There are times when multi-tasking gets to be too much like work, and something has to give.
In my case, I’ve been trying to clean out my house, post to two blogs, learn enough about plumbing to repair a leaky toilet and a chronically plugged bathtub drain, enlist the assistance of others in helping me find a new career or decide what to study for one, finish the settlement phase of my impending divorce, pull myself up from a serious clinical depression, try to fly under the IRS’ radar until I can figure out my delinquent taxes, and finish reading two books and a journal – along with other things I can’t recall right now, but which are sitting in a dark corner of my mind nagging me for attention.
I dropped the other blog. Couldn’t get Word Press to answer my technical questions, there were tons of odious spam in the comment section awaiting approval (not!) and I was running out of fresh things to write about, it being a rather one-dimensional blog to begin with, and I’ve moved beyond the purpose of it.
I’ve put aside one of the books to be picked up later, when I can focus on it. The journal I’ve taken to bed with me, and manage to read a few lines most nights before nodding off. The other book is one I’ve renewed twice on inter-library loan, “The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance,” mentioned in Relucent Reader’s post.
As it turns out, I have a considerable collection of pencils; some mere nubs, others with local advertising imprinted along the length, most without erasers, some with erasers worn down to the ferrules, one an election give-away (candidate lost), plus a couple hundred color (art) pencils. Lots of them bear chew marks – good forensic lessons in bite-mark detection. Not all the bites are mine, I hasten to add.
Among my favorite pencils are carpenter pencils. My Daddy taught me how to sharpen one with a pen knife when I was 7 or 8 years old. I had broken the points on two of his and he decided to teach me how to re-point them instead of punishing me for messing around in his workshop. (I wasn’t so lucky when I broke his favorite folding rule, though.) I have a pen knife of my own these days, and will every once in awhile use it to restore a point on pencils in my workshop.
However, by far my favorite means of sharpening a pencil is with a hand-held, single blade sharpener, the sort of thing we used to buy at the five-and-dime for a nickel. I remember going to Murphy’s and spending a quarter for a sharpener in each color they had – red, blue, yellow, green and pink. The pink one I kept to myself, didn’t let anyone else use it. I was heartbroken when I returned to class after being out with mumps to discover that someone had raided my desk and taken all my sharpeners, and the pink eraser that I hid in a coin purse with my beloved pink sharpener.
Over the years, I’ve bought dozens of sharpeners, usually plastic and made for the five-and-dime market. Some were better than others, but each one ate up too much of the pencil. They were awful for sharpening the art pencils, too, because the lead was soft and would bind up against the blade. Without understanding it while it was happening, I was learning about torque every time I put a pencil into the gaping maw and twisted both pencil and sharpener. I just assumed that all hand-held sharpeners ate pencils this way, but – of course – I was wrong.
A few years ago, I acquired a new sharpener that could be used for flat lead and round lead pencils. (I can’t find it now, unfortunately.) One side had the opening for round/hexagonal pencils and the other side was for carpenter’s pencils. Fascinating thing! I studied it for the longest time, trying to figure out how it worked, but without destroying it all together, I couldn’t get inside it to see. It was made in Germany, a heavy-duty plastic shell with embedded metal blades inside. I think it was red. I went to the local home improvement store and bought a box of 10 carpenter’s pencils, just so I could put points on them with that sharpener. Really cool device and I’m sorry I’ve lost it.
Around the same time, I found an architect’s drafting set at the office supply store: a couple of French curves, a long flat brush, a couple of erasers of different materials, some hard and soft lead drawing pencils – and my first ever metal sharpener. The kit was made by Staedtler, also a German company.
For the first time in my sharpening experience, every pencil I put in that sharpener rotated smoothly; shavings were rolling off in frilled rosettes and the pencils, especially the soft, waxy leaded art pencils, didn’t chatter in the hole. Even poorly centered pencils came out better with the Staedtler.
I had an opportunity to use a dime-store plastic sharpener once when I couldn’t find the Staedtler, with disappointing results. When I located the Staedtler, I resharpened my pencil with perfect results. So, I looked at each sharpener to try to figure out why one worked better.
It has to do with torque and the stability of the blade (I might have that backwards, but I know they are related to the outcome.) On all those cheap models, the blade is a straight-edged rectangle, seated flush against the short ends of the sharpener. When you twist a pencil against those blades, the torque action twists the blade too, causing it to shift slightly, resulting in chatter. The Staedtler blade, however, is notched at each end and fits against pegs, which stabilizes the blade during the application of torque. The blade is steady, there is no (or not noticeable) chatter and the pencil moves against the blade smoothly, resulting in a perfect cut.
I’m no engineer, and I may have all this torque business dead wrong, but I know that the notched blade of the Staedtlers I have runs circles around every un-notched blade in my desk drawer.
(c) 2010 Martha McLemore
0 Yorumlar