Pencil History: The Earliest Forms of Self Expression

Did you know that modern pencils owe it all to an ancient Roman writing instrument
called a stylus? Scribes used this thin metal rod to leave a light, but readable
mark on papyrus (an early form of paper). Other early styluses were made of lead,
which is what we still call pencil cores, even though they actually are made of
non-toxic graphite. But pencil history doesn’t stop there…

Graphite came into widespread use following the discovery of a large graphite
deposit in Borrowdale, England in 1564. Appreciated for leaving a darker mark than
lead, the mineral proved so soft and brittle that it required a holder. Originally,
graphite sticks were wrapped in string. Later, the graphite was inserted into
hollowed-out wooden sticks and, thus, the wood-cased pencil was born!

Pencil History: America Expresses Itself

Early settlers depended on pencils from overseas until the war with England cut off
imports. William Monroe, a Concord, Massachusetts cabinet-maker, is credited with
making America’s first wood pencils in 1812. Another Concord native, famous author
Henry David Thoreau, was also renowned for his pencil-making prowess.

Pencil History: Following the Wood

Early American pencils were made from Eastern Red Cedar, a strong, splinter-
resistant wood that grew in Tennessee and other parts of the Southeastern United
States. To be nearer to the source, Northern manufacturers migrated south and set
up wood mills until, eventually, the greatest concentration of U.S. pencil
manufacturers had established factories in Tennessee. To this day, U.S. producers
are primarily concentrated in the South.

Pencil History: A Global Industry

The history of the pencil industry includes a great number of important companies
and brands from around the world. Many now have factories globally. Factors
contributing to the challenging impact of globalization, resulting in a great shift
of pencil production increasingly being concentrated in Asia over the past 20
years, include:
• The reduction of trade barriers
• The introduction of containerized shipments of goods overseas
• The comparative differences in raw material costs between countries
and the lower cost of transporting people and information around the world

Different Classifications and Types of Pencils

As a relatively old tool for writing, pencil developed in time and different types
of pencils were invented for different uses.

Graphite pencils - standard everyday pencils with a core of clay and graphite of
clay and graphite and a casing of wood. They have many levels of darkness, which
are achieved with different ratios of graphite and clay, and variety of uses.

Solid graphite pencils - (or woodless pencils) similar to standard graphite pencils
but without wood casing. They are used for drawing, allow for covering of large
areas and also have many levels of darkness.

Charcoal pencils - pencils shaped like sticks and made of charcoal and used in art.
They are black (and darker that graphite pencils) but there are also sepia toned
and white.
Carbon pencils - pencils made of a mixture of clay and lamp black (a black
pigment). Their darkness changes with mixing with charcoal or graphite. They are
still darker than pencils but smoother than charcoal pencils.

Colored pencils, or pencilcrayons - pencils with wax-based cores that have pigments
mixed in them with additives, and binding agents. Core is wooden as with standard
graphite pencils. They are used in fine art but also by children because they are
easy to use and don’t leave mess.

Grease pencils - pencil made of wax core and, most often, with paper casing. Some
rarer grease pencils have wooden casing. They can write on almost every surface and
it rarely scratches the surface it is used on.

Watercolor pencils - a subtype of colored pencils. They are made of a material

Mechanical pencils - pencils which use mechanism to push lead through a hole at the
end. They use special leads that have precise diameter for the pencil they use, and
can be of different darkness like standard graphite pencils can. They are used for
writing and technical drawing.

STEP 1
Chunks of graphite (a soft, dark mineral) and clay are placed inside a huge
rotating drum. Large rocks inside the drum crush the graphite and clay into a fine
powder. Then water is added, and the mixture is blended in the drum for up to three
days

STEP 2
A machine squeezes all the water out of the mixture leaving behind a grey sludge.
Here, a worker puts the sludge in a cabinet where it air dries and hardens for four
days.

STEP 3
Huge wheels grind the dried sludge into another fine powder, and water is blended
in again to make a soft paste.

STEP 4
The paste is pushed through a metal tube and comes out in the shape of thin rods.
The rods are cut into pencil-length pieces, called leads, and sent along a conveyor
belt to dry.




STEP 5
After drying, the pencil leads are put into an oven heated to 1,800 degrees F. The
intense heat makes the leads smooth and hard, which makes for good writing points.

Making the wood casings

2 The cedar usually arrives at the factory already dried, stained, and waxed, to
prevent warping. Logs are then sawed into narrow strips called "slats"; these are
about 7.25 inches (18.4 centimeters) long, .25 inch (.635 centimeter) thick, and
2.75 inches (6.98 centimeters) wide. The slats are placed into a feeder and
dropped, one-by-one, onto a conveyor belt which moves them along at a constant
rate.

3 The slats are then planed to give them a flat surface. Next, they pass under a
cutter head that makes parallel semicircular grooves—one half as deep as the
graphite is thick—along the length of one side of each slat. Continuing along the
conveyor belt, half of the slats are coated with a layer of glue, and the cut
graphite is laid in the grooves of these slats.

4 The slats without glue—and without graphite in the grooves—are placed on another
belt that carries them to a machine that picks them up and turns them over, so they
are laying on the belt with the grooves facing down. The two conveyor belts then
meet, and each unglued slat is placed over a slat with glue and graphite, forming a
sandwich. After the sandwiches have been removed from the conveyor belt, they are
placed into a metal clamp and squeezed by a hydraulic press and left clamped
together until the glue is dried. When the pencils are dried, the ends are trimmed
to remove excess glue.

Shaping the pencils

5 The next step is shaping, when the sandwiches actually become pencils. The
sandwiches are placed on a conveyor belt and moved through two sets of cutters, one
above and one below the belt. The cutters above the sandwiches cut around the top
half, while the lower set cuts around the bottom half and separates the finished
pencils. The majority of pencils are hexagonal, so designed to keep the pencils
from rolling off surfaces; a single sandwich yields six to nine hexagonal pencils.

Final steps

6 After the pencils have been cut, their surfaces are smoothed by sanders,
and varnish is applied and dried. This is done with varnishing machines, in which
the pencils are immersed in a vat of varnish and then passed through a felt disk,
which removes the excess varnish. After drying, the pencils are put through the
process again and again until the desired color is achieved. Finally, the pencils
receive a finishing coat.

7 The pencils once again are sent on a conveyor belt through shaping machines,
which remove any excess varnish that has accumulated on the ends of the pencils.
This step also ensures that all of the pencils are the same length.
8 Erasers are then attached, held to the pencil by a round, metal case called a
"ferrule." The ferrule first attaches to the pencil either with glue or with small
metal prongs, and then the eraser is inserted and the ferrule clamped around it. In
the final step, a heated steel die presses the company logo onto each pencil.

Around 2,500 pencils can be made from one average tree.

Word “pencil” comes from Old French word “pincel” meaning “a small paintbrush”.
Pincel, in turn, comes from Latin “penicillus” meaning a "little tail".

The most expensive pencil is a limited edition of the Graf von Faber-Castell
Perfect Pencil. It is made of 240 year-old olive wood and 18-carat white gold. Its
price is $12,800.