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Going the Full Monty on a pencil sharpener. [1]
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Date: 2025-05-11
This is an ordinary pencil sharpener, like millions of us have seen and used since like forever. The only thing special about this one, is that it came from my high school, built in 1914 and demolished in 1976.
How did I come to possess this? Well, I graduated HS in ‘74 and they built a new school two years later. They were tearing down the old building in ‘76, and my cousin, four years older than me, was a carpenter. He somehow got permission to go in and salvage whatever was left after the demolition contractor took what they wanted.
I was on summer break from college that year, and didn’t have a job lined up, so he paid me two bucks an hour to help him extract what he wanted, mostly the old-growth oak planking that trimmed the eight-foot tall classroom windows and doors, the doors themselves, and the baseboards. We got some really cool shit from the chemistry lab. Toss eight ounces of pure lithium metal into the lake and stand back..
The structure was mostly gutted by the time we had access to it, but there was still interesting stuff lying around (the raw material for the Lithium Adventure, for example), and I grabbed this pencil sharpener. The gig lasted about two weeks. Shit, we were still ripping boards down as they were yelling at us to get out because the wrecking ball was about to swing. I don’t know what my cousin did with what we salvaged, but he was a talented carpenter and woodworker. He did a spiral staircase for a ski lodge in Colorado that was amazing. It took three month’s continuous work to complete.
We never even thought about things like asbestos exposure or inhaling toxic demolition dust; nobody did at the time. No one wore seat belts in cars either. It was like safety hadn’t been invented yet, at least by our 2025 standards. Somehow, most of us survived.
As a twenty year old, I didn’t really appreciate the amount of craftsmanship and expense that went into that old building. It was an obsolete ruin to me then, but I know better now.
Anyway, that pencil sharpener has been packed away since then. It’s one of those things that, against all odds, somehow stays with you for almost 50 years. I finally unretired it and mounted it in the shop a few years ago. It works, but it’s kind of scruffy.
Something should be done about that.
Still sharpens a mean pencil, but it grinds the wood away, rather than cutting it.
The first thing to do is, of course, take it apart. The housing that catches the pencil shavings is crimped together with metal tabs. Trying to pry those open enough to totally disassemble it would likely end with tears of despair. Good thing is, the nickel plating on the end caps and side bands looks recoverable with some cleaning and polishing. If it had been too far gone, I’d have to strip and plate the whole thing and paint over the black part afterwards.
I can reduce it to 15 pieces, not counting the two mounting screws. But that wood knob on the handle needs to come off.
Everything got a thorough cleaning with degreaser, off-camera. The spiral cutters are still sharp; they only needed to have the debris stuck in the grooves scrubbed out.
The only parts that really need more work are the pencil shavings housing, pencil size selector disc, base, handle, and a few screws. Should be easy.
I’ll start with removing the little wood knob from the handle. It’s peened on, so I took a little grinder and removed enough material so that I could tap the shaft out. I then bolted the knob up in the drill press and sanded it down to 220 grit.
Removing the wood knob. Sanding off the old finish, with rotational help from the drill press.
With the knob prepared, I gave it multiple coats of my home-made shellack. Shellack dries in minutes, so not much waiting between coats, which is nice. It’s reversable, too. Just soak it in denatured alcohol and rub it off.
Thirsty work..
Here’s where I made a fateful decision. I could have simply cleaned up the handle and base, painted them gray, and called them done. But I thought, since I was already going to re-plate a few of the smaller pieces, why not plate the handle and base, too? Brilliant idea.
The thing about electroplating is, surface preparation is everything. Especially if you’re after a shiny, reflective surface. The handle and base weren’t made with plating in mind; most surfaces are as-cast with the texture of the sand used in the mold.
That means filing. Lots of filing. I began with the handle, going from coarse, then medium, to fine files. Then sandpaper from 150 to 3000 grit. Then polishing with jeweler’s paste. I’m not showing the process, but as they say on Sponge Bob: “One Eternity Later..”
Filing/smoothing the handle As ready for plating as I’m getting it. Where’s that beer?
OK, I’d had enough of that for a while, and decided to focus on the pencil shavings container for a change of pace.
First, it, and everything else that needed it, got an overnight soak in Evap-o-rust. Then, stripping the black paint. The Evap-o-rust soak helped loosen the paint so it didn’t take long.
The bare metal reveals the extent of the body damage. How the hell did this thing get dented from the inside?
The Evap-o-rust soak. Why is this font so small? Stripping the paint. Always fun. That’s some unusual sheet metal trauma there.
Time for some body work. I couldn’t get in there with a hammer so I improvised by propping it on a piece of steel plate between a couple scrap wood pieces and tapping on a socket driver extension with the end placed on the dents, shown below. It worked, kind of. Bondo took care of the rest. I love the smell of Bondo; I probably have cancer now..
