If you decide to use a craft knife to sharpen your pencils hold them in your non writing hand and at a shallow angle stroke the blade along the wood away from you (for safety get a Derwent sharpening stand). To start with you are shaving the wood away from the inner strip and then once it is exposed you can sharpen little bits off of the strip until it is to the point you want. This technique requires a little practice so try it on a more disposable pencil before trying it on your best pencils. Craft knives are a great way of sharpening pencils. The new Derwent sharpening stand will protect you from damage while using a craft knife as a sharpener. Time required: 30 seconds for utility, but why rush? Take a full 30 minutes to really savor the experience Any decent and sharp blade is suitable for knife sharpening a pencil. Even here in the UK with our much stricter knife laws, I can carry a diminutive Spyderco Bug and sharpen pencils to my heart’s content. The Handheld Sharpener The desk-bound sharpener is typically of the rotary variety. In all our other examples, the blade is moved by the user to sharpen the pencil, which is relatively static. In this instance, the pencil remains static, and the sharpener revolves around it, slicing off tiny curls of wood and graphite and dropping them into a collection box below.

Some crank sharpeners also include a tool to adjust the length of the point on your pencil – so you can choose anything from a super sharp, long point to a short, more blunt point. This mechanism is usually controlled through an adjustable screw at the base of the handle. It’s easy to talk about learning from our mistakes but sometimes the hardest thing of all is admitting our mistake in the first place. Our pride gets hurt when we make mistakes and we feel embarrassed and don’t want to talk about it; however this stops us from learning from our mistake. Sometimes making a mistake feels so bad that it stops us from even trying the next time. All of the options so far for pencil sharpening have assumed a level of convenience, privilege, and access to material goods. What if you have none of that? What if you find yourself, in the wilderness, in dire need of notation with nothing but your wits and an unsharpened pencil at your disposal? We have all had the experience, where the pencil we are using has not been sharpened for a while. Writing with this pencil can be a little messy as it tends to smudge a little easier and you cannot write neatly with it. A sharpened pencil for writing offers more precision and a neater outline of letters.Our range of sharpeners can be split broadly into four categories: simple manual sharpeners, reservoir sharpeners, crank sharpeners, electric sharpeners and other sharpening accessories. Aside from our sharpening accessories, these groups of sharpeners will work using either a single blade or helical sharpening mechanism. Single Blade Sharpeners For the tradesman, sharpening with a knife is a practical decision. Why have a dedicated blade for pencils, when the utility blade so adequately crafts a point? Typically the action is to take the knife in your dominant hand, the pencil in your other. Gently peel the wood with the blade, such that you reveal a thinning cone of wood. Once you hit the graphite core, you can begin shaping the lead to your desired shape. Rounded bevel? Concave? Needle? The world, and the pencil, is your oyster, so to speak. What It Produces

Matthew organized various exhibitions before and during his years as a student and is still passionate about doing so today. He currently works as a freelance artist and writer in various fields. He also has a permanent position at a renowned online gallery (ArtGazette) where he produces various works on commission. As a freelance artist, he creates several series and successfully sells them to galleries and collectors. He loves to use his work and skills in various fields of interest. Electric Sharpeners can use either a blade or helical sharpening mechanism, but the whole process is powered by electricity. These sharpeners require very little in the way of manual work – all you need to do is insert your pencil and let the machine do the rest. These heavy duty sharpeners are perfect for artists who use pencils daily, or for those who just don’t want to waste time manually sharpening their pencils. It’s pretty easy to sharpen a high volume of pencils with these sharpeners.Due to their size, mechanical pencil sharpeners aren’t ideal for carrying with you when drawing or writing outside of the home, but they do an excellent job in the home. If there are signs the blade isn’t sharp enough then it means it’s probably time to replace your sharpener or just replace the blade if there are replacements available for your model. You’re Using the Wrong Type of Sharpener Some smells associated with school are best left out of a fine fragrance – overcooked cabbage, damp mops and sawdust covering various effluvia sping to mind; but these fragranced products and personal scents are cleverly composed to provide a highly refined – and sometimes welcomingly whimsical – time-travel trip for your nose…