I fear that I must agree fully with another reviewer here.
Please understand that I am a bit of a forced expert on sharpening pencils and keeping them sharpened at this particular point in my life. As a retired person with much time on his hands, my wife felt and decided that I should expand my horizons, keep active and find rewarding challenges as I slip slowly into my dotage. This can be translated into "get out from under my feet, and stop messing my house up." Sigh.
Anyway, I have for the past several years been acting as a substitute teacher at our local schools. During that time, working with both the very young ones and even the older ones, found that pencil sharpening abilities are an absolute must in order to survive. A young child has figured out that at least 20 minutes per day can be wonderfully wasted in the simple act of sharpening a pencil. If you multiply this by 20 or more students, they have figured out that they can pretty well spend the entire day hanging around the pencil sharpener and thereby have a very, very active social life communicating with their follow students. Yes, pencil sharpening is a social event for kids...it is better than the water cooler they will encounter when they hit the work force.
I have found that if I sharpen the pencils myself, I can get the whole wretched business over in about 15 minutes per day...total. There-in lays the problem. There are any number of different varieties of pencils available today; many brands, some good, some bad. I see and sharpen them all...trust me.
Of all the uncountable types of pencils I encounter and attempt to sharpen and keep sharp, each and every day of my life, this Dixon No. 2...the very ones listed here, are the worse...they are the bane of my life! Sisyphus had his boulder...I have my pencils! The lead breaks and breaks and breaks. Not only do they break through rough use by grubby little hands, they break in the pencil sharpener! I can start with a rather long, almost new pencil and by the time I get a point on it, it is down to a nub. I hand the nub to the kid, he or she returns to his or her desk, and within seconds...snap...we are back to square one. While the little ones seem to delight in this, I find it discouraging, frustrating and hopeless...to say the least.
Now you cannot blame the pencil sharpener in this case (neither the man nor the machine), I use a vast variety of sharpeners, mechanical, electrical, hand held...hey, I even use my pocket knife, and I do not have this same problem with other brands! No, it is the pencil!
I absolutely hate it when one of these are presented to me...I really truly despise these pencils! I fondly hope there is a special ring in hell for the designer of these things.
On the upside, and I always try to find an upside....well, come to think of it....I simply cannot think of an upside at this time...bummer.
Don Blankenship
The Ozarks Dixon Wood Cased Black Core #2 Pencils, 24 Count, Yellow (14401)
A typical #2 pencil can write a 35 miles long line or 45,000 words. Nobody seems to know why the common pencil is called a number two. On the Dixon pencil and other brands are the letters HB; H stands for hard and B for black.
I bought this pack of Dixon pencils despite the negative reviews preceding mine. In my years of teaching, I'm sure I've known thousands of pencils, most nondescript, most yellow, most like the one before and the one after. Some pencils are easier to sharpen than others. Some last longer. Some suffer from constantly breaking points.
How are these Dixon pencils? Sharpening the pencils was no problem, or at least not much of a problem. The paint on these pencils seems thicker than that on other pencils, so the initial sharpening took some time and patience. With two of the three sharpeners at our center I got perfectly symmetrical ends. On the third I got a good point, but not a wood trim evenly proportioned all around.
I gave these pencils to a number of students to use, and made a point to present a pencil to a girl with the same surname. None of the students had any problems with the Dixon pencils - no sharpening problems, no point breaking pencils. To all of them the Dixons were just another pencil, with wood encased graphite, a metal ferrule, and an eraser.
I asked one student how it felt to sharpen the Dixon. "Nothing out of the ordinary," he said. "Just the same old grind."
So for me this set of pencils proved to be a worthwhile purchase for a good price.
NOTE -- I've heard that when a mathematician gets constipation , he works it out with a pencil. Maybe that's why the pencils are called number two. It's just a theory of mine. - Pencils - Eraser - Pencil - Home Office'
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