Six questionably legal pencil sharpeners

pencil sharpeners perfected over decades in thousands of patents every idea has been done right I wouldn't be so sure have you ever seen an explosive powered pencil sharpener or what about one that sharpens Christmas trees or ones that sharpen using water or a chainsaw or a truck or whatever the heck this thing is you're in for a treat cuz we're going to be doing all those things and more this may seem really random but I promise that it's not from time to time I'll be doing something and I'll think this can sharpen a pencil I don't know why I think this but I've accumulated quite a list of possible ways to sharpen a pencil some of these are going to be really hard to get working especially that explosive one I'm not sure if that's going to work and then there's the question of which is best so we're going to have my wife assigned a definitely impartial score out of 10 and before we start building there's a new addition that you need to understand sit there so we have very exciting news which is that we are expecting expecting what 177,000 lbs of raw steel ready to be delivered soon tools are not children I actually think it's a boy how can you tell this is a water jet it's a FL Mach 200 and it can cut through almost anything using water and I mean anything this is a 4-in thick brick but it'll also do steel glass plastic rubber you name it this is going to seriously upgrade what I can make and it's finally here what really makes these machines awesome is how nice the parts are you get out versus how much work it takes to make them I can make Parts on this machine in a few minutes that would take me all day to machine on my Mill these machines are not simple but the general way they work is they shoot extremely high press water out of this nozzle and it mixes a sort of sandpaper grit into the water stream the water pressure is so high that it gets the grit going supersonic like Mach 3 supersonic which is the speed of a really fast bullet you can kind of think of it as a bunch of little bullets hitting the material which is how it can cut through almost anything and then underneath the stuff you're cutting is 3 ft of water inside of a gigantic tank this stops the jet of water from just cutting through everything it also captures all the Dust from the stuff you're cutting and the grit but the coolest thing about this machine is this it's five AIS it means you can cut angles which opens the door to some pretty insane stuff you can do the fact that this machine can cut angles also means that it would make a really good pencil sharpener I just need to hold the pencil vertical so I'm making this little pencil Mount thingy on the water jet this is a good example of cool five AIS stuff you can do all right it's sharpen [Music] time I didn't have the pencil perfectly centered and there was a little bit of Wiggle in my mouth but this is pretty good I think this might be the heaviest biggest pencil sharpener ever having a water jet is a dream come true I've literally been talking about these for at least 10 years to ask my wife how long have I been talking about a Jets forever and now that it's here I'm just so excited it opens up so many creative doors for part design and interesting things that you can do and I can't wait to show you some of the things that I have in mind it's really rare for me to use a pencil sharpener because I have a razor blade in my pocket pretty much all the time so I just use that all I do is just take slices while rotating the pencil and it gets sharp this would be really cool to automate imagine a razor blade attached to a motor and held at an angle if you stick a pencil in it'll slice it and then if you twist the pencil it'll cut a nice cone but even cooler would be if we held the pencil still in the spinning razor blades spun around the pencil I just need to design something that can actually do this in retrospect I probably should have just spun the pencil but this is pretty cool almost all the parts are made on the water jet which makes it so fast to make I can cut 90% of the parts out of one plate in a few minutes making all these parts would have taken me a day or two otherwise a lot of the parts for this go together kind of like a jigsaw puzzle all right let me give you a tour this neat little water jet part holds the pencil in the right spot so you can slide it into the sharpener and then this razor blade is spun by this motor like this and the razor blade and motor can also be spun by another motor turning them both on looks like this if you were a pencil this is what you'd see before going into the sharpener one really important detail is this we need to get power to this spinning motor but if I ran wires to it they would twist and snap this is called a slip coupling and it basically lets the wires twist so all you got to do is carefully slide this pencil into the hole of death and it should sharpen it there we [Music] go why I was really expecting this to work better I spent way too long on this I made things adjustable I realized the razor