The whole point of a mechanical pencil is to have perfect sharpness forever. Yet without precise engineering and build quality, the standard slender leads are doomed to constant breakages. This ...

How Many Pencils Can Be Made Out of a Factory Batch of Graphite? A batch of graphite has just been delivered to this pencil factory in Germany. Once it’s been thoroughly mixed with clay, it’s ...

It used to be that just about any pencil you bought was good. Not true anymore. A lot of the pencils you find now are cheaply made. The wood isn’t good. Often, it isn’t even wood. It’s some composite ...

An curved arrow pointing right. Student-grade colored pencils and professional-grade ones vary drastically not only in their price but how they're made. A set of 120 Faber-Castell Polychromos ...

The pencil “lead” is actually a mixture of graphite and clay. More clay in the mixture makes the lead harder. A harder lead has a higher number. Pencils are numbered from 1-3 but most people use a ...

Coloured pencils can be blended on the page and their tone can be altered by pressure. Some coloured pencils are water-soluble. Water can be brushed over them, or they can be used on wet paper to ...

Pencils, an ubiquitous tool around the world massively used by students, particularly those enrolled in primary and secondary education, are normally not the product of a recycling process.