Sharpner

A pencil sharpener (also referred to as pencil parer in Ireland) is a device for sharpening a pencil's point by shaving one end. Pencil sharpeners exist in both electric and hand-powered forms. Pencils were in use before the development of devices specifically to sharpen them. Previously, they were sharpened by shaving with a knife. Pencil sharpeners made this task much easier and gave a more uniform result. Some specialized types, such as a Carpenter's Pencil are still usually sharpened with a knife, due to their flat shape, though recently a fixed-blade device with a rotatable collar has become available.

A larger, stationary mechanical sharpener can be mounted on a desk or wall and powered by a crank. The pencil is inserted into the sharpener with one hand and the crank is turned with the other. This rotates a set of cylindrical burrs in the mechanism, set at an angle to each other; this quickly sharpens the pencil, with a more precise finish than the simpler blade device. Some such rotary sharpeners have only one burr cylinder. The casing of the sharpener is a repository for the pencil shavings; it needs to be emptied periodically.

Specialized sharpeners are available that operate on non-standard sizes of pencil, such as large art pencils used in primary schools. Sharpeners that have two holes, one for normal pencils and one for larger art pencils are still fairly common. Some mechanical sharpeners have a large hole with a rotating disk in front of it that has several holes of different sizes. Sharpeners of similar design for use on wax crayons are also available, and often included in boxes of crayons. These often have plastic blades for the softer wax.

Antique mechanical pencil sharpeners can be divided into three categories based on the cutting medium or mechanism. One category of antique pencil sharpener relies on abrasive media such as sandpaper or a steel file. Other machines use a steel milling cutter with multiple cutting edges. Yet other machines use from one to a dozen or more blades. A few used two of these methods. For example, the 1900 Challenge pencil sharpener simultaneously used a blade to cut the wood and sandpaper to sharpen the lead.