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Though it was only last week that I started sharpening
pencils with a knife, I am now hooked, and with my position
as a school teacher, working with pencils can take on the
full dimensions of a hobby.
Kids at my school leave on the ground perfectly good, even
sharpened pencils, so gathering those is level one. Next,
there pencils left that simply need to sharpened. This is
level two, and at least this week, which might be a bit of
an outlier because it was the lead up to a week-long break
for Thanksgiving, I gathered so many pencils that I had a
few hours worth of sharpening, which is really just a kind
of relaxing whittling to do. It is nice work to do to
with my hands while I listen to a podcast. I have such a
glut that I can be picky with my categories. The long ones
go in a cup at school, which is now so full that I will
have to start a new container for the extras. The ones of
middling length, that I can still hold in my hand I am
starting to store at my house, as I like that sized pencil
in my shop for marking things, and I imagine I can store
up a lifetime supply in relatively short order.
But the stubs smaller than that, whether broken by a
student and left on the playground or somehow, some way,
used until they are that small, I am starting to attach
to sticks that are large enough to handle.
I did 14 of those yesterday evening. After doing one as a
proof of concept, I did the rest by batching together each
step. I had a little tub filled with little bits of fairly
thick dowel which were once the pillars of some student's
version of a Greek temple (almost certainly put together by
a parent). The darn thing was left in a classroom by a
teacher who refused to clear out her shit after she quit (a
very common occurrence), and so it was just going to be
thrown out by the new owner of the room. I took it and just
demolished to columns with a jigsaw, thinking that the the
future of those columns would be handles, but now I know
their real destiny is to be pencil extenders.
The edges of the dowels had to be cleaned up a bit, so I
did so with with a rasp laid across the bench, running the
pieces over the surface like it was sandpaper. Next, I
drilled all of the pilot holes using my pump drill. This
was not simply an act of using a tool just to get the
satisfaction of knowing I had made it; instead, it runs
quietly enough to continue to listen to a podcast while I
work. I held the dowels up in the vice I inherited from
my grandfather and worked away blissfully.
After the pilot holes were drilled, I took a break, and
then used my electric drill to do the full-sized holes for
the stubs. I hope in the future that I have the correct
sized bit in a sleeve that I can attach to my pump drill
but I did not feel like working on that today, and besides,
I would have to give the epoxy glue time to dry, and today
I felt like getting some pencils done.
After the holes, I pulled out my glue, which is just school
glue that I bought in bulk, some of which I poured in a an
old salsa container. I dipped the back of the stubs right
in, inserted them into the holes I had drilled and then
wiped up the glue that squirted out.
I will probably have a slower go of gathering pencils after
we return from break, but at least I now have the system
down.
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I love to hear from people. My email is the handle minus
"net" (so, a work by Voltaire that starts with "c"), at
sdf.org.
While we're adding boiler plate: this work is hereby in the
public domain. Do what you want with it.