't have given her a lot of vintage pencils that are pink. Well, that's okay. Expand your horizons.
Definitely.
I have one more fresh point, and that is that I didn't discover it, but tested out a new pencil cap that I like very much. The Sun Star Sect. It's a pencil cap extender. We just did a review last weekend. Sometimes you have a problem with the general save it points. Like, they break a lot. And also if you have something a little thinner that has a long point, you'll stab yourself in the leg if you try to use those. So this pen gives. This pencil cap gives you a little more breathing room. And also they work as an extender, which is cool.
I love the name tags.
Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know where they would go at all. And they don't really stick to anything, but they're pretty cool.
But other than that, they're great.
And they have that cool little. There's a. It looks like it had like a pen clip that someone broke off. It's like a little square knob and it keeps it from rolling around. It's like perfect and ingenious. They're pretty cheap. I think they were like two bucks for a pack.
Yeah.
And I've been carrying one around for a month and haven't cracked it yet, so that's pretty good.
That's cool.
Usually I sit on the stable points. They don't last very long.
I have to get some more pencil caps. I'm down to one of my favorite metal ones.
I need to get some of those.
I don't think I've ever seen one of those in real life.
The metal ones.
Yeah. Just in your dreams.
I had a bunch of them from pencil things when I wrote for their blog. And I just like just you know, kind of one by one, just lost them all.
I can pick up from there. Johnny, if you're. Absolutely. I don't have. I only have two things. Don't have a lot. But first thing is my Henry. My son Johnny and I both have a Henry and they're both around a year old and my son just turned one and he had his first pencil experience the other day, which I was very proud of. On Mother's Day, his mom had to work. She was gone for half the day. She was out doing things. And I had him at home, and we were just playing. And I just realized the one thing I had never done with him yet, which, I don't know. I feel guilty and ashamed of myself for never doing this, but we'd never drawn. Never tried to draw in any way, which, I mean, he's really little, but still. But I picked him up, put him on my lap, and he drew a picture for the first time. And I posted it on Instagram because I wanted to share his undiscovered genius with everybody. But he drew with a Castell 9000 jumbo and the rainbow pencil that Johnny sent me, and it was just a lot of fun. So I just wanted to share that. That it was kind of his first being the nerd I am, that that was his first pencil experience, and it was important, you know. So now I am officially stocking up on fat pencils for my son. So I've got a small collection. Johnny, at some point, you had asked me if I had started doing this yet, and I hadn't. So now I am in full swing, and I've ordered. Ordered some Fat Dixon pencils, and then I got a few in my pencils.com cart. They're the. Which of their various brands is it?
The Spangle.
The Spangle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I've got a few of the large pencils, and I think Generals has one there. Trying to get to it now. I should have had that ready. But, yeah, they've got a category on their site where you can actually go straight to jumbo pencils. And so I just went on there and started adding to my cart. Yeah, the Spangle was one. The Kitabashi wood note, round highlighter, jumbo pencils. Those looked cool. Various colors, fat pencils. And then sort of for Henry, but also for me, I ordered some of the Musgrave, the My pal Mini Jumbos, because I like mini Jumbos and I.
They're nice.
I like that. So, yeah, so that's that. The other. The only other point I was gonna bring up is I mentioned earlier that I'm going on this trip. I'm going to Washington, D.C. tomorrow. And I posted something on the site the other day, and it was the first thing I posted in a long time. It was just this little note about what I was taking with me, because of course, that ends up being One of the most important decisions I have to make about going on a trip is what kind of pen or pencil or notebook am I taking with me? And I've decided thanks to a book I'm reading. I'm reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, which is a weird, beautifully written book. I've decided in honor of Nabokov, who wrote several of his novels solely on index cards, he'd write the entire novel on index cards. And he was known for using the Blackwing 602. So that inspired me. And I'm taking index cards and I am taking my Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602.2dc it is traveling with me. It's not going to be a desk pencil. I'm going to take it out, I'm going to beat it up, and I'm going to use it down to a nub on this trip.
Heck yeah.
Are you going to write a novel on the trip?
Yep.
Yep.
I figure I can do that amongst 150 eighth graders. That won't bother me too much.
No, no problem at all.
At least several chapters done. And also on the trip we had the episode about collecting pencils and I was the person who said, yeah, we can talk about pencils collecting, but I don't do it now. I want to. And, and I'm going on this trip and I have decided to. I'm not a souvenir guy usually, but I'm going to buy some pencils from each of the sites that we go to that has pencils available to buy.
Oh, Tim, let me tell you, there are so many cool DC pencils. I have lots of them.
Oh, cool.
There's a. Yeah. Are you going to go to any of the Smithsonians? They have some really, really great ones. And like there's a lot of like Washington D.C. based ones like with pictures of presidents and the White House and things like that. But they're usually at those really like touristy little gift shops. So are you guys going to the White House?
We are not. There's a walk by it.
Yeah, there's a place on the. Oh, the east side, I think that has like, like in the little like the metro city part, there's like an official White House gift shop that's not actually official, but they have, they have a really good. Right. Because there is no gift shop at the White House. But this one claims to be like the one that, you know, everybody goes to and it has the best selection of like, cool like president looking pencils.
I'm excited.
Yeah.
So that's That's. I've got a pencil budget for the trip.
That's awesome. They also have. I bought a pencil sharpener White House, like model of the White House. But the pencil sharpener inside is really awful. But it's a cool. It's a cool model.
Nice. Yeah, I'll keep an eye out for it. Maybe I can get like a Washington Monument 1. Or like that would actually be kind of cool.
That would be cool.
Or a Lincoln Memorial where you can like put the pencil in Abe's mouth and sharpen it.
Yes.
I'll see what I can find.
Okay, let's see what you do.
You guys will have a package in the mail of some treats that I find.
That's awesome.
But that's all I got.
Cool.
So do we want to before or just kind of to the topic of pencil sharpeners. I want to make sure we get to some of the questions that we've gotten on Twitter that we've compiled over time. We've gotten some really good questions and I just thought we could approach them one by one. Sure. We can just kind of go through them one at a time. Andy, you want to bring up the first question?
Sure.
