Today I’m going to talk about sharpening pencils. Yes, I know it’s not as exciting as counting flowers on the wall or matching up socks, but it’s something that needs to be talked about because we go through a LOT of pencils around here, and I’m fed up with the little hand-held sharpeners! They love to get lost. They love to create messy little piles of shavings on our table. And they especially love to devour the ends of our pencils. Getting a pencil sharp really shouldn’t be such a headache.
Troy DeCoff sells what he calls the “Quietest Classroom Pencil Sharpener” over at Classroom Friendly Supplies. The sharpeners are $24.99 with free shipping. He generously sent us one of his Classroom Friendly Supplies sharpeners to try out in our homeschool. It’s a burr-style sharpener with an 8 mm hole.
Upon its arrival, I was quite taken with the “old school” look of this sharpener. The shiny chrome and cherry red paint give it a nice retro feel. But it’s not just pretty. This sharpener is quite heavy, and is composed of mostly metal parts. The exception to that is the see-through drawer at the bottom which collects pencil shavings. Our sharpener also came with a clamp which mounts it onto a table edge.
Up to this point, we’ve always used the little hand-held sharpeners. They are cheap and readily available. However, these dollar store offerings have many flaws: we tend to lose them constantly because they are just so small. Quite often, we lose just the top or the bottom half. If you get the kind with a compartment to hold the shavings, you must constantly dump it because the hold capacity is ridiculously tiny.
And did I mention that many sharpeners will often eat the tips off pencils? The main reason for this is that you don’t know exactly when sharpening is complete, so you just keep on grinding. All of a sudden, you hear that telltale crunching sound. Your pencil sharpener is having a snack!<
Because of all these headaches, I was very curious to see how the Classroom Friendly Supplies pencil sharpener performed. I was especially hoping it would work well on colored pencils because we use as many of those as we do regular pencils.
I let Joseph give it a test drive. He pulled out the feeder and inserted a pencil into the sharpening mechanism. Little teeth help to grip and hold the pencil in place, so you can just let go. Joseph used his left hand to steady the sharpener and his right hand to work the crank.
I sharpened up one pencil with our little dollar store sharpener, and another with the Classroom Friendly Supplies sharpener. The results? It hones the edge of pencils to a finer point than our hand-held version. It also contains the mess in a nifty little compartment.
I also tried the sharpener on a broken-off pencil. It was a casualty of one of our cheaper sharpeners, and I’ve found they are almost impossible to sharpen back up without peeling back some of the broken tip and exposing the lead. I inserted the broken tip into our Classroom Friendly Supplies sharpener without doing any type of remedial work on it first.
The result? You’d never know it had been broken.
For review purposes, I did mount it on our table for a while. It was easy to install (no tools needed) but I found that after a lot of use, it loosened ever so slightly and wasn’t staying put as well. This wasn’t a big deal for us since we actually preferred to just use it unmounted. I like being able to quickly take it from place to place.
My thoughts about this sharpener overall?
PROS
- It’s quiet and makes a gentle grinding sound during operation.
- The auto-stop mechanism keeps your pencil from being sharpened too much. When it’s done, you’ll feel all the resistance in the crank handle disappear.
- The handle operates smoothly and quickly.
- My children can use it without any difficulties.
- It looks great!
- It sharpens pencils to a super fine point, yet without leaving a “point” at the tip that is so needle fine that it immediately breaks off when you start to write.
- The price, compared to other burr-style metal sharpeners, is very competitive.
- When leads do get stuck, it’s easy to remove the crank handle assembly and get the piece out.
- Like many other standard sharpeners, this one doesn’t work as well for colored pencils. The tips tend to break off more easily and clog the mechanism. Classroom Friendly Supplies shares this advice on their Facebook wall: “I have told my own students to only sharpen the colored pencils partially. This means only turning the crank 2-3 times. This allows for a sharpened tip and less jamming issues.”
- The teeth that hold your pencil in place are so sharp that they cut into the wood. For regular pencils, we really didn’t care too much, but the children didn’t like having their “pretty” and “fun” pencils getting marked up like that.
- The clamp mechanism performed well for a time, but eventually loosened up. After reading feedback from other users on the Facebook page, I found this is a common issue.
I’m quite happy with how this sharpener handles all our regular pencils, and I can highly recommend it to anyone who’s looking for something sturdy, reliable and attractive.
