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my name is David Reese and I have an
artisanal pencil sharpening business
people pay me to sharpen their pencils
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the oldest way to put a point on a
pencil is using a straight blade take
the straight blade and apply it to the
edge of one of the hexagonal sides of
the shaft your first couple rotations
around the shaft all you're trying to do
is expose the unfinished cedarwood this
is basically a two-stage process the
first stage is to remove enough cedar so
that the graphite is exposed so here you
can see and this is just really rough
I'm not doing this for aesthetics we're
just doing this for functionality that
I've exposed the graphite core in the
middle of the pencil and now for the
second stage we're going to shape the
graphite and create our pencil point oh
I quit political cartooning and I got a
job at the United States Census in the
spring of 2010 and on the first day of
census training they had us open our
supply kits and inside there are a few
pencils and a pencil sharpener because
you fill out the forms and number-two
pencils for the scantron machines and so
on the first day of staff training new
staff trainer was like alright now
everybody's sharpen your pencil so we
were all expanding around these trash
cans sharpening our pencils with these
little pocket sharpeners and it was so
satisfying and fun that I thought I want
to figure out how to get paid to sharpen
pencils so this used to be a paperclip
factory here in Beacon New York and as
you can tell we have the ghost image of
some paperclips and some old rusted
paperclips there's a lot of abandoned
factories in warehouses here in Beacon
and there's a lot of abandoned factories
and warehouses all over the
country so there's something very
different about an empty warehouse
that's been abandoned as opposed to an
empty warehouse that's about to kick
into production the next day the latter
is kind of the same thing as unblemished
office supplies there's just a lot of
promise and potential in a brand new
empty ledger book or a brand new freshly
sharpened pencil that hasn't been
applied to the page yet just makes you
think about you know the past of our
country and the future of our country
and how they're probably all going to
die starving to death and tearing each
other apart and there's some kind of
wasteland I was always gonna quit when
George W Bush left office because I was
making me depressed and also I was
getting kind of impatient I was ready to
do different things like different
projects I remember when the all the
photos came out from the Abu Ghraib
prison scandal and that was just kind of
depressing and so dark who knows but I
knew that I had to make cartoons about
it and people were emailing me saying
when are you gonna make cartoons about
this where are the cartoons about Abu
Ghraib and part of you was like you know
what I really want to do is just like
hide under the covers and eat cereal and
not think for a couple months so I had
to create a kind of a taxonomy of terms
to describe different parts of the
pencil point so I described the pencil
point as beginning where the unshaped
shaft of the pencil stops and ending at
the tip of the pencil I call this whole
thing the point
the exposed cedar of the point I call
the collar so the collar bottom is where
the unshaped cedar shaft ends and the
exposed cedar cone begins that's the
collar bottom the collar top is where
the cedar ends and the graphite begins
that I call the collar top
so I'm going to read to you a passage
from my new book how to sharpen pencils
cutting into the shaft of a pencil and
removing its point can be an emotionally
wrenching experience after all as pencil
sharpeners we are taught to perfect and
protect the point at all costs and this
amputation may feel perverse and unjust
if the process feels you leaving bereft
or ashamed rest assured your melancholy
will be displaced by satisfaction soon
enough as the predestined arc of the
pencil point is conjured anew by your
hand
I started my pencil sharpening business
as my marriage was ending and so it's
kind of like I started this project and
got obsessed with pencils and pencil
sharpeners at a time when I really was
kind of adrift in terms of my identity
professionally because I quit cartooning
and then also personally because I was
no longer a husband this is just rubber
plumbing tubing that you could buy at
any hardware store and you can see that
it fits over a pencil point so this is
the first step of protecting the pencil
point is to actually cut a length of
rubber tubing that's long enough to fit
entirely over the pencil points so that
it's not left exposed before you put it
in the mail and this tubing is simply
placed over the shaft of the pencil and
around the tip of the pencil so there
you go
that's the first step if I'm sharpening
pencils at a party or a convention and
the person plans to use their pencil
pretty quickly then I'll just hand it to
them with this sheath this protective
sheath placed over the pencil point
I kind of like being limited or having
constraints when I'm being creative just
makes it I get overwhelmed if you can do
whatever you want I just get overwhelmed
and shut down so like making comics with
clipart that's a good limitation but you
can't draw anything so you just have to
write around whatever images you find I
guess the same is true of HTML like HTML
pretty bare-bones I know like maybe five
different tags like center bold
italicized font size font color and so
you just try to have as most as much fun
with it as you can like I built this
website for this fake advertising agency
called Joie the Midwife and I made all
these like online viral ads for like
Pepsi and Toyota or whatever Duracell
batteries I mean I wasn't commissioned
to make the ads I just made him for fun
and it was just supposed to be like
really silly and goofy and that was all
HTML and I think that made me laugh
harder than anything I've ever made
nobody not many people ever really got
into it but for me it was like really
really made me happy I think most of my
clients don't actually use my pencils
they just keep them as art objects or
conversation pieces or inspirational
talismans so these display tubes work
really well I got a cap on each end and
now you can see that the pencil point is
protected twice first by that rubber
sheeting and now by the shatterproof
plastic tube
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the pencil tip is unbroken you would
never know that had been thrown across
an empty warehouse again that just
speaks to the thoroughness of the
research I did when I started my
business but one of the appeals of
starting the business was I thought it
would be cool to use the Internet to
send people pencils in the mail because
pencils are like really kind of the
opposite of the Internet in many ways
and so I thought it was cool to combine
those two different technologies like a
really old method of communication the
pencil and then a really new method of
communication social networking and the
internet you can see if you look closely
that the pencil is moving into the
sharpener and now the pencil has stopped
moving into the sharpener so we will
open the aperture remove the pencil and
you can see we've put a lovely long
point on this Palomino black-winged
pencil again this is the difference
between machine and man machines are
perfect and men are flawed once I got
into number two wooden pencils again it
really made me kind of despise
mechanical pencils and the people who
use mechanical pencils and the people
who brag about how their mechanical
pencil never needs sharpening I mean
you you you
the shavings are part of the pencil and
so they should be returned to the client
along with the pencil and you can see
that this pencil uses high-quality red
cedar because the color of the shavings
is very nice it looks like salmon I'll
label these when I get back to the
office it's a real business like it's
not a joke like I literally sharpen
people's pencils for them and I do a
good job you know I
over 450 pencils I've never had one
returned I rarely get complaints about
my handiwork
I've met a lot of nice people striking
pencils I got hired to sharpen pencils
on a cruise ship in the Caribbean that
was cool
you know I literally sharpen a pencil in
a Jamaican waterfall
so I guess insofar as it has increased
my overall stockpile of happy memories
yeah it has been therapeutic what I find
interesting is how in had some people
get about it like and there's an article
about it in a newspaper sometimes the
people in the comment sections are so
furious and part of me is like guys like
they don't need to overthink it it is
what it is what it is like people pay me
money I send them a really sharp pencil
that's about it
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you