That was from Brick Stories. It was actually just asked, I think today, maybe yesterday. It's Rckstories and it's a British guy. He actually I went to his site. He does. He makes little comic strips out of Legos and he takes pictures of those and then puts them, puts them up with like speech bubbles. It's really cool. So he is going. Going on holiday soon. He's from England or the uk. He wants to do some travel writing. He's not sure about mechanical pencils. He wants to know if the Midori pencil is the best option. So I responded just with some follow up question to go. Are you going to be limited to your pockets only or do you have a bag for keeping your stuff also what kind of a journal? So he replied mostly pocket only or a small bag at best. He's using the Midori Traveler passport or a pocket Moleskin, which I really want to try that Midori passport. I've never. I've only ever used like a Midori bullet pencils from Midori. But I think that would work really well. So if you wanted to stay away from a, you know, mechanical pencil besides like a short pencil and a in a cap, I really thought the Midori pencil would be a really good option. And then maybe pack a couple of refills in a suitcase or a bag and then also bring like A little KUM sharpener with you or something like that. Do you guys have any kind of alternative ideas?
I mean, I'm partial to the. Just a shortened pencil. That's what I like to carry. I just, I find myself when I carry a bullet pencil. I, I don't know, it's weird. I just don't pull that from my bag very often just because there's something about pulling it apart and putting it back together that I'd rather just take one out, take the cap off and write. Yeah. Of course, if you're going on a. If you're going on a trip and don't want to have a huge long pencil in your pocket, then maybe that. I'd say that would probably would be the best option.
I, I was trying to figure out. I, I guess I didn't ask like how rugged this trip is. Like, you know, is. Is he hiking or just like going through a city or something, but like big game hunting. Yeah, Big game hunting.
Doing a.
Doing a marathon. Yeah.
Corrodes of brass.
Yeah. What do you think, Johnny?
I'm in the short pencil with a cap on it. School myself, but I've never held a Midori bullet pencil before. They are very pretty, but I live in sort of a hipsterific neighborhood and if you pull out a bullet pencil around here, it'll start like a two hour conversation. I don't even pull out black wings in public anymore. Just dicks and don't look boys. But I would carry like something cheap just with.
You could just tell them that you liked black wings before they were mainstream.
I bought them the day they came out.
Yeah, I think that's. I don't really have anything else to add beyond that. Those really are the two best options. It's not really an exciting answer, but those are. Oh, go ahead.
The only other thing I would say is, you know, if you're traveling, you might already have a pocket knife on you. So it's a good excuse to perfect your knife sharpening skills and skip a sharper.
That's true.
Or for traveling like that. Brass or not brass. The magnesium comb with the extra blades. I always take that if I go camping and I get lazy with the knife because then you've got plenty of
extra blades on you and can you use the magnesium as a fire starter?
Yeah.
That's cool.
Not that I know. Actually, when we tried to do. The last time we went camping, we tried to use like a regular magnesium block and like a freezer bag of pencil shavings lights a fire better. Than anything. It's great and it smells good.
Yeah, that's a really good idea.
Yeah, we had like a lot of magnesium in a little pile and it just kept not sparking and then the shavings caught.
Well, our next question is a sharpener question. I guess we've got several sharpener questions here in a row. And this question comes from Thomas Kackler, who's Vcackler on Twitter. And he said, hey, Erasable podcast just picked up these on a trip to Korea. What would you recommend for a sharpener? And there's a picture he has, I guess about seven. Yeah, seven pencils, eight pencils. There some handsome drawing pencils.
It's a tombow in there.
Yeah, there's Tombow mono. There's a Staedtler. I can't recognize some of the floral ones on the left, but they all look really nice. And this is kind of a big question. Of course, it depends on what he would prefer, but I thought a good way to answer this would be, if you're just getting into pencils, what sharpener should you start with? So if he's asking what sharpener and we don't know what his preferences are, then why don't we recommend, you know, kind of maybe we can say where we started, what was our first nice sharpener and just kind of go from there. And my first sharpener, which I guess I'll end up talking about later, but the KUM automatic long point sharpener was my first nice sharpener that wasn't just a one you can buy at Walmart or Target, whatever, really enjoyed. And that's. You get. Get a really long nice point. I just feel like that's a. That's a good place to start if you're interested in pencils enough to try pencils that are this nice. Yeah. You know, like as some of this, like the mono. And I'm trying to see the pencils on the right. I think it says Deojan is the brand name.
I don't know, but they look, I
think, look really nice. They look like a matte. Matte black finish or something.
Can enlarge this a little bit.
Yeah, D E O J O N is what it looks like to me. But. But yeah, they look really, really sharp. No pun intended. But what do you guys think? Where do you think you should start real quick?
It looks like on Pencil Talk. Back in 2008, Steven did a review of the Moon Wa Diogean high mic pencil. And I actually, I was doing some research about Asian pencils. The Other day and they're from Korea and I ran across these. They're really cool. So I have never actually tried one, but I was thinking about buying some. I'll put a link in, show notes. But you guys, if you can see this below this right above that picture, I'm going to post a link. You have to go there and look at the really gorgeous box that, that it comes in. While you look at that, I'll answer Maya.
Gracious. Yeah.
Isn't that cool?
Oh man.
Thomas, we want to know if you
got the wire it has on it.
Yeah, that's what it looks like. If you got the cool box with your Diogenes with the purple and the silver and the big wire in the middle.
That's.
Yeah.
Anyhow, actually my first pencil sharpener as kind of a interested pencil user was the KUM Left Handed sharpener. It's the one where it just has like a little just encasing around it and the blade is just facing the other direction. So when you hold the pencil in your left hand you can turn it towards you and it sharpens. And that was like a medium, like a pretty medium point. But it's probably the first KUM that I ever really used. And it was just, it just sharpened smooth like butter. Like it was really nice. And I still have that. Even though the casing that surrounds it cracked. It's still a really nice sharpener. So I would, I would probably go. So like something like that if you're not left handed, something, you know, right handed with a medium point just so you can kind of see what the benchmark is before you branch out into short points or long points, which I know are definitely a preference and I assume we'll probably talk about later on. Yeah, but, but yeah, like a, like a nice solid medium point sharpener would probably be good handheld probably. Yeah. Yeah.
Johnny, what do you think?
I was going to say something similar. The KUM standard brass wedge with one hole was my first. Like nice, nice sharp. Well, not nice sharpener but good sharpener. They're really cheap and they're pretty easy to get. That's probably a good place to start. Like Andy said, the angle of the point is like perfect. It's good for art, it's good for writing and you can cut chunks of it off and burn it surprisingly soft. I don't know why they use it for sharpeners.
I miss the brass ones. I think you're the one who told me they were discontinued. Yeah, I never got a chance to get one.