Banging out the dents from the inside. I’m a professional. Ready for body filler Sanding everything smooth
Once the body filler was sanded back smooth, I polished the plated end caps and connecting bands with jeweler’s paste, re-masked the now-shiny parts, and shot some primer and satin black paint on it. Next day:
Picking paint out of the end cap edges with an awl. The manufacturer’s markings are finally revealed!
Now I had to tackle polishing that base. This was the job I’d been dreading. Why didn’t I just paint it? Because I’m an idiot, that’s why..
The process was the same as for the handle, but it took so much longer. The endless hours of 1930s Soviet gulag-worthy labor that went into this would make Stalin’s ghost nod in approval. But I did get to drink beer, listen to music, smoke weed, and eat food while I was at it, so I had that going for me.
Polishing the base. Patience and tenacity are recommended. Beer and weed don’t hurt, either.
After several more eternities, I called it done. Here it is, polished and ready for the nickel electroplating. Some of the inside corners are still rough, but hey, this is a pencil sharpener..
The base is ready for plating. Where’s that beer?
My DIY nickel plating setup is pictured below. At left is 35% hydrochloric acid (The yellow liquid in the peanut butter jar), then a tub of distilled water, then the plating solution, and finally the power supply, in this case, my 12V battery charger. Handling the acid is the scariest part. 35% HCL is strong. You don’t want to spill that shit. I would have done it outside, but it had been raining for days on end. This is not necessarily the recommended method, but I live dangerously..
The part to be plated is first dipped in the acid to clean it. I kept it immersed for about ten seconds, then swirled it around in the water rinse to clear off the acid.
Next, the part is clipped to the negative (black) lead on the battery charger and carefully submerged into the solution, making sure it’s free-hanging and not touching the nickel cathode that is already connected to the positive (red) lead.
You can buy 99%+ pure nickel strips online. But hurry, I hear there are supply chain issues..
This is all perfectly safe.
When 2 amp current is applied for about three to five minutes, nickel ions are released from the positively charged nickel strip and flow through the solution, ultimately being deposited as pure nickel on the negatively charged part, generating hydrogen as a byproduct of the reaction. That’s my best brief explanation. I was not a chemistry major, so take that into account here.
The plating solution is home-made. It’s composed of white vinegar, some non-iodized salt for electrical conductivity, and free nickel ions. The solution is prepared in a similar manner as plating, except you put nickel strips on both leads. Once the vinegar turns green it’s seeded with enough nickel ions and you’re good to go. It can be re-used indefinitely, as long as you have the nickel strip cathodes.
Electroplating in action. Look close and you can see the hydrogen bubbling to the surface around the copper wire.
The three photos below show the before and after of the plating process. At left is the polished part, ready for acid cleaning and plating. At center is the part as it came out of the plating solution. At right is the finished, polished part. It turned out pretty nice, if I don’t say so myself.
The other parts — Handle, pencil size selector disc, and a few screws got the same treatment.
Before plating, polished and ready. After plating. Doesn’t look all that good.. After plating and repolishing. Much better. Re-assembly! Step one is to re-attach the wood knob to the handle. Since I had to remove material from the shaft to get the knob off, I put a 45 degree chamfer on the back side of the hole in the handle to make room for the metal at the ground-off end of the shaft to flow into when peening it back on. Worked like a charm; it’s on there good and tight. Peening the knob back onto the handle. The rest of reassembly amounted to what we learned how to do in first grade. This is a pencil sharpener, after all. Here’s the finished project. It looks good, but how well does it sharpen a pencil now? Good for decades more use, with style. Here’s a likely test candidate, an unsharpened official Michigan state pencil, no less. This humble object contains a wealth of information about the Great Lakes State: The test specimen. Never sharpened — I’m doing this scientifically. Known as “The Wolverine State”
State motto is “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look around you.”
26th state, admitted to the Union in 1837
State capitol is Lansing
The robin is the state bird
The apple blossom is the state flower
The white pine is the state tree
Home of the Sault Ste. Marie locks
Home of the Mackinac Bridge
Home of Pictured Rocks Nat’l Lakeshore
Famous for automobiles, iron, and apples. Apples get double billing here while the state mineral, the Petosky Stone, is snubbed. If you, like me, think this is an egregious insult to rock hounds everywhere, please direct all complaints to the Acme Pencil Co, attn: W.E. Kiote. Back to the pencil sharpener. It works great, cutting a nice smooth surface and a uniform conical shape. The graphite tip is subtly rounded off so it won’t break the first time you use it. Cleaning out those spiral cutters really did the trick. Success! That beer’s around here somewhere.. Here’s a before and after comparison. From what I can find, this design was patented in 1918. About the manufacturer: The Automatic Pencil Sharpener Company, or APSCO, was founded in 1905 in New York City, and moved operations to Chicago in 1913. APSCO survived in one incarnation or another until the 1980s. They never did develop an electric sharpener, and their mechanical ones ultimately couldn’t compete. The Made in Chicago Museum has an excellent article detailing their history. That’s it for now. Happy Mother’s day to moms everywhere!
-ER
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