Make One Pencil - Wed, 05/02/2007 - 10:00 By Tyler Farrer

I've been posting on my intentions for almost a month and I have yet to build anything. I really ought to have some slivers right now, yet the most handy thing I've done this week is to reattach a towel rack that had deposed itself of our bathroom wall.My wife was so impressed by my manhood.

Make One Pencil - Mon, 04/30/2007 - 22:59 By Tyler Farrer

A kiln seems to be a crucial element in making the graphitei core of my pencil. A small kiln runs about $1,300, according to the DIY network.How much labor is required to construct a kiln?

Make One Pencil - Mon, 04/30/2007 - 13:46 By Tyler Farrer

Question:"If you happen to be successful at making this pencil. Will you actually use it? Well, I mean more than once to make sure that it works? "Answer:Musgrave Pencil Company declares."The average pencil can be sharpened 17 times, write 45,000 words or draw a line 35 miles long."The above being true, I will offer to sell my signature at $5.00 per signature. Tyler Farrer is two words and so should bring in about $112,500.00.

Make One Pencil - Mon, 04/30/2007 - 12:45 By Tyler Farrer

The Woodchuck, pencil expert extraordaire, at Timberlines has a good synopsis of my mission, and predicts my eventual fate. He doesn't specify whether he thinks I will be able to afford the prescriptions that I'll have to take.Please feel free to contribute to my 'Recovery Fund' by clicking on the Paypal link on the sidebar.

Make One Pencil - Wed, 04/25/2007 - 15:56 By Tyler Farrer

I'd love to be able to go out in my backyard and to dig up some graphitei, but alas, that will likely be fruitless.It isn't that I need to find a large cache, but just enough to supply one pencil. I've learned that graphite can be found in the veins of metamorphic rocks. Particularly limestone deposits. I'm aware of some limestone here in Utah, in fact a contractor for applications of this type of rock are headquartered in my town of North Salt Lake.

Make One Pencil - Wed, 04/25/2007 - 11:03 By Tyler Farrer

Please pay special attention to Timberlines, listed in my sidebar. I've received some encouragement in my quest from its proprietor, Woodchuck.As a successful producer of what I would call high-end pencils, Timberlines has my respect and awe.

Make One Pencil - Thu, 04/19/2007 - 15:44 By Tyler Farrer

I volunteer in the Boy Scouts of America, working with 14-15 year old boys. Last night, while waiting for some pizza's to come out of the oven, I found a pencil sitting on the counter and mentioned my new interest in pencils to the youth in attendance.One of them, after I had gone on a bit about pencil lore, suggested that he might do some real damage to my psyche by breaking this particular pencil in half.

Make One Pencil - Tue, 04/17/2007 - 15:54 By Tyler Farrer

Just one week ago I made a laughable gaffe in suggesting, in an obscure reference to uranium enrichment, that I should use Aluminum tubes to form my graphitei "lead".Wrong! Graphite is corrosive when it comes in contact with aluminum. Maybe that's the real reason that NASA uses pens in space.Also, Graphite is a very different thing in a zero-g environment, and I must be careful when milling graphite. Don't inhale!

Make One Pencil - Tue, 04/17/2007 - 15:18 By Tyler Farrer

I am always amazed, not only at human ingenuity, but to what ends inspiration is directed.Take a simple object, one that would ordinarily miss notice, because it is ordinary. Something that you take for granted, and reduce that to its simplest form. Take it in its form from which man first touched it--maybe you! What are its properties? How is one piece of matter different from another? How are they the same? What could be substituted for one thing to make up the difference for what is lacking in another?

Make One Pencil - Tue, 04/17/2007 - 11:03 By Tyler Farrer

Maybe as a first step I should upgrade an existing pencil. For example, pencil wood comes in at least three varieties, of differing qualities. On the low end we have the pencils that are much more flexible and when broken, do so cleanly. These are actually made of a plastic composite. Pencil connoisseurs don't go for these at all. A tier up would be the pencil made of tropical rain forest trees, identified by the dark specks in the wood..