Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

I will point out that although nothing I have created along these lines, or most any others for that matter, even approaches Lenn's fantastic folk art work, I have in fact made a couple of different pencil or lead pointers in my day. On the low tech end of things, I have made some compass lead sanding boards, that are little more than a fine grained, multi-layered, small board mounted fingernail file. Didn't run across any of those while gathering items to photograph this morning, but they are just like the K&E example that is in the center foreground of the photo in my prior post.

On the other end of the tech spectrum, I did design and build, or rather helped to build, a monster machine in the form of a pencil pointer that points hundreds of gross of pencils per hour. Of course this is a machine built as a job of work for an employer a few years back so I most certainly don't own nor otherwise possess it. But it does run on a nearly continuous basis during normal working hours, and I can go visit it if I wish, though I tend not to as I don't wish to be conned into just fixing some little thing or other while I'm there.

Here then is the "Stewart" pencil pointer, named in honor of a coworker who past away during its construction: