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Plywood pencil

No longer just ceda
 
(+2, -2)
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Consider the pencil. A straight stick of wood. Could one improve on this, possible reducing wood waste, possibly allowing use of other wood types? At BUNGCO we delight in our cedar pencils but we had to know if it could be done.

The plywood pencil starts with an enormous flat sheet of wood, produced from a single log in the manner used to make plywood. Rather than stack sheet upon sheet to make plywood sheets, the sheets are daubed with glue and then rolled concentrically into a cylinder, the graphite stick in the center. It feels, looks, and sharpens like a wood pencil!

BUNGCO is experimenting with sheets of recycled paper to see if a paper pencil can work as well as one of cedar.

bungston, Apr 06 2014

Rolled paper pencils https://www.treesmart.com/process.html
[the porpoise, Apr 07 2014]

US 461,911 https://docs.google...m/pdfs/US461911.pdf
Patent for pencil made from rolled veneer, paper, or cloth [the porpoise, Apr 07 2014]


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Annotation:







       There are plenty of pencils made from recycled paper. Not sure about rolled veneers, though.
MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 06 2014
  

       Cool. Make sure you wrap it widdershins and put the eraser on the right end or your pencil sharpener will just wedge.   

       If you made another line out of sharpening shavings you could keep recycling them over and again. (OK so it would be a tiny bit of a con. You'd just sell a pot of glue, a lead, and a mold - which I spell as "mould" on Wednesdays. People would buy the *idea* of recycling this way from you, as long as you keep quiet about the glue. )
skoomphemph, Apr 06 2014
  

       That's the "MDF pencil"
hippo, Apr 06 2014
  

       You'd have to taper the end of the sheet in order to not leave a void during the rolling process. Veneer plies tend to be a little thick compared to a pencil lead.
MechE, Apr 06 2014
  

       It's Monday morning so I can't even be bothered to do a veneer-ial diseases joke.
not_morrison_rm, Apr 07 2014
  

       I have some high-falutin art pencils that appear to be made of MDF or even HDF. Definitely some kind of composite wood that sharpens very cleanly and smoothly. Dunno where I got 'em.
Alterother, Apr 07 2014
  

       I very much appreciate the engineering tips. The widdershins wrap makes sense. I think it should suit all - not sure if there are lefty pencil sharpeners.   

       The tapered sheet also makes sense. I think veneers are a couple of mm but even that would leave too big a hole in the middle.   

       And selling the "idea" of recycling. Ideas are so inexpensive! As demonstrated on this site.
bungston, Apr 07 2014
  

       There is a fictional movie titled "The Odd Life of Timothy Green" in which his parents invent pencils out of rolled leaves!
xandram, Apr 07 2014
  

       Wow, that's kind of rude...I'll fix it with a bun.
xandram, Apr 07 2014
  

       [bigsleep] You do realize that plywood/veneer is different from particle, right? If you can show me a single example of a wrapped veneer pencil, I'll be very surprised. Unlike the ones you are talking about, this would not be majority glue, and would be considerably more energy efficient than reconstituting wood waste. It would also be a much more efficient use of raw wood than traditional cut pencils.   

       And yes, I am aware of paper wrapped grease pencils, which still aren't the same thing, although conceptually similar.
MechE, Apr 07 2014
  

       So save a tiny bit of wood at the expense of more glue? Hardly seems worth it. You may not even save wood, as one can't perfectly veneer-ize an entire log without some waste.   

       Rolled paper pencils are WKTE [link].
the porpoise, Apr 07 2014
  

       The amount of wood saved should be significant, and the amount of extra glue used should be minimal. A lot fewer saw cuts involved, minimal secondary machining, and one thin layer of glue won't be that much more than is needed to glue pencil halves together.   

       And yes, paper pencils exist, and are produced a lot more efficiently than the hand rolled versions from that link, but that does require more glue, and is only a good idea if you have the recycled paper anyway.
MechE, Apr 07 2014
  

       OK, so one F. E. Blaisdell contemplated a pencil made from rolled thin wood veneer over 100 years ago [link]. It even sharpens itself.   

       I'm with [bigsleep] on this one. A quick search shows there's nothing new here.
the porpoise, Apr 07 2014
  

       Aside from an idea being WKTE, rudeness is more wasting of people's time.There is polite way to tell someone their idea is already baked, but to say that the reading of ANY idea here is a waste of one's time, then you shouldn't come to the hb to insult others. (just my opinion which I'm sure is worth nothing to [bigsleep])
xandram, Apr 08 2014
  

       //you shouldn't come to the hb to insult others. //   

       Well, no, of course not - mockery, denigration and gratuitous prejudice are at least as important.
8th of 7, Apr 08 2014
  

       I agree with you numbers [8th] & [21]...all for sport is fun. I just felt that [bigs] was being rude, which isn't fun or smart, just ugly.
xandram, Apr 08 2014
  

       Hey [21Q], looks like he's building a giant wooden rabbit …   

       // I really don't know I bother to reply //   

       Because you can't bear not to have the last word, that's why.
8th of 7, Apr 08 2014
  

       //wasting space // or //wasting (my / your) precious time is two different things. You wasted your time typing.
xandram, Apr 08 2014
  

       //There. I think that's rounded off everything nicely. Nurse!//   

       : ] [marked-for-tagline]   


 

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