Pencil Repair

This is a Pentel Graphgear 1000 pencil, which is a type I use a lot both for workshop use and otherwise. They seem to suffer from a common design flaw in that, despite being mostly made of metal, they have a flimsy threaded plastic piece forming part of the body. The one in the photo above has a broken plastic piece (the end of it is inside the metal tip piece). Above the pencil you can see a brass replacement for the plastic part.

Over the years I've ended up with a drawer full of broken Graphgear 1000 pencils, all of which broke in the same way. I kept the broken pencils and once I reached the point I had about 10 or so of them, I had a session on the lathe and made lots of brass replacements. The photo above shows five of them along with another brass insert. The brass insert makes the pencils much more robust and I haven't had any issues with any of them since getting rid of the plastic piece.

I am a hobbyist metalworker and woodworker. I work as an electronic design engineer and spend most of my working days in front of a computer so I enjoy having the opportunity to use my hands and make things in my spare time. I particularly enjoy making tools as I can then use them on other projects. This website showcases some of the things I've made.

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