Originally Posted by
David Keller NC
But...The problem with any mechanically sharpened pencil in the shop is that it gives you a conical point, which is not ideal for laying against a square and marking a line. The metal blade on the square will bear on a tiny area on the side of the conical point, and the force tends to snap it (the point), especially if you're using the ideal hardness for marking wood, which is in the B and softer range. Harder pencils like the 3Hs will stand up better, but yield a much fainter line on wood.
So there's an easy solution - sharpen your pencil on sandpaper attached to a wooden block. Leftover 220 grit will make short work of sharpening a cedar pencil, but the real reason to use the sandpaper is that it is very easy to form a chisel point on the lead.
One could achieve a chisel point shape with a knife or a chisel, but this isn't nearly as easy as it sounds - in softer pencils, the pressure from the knife often breaks the point off that you're working on. Sandpaper doesn't have that problem.
Not sure how this makes the chisel point but I thought it was intersting.
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