
Making a pencil from scratch (2013) - cba9
http://gse-compliance.blogspot.com/2013/05/making-pencil.html
======
Animats
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](http://www.generalpencil.com/how-a-pencil-is-made.html) [2]
[http://museumofeverydaylife.org/exhibitions-
collections/curr...](http://museumofeverydaylife.org/exhibitions-
collections/current-exhibitions/visual-history-of-the-pencil)

~~~
pron
> 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.

~~~
davidiach
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.

~~~
TomNomNom
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P73REgj-3UE)

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

------
whoopdedo
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/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679734155/)

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

------
huxley
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](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/](http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/milton-friedmans-pencil/)

------
kragen
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...](http://gse-
compliance.blogspot.com.ar/2013/05/finding-graphite.html)

Other related projects include:

Thomas Thwaites making a toaster from scratch:
[http://www.thomasthwaites.com/the-toaster-
project/](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/](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](http://gingerybooks.com/index.html)

Jeri Ellsworth demonstrating how to make integrated circuits at home:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdcKwOo7dmM](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...](http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set)

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...](https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon/index.html)

~~~
kd5bjo
Don't forget the Gingery book series on how to build a machine shop:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Gingery](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Gingery)

------
anon0518
Here is a later post from him on producing the graphite: [http://gse-
compliance.blogspot.se/2013/05/finding-graphite.h...](http://gse-
compliance.blogspot.se/2013/05/finding-graphite.html) Also quite fascinating.

------
adam-a
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](http://www.thetoasterproject.org/page2.htm)

------
rmason
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...](https://jet.com/product/detail/94fb28fc091a45ccbd2aee90942ce9a0?jcmp=pla:ggl:office_supplies_a3:office_instruments_writing_drawing_instruments_pens_pencils_a3_other:na:na:na:na:na:2&code=PLA15&k_clickid=56a5acca-0ef1-4b58-b4a1-b17d800f2365&gclid=CL7tgpWtrckCFUSPHwodkzUOJw)

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.

~~~
thaumasiotes
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.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _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.

~~~
webXL
> 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!

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _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.

~~~
webXL
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.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
> they don't revolt when taxed.

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

~~~
webXL
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.

------
winstonewert
Did he ever publish the complete description of his method?

------
christinecha
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.

------
afsina
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...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Everything-Possibility-
Prosperity/dp/0691143358)

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

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

------
signa11
but what about inventing the universe first ?
([http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/32952-if-you-wish-to-make-
an...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/32952-if-you-wish-to-make-an-apple-pie-
from-scratch))

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

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

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

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

------
wpblogheader
OMG!

