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Pencils - Easy long points
Folks
I have slaved over bins for too long with a blade paring back the wood until the lead breaks. After ten or fifteen minutes all you have left is a reasonable point on a short lead on a short pencil and a bin full of shavings.
Would you like to get a deadly point in about ninety seconds? Try this technique:
This is 180 grade sandpaper, but any grade will do fine. Use thumb and index finger atop the head of the pencil and stabilise the back of the pencil with the heel of your hand. The blue the blue pencil is a rest to maintain a constant grinding angle, also on the sandpaper to stop it skidding away. As shown in the finished points at top of the photo l like to grind three faces to give me nice flat edges for sketching and a great point for detailed work.
Tap the dust into the bin and your done.
The same technique can be used with color pencils or pastel pencils, though go more gently with these.
Denis
I have slaved over bins for too long with a blade paring back the wood until the lead breaks. After ten or fifteen minutes all you have left is a reasonable point on a short lead on a short pencil and a bin full of shavings.
Would you like to get a deadly point in about ninety seconds? Try this technique:
This is 180 grade sandpaper, but any grade will do fine. Use thumb and index finger atop the head of the pencil and stabilise the back of the pencil with the heel of your hand. The blue the blue pencil is a rest to maintain a constant grinding angle, also on the sandpaper to stop it skidding away. As shown in the finished points at top of the photo l like to grind three faces to give me nice flat edges for sketching and a great point for detailed work.
Tap the dust into the bin and your done.
The same technique can be used with color pencils or pastel pencils, though go more gently with these.
Denis
Comments
I find the results of sharpening my pencil to be a reflection of the mood I am in.
A sudden loss in patience and I'll snap the pencil in half.
Long deep breaths do the trick for me. I was able to get a two inch long charcoal tip the other day
However that moment of Glory didn't last long. I sat on it yesterday. Need I say what happened after that
At the risk of putting too fine a point on this thread. Here is a shot of my Stabilo CarbOthello pastel pencils and my graphite collection.
These points are beautiful for sketching and drawing and so easy to dress back to a point when worn down. I use pencil extenders to squeeze the last inch or two. The pastel pencils in the middle are spares.
Just looking at these on my desk is inspiration enough to get my fingers twitching.
Denis
I forgot to mention in my last post, the picture with the long pastel points - these points are done using a plastic ruler in place of the blue pencil shown in the graphite picture.
However, if you find this to be too much of a grind, ( three minutes per pencil) there is an option called "wood less graphite". I can long point these in about a minute.
The Koh-I-Noors are 3.5mm lead holders, bit of a restricted range available here 2B, 4B and 6B. Rarely, I find black, white and bister.
The Derwent and Mont Marte are the wood less graphite. With peel off paper labels. Again hard to find, but lasts for years.
Denis
Technology update:
The above manual sand paper method takes about three minutes per pencil not fast but slow and steady.
With about eighty CarbOthello pastel pencils and about six or eight graphite markers, the search was on for a faster method,
Tried coarser sandpaper - a few more lead breaks but no more speed.
Tried a Dremel grinding wheel - worked well for the first few, small surface area clogged and glazed. Time saved was then spent cleaning the grinding wheel. New wheel every fourth pencil. Too expensive.
Tried my 18 volt random orbital sander - hand manipulated with the Inverted machine on my lap, takes about a minute per pencil, bags the waste and requires a pair of noise cancelling headphones and some great music. The things we do for art.
Denis
.here is a great sanding block to take around with you as well, the nitram one, cost me like $7 at my local art store. also have seen at blick..
They take less than 5 seconds to sharpen in my X-Acto School Pro electric sharpener. Long points, too.
This electric sharpener also works on round compressed charcoal, General’s charcoal white, colored pencils, and even Nitram H charcoal sticks. It has holes for six sizes of pencils. It’s awesome. Huge bin for shavings, too.
I've been using the Cretacolor 5.6mm leads for my charcoal portraits and love them! I also found lead holders for them on Amazon in a set of three for $10. AmazonSmile : 3 Pieces 5.6 mm Holder Mechanical Pencils Sketch up Automatic Mechanical Graphite Pencil for Draft Drawing, Shading, Crafting, Art Sketching, Wood Working : Office Products
Interesting that you X-Acto School Pro is working so well for you. I bought one on Amazon and it did a horrible job on my pencils! Chewed them up or broke the leads. I ended up throwing it away.
I sharpen my graphite pencils at least every five minutes when drawing. Even though I’m very light handed I’ve found the lead burnishes down quickly and the constant resharpening solves that problem. The sharpener stops when the pencils are sharp so the reshaping stops in about a second and doesn’t take off more than the burnished tip so pencils last as long as they would if I didn’t sharpen so often.
I think you will like the Giocondo’s qualities.
After I read how good your School Pro sharpener has been, I did some investigation and found that the model I got off of Amazon was about two models back and has a defective design. (It's still being sold on Amazon) The current model is more expensive than what I paid but is supposed to be very good. I ordered the latest model this morning from Amazon and it was delivered around 2 this afternoon! I'll be giving it a good testing over the next few days!
I also ordered a set of the Giocondo leads. They'll be here Thursday.
A standard #2 graphite pencil sharpens to a beautiful point and stops when the sharpening is complete. However, when I sharpen a Prismacolor Premier colored pencil, the sharpener won't stop. It just keeps sharpening as long as I feed the pencil!
It makes a beautiful point! Just won't stop sharpening. That's not a big deal because I can just feed a little bit and then check. I tried a couple of Prismacolors in two pencil holes. First the #2 pencil and then the next smaller hole.
Have you seen this?
perfectly with a slight chip off the outer painted area on each one in both holes. Their wood is probably pretty dried out so I don’t know if that’s a factor. Their wood seems to be pretty soft and lightweight compared whit the quality of stuff I use now.
OK- now I’ve actually moved to the lower level to type this as it’s gotten scary quiet outside. Anyway, my sharpener didn’t stop revolving either with these Prismacolor pencils but even though I kept pushing them in they didn’t sharpen any further. Pretty weird but fine with me so long as they they stop sharpening.
Have you measured before and after sharpening for, let’s call it “too long”? Maybe it’s not as bad as it seemed.
Like yours, my pencils barely fit in the next smaller hole.
One other thing I noticed is that the #2 graphite pencil's point wasn't quite as fine as what I got on the Prismacolors.
I wonder how the sharpener decides when the point is sharp? Is it an electronic circuit that works with electrically conductive graphite but not with other materials?
Except for that, it's doing a great job!
My sharpener isn’t the latest model like yours is. Think it’s a previous generation build - once removed from this weird new decade’s alternate timeline stuff. As are my graphite pencils.
check out this perfection in pencil….
Denis
I haven't tried @Dencal 's sanding technique, but will probably use it for my wood-cased charcoal pencils because I haven't been able to sharpen them by other means without breaking the soft charcoal lead. It also looks good for the woodless graphite pencils, although I haven't used them much.
For my wood-cased graphite pencils, I generally use a regular pencil sharpener. I also use the 2mm drafting leads in a mechanical holder. I used them during a year of mechanical drawing classes in engineering college. I sharpen and/or shape them using the sandpaper sharpeners.
I recently started using the 5.6mm leads in a mechanical holder and love them! I use the Cretacolor charcoal leads, but just got some of the Koh-i-Noor Gioconda leads to try.
So, to answer your question, the reason for having more exposed lead and all of these different shapes and sizes it to enable different shapes and sizes of marks.