Making a pencil from scratch (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Making a pencil from scratch (2013)

gse-compliance.blogspot.com

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Making a small-diameter pencil is hard, although you could probably make a big one, like a lumber pencil, by hand if you had a potter's tools.[1] The first step is mixing and grinding graphite and clay into a water-based paste. You could do that with a mortar and pestle if you had to. Then you have to dry out the paste, grind again, and add more water to make a soft paste.

Then the hard step - extruding the paste into a rod. For a big-diameter "lead", you might be able to get away with rolling the paste into a rod by hand on a board, like working with dough. The rod then has to be dried and fired, like pottery. All this is a lot of work, but you'd make a batch of them at a time.

The wood casing could be made by whittling, in two halves. Cut a notch for the "lead". Then glue, which probably has to be made by boiling down hide scraps or pine tar. Some early pencils were wrapped with leather thongs.[2]

If you've made it to pottery, which most civilizations got early, you can get to a pencil.

[1] http://www.generalpencil.com/how-a-pencil-is-made.html [2] http://museumofeverydaylife.org/exhibitions-collections/curr...

> if you had a potter's tools

I think the article assumes that "from scratch" means that you have to make those, too (including the kiln), and including all the tools you need to mine the graphite.

Well that's the whole point of the exercise. To show how even creating a simple thing like a pencil requires vast amounts of knowledge and expertise that cannot be acquired by a single individual.

The way I like to frame this is by telling people to imagine they are strapped on an island with no clothes or tools. Let's assume there is fresh water and access to food (some fruits here and there and a decent amount of animals to hunt). Even if you have good knowledge about how our current world and economy works it would still be really challenging to create/build anything that has even a small degree of complexity.

Let's say you believe using some metal would help you build some useful tools and you want to start mining for metal. How would you to it with your bare hands? You need tools for that, but what tools can you build with your bare hands? Even cutting down a tree to make something out of it would be really challenging. What would you use, a rock? Imagine cutting a tree using a rock. With no tools it's almost impossible to do anything.

But this is the story of humanity, we started naked and without tools, and also with no knowledge about the world, we didn't know that we can make fire, nor how we could use it, we didn't know what to eat and what not to eat. We didn't know why we get sick or what a diseases is. We didn't know where we come from nor where we are heading and yet somehow, afters many years we now build rockets that go to space, algorithms that know what we want before we do, surgeries that make the blind see, devices that make the deaf hear and so much more. These humans are truly amazing.

Punch a tree to get some wood, build a crafting table, make a pickaxe out of wood... honestly, a child could do it.

This guy's YouTube channel [0] features videos of him making stone tools, cutting down a tree, digging up clay, making a kiln, roof tiles and huts; all from scratch. His videos are a great watch, and even with heavy editing it's pretty clear how difficult it all must be.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P73REgj-3UE

This guy is amazing and his videos are well worth your time! There's something peculiarly, primaly satisfying about them.

Just as a note, the original "you cannot make a pencil"[0] thought exercise is based on a commercial pencil with attached eraser, which adds the need for thin brasswork, gum, lacquer, and embossed/painted label, making the whole thing _a lot_ harder.

[0] "I, Pencil" http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

Maybe you could use a mold instead of forming them by extrusion. Square leads were common in the past:

http://www.officemuseum.com/pencil_history.htm

This website reminds me of "slate pencils" (soft slate wrapped in paper). I remember my parents having some of these for a message board in our house. You can still get them:

http://www.amazon.com/Slate-and-Pencil-by-KCFT/dp/B017N0U4CS...

Related: "The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance". My favorite passage mentions Henry David Thoreau, who was a pencil maker by trade.

    Thoreau seemed to think of everything when he made a list of essential
    supplies for a twelve-day excursion into the Maine woods...
    But there is one object that Thoreau neglected to mention, one that
    he most certainly carried himself... without it he could not make
    his list. Without a pencil Thoreau would have been lost in the Maine woods.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679734155/

Also reminded me `how to make a chicken sandwich in 6 months` https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URvWSsAgtJE

While Leonard Read's essay was reasonably well known among Chicago School economists, the concepts it described were made more famous by Milton Friedman's Pencil Allegory from the 1980s PBS series "Free to Choose": http://youtu.be/R5Gppi-O3a8

You can read a critical article on the back story to Friedman and Read's writings on pencils here: http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/milton-friedmans-pencil/

So it seems like he didn't actually succeed in making the pencil from scratch, or if he did, he didn't blog about it. He did successfully make it to mining the graphite, which is more widely distributed than I would have thought: http://gse-compliance.blogspot.com.ar/2013/05/finding-graphi...

Other related projects include:

Thomas Thwaites making a toaster from scratch: http://www.thomasthwaites.com/the-toaster-project/

That guy who made a ceramic-tile-roofed house with underfloor heating from scratch just posted about adding a kiln and firing more pots: https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com/2015/10/30/55/ This one is really "from scratch"; he starts the project (in a previous video) by making stone tools from rocks he found onsite.

kd5bjo points out, "Don't forget the Gingery book series on how to build a machine shop!" They build a machine shop starting from scrap metal, starting with a charcoal foundry for casting aluminum and pot metal; there's now a US$75 hardbound edition of what was originally a seven-book series. http://gingerybooks.com/index.html

Jeri Ellsworth demonstrating how to make integrated circuits at home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdcKwOo7dmM

The Global Village Construction Set is working on a set of 50 machine designs capable of reproducing themselves: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Constructio...

