By Andrew Liszewski
While incredibly simple but highly usable, there are still two big issues I have with wooden pencils. 1) The wood basically does nothing more than make holding and writing with a thin piece of graphite easier. And it’s basically wasted every time the pencil is sharpened. 2) The eraser on the end is never big enough to accomodate my constant mistakes.
So I’m 100% behind Deuk Young Lee’s concept of making a pencil out of rubber eraser material instead. It can still be sharpened like a traditional wooden pencil, using the same office gear, but ends up being more comfortable and easier to hold thanks to the softer material. And there’s plenty of eraser for correcting your mistakes. Admittedly the delete key tends to fill the eraser’s role in my life these days, but as long as grade school kids still have to learn penmanship, I think this design has some merit.
Biggest downside I see is that it would be very easily to accidentally or purposefully break all the graphite in the pencil. Erasers won’t rigidly protect the graphite stick like wood does.
So… basically we change a mid contaminat material for a high contaminant material? you still are wasting the eraser
Mechanical pencils solve all your problems. Easily gripped, refillable – both lead and eraser-, and always sharp.