Pencil Making

The Story of Pencils Lesson Plan: Activity 3 - How are pencils made today?

At a sawmill Incense-cedari logs are first cut into lumber called "Pencil Stock" or "Pencil
Squaresi". This lumber product is dried to a uniform moisture content in a dry kiln and
then shipped to the Slati factory.

1. At the Slat factory Pencil Stock is cut into "Pencil Blocksi" a bit longer than the
normal length of a pencil. The small amount of extra length is called "trim allowance"
that is important at the pencil factory later.

2. Pencil Blocks are cut into "Pencil Slats" using specially designed circular saws. These
saws are very thin in order to reduce the amount of "waste" in the form of "sawdust". Due
to the natural grain and defect characteristics of the wood the slats are sorted by width
and grade for further processing. Slats without defects are called "full ply". Some slats
are cut to smaller widths (called "narrow ply") or shorter lengths (called "memos") in
order to eliminate the defects and to produce a variety of useable grades and plies of
pencil slats.

3. Pencil Slats are treated with wax and stain in order to provide uniform color and
improve the machining and sharpening characteristics of the wood for future processing.
The slats pass through a final inspection process and then are packaged and shipped to
"Pencil Factories" all over the world.

4. At the Pencil Factory a "Groover machine" cuts grooves into the slats to accept the
writing core (or "lead").

Groover and lead layer linked in a single process - Steps 4 to 6

5. Writing cores -- made from a mixture of graphite and clay -- are placed into the
grooves. Other pencils may use wax based cores for coloring pencils as well as many
other formulations used to make cosmetic pencilsi.

6. A second grooved slat is glued onto the first -- making a "sandwich." This is done with
a machine called a "lead layer" where the sandwhiches are then "clamped" to hold them
together tightly while the glue dries.

7. Once the glue dries the sandwiches are transfered to equipment called a "Shaper" and
are first "trimmed" to assure that the sandwhich is square and that all the pencils will be
the proper length, then the sandwich is machined into pencil shapes such as hexagonal,
round or triangular.

8. The individual pencils cut from the sandwich are ready for further processing. Any
defective pencils such as uncentered leads or chipped wood are discarded at this point.

9. Next each pencil is painted in a machine receiving from 4 to 10 coats of lacquer

depending on the desired quality of the finish and the color of lacquer. A recess is cut to
accept the ferrule.

After painting some pencils are wrapped with decorative film or foils with fancy designs
although most pencils are imprinted with the brand name by stamping the foil into the
surface of the pencil.

10. On a "tipping" machine an eraser and a ferrule (the metal ring that holds the eraser to
the pencil)are crimped into place on each pencil.

Eraser Tipping Machine

Following tipping pencils are packaged in many different ways for shipment to
distributors, wholesalers or direct to retail stores where you buy your pencils.
he Story of Pencils Lesson Plan: Activity 2 - The History of the Pencil?

The Early Days

Modern pencils are the descendants of ancient writing instruments.

In ancient Rome, scribes wrote on papyrus (an early form of paper) with a thin metal rod
called a stylus, which left a light but readable mark. Other early styluses were made of
lead. Today we still call the core of a pencil the "lead" even though it is made from
nontoxic graphite.

Graphite came into widespread use following the discovery of a large graphite deposit in
Borrowdale, England in 1564. Graphite left a darker mark than lead, but was so soft and
brittle that it required a holder. At first, sticks of graphite were wrapped in string. Later,
the graphite was inserted into wooden sticks that had been hollowed-out by hand! The
wood-cased pencil was born.

Oldest Known Wood Cased Pencil – Faber-Castell collection

The first mass-produced pencils were made in Nuremberg, Germany in 1662. There an
active pencil industry developed with famous companies like Faber-Castell established in
1761, Lyra, Steadtler and others growing throughout the 19th century industial
revolution.

Development of the US Industry

Until the war with England cut off imports, pencils used in America came from overseas.
William Monroe, a cabinetmaker in Concord, Massachusetts, made the first American
wood pencils in 1812 as did another Concord area maker, famous author Henry David
Thoreau.

Click here to learn more about famous people who have used pencils.

Other eary US manufacturers that helped industrialize pencil making in the United States
were Joseph Dixon Crucible Company (now Dixon Ticonderoga) and a number of
factories established in New York and New Jersey towards the end of the 19th century by
immigrants from the German industry including Faber Castell, Eberhard Faber, Eagle
Pencil Company (Later Berol) and General Pencil Company.