Of course we all know about the RepRap project that spawned the current proliferation of 3-D printer companies.

Project Oberon is one of a few different projects that has a whole self-hosting toolchain including CPU architecture, compiler, networking, GUI, filesystem, and applications in a form comprehensible by a single person; it's free software: https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon/index.h...

Don't forget the Gingery book series on how to build a machine shop: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Gingery

Here is a later post from him on producing the graphite: http://gse-compliance.blogspot.se/2013/05/finding-graphite.h... Also quite fascinating.

This is reminiscent of The Toaster Project[0] a really interesting book written by an art student as he attempts to build a toaster from scratch. Including visiting disused mines and making a plastic mould out of a tree trunk.

[0] - http://www.thetoasterproject.org/page2.htm

I actually think that it could be a business building American made high quality pencils selling 10-20X the normal selling price.

When I was a kid our family had a friend whom you couldn't know for ten minutes and he would show you his NASA pen that could write upside down. Apparently they're still selling them:

https://jet.com/product/detail/94fb28fc091a45ccbd2aee90942ce...

The key would be superior marketing, having celebs or astronauts using your pencils. Look at what Shinola has done with watches, in fact Detroit would probably be the best place to start your pencil factory.

> having celebs or astronauts using your pencils

I don't doubt that having astronauts using your pencil would be cool, but I thought I'd mention why astronauts needed a pen and not a pencil: graphite shavings/powder or eraser bits floating around and causing problems was a real worry.

I'd be pretty surprised if you could make that sell. At least a pen can theoretically be an expensive construction that you're proud to own. A pencil is inherently disposable; they are destroyed as you use them. A pen just needs to be refilled.

> At least a pen can theoretically be an expensive construction that you're proud to own. A pencil is inherently disposable; they are destroyed as you use them. A pen just needs to be refilled.

I was inclined to agree with you but then I reminded myself that pretty much everything around me, cheap or expensive, is designed on purpose to be disposable - to wear down quickly and be replaced with a new purchase. XXI century is an era of throwaway wealth. I can totally imagine someone selling very expensive pencils.

> XXI century is an era of throwaway wealth

Some might say this started with the Dixie cup or disposable diapers, but the personal benefits vastly outweigh the "throwaway wealth" that was exchanged for them. As long as externalities can be dealt with, let people throw away their wealth so that someone can have a job and eventually throw away his or her wealth!

> As long as externalities can be dealt with

Yes, that's sort of the 100 meters tall elephant in the room. You know what's the one thing market economy absolutely sucks at dealing with? Externalities.

It's the worst, except for all the others. Capitalists aren't anarchists and they don't revolt when taxed. We all want the best government money can buy, and we want the benefits of the market economy. It's a trade off, so we get externalities.

> they don't revolt when taxed.

I hear an incredible amount of screaming from capitalists when it comes to taxes.

That's not revolt. I would imagine it's a pretty universal feeling when you work for something and are forced to give X percent of it to someone else. Chris Rock has a pretty good rant on the subject.

Being destroyed while you use it does not preclude a premium market. See for example Hagomoro chalk:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

Which they're not making any more, which suggests there isn't enough of a market to sustain it.

Responsibly sourced cedar wood, with good replanting program; ethically sourced graphite with protection against child mining and minimum wage for all workers.

On the very high end, Graf von Faber Castell has been selling their "perfect pencil" [1] for a couple of years now. It's platinum-clad (or something similar) and comes with a built-in sharpener for around $260. Refills are some $10 per pencil. A cheaper, plastic version sells for around $15.

As far as I can tell, luxury writing instruments have remained an extremely small niche. Apart from Montblanc, perhaps Caran d'Ache and very few others, most brands aren't well-known outside of it.

In a less unneccessarily luxurious price bracket, Kickstarter sees quite a lot of pen projects. Most revolve around minimalist design and/or using interesting materials like titanium. Reception seems, as far as I can tell, so-so.

[1] http://www.graf-von-faber-castell.com/writing-instruments/pe...

Did he ever publish the complete description of his method?

This process he is describing seems incredibly different from our everyday work, but it's really the same core of learning anything.

Usually, you start with a top-level entrance (records for musicians, games for programmers, translations for language learners). Then, step by step, you go backwards in time.

That album was composed of songs. These songs are composed of harmonies and melodies. Harmonies are composed of chords and voicings. ... on and on until you're dissecting the very sound waves themselves.

This beautiful curiosity that exists in every deep learning experience is what sets apart the hobbyists from the geniuses.

The novel "The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity"[1] from Russell Roberts contains the tale of surprising difficulty of production of the pencil and how it is the result of division of labor and free market's natural orchestration.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Everything-Possibility-Prosp...

This would be nicely accompanied by a photo-journal...

... but it'd take him another lifetime to make the camera.

but what about inventing the universe first ? (http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/32952-if-you-wish-to-make-an...)

Universes are trivial to invent you just need literally nothing and an unternity of nontime; they make themselves.

Hard to generalize from a sample size of one (about which we don't even know that much).

In fact, it's really easy to generalize like that.

I thought this was going to be about the MIT educational programming language.

OMG!

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