My grandmother and pencil sharpeners
I recently stayed at an airbnb that was woefully understocked – and that was the least of the things wrong with it, alas. I did notice that one of the few pieces of kitchen equipment it had was a vegetable peeler. But one evening when I took it on myself to make soup and to peel several types of vegetables, I discovered that the peeler didn’t work.
Not that it didn’t work well. It didn’t work at all.
And so I resorted to something I hadn’t done in a long time, which was to peel carrots by scraping them with a knife. While I was engaged in that task, I suddenly flashed on a memory of my grandmother sharpening pencils with a knife.
My wonderful grandmother was born in the early 1880s, but this memory was from the 1950s. And I never ever saw her use a pencil sharpener, although she lived to be over eighty. She would whittle that pencil down with a knife. Her pencils bore the markings of her efforts, much like prehistoric arrowheads or flint tools.
Why did she do it that way? I neglected to ask her, and now I’ll never really know. When I began to write this post, I thought perhaps the pencil sharpener hadn’t been invented yet when she was in school. But in fact it had, and even the prism type (the small hand-held one still commonly used) was able to be mass-produced from 1851 on.
Apparently, even today artists still knife-sharpen their pencils at times. My grandmother was good at drawing and had had some formal instruction in it, so perhaps that’s where she picked up the habit.
There are plenty of YouTube videos on how to do this, but they don’t use my grandmother’s technique. She used a regular knife rather than the very sharp edges in the videos, and she laid the pencil on a surface rather than holding it in her hand (videos like the following one make me nervous):
I once tried to hand-sharpen a pencil and I was nowhere near as good at it as my grandmother was. When I contemplate the fact that she was born about 140 years ago, it seems wondrous to me that I have that window back to a distant time.
Here’s a photo of my grandmother on graduation from teacher’s training school around 1902 or thereabouts:
I have sharpened many a pencil with a knife. Works great!
Also, peeled many a carrot with a knife. And cucumbers.
So that’s how they make baby carrots, carrot sharpeners!
Much like corn syrup; all those little buckets collecting the corn sap, and then off it goes the corn sap concentrator. Just like with Maple syrup in Vermont or Canada.
I have been sharpening pencils with knives as long as I can remember. I use pencil sharpeners when they are handy.
I still use my parents’ Berol Premier Vacuhold pencil sharpener. I believe it was Berol’s top of the line sharpener as in addition to the vacuum base it has a spring-loaded pencil carrier that automatically adjusts to the pencil diameter and force feeds the pencil into the sharpener for a precise, fine point. I think it does as good a job, or even better, than an electric sharpener, since you can feel when the point is sharp and not waste pencil material.
The design was originally made by Apsco, which appears to have been bought by Berol.
https://polarpencilpusherhome.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/20190501_095918-01.jpeg?w=866
It doesn’t look like Berol still sells manual sharpeners, but X-Acto does sell a vacuum base sharpener, though it doesn’t have the Berol Premier’s cool pencil carrier/feeder and you have to rotate a collar for the correct pencil diameter.
Should be the first thing you learn in drafting instruction: how to sharpen a pencil, and yes, with a knife.
Knife skills belong first, or among the first, too, in kitchen instruction.
I have cleaned, groomed, shaved, and combed myself with a knife, well enough to stand best man creditably at a friend’s wedding. But I wouldn’t go as far as to say this too belongs among the basics everyone should learn.
For what it’s worth, carpenters’ pencils are intended to be sharpened with a utility knife. They won’t even fit in a conventional pencil sharpener.
I’m trying to remember the last time I used a pencil. I’m sure I haven’t bought one in thirty years. Maybe scoring a round of miniature golf when my niece was young?
Johann A M:
Johnson made a prism type pencil sharpener for carpenters pencils, with a rotating chuck. Original design had a curved blade that was later simplified to a flat blade. Both worked pretty well, but the Stanley knife was always in my tool belt/pouch so it got used more often.
I sharpened pencils with knives all the time when I used them.
I’m agnostic on the sharpening of pencils. Whatever comes to hand. A year or so ago, after moving, I’d misplaced my little hand held sharpener and for the first time picked up a sharp knife and whittled the pencil tip into use. Not particularly difficult, as long as you remember to always cut away from yourself.