Eagle Pencil Factory - New York

The first mass-produced pencils were unpainted, to show off their high-quality wood
casings. However, by the 1890s, many manufacturers were painting their pencils and
giving them brand names. There's an interesting story behind the familiar yellow color of
the common pencil. Click this link to find out why pencils are yellow.

March 30, 2008 was the 150th Anniversary of the Hymen Lipman patent on eraser tipped
pencils. Read more here.

Following the Wood

Early American pencils were made from Eastern Red Cedari, a strong, splinter-resistant
wood that grew in Tennessee and other parts of the southeastern United States. Many
Northern manufacturers set up wood mills in Tennessee and other Southern states where
Eastern Red Cedar grows. Eventually much of the US pencil manufacturing industry
established pencil factories in Tennessee where the remaining US producers are primarily
concentrated today.
By the early 1900s, pencil manufacturers needed additional sources of wood, and turned
to California's Sierra Nevada mountains. There they found Incense-cedar, a species that
grew in abundance and made superior pencils. California Incense-cedari soon became the
wood of choice for domestic and international pencil makers around the world.

To ensure the continued availability of Incense-cedar, forest workers have carefully

managed the stands of trees in which Incense-cedar grows, and timber companies have
been careful to harvest the trees on a sustained-yieldi basis. "Sustained-yield" means that
the annual growth of the forest is greater than the amount harvested from the forest.
Forests managed on a sustained-yield basis are abundant and healthy, and will continue to
provide wood for people and habitat for animals for generations to come.

A Global Industry
The history of the pencil industry includes a great number of important companies and
brands from around the world. Many of the major brands now have factories throughout
the world. 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 tranporting people and information around the world have lead the
pencil industry like many others to experience the challenging impact of globalization.
This has lead to a great shift in the past 20 years of where pencils are produced with
increasing concentration of manufacturing in Asia.

One of the oldest and most widely used writing utensils, the pencil originated in pre-
historic times when chalky rocks and charred sticks were used to draw on surfaces as
varied as animal hides and cave walls. The Greeks and Romans used flat pieces of lead to
draw faint lines on papyrus, but it was not until the late 1400s that the earliest direct
ancestor of today's pencil was developed. About one hundred years later graphite, a
common mineral occurring as soft, lustrous veins in rocks, was discovered near
Borrowdale in northwestern England. The Borrowdale mine supplied Europe with
graphite for several hundred years; however, because people could not then differentiate
between graphite and lead, they referred to the former as "black lead." Cut into rods or
strips, graphite was heavily wrapped in twine to provide strength and a comfortable
handle. The finished product, called a lead pencil, was quite popular. In the late sixteenth
century, a method for gluing strips of wood around graphite was discovered in Germany,
and the modern pencil began to take form. In 1779, scientists determined that the material
they had previously thought was lead was actually a form of microcrystalline carbon that
they named graphite (from the Greek "graphein" meaning "to write"). Graphite is one of
the three natural forms of pure carbon—the others are coal and diamond.

In the late eighteenth century the Borrowdale mine was depleted, and, as graphite was
now less plentiful, other materials had to be mixed with it to create pencils. A Frenchman
chemist, Nicolas Jacques Conte, discovered that when powdered graphite, powdered clay,
and water were mixed, molded, and baked, the finished product wrote as smoothly as
pure graphite. Conte also discovered that a harder or softer writing core could be
produced by varying the proportion of clay and graphite—the more graphite, the blacker
and softer the pencil. In 1839, Lothar von Faber of Germany developed a method of
making graphite paste into rods of the same thickness. He later invented a machine to cut
and groove the pencil wood. Following the depletion of the once-abundant graphite
source at Borrowdale, other graphite mines were gradually established around the world.

A number of these mines were set up in the United States, and the first American pencils
were manufactured in 1812, after the War of 1812 ended English imports. William
Monroe, a cabinet maker in Concord, Massachusetts, invented a machine that cut and
grooved wood slats precisely enough to make pencils. Around that time, American
inventor Joseph Dixon developed a method of cutting single cedar cylinders in half,
placing the graphite core in one of the halves, and then gluing the two halves back
together. In 1861, Eberhard Faber built the United States' first pencil-making factory in
New York City.