You can get Them on.
I have one that I guard very, very closely. It doesn't leave my house.
Oh yeah.
Anymore.
I don't know if this is the exact same one, but I see them on Amazon here. It's a solid brass single hole pencil sharpener by Kum. Maybe they're just, is just some random place that had a mass of them. But I'll put it in the, I'll put it in the show notes. They're 6, 677 in free shifts, so.
Well, I am not going to put it in the post because I don't want all of our listeners to buy them
along. Along those lines, just while we're talking about these like small brass sharpeners, have either of you tried the Alvin Brass bullet sharpener? Is that. It's a brass sharpener. It's round, it has a knurled grip on it.
Johnny, is that the one that guy from Wired talked to us about?
Yeah. They also market it as the Moebius and Rupert Granata because it looks like a little grenade.
Yeah, yeah.
Gunther has like serious history of that pencil sharpener on his website. It goes back to I think like the 1890s.
Wow. That's a sharpener I've put in my cart on Amazon various places probably a dozen times and just haven't pulled the trigger yet.
It's totally worth it.
Do it, do it, do it.
They're such a good price. You know all of these things we're talking about guys are really reasonably priced like we'll get to and some of our favorite sharpeners we'll get to some ridiculously priced sharpeners. But like all these little handheld ones are just like a really good price.
Well, the next question comes from Luke Sinclair who's Moonpeel on Twitter and he said Daiso D A S I O win a sharpener with five length settings for $2.80. $2.80. PencilNerd sent us a picture of a pretty cool looking sharpener that I'm actually to be honest seeing for the first time tonight. I just saw it for the first time a little bit ago and I know nothing about it.
Yeah, he and I had a, he and I had a conversation about that. I'm trying to remember
Sharpener.
Daiso is a like a Japanese, like a store that sells Japanese goods that they have in Australia and they may have in Japan as well. But Moonpeel's from Australia and he, he picked one of those up there and yeah, they're really cool looking. It looks like there's like a little like a lever that you, you know, you pull down to. To, you know, control your points. Those are really cool.
This is just a random addition to this conversation, but I added this, the solid brass wedge by Kum to my cart at Amazon and the list price. I don't know if you noticed this, they have it listed as a $54 sharpener. So when you add it to your. When you add it to your card, it says you save $47.03. It's 87% off everything.
Sounds like a good deal when you just like inflate the original price.
Huh? Yeah, it's a really. Yeah, it's really fascinating looking sharpener.
Yeah.
Do you. Johnny, do you want to take Mary Collis's tweet?
Sure. Mary from the pen cup.
Is that the right.
The name of the vlog she writes Sharpening, exclamation point.
This is, by the way, in response to I asked for questions to discuss at one of our podcast episodes a few weeks ago. So that's why she just kind of yelled sharpening.
She doesn't have.
She doesn't have Twitter Tourette's begin with that
handheld tabletop. What to do if you're an obsessive sharpener? Buy more pencils. Right. If I can go first. I would totally get wedge sharpener with no mechanism to collect the shavings. So it's just like you, the metal and a blade and your pencil. You can keep a really close eye on stuff that way.
Sometimes they're all sharpeners.
Yeah. With some pencils. I don't like to sharpen them all the way. Like, you know, if you sharpen a black wing all the way, you've lost the point in the first word anyway. Yeah, I don't usually go all the way down with them, so I think that's the best way to just be one with your pencil. Unless you're going to pull out a knife and do it that way, which is also very fun. But you know, it takes a little experience to get really, really choosy with how much lead you expose with those.
Tim's just type in random dirty quotes from us on our Google document. Don't mind us. I don't always go down the way with them. Johnny says. Yeah, he doesn't go all the way. I am choosing Donnie when it comes to tabletop sharpeners. We'll talk a little bit more about this a little bit later on and we've definitely mentioned it in previous episodes, but I have at my desk at work a classroom friendly sharpener. And what I like about that is if I'm just feeling like just sharpening my pencils all the time, it puts a razor sharp tip on that pencil and I can, you know, once I kind of dull that down or kind of break off the tip accidentally, I can just stick it back in and sharpen it up again. And we'll talk about some of the. Some more about that in a little bit. But Mary, if you don't have a classroom friendly sharpener, they're really cool. You should get one. What do you think, Tim?
I am a pro pocket. I just like having a pocket sharpener with me. And my kind of go to one is the. Which I know Johnny's gonna talk about later, but it's the KUM one hole magnesium sharper that has this extra blades attached to the side of it. Just super practical and it's just take it everywhere. It's about the size of a. I don't know what would you compare that to? Maybe a grape. Like the smallest little thumb drives. You can get those, like tiny little thumb drives about the size of that. Maybe a few Chiclets, the gum. But I'm a big fan of that. So I have that in a classroom friendly sharpener at school that I use all the time and my kids at school are obsessed with. So that's cool. But yeah, that's. Yeah, I would. The answer between household or sorry, handheld or tabletop. The answer is yes.
Perfect. Chase Ethosophical says sharpeners. What's the difference? Which ones do I need?
That's two people screaming sharpeners. Sharpeners.
And also like looking at Chase's like little Twitter avatar, like that little, that little cartoon guy yelling face. Yeah, yeah, it looks like he's shouting shy bears. So yeah, we'll. That'll actually be the main topic of this conversation. So hopefully we'll talk about some of the differences and you know, lay out some use cases for each of those to see what you think. Chase. Yeah, yeah, the last one that I kind of found was Joe rachino that was O Rauccino 3. He said, can you recommend a good portable sharpener for me? I need a fine point for doing accounting homework. Enjoy your podcast. And so I guess, I mean that fine point, like if you can figure out how to use it, the, like the Kuhn long point sharpener. The two stage one gives you a nice like razor sharp long point. But it is kind of confusing to use. And actually when I worked at pencils.com, i made a little video about it that I think works A little bit more or that describes it a little bit more. But I'll post a link to that. So either that or the classroom friendly sharpener is the ones that I would recommend.
KUM even makes a long point wedge. It's magnesium. It's kind of oddly shaped and
works
at a weird angle. Sorry.
Doesn't it break points?
I think yeah, it breaks stuff like crazy. But Gunther said they have or they're in the process of redesigning it so that it actually works. And I think they even like finish. So it looks really pretty now.
It's really nice of them.
Wow. Hey guys, crazy idea. Let's make one that actually works.
