by the Artist
The Carpenter went to a builders show recently and came home with his annual stock of carpenter pencils. I was impressed with the color selection and quantity! They are usually found laying around our home and I’ve never much paid attention to them, other then getting annoyed when I find one in the washing machine! His recent catch got me to thinking.. there must be a story behind these unique pencils.
carpenter’s pencil from the early 1600’s
https://www.makefromwood.com/why-carpenters-pencils-are-flat-and-other-cool-facts/
Some time before 1565 (some sources say as early as 1500), an enormous deposit of graphite was discovered on the approach to Grey Knotts from the hamlet of Seathwaite in Borrowdale parish, Cumbria, England, (which the locals found useful for marking sheep.) The first “pencils” were graphite sticks wrapped in string in the mid-16th century. Around 1560, an Italian couple named Simonio and Lyndiana Bernacotti made what are likely the first blueprints for the modern, wood-encased carpentry pencil. Their version was a flat, oval, more compact type of pencil. Their concept involved the hollowing out of a stick of juniper wood.
“The first pencil factory was in Germany in 1662, but things really took off during the Industrial Revolution in Europe. The earliest form of manufactured pencil was two small slats of wood encasing a slab of graphite, thus, flat and rectangular in shape. So you could say the earliest pencils were all what we would call “carpenter’s pencils” today.”
https://www.quora.com/Who-invented-the-carpenters-pencil
A carpenter pencil is a pencil that has a body with a rectangular or elliptical cross-section to prevent from rolling off a table or a roof! Carpenter pencils are easier to grip than standard pencils. When sharpened properly.. thick or thin lines can be drawn. The end of the rectangular point can be notched to draw two parallel lines! (Have you tried this Mr Carpenter?) They hold up when used on rough surfaces like concrete. The pencil itself is robust enough to survive in the bottom of a bag with heavy tools. Carpenter pencils are typically manually sharpened with a knife. In fact carpenter’s have been sharpening their pencils this way for 400 years! (there is a sharpener but it creates a finer pencil type point which doesn’t have strength)
Here’s a good little video that shows you how to sharpen… the guy does a little sales pitch at the very end you could skip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUwQZv_HKzA
I learned something today. Even Carpenter pencils have a beginning. Everything has a beginning. And a beginning is all you need to start! Give us a call. We have plenty of carpenter pencils to get your project done!