Today, the hardness of a pencil is designated by numbers or letters. Most manufacturers

use the numbers 1 to 4, with 1 being the softest and making the darkest mark. Number 2
pencils (medium soft) are used for normal writing. Pencils are also sometimes graded by
letters, from 6B, the softest, to 9H, the hardest. The idea of attaching an eraser to a pencil
is traced to Hyman W. Lipman, an American whose 1858 U.S. patent was bought by
Joseph Rechendorfer in 1872 for a reported $100,000.

The first step in pencil manufacture involves making the graphite core. One method of
doing this is extrusion, in which the graphite mixture is forced through a die opening of
the proper size.

In addition to the conventional wood pencil, a number of other pencils are widely used.
In the early 1880s, the search for a pencil that didn't require sharpening led to the
invention of what has variously been termed the automatic, propelling, or repeating
pencil. These instruments have a metal or plastic case and use leads similar to those
found in wood cased pencils. The lead, lodged in a metal spiral inside the case, is held in
place by a rod with a metal stud fastened to it. When the cap is twisted, the rod and stud
move downward in the spiral, forcing the lead toward the point. The early twentieth
century saw the development of colored pencils in which the graphite core was replaced
by a combination of pigments or dyes and a binder. Today, colored pencils are available
in more than 70 colors, with 7 different yellows and 12 different blues. However, the
cedar-casing lead pencil—manufactured at a pace of 6 billion per year in 40 different
countries—continues to outsell all of its competitors, including the ballpoint pen.
Raw Materials

The most important ingredient in a pencil is the graphite, which most people continue to
call lead. Conté's method of combining graphite with clay is still used, and wax or other
chemicals are sometimes added as well. Virtually all graphite used today is a
manufactured mixture of natural graphite and chemicals.
The wood used to manufacture pencils must be able to withstand repeated sharpening and
cut easily without splintering. Most pencils are made from cedar (specifically, California
cedar), the choice wood for many years. Cedar has a pleasant odor, does not warp or lose
its shape, and is readily available. Some pencils have erasers, which are held on with a
ferrule, a metal case that is either glued or held on with metal prongs. The erasers
themselves consist of pumice and rubber.
The Manufacturing
Process

Now that most commercially used graphite is made in factories rather than mined,
manufacturers are able to easily control its density. The graphite is mixed with clay
according to the type of pencil being made—the more graphite used, the softer the pencil,
and the darker its line. For colored pencils, pigments are added to the clay, and virtually
no graphite is used.

Processing the graphite

1 Two methods are used to form the graphite into its finished state. The first is an
extrusion method in which the graphite and wax mixture is forced through a mold to
create a spaghetti-like string, which is then cut to precise measurements and dried in
ovens. In the second method, the graphite and clay mixture is poured into a machine
called a billet press. A plug is placed over the top of the press, and a metal ram ascends
from the bottom to squash the mixture into a hard, solid cylinder called a "billet." The
billet is then removed from the top of the machine and placed into an extrusion press that
forces it through a mold, slicing off strips the

To make the wood casings for the pencils, square slats are formed, and then grooves are
cut into the slats. Next, graphite sticks are inserted into the grooves on one slat, and then
a second slat with empty grooves is glued on top of the graphite-filled slot. Correctly
sized pencils are cut out of the sandwich, and the eraser and metal ferrule are attached.
size of the pencil core. After being cut to size, the cores pass along a conveyor belt and
are collected in a trough to await insertion in the pencil wood.
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.
Colored pencils

Colored pencils are produced in much the same way as black-writing pencils, except that
their cores contain coloring materials such as dyes and pigments instead of graphite.
First, clay and gum are added to pigment as bonding agents, and then the mixture is
soaked in wax to give the pencils smoothness. When the pencils have been formed, the
outsides are painted according to the color of the center mixture.
Quaility Control

Because they travel along a conveyor belt during the manufacturing process, pencils are
thoroughly scrutinized before they are distributed to the public. Workers are trained to
discard pencils that appear dysfunctional, and a select number are sharpened and tested
when the process is complete. A common problem is that the glue of the sandwiches
sometimes doesn't adhere, but this nuisance is usually caught when the sandwiches are
being cut.
Where To Learn More