You know that sharpener that sounds great, but it's terrible. We're gonna make it again, but this time it's gonna work because we love our
before. You could get it to work with like some pencils if you're really careful, but not so much. Plus it's kind of sharp. The sharpener itself kind of poked you a lot.
Yeah. I think the KUM automatic, you know, automatic in quotes, long point sharpener would be the obvious choice here, I think because it's perfect for making a really sharp point. And he said portable. So it's really the best option. I mean, I think I. From my experience, there's a couple pencils I've used with it that it hasn't really worked great. Some pencils that are slightly thinner. I think the forest choice I've tried to use with the KUM longpoint, it didn't work quite as well just because it didn't fit the dimensions of the holes perfectly. It still is functional and still can sharpen basically anything. But I've just noticed that it works really well with certain pencils and I
think that the blade makes a big difference because if the blade is at all a little bit defective or has like a dull point or something, that
ruins the whole thing.
Yeah.
And I'll talk about that later.
Yeah, cool. So that kind of wraps up, I think, the feedback that we really had from that episode.
So yeah, we can do a short section on just either sharp. If either of us or any of us have a sharpeners to avoid specific sharpeners to avoid ones that you don't want stay away from them. Or certain signs that you should avoid a sharpener. Like what are the. What are the clues that you've got a really terrible sharpener on your hand besides trying it and it's terrible.
So the one that I like for me personally and there's a lot of people who really like it. I actually don't like that, that long point sharpener very much. That, that two stage one, the automatic like I, I guess, I guess all the ones that I've used are the ones that are kind of co. Branded with the Palomino brand. And I don't know, I have like three of them. I think I picked up one when I worked there and I have a couple that came with various sets and I just, I don't know, I just don't, don't like that two stage thing very much. I mean, I may just not be very good at it. I think the only successful time I was able to really use it was when I was recording that video, which I think is pretty lucky. But part of it was because it was back, back when there was only one, the one Palomino Blackwing and it was the, the classic. And that one has such just a soft buttery graphite core that it doesn't, it doesn't shard and kind of shatter when you put it in the second stage. Because I can, I can always do the first stage pretty well. But it's that second stage just sharpening just the graphite core that really gets me. So for some reason that's, that's the one that I just always avoid that one or you know, some of the generic ones you can get like at Target or whatever. But I think we'll, we'll discuss that one too. So yeah, that's, that's the one that I would recommend just kind of staying away from unless you know that it's for you and you would like to try it.
And I, I think with that one, I mean I had one and it worked perfectly for like a year and a half and then I had issues and actually I can talk about this later, but I talked to some of the folks@pencils.com about it to try to figure out what was going on. And the basic kind of like what you said, they said if you have any, if the blade is dulled or if you're having, if it needs to be replaced, then it's going to be really frustrating because it's just gonna break tips off all the time on that second stage. So I really just need to buy some new, new blades for it. But yeah, I'm personally, I'm a big fan and it was really the only sharpener I had for like a year.
That's cool.
I got, I ordered it when I got my first set of the Palomino Blacks. As far as sharpeners do avoid like you said, you know, the kind of generic ones that you find at Target or something like a big back to school sales and they have the bin full of pencil sharpeners. If you get one that works, then that's a defective one, you know what I mean? The ones that work are the lemons. I've found just as far as like pencil sharpeners that tend to be pretty awful. Besides one wedge sharpener that came with some Faber Castell pencils. Sharpeners that come with store bought pencils tend to be really cruddy.
The ones that come with the Triconderoga that, you know, say they're especially for the triangular triconderoga. They're awful.
Don't get me started.
Don't even get me started.
Don't even, don't even get me started. I have that sharpener, it's actually like a foot away from me right now. And I just like use it to like hype me up and get angry before like sporting events or something.
They did the body wrong. The blades on it were pretty nice, but the angle that the pencil hits the blades is like really inconsistent and kind of wonky.
And also any pencil sharpener that when you look at it by itself, if it doesn't have any markings on it or if it doesn't, you know, say made in Germany or made in somewhere or have a brand name on it to me, and with pencils it's the same thing. For me that means whoever made it is not proud of it as a product. So. So stay away because it's probably gonna be just as crappy as it looks.
It's good advice.
Yeah, yeah.
If it's a good sharpener, they'll put
their name on it. Yeah.
I wanna beat on that long point sharpener a little more because I think one of the things I like to stay away from is that if the blade is screwed into plastic, then it can't stay tight long enough. And that two point sharpener is completely plastic except for the blades and the screws. So I have one that I've replaced blades in a few times. But so the threading is sort of giving way and the blades just kind of fall out. It's not cool when you have kids around. Plus it doesn't work. Dad, look what I found. I've had issues with the hinge. They always break off. So I actually have red duct tape in my house just for repairing that sharpener and the various ones floating around here. The other thing I hate about pencil sharpeners is when you can't replace the Blade, because you'll get a sharpener that you really fall in love with. And then as soon as the blade's dull, you've pretty much got to chuck it. So, like, my favorite sharpener in the world is infinitely replaceable because I can always get blades for it in theory. And if they stop making them, I'll buy like a thousand. But so I can keep it forever as long as I don't, you know, swallow it or lose it or, you know, getting robbed. But I think those are the two big things. Anything that's completely plastic and anything whose blades you can't replace. And also anything with a character, you know, like a Disney princess sharpener.
No.
Even though sometimes you want to stab the princesses, you know, it's not a really good sharpener. Do it with your pencils already sharp.
Hey, guys. So we've had. I don't know if either of you have our Twitter feed up right now, but we had a pretty momentous thing just happen. We just got followed by David Rees.
Yes. Before we started, I tweeted him and let him know that we were going to be talking about sharpeners and probably his books. Thank you, David.
We are one of the. We are one of the 142 people that he follows on Twitter.
I'll be contacting you soon. Maybe we can have you as a guest on the show.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So thank you, David.
I know you've been on some little things like CBS Sunday Morning, but this
is the big leagues, so welcome to the big time.
Mo Broca is nothing compared to the three of us.
You knew nothing about pencil set.
That's not nice. So do you want to go ahead and get into our favorites? We can kind of close up with going through some of our favorites.
Absolutely.
Just kind of get positive, chat about them on the way out. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get out of this bad vibe. So, Johnny, do you want to start us out? Yeah. You've kind of hit on a few of these, but you can touch on them again. Tell us about your favorites.
I'll start off with sad news, and that's that my favorite pencil sharpener, probably on Earth, is the Kuhn Brass wedge, which is discontinued. And I know it's discontinued forever because brass has a lot of lead in it. And the way they machine it, the lead sort of makes its way to the surface. So Charles from Timberlands told me that KUM had to sort of contend with all of these international lead standards, and they were just like, you know, whatever, forget it. We're not doing brass anymore. So I know like Mobius and Ruber makes, they make one. I don't have it, so I don't know, you know, how the angle compares. But the Coom brass wedge is like the best sharpener that has ever been on earth. It's great. The threading is brass so you can replace the blade like a million times. You can always get blades for it. And it's got a really, really nice weight. You will. You're less likely to lose it because it's so heavy. You'd notice it fell out of your pocket. And I don't know that they've sort of smoothed the corners versus the magnesium one. Although you could probably sand the magnesium. But I love mine so much. I used to take the blade off and sharpen and polish it once a month to keep it shiny with baking soda, which I stopped doing because that's just kind of weird.
You're such a geek.
And it was hard to get the baking soda out of the threads. That's really the reason I suck. But if you ever come across them, get them. Get me one too.
I will make it worth your while.
I'm actually trying to track down one of the double hold versions because I don't have one and those are seriously heavy, like weapons grade pencil sharpens. So if anyone listening has one, I will trade you something awesome for it. Or money. But similar to that, Tim mentioned the KUM magnesium wedge that comes with spare blades, which is a really great sharpener because wherever you go you've got spare blades. And oddly, usually you could find it at like an utrecht for under $3. And a three pack of blades costs more money. I don't know why this is.
That's one weird paradox in the pencil sharpening world that just drives me crazy, is like every time I, I go on online to look for replacement blades, I always find them. I'm like, oh, there they are. Oh, seven, eight dollars. Wait, there's only two. You know, you go through that every time. Like, surely there's a bulk pack I can get. It's not gonna, you know. Yeah, this is. They just always seem way overpriced. It's like, yes, I'm just gonna buy a new sharpener.
Yeah, I guess they figure if you're buying blades, you're probably really attached to that sharpener so you'll pay for it. Maybe this is a really good sharpener. But like the angle is a little duller than my brass wedge. So at home I don't really use it very much. It's kind of sharp for your pocket, but for chucking in your bag and especially like traveling and camping. It's really great. And now I have to talk about my favorite crank sharpener, which is not the classroom friendly, but the deli 0635 sharpener that Matthias sent me that does a really nice long point. Sort of like the classroom friendly, not sort of like as obscenely long. And it doesn't leave bite marks on your pencil, which is cool. Oh yeah, it has a little manual sharpener built into the shavings drawer too, which is awesome.
But is that for like polish work or is it just for like short order stuff?
I think you could do like colored pencils in there because the point on that's pretty dull or pretty, I don't know, wide. Yeah. But on the flip side, it's plastic and it's small. Like it's, you know, not this behemoth metal thing. Don't drop it on your feet like the classroom friendly sharpener is. So you sort of got to be careful. And I've broken one once and had to take it apart and fix it, but I did fix it. So I guess it's not really broken. It fell apart. And they're hard to get. I don't think Delis markets their sharpeners in the U.S. but there are a few Amazon sellers. I bought mine on ebay for like seven bucks free shipping. It's a good deal. And I know we all want to talk about the classroom friendly sharpener, so I'll just make it quick. But why don't we just.
You can just open up discussion and we can just all talk about it. Yeah, absolutely.
Thing is great, like everybody that blogs has a sharpener I've never read a bad review of, just makes ridiculously long points. It does a really good job. It's very sturdy. It holds a lot of shavings too.
I haven't emptied mine in a long time.
Yeah, I just saw that they sell a new mount where you can mount it easier to a table.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
Yeah, I came with mine.
But also it has a cool sharp sticker on top that says pencil sharpener.
Particularly endearing.
And they have all those cool new colors. Although I still dislike the green that came first. I have the green.
Yeah, I have the blue. I went for the.
That blue one's good.
Looking for the cubby blue. Yeah, yeah. So.
So my, my big, my big complaint about it, and I think everybody's too, is that, you know, it grips. It grips the pencil really well. And it just bites down on the pencil. And my trick that I started using and I really need to make a video of this.
Yeah.
To show people I really I should do that, is you take a post it note and you tear it in half, you know, kind of lengthwise bisecting the, like the adhesive and wrap that around, like stick your pencil into the sharpener and kind of put your finger where. About where that blade bites down on it. Wrap the post it note around your pencil barrel at that point and then stick it in. If you write it, if you wrap it tight enough, it should still fit. And so the, the sharpener will bite down on that and then it'll work great. And it's kind of, it's kind of. I look like a crazy person when I do it because it takes me like three times longer to sharpen my pencil. But I'm like, hey, it looks like I chewed my pencil if I didn't do this. And I do not chew on my pencils. So yeah, I think that's a good trick to kind of avoiding that. And you still get that. Amazing, amazing. Just like razor ship, razor sharp point. I just like that a lot.
I'll posit to you all that with the teeth marks and that mechanism that really like grips into it and bites the pencil into place. Kind of the point with that sharpener is that it was, it was invented by a teacher, hence the name Klastman Friendly Sharpener. And I know from experience having it in class that those grip, those clamps make the sharpener totally idiot proof, you know, like it's true. A kid can't mess it up. Like you teach them, once they put it in, they close the clamps. They don't even have to hold onto the pencil. They just crank it until it's done. So I can totally see how as far as functionality and like why it was even why it was created, it was made to make a really good point on a pencil and not take forever or take several tries, you know, so you put that pencil in there, you pull out the face plate, clip it in and it's just, it goes. And you don't have to worry about it. So kids don't end up. You don't have any of the kids who stand at the front of the classroom for five minutes looking at their friends and sharpening without looking at the pencil, you know, like grind it away trying to get attention, you know, when they, when they walk up to my sharpener, I know that if they're up there for longer than you know, 10 seconds that they're just trying to get attention. So I call them out.
Yeah, yeah.
Quit looking at your friends. Go back to your desk. You're sharpened. I know. I named. I named mine. I don't know if I brought that up in our previous episode. So my. My pencil sharpener has gained a personality, and is. Is I have random kids who aren't even in my class, and they walk up and they're like, hey, how's Clark doing?
Clark.