At Classroom Friendly Supplies, you can find this same great sharpener in your choice of color: red, blue, black or green. There are also replacement blades for sharpeners that really take a beating (think daily classroom or office use). There are package deals with discount pricing to save you money when buying lots of sharpeners all at one time.
You can connect with Classroom Friendly Supplies on Facebook and Twitter. To purchase a sharpener for your home, office, or school for $24.99, visit the online store. And stick around, because very soon I’ll be giving away a FREE pencil sharpener on my blog!
Less mess works for me! I love that it’s something that my three year olds can use. Thanks for sharing.
Besos, Sarah
Blogger at Journeys of The Zoo
It’s certainly child-friendly! Thanks for commenting, Sarah. 🙂 ~Anne
My son would be so thrilled to have a sharpener that works well for a change. I’m waiting to hear more about colored pencils as well.
I so need one of these for my classroom! I can count the number of dollar tree sharpeners i’ve been through over the past 5 years loL!
Yep, we’ve thrown a lot of dollar store sharpeners away over the years! ~Anne
This sharpener really has me intrigued! So many people have written rave reviews. I hope I win so I can try it out personally!! 🙂
Looks great and your review makes me want to have one. Hopefully, I will win one through your contest but if not I might have to purchase one myself.
This would be amazing! I’m just starting in a 4th grade and would LOVE it for my class.. love the quiet-ness it provides 🙂
I have this sharpener for my classroom. Right now I’m the only one who uses it, because in the past students always seem to break any sharpener I have ever owned. I’d love to get another one and trust the kids to use it correctly after teaching them how to use it. Also I agree about colored pencils. I have not had luck sharpening them. I send my students over to the electiric sharpener to take care of those. This is a great sharpener for regular pencils.
Would love this
I absolutely LOVE these pencil sharpeners!! I would love to have a 2nd one so one can be only for me and one for the kids! The kids have done a great job using it!
Thanks for the picture of it mounted. I’ve been trying to figure out how to mount our sharpener.
It looks pretty good, but I have to wonder how it would hold up to regular classroom use.
Lots of teachers have reviewed the sharpener and you can see them posted at the Classroom Friendly Supplies website. Two things I have learned from teacher reviews is that they have to find a better way to mount the sharpener because the included clamp is weak, and that they sometimes have to buy replacement blades after a while. ~Anne
I’ve always heard the positive things about this sharpener. I appreciate the honest review and great pictures to illustrate.
I really like the auto-stop mechanism so they cannot over sharpen. This is great! We have sharpened pencils all year for my grandson for kindergarten and could surely use this
Thank you for this extensive review. I have been reading a lot of comments about this sharpener from different sources. I like that you also tried the colored pencils and give helpful hints. I don’t have one yet, but it has been on my wish list!
I have tried these sharpeners as well and LOVE them. They are quiet and always sharpen. There is a bit of a learning curve when you first you them but once the kids have it down… they work like a dream.
it almost sounds like it would be better just for home use, but these days it hard to find anything that lasts very long, I would love to win this for my grandchildren
These are nice sharpeners and they look very easy to use, I would love one as all the mess is contained where as I have hand held ones now and the grandkids, just can’t seem to hold them over the trash can when sharpening, I love the blue one..
We could really use this cool retro pencil sharpener. My kids get a lot of homework and are always breaking the points off their pencils!
This pencil sharpener is certainly one of the most user-friendly ones I have ever used. The kids love it.
i love how old school it looks! makes me excited about all the school supplies i get to pick out for our first year of homeschooling this fall! it would be nice to WIN some of those supplies 🙂 thanks for the chance
*kelly
kelly-tillotson@hotmail.com
I’d love to have this for our colored pencils even if it doesn’t sharpen them all that great – it has to be better than the cheap ones we use now! We also have so many regular pencils that never get used because I can’t stand having to use the handheld sharpeners to sharpen them!
This looks AMAZING! I hope to win.
Wow, a pencil sharpener that works! I hate those cheapies you get at the craft store.
i love that it clamps down on the table and no messes! 🙂
The pencil sharpener sounds awesome wish I had one for my sons they are always losing there’s.
This is great, my mom is a teacher and complains about having too much noise from her sharpener to use it during class!
This IS an amazing pencil sharpener! I can see why there are so many great reviews about it. I only wish I had more of them for my 32 second graders. 🙂
Great review! We have gone through quite a few pencil sharpeners. I like that this one is quiet and clamps to the table!
This sounds awesome! I’m a kindergarten teacher and am always frustrated with how poorly the pencil sharpener in my classroom works. This one sounds much better!