I do have fond memories of the old pencil sharpeners in school. IMO, they beat the hell out of the electric ones, much better control. But then, I prefer the feel and sound of the old mechanical dial phones. Just a ‘rightness’ that push buttons and capacitive touch phones can’t touch.
Neo, your Grandmother was a handsome woman and I think very proud. What we can see of you, you must look very much like her. The eyebrows look very much the same.
LoL, I am a carpenter and use a utility knife to sharpen my pencil daily. You can put on a point as sharp or dull as needed.
My first knife was a little Brownie knife. About ten years ago, I saw the same knife at a flea market for $100! The small knife is somewhere in my home.
Now, I have a bunch of Gerber knives and they are all over the place. I probably need to gather them up and do some annual routine cleaning, oiling, and sharpening. I have the knives in the boat bag, car, purse, desk, bedside table, and a spare or two. If I am wearing slacks that have a pocket, the knife is in the right pocket.
Most of the use is for cutting boxes open or something with respect to the boat, though I have never used the knife for the intended purpose of getting myself clear of lines in an emergency. For personal safety, I could carry a gun, but I think a knife is better for close defense. I hope I never need to use it on a person.
Grandmother Neo was quiet an attractive lady.
She does seem to be holding the family apple behind her back, instead of in front of her face.
I use either a pocket knife or a razor knife to sharpen pencils on the job, although I have mostly gone to markers. Though there are some things you do not want to use a permanent marker on. Markers do work better on metal than pencils. I cut a fair amount of light metal in my work, and pencils just do not leave a very visible line on fresh, clean galvanized flashing material.
jon baker:
She’s quiet in the photo, but she wasn’t quiet in real life. She was fairly talkative and lively.
SHIREHOME:
Thanks. You are correct that I resemble her, although of course not exactly.
Oh, to have her figure!
Trying to create the longest possible pencil shaving was fun. Can’t remember when I last sharpened a pencil. Must be 30+ years ago.
I’ve been peeling a lot of ginger this winter with a knife. Must now take the radical step of trying with a carrot peeler and seeing what happens.
@GoddesstoolongtotypeyesIknow:
Shirtwaists. Of Triangle Factory fame. The effect is pleasing but cannot have been comfortable. Women have it too easy these days! 🙂
I still use lots of pencils for marking up music, and prefer wooden ones. I use my father-in-law’s Panasonic electric sharpener from the 60s. Works great, built like a tank.
Zaphod:
Not a shirtwaist. A turn-of-the-century shirtwaist (as opposed to much later use of the term) was a woman’s blouse cut along similar lines to a man’s shirt. See this. What my grandmother has on in that picture is a dress, a fairly fancy one at that.
My grandmother herself used the term “shirtwaist” only to refer to a woman’s blouse. As a child I recognized this as an old-fashioned term of hers, much like her use of the word “icebox” to refer to the refrigerator.
However, by the middle of the 20th century, when I was a child, “shirtwaist” did mean a dress, ordinarily a cotton dress that buttoned down the front, with a fitted waist and full-skirted lower half. But that was not the case in my grandmother’s youth and young womanhood.
I do have a photo of my grandmother in a shirtwaist blouse taken a couple of years later (maybe 1906 or so) – a white blouse and long dark skirt.
@neo:
Interesting! Thanks.
Fascinating and fun, thanks. Makes me note that “pen knife” is an old word that summons up its circumstances. Quill pens that you would prepare yourself.
Pencils came later.
It is a wonderful photo and your grandmother looks lovely! I’m sure she was proud of all her granddaughter went on to accomplish.
The few times I used to try a knife or razor edge of some kind to sharpen a pencil, I was never satisfied with the result. I miss the crank-type sharpeners mounted on the edge of a table.
liz,
If I’m kayaking or sailing where I’m sharing the water with alligators or sharks I always make sure to have a long-bladed knife in a very accessible location.
I also keep a folding knife on my person to quickly cut a rope. I also keep extra rope handy, clip caribeners everywhere and twist different lengths of Gear Ties on various handles, ropes and surfaces. Caribeners and gear ties have so many practical uses!
When kayaking I also usually wear a bracelet made of paracord that can quickly be unwound into 10 feet of rope that will easily hold my and the kayak’s weight, even in a decent current.
When I need a pencil sharpened in my shop, I turn to my belt or disk sander.
I also carry a penknife with me all the time. That is just a common term for a pocket knife. I have contributed a number of nice ones to TSA when I forget to leave them at home or in the car.
“Ice box” is archaic? Who knew? Maybe that’s why my kids and grandkids smile so broadly when I say it? Nah!
Rufus – I also have the knife always available while on the sailboat. If I have a young person on board, there is a safety cutter – it looks like a envelope opener – https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DYS24G8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I also have extra whistles and lights to give crew during races. Our club has a yearly “stay aboard, man overboard” class and it tends to be expensive for new racers with getting the orange throw cushions, throw lines, whistles, lights, line cutters, first aid kits and so on.
I sail on a lake, but it is in Oklahoma so the wind will blow. Our club also requires a sailing test/MOB recovery for new members. Some have to retry the recovery, others just fail and have to practice and try another day.
Also, OKC is a site for US Olympic training for rowing and kayaking – https://www.riversportokc.org/training-site/ What is neat is that the white water rafting area is also used for swiftwater training for first responders.
U of Central OK is a training site for some paralympics sports https://www.uco.edu/offices/wellness/programs/u.s.-olympic-and-paralympic-training-site
Good for you Rufus. I kayak fish in the bays of Socal and am often surprised at how many people are on the water without even a PFD in view. Knife? Why would I want a knife?
There was a time when no self respecting boy would be caught without his pocket knife The classic gift from Grand Dad. That and his first .22 rifle.
The ability to sharpen a pencil properly was a source of small pride.
When I was in drafting we also used fine sand paper to keep a sharp point on the graphite.
Why did she do it?
It’s very satisfying. You feel the knife slicing through the wood and you can tell if your knife needs sharpening. You can judge the quality of the wood and and the hardness of the lead. It’s a skill you’ve perfected over the years and it just feels good to use it again. And it sounds better than the crunching noise of a pencil sharpener. It’s a happy little task, a tiny pleasure.
I always have a Gerber multitool on me somewhere. For woodworking, I use a Woodpecker’s mechanical pencil I got as a bonus, when I bought some of their woodworking rules.
I have a sharpener for my carpenter’s pencils, that I bought at Menard’s, but a knife works better.
Oldflyer’s comment about boys carrying knives reminded me about something in my youth. I was born in 1970, later than most of the regular commenters here. I attended a private Christian school thru the eighth grade before going to a public high school.
Now this private Christian school was outside of the city limits of Shreveport, Louisiana, and was a very conservative and traditional school with a southern culture that was neither entirely city or rural, but somewhere in between. And yes, the principal would paddle kids in the office with a wooden paddle! I got one of those paddlings myself!
Very early on, somebody in my family gave me a very small pocketknife. I think many of the boys carried knives, and I am talking kindergarten and first grade here. Nobody was fighting with them. It was just one of those cultural vestiges, I believe, from our rural and pioneering ancestors . Just like every boy learned to shoot a gun at an early age . Around my first or second grade they announced that we could not bring knives to school. I felt like my rights were being violated !
Oh how much that being an American has been stripped from us, a little here, a little there!
These days, I carry a pocket knife pretty much everywhere, but I try to remember to not carry it into the post office or bank. It has a just legal length locking blade and yes, I practice drawing and opening it with one hand, both quickly and / or quietly, in case the need to neutralize a serious armed threat occurs.
looks Mike Pompeo sharpen himself by losing 90 lbs,
Read more at: https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article257140177.html#storylink=cpy
Regarding my earlier comment about “ cultural vestiges”, I have this theory that one reason much of the East Coast is more liberal than the center of the country is that the East Coast is more generations removed from its pioneer days. Plus, you have many families who came into places like New York City and never went West. There is no family tradition of the proverbial gun above the door just like grandpa had for survival hunting and fighting Indians.
Now the West coast, my theory there is that many people over more than one generation went to California seeking fortune and or fame, whether it was gold or Hollywood. Plus the LGBT movement got a hold there early on.
And yes, I am aware that what we have in this country is not so much red state or blue state, but red county or blue county.
@Martin
“When I was in drafting we also used fine sand paper to keep a sharp point on the graphite.”
My first drafting teacher used to open a window and hone his pencil on the concrete window sill. I haven’t found that necessary yet.
OK, I typically use a pencil sharpener…I have one of the hand crank type commonly found in school classrooms of my day in my Garage, and I have an electric sharpener in my office.
But I carry a pocket knife and if I’m out and about and encounter a dull pencil, I have no problem sharpening it with my knife.
I think the most common time I’ve needed to do this was when keeping the scorebook for my kids and grandkids little league baseball games (if it is discovered by a little league coach that you know how to keep a scorebook, you will be relegated to that task forever more).
All that is to say…people actually need a youtube video to show them how to sharpen a pencil with a knife? Someone in this world can’t look at a pencil and just intuit how to use a sharp edge to scrape the end of the pencil into a point? I mean, I realize that many of the younger generation aren’t learning the basic self-reliance skills that people of my older generation learned as a matter of course, but still…
It’s just disheartening to hear that some people out there can’t figure out on their own how to (essentially) make a stick pointy using a sharp blade.
Sigh.
My dad, who is approaching 100 years old, always sharpened our pencils with his pocket knife. He also still uses his slide rule and schooled his kids in using them. He also has always been fond of mechanical pencils. He is a civil engineer.
What a lovely grandmother you had, Neo.
Just remembered a funny thing, my grandfather mounted a school grade pencil sharpener inside the basement doorway. It had the multi size pencil holder. I remember running around finding ever pencil there just to sharpen them.
I switched to mechanical pencils when I started college. A single 0.7mm Pentel followed me through college and grad school.
In grad school I did some drafting with a drafting version of a mechanical pencil which uses a fat sturdy lead. We had a special sharpener for these which I guess is called a “Lead Pointer.” There is a conical abrasive drum inside and you manually push the pencil around in a circle to sharpen the lead.
https://www.draftingsteals.com/catalog-pencil-sharpeners—erasing-supplies-lead-pointers.html
TommyJay:
I’m a big fan of the Alvin DraftMatic mechanical pencils.
Sadly, Alvin has closed its business — a victim of Covid, supply chain problems and retirements. I read that it is being relaunched, but see no signs yet. Amazon offers a few Alvin pencils for $45 each.
It seems a number of my favorite products are no longer available and have been replaced by crappier versions.
TommyJay:
IIRC that was a Kohi-Nohr lead pointer, very much top of the line manual pointer.
And of course you had all the hardess gradations of pencil “lead” and all the widths of ink pens; “Rapidograph” type and their associated care and maintenance.
jon baker:
On the liberalness of the east coast –
The southern part of the east coast is still pretty much to the right, and the parts that aren’t (such as Virginia, for example) were on the right until very very recently. So I don’t think it has to do with removal from a pioneer past. New England likewise. Maine, NH, and Vermont were Republican until not that long ago, especially NH which is still rather purple and is red on the state level (governor and legislature) at the moment. I think you’re really talking about the liberal mid-Atlantic states plus Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Maine and NH in particular have a very strong gun tradition in the rural parts of the states, and they have a lot of rural parts with rather small cities. Many people seem to think that what happened to those states (and to Vermont as well) to turn them blue (or in NH’s case, purple) was that a lot of people came to them from Massachusetts and NY and brought their politics with them.
@TJ:
“There is a conical abrasive drum inside and you manually push the pencil around in a circle to sharpen the lead.”
Heh. I’ve got a Dahle 301, very slightly modded to sit in a cylindrical component which failed QC. It’s pretty much a desk ornament at this point.
OK. Pencil sharpeners and pocket knives… Is this the most niche thread ever at Neo’s?
1. What a great picture of grandmother. Recreate it with neo as the subject!
2. Art supply stores have really great pencil sharpeners, but I don’t use pencils. When I sign something personal, I use my fountain pen.
I used to sharpen pencils with double-edge safety razor blades. Anyone remember those? 🙂
Koh-i-noor used to be (and I believe still is) an excellent pencil brand from Bohemia/Czech Republic.
I think the “pointer” we used was a K&E or Keuffel & Esser brand. Had to dig a bit to find it.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/133954509898?hash=item1f304f9c4a:g:d7wAAOSw6i1hrACd
TommyJay:
My memory was faulty, K&E sounds right. I got my “K”s mixed up. The PE at my prior employer has one of them on his desk top. And he is a stickler for using No. 2.5 pencils for hand calcs, but that’s another story. Now all the engineering drawings are done in SolidWoks (or AutoCad ….) or another type of computer assisted design, of course
Cornhead,
I do the majority of my writing with fountain pens. I also have some calligraphy nibs, which I use to write calligraphy.
