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.

==

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.