Guardian Pencil Discussion

Pencil fandom becoming mainstream? The Guardian has a discussion about contemporary pencil usage.

Personally I don't consider myself to be a "commodity fetishist" when it comes to pencils, but I enjoyed this article and the comments beneath. I'll be commenting later, when I get back from an engagement I have this evening....

Cult Pens gets a few mentions in the article and the comments, as does Dave's Mechanical Pencils. Nice to see pencils get a discussion.

It would be great if some of the pencil bloggers could contribute to the comments, too.

The World's Most Expensive Pencil Sharpener?

...and he even made it a long-point too. 

KUM Long Point Sharpener

I recently bought a KUM long-point sharpener from Cult Pens, but I've had very mixed results using it. Some pencils sharpen well - such as the Staedtler tradition HB - but others break leads almost as soon as I turn the pencil. For example, the Faber-Castell 9008 Steno kept breaking.

I'm still new to this game so it may well be my own fault for being too rough or turning the pencils with too much force. On this design there seems to be a lot of pressure at the narrow end, more so than a conventional sharpener.

If any readers have tips on using this stenographer's sharpener, please let me know.