I think I have used just about every method mentioned here (except the concrete one), construction, drafting, art. I mostly use an Apple Pencil for art now but I have been experimenting with an Oculus Quest and a large scale 3-D tool Gravity Sketch. Unfortunately, I seem to get VR motion sickness when I use it. I have ended up inside a 3-D painting wondering how I managed to paint myself into a box so to speak.
Rufus T. Firefly, you mentioned the other day about preferring the ISS to a sub. Oculus has an excellent vomit inducing ISS sim.
I carry a ballpen and a mechanical pencil in my shirt pocket when I leave the house and I do like my pens and pencils. I still use fountain pens from time to time and I started writing with fountain pen and ink in grade school in 1952, a long time ago, I used and Esterbrook when I was in college in the 1960’s. I then became familiar with Koh-in-Nor and their products when I ran an Arts & Crafts wholesale company in the 70′ and 80’s. When I decided to get out of a large company environment my wife and I spent the 90’s and early part of 2000’s running a fountain pen, ink and writing instruments store selling nice collectable fountain pens to docs, lawyers, executives and other nice fine folks who had an appreciation for fine writing. I ended up my working years with Montblanc mostly for the health insurance benefits until I was 65 years old and then I stayed a few more years having lots of fun with nice people.
Pencils and fountain pen ink can show more expression and style whit a person’s writing than ballpen or rollerball by shaping the pencil lead with a sharp blade and with fountain pen the shape of the nib and the pressure on the paper and inks flows out. Kind of fun that old timer stuff is.
And Liz writing about sailing above, I always had a knife close by when I was sailing and racing boats around in triangles on Lake Hefner in the 70’s and 80’s. Good days fresh water sailing with great winds.
Liz @ 9:48: love your brag on Oklahoma, a place I’ve never been but now, thanks to your vivid and detailed sketch, I want to visit.
That’s the beauty of an open-ended conversation like this, hosted by Neo around, of all things, pencil sharpeners. You get to know stuff. More importantly, you get to meet people.
Thanks all.
@OldTexan:
What a wonderful business to have been involved in!
For the first time in many years decided recently to write some personal letters on actual, you know, paper. I went on autopilot to the same store I would have gone to in the 90s, and they didn’t stock any kind of proper (meant Basildon Bond in my youth) letter writing paper. Amazingly they did have airmail envelopes. Had to buy the paper from Amazon UK in the end.
Used to collect fountain pens for a while and eventually got fixated on the wacky Pilot Vanishing Point retractable fountain pens and sold off most of the rest. I still get a kick out of using a fountain pen that has a nib you click in and out like a cheap old Parker ballpoint. Feels like it comes from an alternate historical timeline.
@ChasesEagles:
Re: Painting yourself into a corner with the Oculus Quest.
Sounds fun. There just *has* to be a Tron type game available for this device.
I’ve never tried to sharpen a pencil with a knife, but I used to always carry a ‘Princess’ Swiss Army Knife (pink, of course!) in my handbag. The kind with the tweezers and scissors. Then 9/11 hit and I lost so many to TSA, I just gave up.
I’m getting into power garden tools in my old age…
There are all kinds of action games. The Star Wars dojo lightsaber training gives you a good work out. There is a VR video that takes you into a 3d Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting that is pretty trippy.
I love fountain pens.
I started with the standard schoolkid’s Schaeffer cartridge pen. (No longer available, because no market I guess.) As a young man I upgraded to Waterman and ran through about a half-dozen of those.
When I was flush in the 90s, I bought a Slimline Mt. Blanc on sale for $75. I seem to recall seeing them on eBay for $200+, but now only $140.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/203783914277
I had it reconditioned a few years ago. Still writes beautifully. Though I find few occasions these days. Mainly I use it to write out my answers to chess puzzles, which I solve over the board on one of my nice chess sets.
Being left-handed I never got the knack of writing with a fountain pen without smearing.
The sinister smear?
There is something to be said for old school approaches. I find it sensuous to move the chess pieces and then to write out my solution formally with a fountain pen.
Recently AesopFan commented that young people seem to lack finer manual motor control compared to earlier generations and speculated that the de-emphasis of cursive handwriting might be the culprit.
Makes sense to me.
One of the chess courses I’m doing is by Artur Yusupov, one of the best grandmasters you never heard of. He made it to the semi-finals of the World Champion qualification three times, but didn’t grab that brass ring. After that he became one of the great chess trainers. His course, I am told, is one version of the fabled Soviet Chess training program which locked down the World Championship until Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky.