So, like, when my one day. One day I took it home because I wanted to sharpen some pedals at home, and I forgot to take it, and then a kid came up and they're like, hey, where's Clark? And then I said, clark's sick. Staying home today. And so then I get questions about that all the time because I have another class that uses my room while I'm on my planning period, and I'll hide. I see. I almost said clark. I'll hide Clark in a drawer so that nobody destroys it. And so then kids will come back and they're like, is Clark sick? Actually sounding sincere about it.
He's just spewing pencil shavings. He just can't.
Which is exactly what I said. He's just napping. And then I have made the joke about trying to get all the pencil shavings out.
Now I need to name mine.
Yeah, I named it Clark, for I'm a huge Cubs fan. And Wrigley Field is on. Clark and Addison. They're the streets that field's on. So I do plan to get a red one to have two in the classroom. And guess what I'm gonna name the other one.
Addison.
Addison.
That's awesome.
So.
So yeah, they're. They're 20 bucks. The guy who. Oh, what is his name? The guy who runs the shop is a really nice guy. And I remember when he started, he emailed me, and, you know, we talked about it a lot, so you should check it. I think he did that in the days before Kickstarter, or at least before Kickstarter is really a thing. So I'm not sure how he funded it, but it was, like, super startup, and it's a great, great product.
Yeah, they're amazing. About as perfect as you can get as far as a functionality of a sharpener and quality of a point.
So before, I guess, I guess. Here's another question.
Can.
Can we, as you know, being the engineers that we are, can we think of a. A good way to, like, replace those clamps so they still hold as Much as they do without biting into the pencil.
It would need to be some sort of like, they'd have to. The spring tension on those, the little buttons on the top that you pull together would need to be way higher. And then instead of like any. Yeah, I've thought about this. Instead of the teeth, it would need to be a really grippy rubber, I guess is the only way that I could. I could think of it like maybe even three round circles of rubber that kind of come together, but the tension would need to be way higher to hold it into place. Yeah.
Could you coat the tips of those teeth like that? They have currently with like silicone or something like that.
I thought of trying to stick wax in there, but I think it would get stuck.
Yeah,
the faceplate doesn't come apart.
That's true. Yeah.
I'm gonna pry it apart.
This could get really complicated. But I just had a thought of if there was some kind of, you know, set of. I don't even know what the word would be. Like pulleys or something where you can string some sort of rubber belt through it so that when you pull. Or maybe you can. Instead of pulling them together, you can pull them apart and then it like tightens and then the belt wraps around the pencil and holds it in. But that would end up, of course, breaking pretty quickly, Especially if it's supposed to be used in a classroom.
Mine.
You guys talk about how you, like, haven't emptied yours. I empty mine every day.
Wow.
That's how much it gets used. Kids just, like, wear it out. And I have kids who just love to use it anyways. And they'll just grab my bulk pencils cup every couple days and sharpen all the pencils that are in there, like in between classes, just because they like using it.
You're fostering, like, you know, the beginnings of ocd. And all those children, they're all gonna be like monk when they're done.
Yeah,
that's awesome.
So they're gonna go to. Go on to high school and the teacher's gonna have this pencil sharpener. Like, what's this piece of shit? Just push it off the desk and like crack
office space on it. Yeah, right.
Take it back. You see?
Load letter. Yeah, that's cool. So we should. We should kick start a pencil sharpener, I think. I think Tim's our engineer here. He has thought about this. I'm all in.
You know, my drawings look like. I do them with my left hand, but I'm, you know, I'm all in.
Yeah, Tim what are some of your favorite sharpeners?
And I'm right handed, I should say. Yeah, well, we already talked about the Kuma Automatic sharpener, and that is a favorite of mine, which, I don't know, it's a favorite of mine, but I say I haven't used it in a long time because of that issue I was talking about. I sent an email to pencils.com about it and said, you know, I keep breaking the tip off of every pencil when I get to the second stage and it's driving me crazy. And they, I mean, they were really, really nice about it and sent me back messages where I asked any questions and said. And then they offered, said, well, why don't you send it to us and we'll try to figure out what's wrong with it. And then I thought, that's really, really generous, but I'm not going to spend $5 to ship a $4 sharpen back to you. I'll just buy a new one. But now, like, through this conversation, I think you guys have kind of enlightened me and helped me figure out what's probably wrong with it. And it probably is like, Johnny, like you're saying because it's plastic. Sorry, I'm about to sneeze.
We'll fill this with just some elevator music.
Okay. It went away because it's plastic that the blade just isn't sitting right. And I've replaced them maybe three times, four times since I got it. And that's probably the case. So I will get a new one and I'll use it because it's, it's just, you know, I loved it and it worked so well for me for such a long time. And I just had the blue one that had the two holes. There are two holes on the side for the really thick grade mechanical pencil lead, which I never used, but, but that was there. There are these two holes in the sides that you can put in the long pieces of lead and sharpen the points before you put them into the, the lead holders. So. But I really love that, love that sharpener and I will get a new one. It's worth it to me to get a new one also. I'm not going to talk about it, but Johnny already did. But the comb, that wedge with the spare blades, I guess it's not a wedge. It's. It's actually. It's a block. Yeah, it's like, it's like a. Shaped like a tiny little brick, but it's just so practical to carry around with you because it Comes with a blade on the top and it has two spare blades, which is just really cool. Basically you won't need to buy blades for it for a long time, which is really cool. I also really like the Kum 2 hole sharpener and I have the one that pencils.com sells, which actually has two sheets of foam on the sides to grip.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just to make it really easy to grip, which is just this nice little kind of funny bonus to it. But I really, I really love that sharpener and I use the fat side for fat Dixon pencils and then the. Sometimes I have to use it the fat Dixon pencils and then the Castell 9000 fits really nicely. And then the Ladee. Sometimes I can actually do that on both sides, but sometimes I do it on the, the wider side just to get a shorter, shorter tip. That's a really nice, really nice sharpener, a good starter sharpener. I guess if you aren't, you know, obsessive about having the really long point. I just think it's a really good option. It gives you the versatility of having the two different holes because the automatic sharpener has two holes. But I guess we didn't really explain how this works, but so it's different. There's the two hole sharpener which the. There's one is for smaller sort of standard sized pencils and one is for a jumbo pencil with the automatic sharpener. The first hole, stage one, what it does actually the opening at the end, at the tip, or sorry, at the end of the blade that you're using is wider. So you sharpen it. And what the first stage actually does is it exposes the graphite and shaves
off
all the layers of graphite, but doesn't actually bring it to a point. Did one of you talk about this? And I forgot.
Okay. I mean, maybe a tiny bit, but no, yeah, the explanation is good.
