than half a pencil. Every piece must be examined to make sure that it is perfect, and it must be thoroughly seasoned and kiln-dried to free it from oil. Then it goes through a grooving-machine which cuts out a groove half as deep as the lead. The lead is laid into one piece, another is glued on top of it; and there is a pencil ready for work.
Courtesy Joseph Dixon Crucible Co.
HOW THE LEAD GETS INTO A PENCIL
(1) The cedar slab. (2) Planed and grooved. (3) The leads in place. (4) Covered with the other half of the slab. (5) The round pencils cut out. (6) The pencil separated and smoothed. (7) The pencil varnished and stamped.
Such a pencil would be useful, but to sell well it must also be pretty; and therefore it goes through machinery which makes it round or oval or six-sided, as the case may be, rubs it smooth, and varnishes it, and then, with gold leaf or silver leaf or aluminum or ink, stamps upon it the name of the maker, and also a number or letter to show how hard the lead is.
The pencil is now ready for sale, but many people like to have an eraser in the end, and this requires still more work. These erasers are round or flat or six-sided or wedge-shaped. They are let into the pencil itself, or into a nickel tip, or drawn over the end like a cap, so that any one's special whim may be gratified. Indeed, however hard to please any one may be, he ought to be able to find a pencil to suit his taste, for a single factory in the United States makes more than six hundred kinds of pencils, and makes so many of them that if they were laid end to end they would reach three times across the continent.
There are many exceedingly cheap pencils, but they are expensive in the end, because they are poorly made. The wood will often split in sharpening,
and the lead is of poor materials so badly mixed that it may write blacker in one place than another, and is almost sure to break. Good pencils bearing the name of a reliable firm are cheapest.