Anyway. My point is that Yusupov insists that students work out his chess problems on a real board with real pieces. (Fountain pen optional.) First, one only stares at the board and visualizes a solution. If that fails, then moves the pieces by hand. However, under no circumstance should one work off a diagram or worse, a computer screen.
Also makes sense to me, though there are no studies to support the claim.
@ChasesEagles:
Thanks.
I guess you’re also using your VR headset for something like this:
Mirage 2000C Vs F-16 Viper Dogfight | Digital Combat Simulator | DCS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZvUBGXP_IQ
Being left-handed I never got the knack of writing with a fountain pen without smearing.
neo:
Quite right. I love spiral notebooks too and they pose a problem to lefties.
Did you ever learn to write Hebrew?
huxley:
No, and can’t read it, either.
neo:
Just curious.
The way Jews kept Hebrew alive and then made it a real, working, living, national language in Israel astounds me.
My Irish friend tells me that for all the efforts and lip service to make Irish Gaelic a real language in Ireland, it’s a fantasy.
I have my dad’s old K&E lead pointer. It was much better than the little plastic ones that were around when I was drafting in pencil.
When I first learned to draft, I had a purist for a teacher and we used pencils and when we moved on to ink, ruling pens. Ruling pens are torture. Then I discovered the joys of lead holders and rapidographs. I recently threw out most of my set of forty year old drafting tools, including the various triangles, French curves, other templates, adjustable curves, and pounce bags. I kept the old K&E lead pointer and some of the better lead holders and mechanical pencils. The rapidographs went in the trash. I kept the adjustable triangle and the compass, too. But I threw out a lot of stuff. It was kind of sad…
Lee Also:
In the seventies I remember the college art students always seemed poised over a sketchbook with a rapidograph.
What was so great about the rapidograph?
Huxley —
When I first went to Israel, it surprised me to see a number of lefties who learned Hebrew at a young age still did that kind of arching hand thing (that a lot of lefties do when writing in English), while right had people did not.
When I started learning Hebrew, I tried to do that arching thing (as a rightie, writing right-to-left) because I hated smearing the pencil.
The other thing that I found curious is that handwritten Hebrew is generally taught with an upper-right to lower-left slant. (Not that everyone generally winds up writing it that way…) I guess I find it curious because that is the way cursive is in our right-to-left world. I assumed the slant had something to do with the direction of writing…
Huxley — Rapidographs came in varying nib widths and did not squirt out ink. You could refill them. The nibs didn’t soften and fray for a very, very, very long time. There were other pens out there that you could draft with but they weren’t refillable. Ruling pens was evil, but made beautiful lines. But if you weren’t REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY GOOD with it, ink would come swishing out all over your work. It was horrible.
Here is what a ruling pens is:
https://www.drawingislamicgeometricdesigns.com/blog/steel-pens-ruling-pens
I love Koh-I-Noor pencils! They look so serious, with the knurled metal barrels. I do crosswords with a .9mm Koh-I-Noor Rapidomatic.
The boxes on the forms I fill out at work are so small, I use a Pentel .35 mm razor point pen, but I love how smoothly a .7 mm pen writes.
The generic term for them is “technical pens” but most people just called them rapidographs. Koh-i-Noor was the most prevalent (their pens were actually the Rapidograph), but there was also Rotring and Staedtler. Staedtler’s pen was the Marsmatic.
I also threw out my Leroy Lettering Set. That was a hard one to let go of. It was a real treat for myself when I first bought it.
https://youtu.be/5t1YLxb2hbY
huxley, is that the 9-volume course? When you mentioned problems, I wondered if you were referring to the chess problem community – for example, Loyd and the various endgame composers.
Philip Sells:
Yes, that’s the Build Back Better series … er … Build, Boost, Evolve series. Three sets of three — nine volumes.
Not primers. It’s the real stuff for real tournament players.
So-called “chess problems” I have no use for. Fantasy setups with weird tricks which would almost never appear in a real game. Like trick shots in pool.
Lee Also:
Thanks for the rapidograph explanation. I’ve been tempted to get one to fool around with it.
Lee Also:
Keeping the Rapidographs pens clean and running was sometimes a challenge :). Leroy lettering sets and such, those old timey geologist tools and shilz for making geologic maps and cross sections … Faster now with computer graphics programs.
Huxley —
I’ve been looking at videos on line about ruling pens and they’re making want to give them another chance! Ha ha!
The down side of technical pens is their care and feeding. If you don’t use them often enough, they can be a bear to clean. If you have one if the really narrow nibs, you can run the risk of damaging it.
huxley, I’m going to have to disagree with you about the problems only when it comes to endgame studies specifically. They’re very useful in sharpening one’s understanding of essentials.
I have a collection of endgame exercise books, with something of a concentration on pawn endings, since I was at one time for various reasons going to make it a personal project to study all of the essential pure-endgame material. Pawn endings being the obvious foundation, I started there and ended up using a lot of that background in training my more talented students. In the better endgame studies, there’s nice clarity and some great insight to be had, always focusing on the fundamental properties of the pieces and board.
What kind of set do you use to work on your exercises?
One of the interesting things that I found out about schools when I became a network administrator at one and was at school buildings after hours and during the summer was that the cutters on the inside of pencil sharpeners like every classroom has on a windowsill are replaceable.
I never knew that. But one of the summer tasks for maintenance was going from room to room and checking the pencil sharpeners for sharpness.
I myself have two electric sharpeners that I use but also I sharpen carpenter’s pencils by hand because they don’t fit.
Philip Sells:
I understand endgame studies, like king and pawn endings, assuming they are classic positions which could arise in regular play.
I’m talking about bizarre puzzles with four white pawns in the same file and pieces clustered abnormally.
One of my favorite Bobby Fisher stories was how he became dissatisfied with his rook and pawn endings, so he holed up in a hotel for weeks and did nothing but R+P endings until he felt he had mastered them. By the time he was world champion he was also a great endgame player.
What kind of set do you use to work on your exercises?
Philip Sells:
I’ve got four sets — three wood and one plastic. The plastic is the old Drueke Player’s Choice, which was the standard tournament set in the 60s and 70s, and probably still my favorite.
The problem is that the company went out of business and they broke the molds so the remaining sets became collector’s items. Which worked only too well. Now the Player’s Choice goes for $200 on eBay.
The standard tournament set these days is a hideous, cheap product from China, which you’ve probably seen.
For wood I’ve got a German Knight set, which is sturdy but ugly, another set was gift from a friend which is somewhat fragile and the white pieces have turned bright orange with age, and finally a beautiful replica of the Fischer-Spassky set, which is close to too nice to play with.
huxley, that’s a nice collection, sounds like. I don’t actually have any wooden sets currently – my collection consists of plastic, utilitarian (but higher-end utilitarian) tournament sets. Triple-weighted tend to be what I like. The one Drueke set I have is a travel magnetic set. (Drueke was based in Grand Rapids, I believe; a bit of local color for the Michigan chess scene.)
Once, I had a game with one of my friendly rivals in the local club, in which we started the game using his ivory set. By prior agreement, once we got to move 20, we switched over to a less fragile set of equipment (as we both had a certain reputation for getting into time scrambles).
By way of attempting to steer the conversation back to the thread subject, are you using your pen to write descriptive or algebraic notation?
From sharpening pencils to sharpening chess games – my dad’s after-work hobby was woodworking. One of his projects was a chess table (integral board with legs), which has a beautiful satin finish.
Sadly, my sister has it, not me.
We all played at chess, but never concentrated enough to be very good, but it was a pleasure just to move the pieces on that board.
I do have his chess box, which is a board that doubles as the top of a box holding the pieces.
He sharpened his carpenter’s pencils by hand, of course; we also had a manual rotary sharpener with the multiple-holes disk.
Now I use electric ones most of the time, except for the cheapo plastic ones strewn about the house for quick access.
@ sailorcurt > “It’s just disheartening to hear that some people out there can’t figure out on their own how to (essentially) make a stick pointy using a sharp blade.”
Indeed.
Huxley mentioned my remarks about the correlation of declining fine-motor skills and lack of training in cursive handwriting; that was in the context of a discussion about having to teach 8 to 10 year old Cub Scouts how to use a knife to cut string and open boxes, before we could even get around to actual carving techniques.
Sigh.
Neo–
Not to do with pencils, but a recent post you wrote not too long ago. This is why I don’t think Republicans will make much in the way of inroads in the next two elections. This woman b***ches about the Democrats, and then writes: “None of this has shaken my support for the Democratic agenda, which I still endorse wholesale.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/democrats-botched-public-school-covid-policy/621183/
Maybe I am just an old crank (maybe no maybe about it!) but it seems like the lead in pencils got cheaper and more brittle recently (or maybe I did!) and they break when you try to sharpen them.
When I’m working on something I will use a utility knife to sharpen pencils, or just rub the point on a piece of sandpaper. Usually the utility knive blade will be dull, or the utility knife is not where it ought to be because a certain person used it to cut stuff in her garden…
However I generally tend to have real trouble keeping track of small items like pencils, watches, sunglasses, utility knives, screwdrivers, etc., and can never put my hands on them when I need them (I generally find them at the bottom of the heaps of stuff in the various “organizers” I try).
In any event, I do have lots of those those little golf scoring pencils lying around. They get the job done and are free! The factory point is pretty good and when it breaks off you just grab another one.
I used a pen knife and used that technique. My knife was not super sharp so not a big risk at cutting myself.
Philip Sells:
When I returned to chess in my desultory fashion several years ago, I had to bite the bullet and really learn algebraic. Everything is algebraic now except out-of-print chess books.
Some say it’s easy. I found it less so. Even now I sometimes flip the rank numbers for black. I agree algebraic is superior, but old habits can be hard to break
That Drueke magnetic set was a beaut! My grandfather had one. Sadly, portable sets and chess wallets have mostly been replaced by cell phone chess programs.
@Molly+Brown
“Then 9/11 hit and I lost so many to TSA, I just gave up.
I’m getting into power garden tools in my old age…”
What does TSA say about *those*??!!?
Re: Declining fine-motor skills, etc.
AesopFan:
I’ve read in several places that, when it comes to their own children, our Tech Overlords strictly limit children’s digital screen time and send them to expensive prep schools where the kids learn with good old-fashioned paper, pen, pencil, crayons, chalk and paint.
Computers have come a long ways since the 60s, but the virtual reality they provide is still far short of the fine grain of physical reality we evolved in.
At first I was quite enthusiastic about computer learning — and I still love computers/internet for online encyclopedias and dictionaries — but they don’t replace paper, pencil, sweat, visualization and discussion for real learning.
My impression is that computer learning has become a substitute for real education. Instead we spend money on Chromebooks and wifi and pretend we’re doing a great job for our kids.
We sent our kids to a very doctrinaire Montessori school for preschool and kindergarten where they were taught the alphabet and how to read and write in cursive before print. They also learned world geography very early by drawing many, many maps. Math was also taught in an interesting way that I never quite understood but it worked. It involved an abacus and many multicolored strings of beads. Our kids just loved this school. I think the incorporation of fine motor control – the cursive, the beads, the map drawing – into the learning was exceptionally effective and instilled a love of learning.
So the wooden and mechanical pencils and fountain pens we are fondly discussing here are valuable and not just quaint habits. They incorporate not just our minds but our physical selves into thinking, composing, solving.
Unlike screens.
Before this thread peters out, I’d like to recommend Henry Petroski’s ‘The Pencil’. It’s a story of the pencil both from the point (heh) of view as a design tool and as an engineered artifact.
Regarding the discussion of writing Hebrew and writing from right to left:
I can write cursive from right to left, what some people refer to as “mirror writing,” or “Da Vinci” cursive. I actually prefer it to writing “forward,” in typical left to right fashion. It is also much neater than my left to right cursive, although I can do it quickly.
It comes in super handy in meetings. I can make all kinds of contemporaneous notes about others in the room, or helpful points I want to remember that I may not want others to read if looking over my shoulder. Some folks question whether it’s real, then I hold my writing up to a mirror and they are surprised by how neat and legible it is. When people ask me how to do it I insist that it’s really rather easy (or at least was for me) and insist they try it, but no one ever does, they just keep being amazed I do it. Since I picked it up almost immediately my guess is most others would also, if they gave it a go. Numbers sometimes slow me down, especially twos, fives and sixes, and for some reason I generally have to pause a nanosecond when remembering which side a backwards, cursive “x” is crossed on!
Rufus T. :
You are an ambidextrous writer, among no doubt a great many other talents!
Maybe a means of discouraging advances from the unsuitable.
Seemed to work for the Italian girls back in the day.