So it exposes the graphite and it comes out basically in a bar. So you have like raw bar of graphite that just has a little spiral basically on it when it comes out. So when you pull it out, you'll have maybe a third of an inch of graphite exposed at the end. And it's just a cylinder, a straight cylinder. And then the wood is nicely shaped from that blade. Then you put it into stage two. And what stage two does is that it actually only sharpens. It comes to a smaller point at the end, so it actually sharpens the graphite that's been exposed. So that allows you to sharpen it to a really long point because the blade that's being used doesn't have to, to both sharpen or both expose the wood and sharpen the graphite at the same time. So it puts those two tasks into two into their own place. So yeah, so then the two hole sharpener is different because it actually they both sharpen to a point but just different size pencils. Yeah, those are my favorites. Of course the classroom awesome sharpener as Johnny calls it is at the top of the list. I use it every single day. And when the school year is over I will bring it home. Of course I'll bring Clark home for the summer, let him have the summer off. Just let him just casually sharpen pencils here and there as the summer goes by instead of like you know, breaking his back all day long. And the last point is I really, really, really want one of those swing blade sharpeners that David Rees uses. And I've seen him using videos those old style sharpeners where you put the pencil in and you turn it and there's actually a blade on a hinge that you move and kind of do the circular motion and swipe forward.
It's such a neat idea. Like it's, it seems to me to be like, I don't know, just, just like before people like knew any better or something like that. Like don't move the blade, move the pencil. But no, it's super, super cool.
I really want one. It just looks like so much fun. And I found if you Google swing blade sharpener, there's a sharpener that was made. I mean I can't find out where to buy it. It's really pretty.
Oh, you can get it from Lee Valley. I think they call it the little shader.
Well the one that I looked up, it's actually called the swing blade pencil sharpener. Was. It looks like a piece of art. I'll put it in the show notes. There's a post on it at Design Milk. But yeah, it's this really sharp. I keep using that word really sharp looking all black. Looks really, really handsome. I'll start using that word instead. But yeah, and then there's a picture at the bottom of that post. There's a picture of a vintage one similar to the one that David Rees has which I think his is. Are. I think his is was made recently. It's not as you know, it's not a vintage one but I don't know that for sure but I would love, I want, yeah, I want to figure out where to buy one so I'm gonna, I'm gonna go look at that Lee Valley one right now. But that just looks like. I would love to sit, stand in the front of my classroom and just do that while the kids are like reading a report and just stand there. There's like really sharp blades staring at them. You know, like,
pay attention, pay attention.
But yeah, that's it for me. Cool.
So. So we've been talking about David Rees. And in case you, you don't know what we're talking about, this is a guy who wrote a book called how to Sharpen Pencils. And he's kind of first known for his artisanal pencil sharpening where for a certain amount of money you would, you know, send him a pencil and he would sharpen it along with like, you sharpen a very like manual kind of intentional way and send you back the sharpened pencil, the shavings and a certificate
of authenticity because the shavings are still your property.
Yes, yes, indeed. And you know, it was kind of a, you know, kind of a tongue and tongue in cheek thing. Like I actually when I was reviewing this book, I. For my blog, I really compared him to John Hodgman, which is funny because there's the forward of the book was written by John Hodgman in that, you know, you don't know if he's, you know, serious or full of crap, but probably he's both at the same time. Like, he is super serious about sharpening pencils. He knows how all sorts of ways to do it he can do with a knife, but I think. But he inserts enough humor in it where I think he understands kind of not, not the absurdity of it, but just kind of like, you know, how anachronistic it is or how, you know, developing or kind of positioning yourself as an authority on that is. Is kind of a.
He also obviously loves it like what he's doing.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, he does. Yeah.
Which is the, which is also the great part. Yeah.
So. So he wrote this book, how to Sharpen Pencils.
Entertaining.
Oh yeah. Which reminds me a lot of the John Hodgman's. The areas of my expertise where. Except this is kind of, you know, on one subject, but in this book I discovered this thing, this sharpener called an El Costco. Not Costco like, you know, the Boxmart, but like Casco. So if you're American, I guess you say El Casco. But it's as, as he said in, in the book, it's the fourth most expensive thing I own and I own a House and a car. And it is so cool. It's a crank sharpener and you can buy one on Amazon right now for $420. Unless you want, unless you want a gold plated one, in which case it's a little bit more.
But I, I've seen this thing. Yeah, it almost looks like one of those cameras. What's that camera?
It does those.
Oh, the. Develop the square picture.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Instagram. No, I mean, kind of like those.
IPhone.
Yeah, exactly. It's really, really nice. It kind of like the classroom friendly sharpener. It has a super long point. But what I just really, really am in love with is that the, the like, it's not like a straight point. It's not just, you know, two lines that just form an angle. It's. It's concave. So it actually tapers into a point. And it's just. I don't know what it is. It's mostly the aesthetics for me because I've never actually used one or tried it out. But I really love how it just kind of like sharpens to do a point.
Does it have a porthole on the top like, you know, I think it
does because you can, you can kind of adjust it on the side, on the other side from the, from the grinder. So you can kind of adjust it so it's. Oh, let me read something from his book here. So the observant reader will note two important differences between this point. The one that the Costco makes and then one that's shaped by a single burr grinder which just has one of the little burr grinders on it. It has a scalloped edge where the shaft gives way to the exposed cedar collar and are less pronounced than those produced by the single burg machine. And the collar is actually concave with a slight curve to his profile. And then he goes on to explain this is like a technical manual. The unusual shape of the collar is due to the bifurcated shaping sleeve inside the sharpening mechanism, which is slightly convex as the shaft of the pencil moves into the sleeve is molded like clay on a potter's wheel.
Bifurcated.
Bifurcated shaping. Shaping sleeve.
Shaping sleeve. I love that. I'm gonna make up. That's what I'm gonna name my band, Bifurcated sleeve shape.
So I really, really want to get one of these. It's super cool, but also it's super expensive.
We can go in it, go in it together. Just like could spend four months at each of our houses.
It'll be like the Yaya Sisterhood of the Traveling Paint. No, the. Yeah, of the Traveling Pants. It could be the Traveling Sharpener. The Yaya Brotherhood of the Traveling Sharpener. Maybe that's the name of the episode.
That's an episode title.
I'll just talk about a couple more real quick. The one that also kind of gives one of those. Those kind of convex or concave sharp tips, I guess it's a. The Janus 4048. And they talk about it before in Lexicaliker.
And it's.
Is that how you say it, Johnny?
Oh, I have no idea.
Lexi Kalikker. Okay, I'm just gonna say that. I hope so.
That's how you say it.
It's not made anymore. It's really old. It was made kind of mid century. It is freaking $50 if you want to get one. If you find one on Amazon. Unless it gets bit up. But it's a little wedge sharpener. And the actual shape of it is also kind of like a more pronounced convex like that. And they're really, really, really cool. It uses kind of a standard blade, and when you tighten it, it looks like it curves it just a little bit. Like it pulls it down in and curves it.
It's.
It's really neat. I have been kind of trying to. Trying to figure out how I can justify spending $50 and getting one. I just love them a lot. So there's a link to those in show notes. Two more I'll just go over briefly. Is the Yikes pencil sharpener. I'm. I don't want to brag. I'm kind of a Yikes expert.
Mostly.
I'm just the only one who is interested in it. And I have a post about it.
I just call you a Yikes scholar.
Yeah, a Yikes scholar. I'm a.
It's like a Yates scholar.
Exactly. I'm a student of the 90s, and yikes are kind of the perfect embodiment of the 90s. And what's funny is I really wanted one of these sharpeners, but I never got one of. My sister was buying me one, bought me one for Christmas one year. And she told me she was, like, doing some research and trying to figure out, like, you know, what colors they came in, where you can find them. And she says she was reading. She. She found a thing about the Yikes sharpener and she was, like, reading about it. And then she realized she was reading my blog. She just. She just googled and found that Yikes post that I wrote. So it's a. It's super cool. It's bright colors. It's kind of a crappy sharpener. Like it's just, you know, it's old and dull and doesn't. It's kind of one of those burr grinders like you like a wall mounted Boston or something. It just really eats away the pencil. But it's cool looking and so I just. Yes, I just have it on display. And the last one is that I was going to talk about is something called the Scrapple. And it is. Have you seen, I think we talked about it before, those sharpeners that are built into the mason jar lids.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
Yeah. So a few years ago they say
you can see your productivity or whatever.
Yeah. Which is silly, but.
Yeah.
But it's cool. It's neat how that works. I actually, when I work for blog for pencil things, they sent me something called a Scrapple C R A P L. And it was kind of that same situation, it was about five years ago. And it tightens onto like a soda bottle lid and you just sharpen right into the, you know, right into the bottle. And I actually, that year that they were doing that, there was something Pepsi had, something called the Summer mix, which was like a super gross version of Pepsi. Tasted like somebody put a bunch of Skittles in it. And so I drank it. I was like, bleh. And I poured the rest of it away. But then I was like, you know what? This, this is never gonna see the light of day again. Nobody's ever gonna have Pepsi Summer Mix. But I put my Scrapple on it. So it's gonna take me forever to actually like fill that up. So in the meantime, I have like just a relic of 19 or 2007 on there. And it's just a nice. I mean it's a really mediocre sharpener, but it's a really cool concept and it works really well. So I have a blog post that I wrote about it in 2010 which I'll link to. So those are kind of among my favorite sharpeners. So yeah, I think that just about does it. Was anybody actually listening to me or just typing things about the chipmunks into Google Docs?
Yeah, I'm thinking of like Scrapple itself.
It's kind of grossing me out. Oh yes, Scrapple. Yeah. By the way, I just screenshot all of your doodles. I don't. Because you like, you know, the scraps go into the bottle and it's like a scrap bottle.
One thing I was thinking of is whether or not a Pepsi Bottle full of pencil shavings constitute a bomb. Probably start a pretty good fire with that thing.
That's true.
I guess it wouldn't explode. It's maybe not a bomb.
I don't know. You should find out.
I need to get a Pepsi summer mix bottle though.
I feel like I have the only one left on earth. So that, that about wraps it up I think guys.
Yeah, I think we, yeah, we touched on, we talked about the small pocket wedge sized sharpeners which are, we all seem to be pretty, pretty fond of. And then the holy grail of affordable sharpeners, the classroom friendly sharpener. And yeah, there's just a lot of really good options. This is one of those episodes where the show notes is just going to be stocked full of ideas. I think people, what people need to think about first and foremost is like what kind of tip you're looking for. Like what do you want to do? You want a long point or do you want just kind of an average size or do you want something and you know, in general, if anything, if you want a long point, then that sharpener will be called Long point will be somewhere in the name usually, you know, except for the classroom friendly sharpener which gives you one of the longest, you know. But there's of all the ones that we've at least, you know, I'm just speaking for me, all the ones that we've mentioned in our favorite sharpeners that I've tried which I've, you know, all the kum wedges. Kum is just kind of the. That's the Mercedes or maybe not Mercedes, maybe like the, the, the Volkswagen or something of sharpeners, you know, really, really reliable.
It's the people sharpener.
Yeah.
Right.
So you can't really, at least in my experience you can't really go wrong with a kum if you're starting there. And yeah, so I think this has been a really, really fun episode, really good episode. Including the chipmunks conversation that we had to have based on that Alvin sharpener. It's kind of an exciting, exciting, fun way to end the episode. But thanks guys. Well, this has been the sixth episode of. Sorry, we got these meta conversations that
we're having
in the Google Doc. This has been the sixth episode of the Erase podcast. We thank you for listening. My name is Tim Wasem. You can find me at thewritingarsenal.com or just writingarcenal.com and then I'm on Twitter writingarcenal and on Instagram thereriting Arsenal. Oh Johnny, is it my turn I'm
sorry,
I just jumped in.
Johnny Gamber. I'm@pencilrevolution.com on Twitter Pensolution and on Instagram, usjohnnygamber with no punctuation.
I am.
There's a good picture of mushrooms on there today. Sorry, Mushroom. Mushroom.
I am Andy Welfle. I run woodclinched.com and you can find me on Twitter at awelflly A W E L F L E or oodclinched. And then there's of course, Erasable itself as an entity and that's @erasable us or @erasablepodcast on Twitter.
Guys, well, you have a really good week. You be watching your mailboxes because I'm gonna send you some Washington swag. Woohoo.
And you have an amazing time in dc.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
Looking forward to watching on Instagram.
I'll let you know how the first several chapters of my novel turn out on the trip with all that free time I'm gonna have.
Perfect.
Well, this has been the sixth episode of the Erasable Podcast. We thank you for listening and we ask you not to actually erase us from your podcast feed until audios.