blade was backwards don't ask I also decided the risk to fingers was too high so I added a guide I was wondering if the design was fatally flawed why guess what I just discovered this razor blade is completely dull which is a really good explanation for why it didn't cut anything this blade is actually sharp I checked all righty here we go oh that was [Music] close that totally works man but how good is it so we're going to have my wife rendering her impartial opinions mine don't count because I think they're all the best we all know that's not true one of these is going to stink it up probably literally no I don't have any sort of gas-based pencil sharpeners hopefully I connect the wires to this baby with the right polarity otherwise the baby will run backwards just say O come on I mean it's cool I'm not putting it in there why not I got a tourni kit nah you do it now you need to have a firm grip cuz it wants to eat the pencil this is why I didn't want to do it to feed it I knew there'd be more to it yeah see kids will love this look at that is that awesome that is cool it's really weird it doesn't cut the graphite it sharpens to a bold point I guess she's going to give it a score out of [Music] 10 nine I'm shocked that you would score it that high minus two for graphite I do not approve of the graphite stick minus two safety if you get hurt by this you deserve it plus three very fun to watch nice [Music] noise I really like chainsaws probably a little bit too much but I've been thinking that you could actually make a really cool pencil sharpener with one of these the basic idea is if you hold a pencil at an angle the chainsaw is going to cut a nice angled line and if you spun the pencil it will cut a nice cone sharpening the pencil I designed a barebone chainsaw around this blade which turned out to be a lot simpler than I expected the basic idea is there's a little guide that you put the pencil into and twist it and it should guide it to a cone so let's get it made and see if it works [Music] this is the most important part it's what guides the pencil into the chainsaw otherwise it's a steak knife-shaped chainsaw it's driven by an overpowered motor and the blade is upside down so it pulls the pencil in this is the part that I'm hoping will cut that angled line on the pencil and guide it into a cone shap shape unfortunately it's kind of hard to see what's going on but you can see it ejecting little pieces of pencil all right now this will be in classrooms Everywhere by next year keep dreaming man so what you do pencil goes into the cone hole you twist it like it's an old school pencil sharpener and before you know it your tip is pointy all right can I try it I will control the speed button does nothing the thing that the button would have done got fried all right just don't touch the [Music] blade wait you need safety glasses all right ready I see wood dust how about that that's good have you ever sharpened a pencil with a chainsaw before check that off the old bucket list ready for my rating am I the one writing the scores here hey these are really cool how do you like that how could I not like it are you kidding wait till you see the last one you going to wish you had more numbers to go up probably goes before the fall he thinks he Sav the best of last no I just know I know what it's capable of so I've been thinking a lot about pencil sharpeners and I realized I'm in a pencil sharpener I should probably explain imagine that I have a pencil dragging behind my truck it's going to wear down from rubbing against the road if you held it at just the right angle and rotated it the road should wear it down to a nice point you could even make it hitch mounted basically a tiny little pencil sharpening trailer we can hold the pencil about here so that the wheel can keep the pencil from slamming into bumps although if we break the tip it's game over so the pencil is going to be on a sliding cart that feeds it into the ground as it rotates it the details will make a lot more sense once we get it [Music] built all right we have the tiniest trailer ever and it is awesome this part connects to the truck and this is the trailer the pencil goes right here where it can drag against the ground at the tip the pencil is held in place with this little belt which also rotates the pencil so it's doing double duty and then the belt is connected to this gear boox which turns a little gear on the back side which feeds the pencil into the ground as it's being sharpened I wanted to drive this gearbox with the spinning of the wheels but it was kind of hard to connect it to them because the cart's moving back and forth so I'm using a flex shaft to do this this tube has a flexible Rod inside of it that's free to spin if I twist this end the other end also twists so I use this to take the spinning of the wheels and direct it into this gearbox the only problem is that at highway speeds these wheels are going to be going way too fast it'll feed the entire pencil in like two seconds so I added another gearbox which rotates about one time for every 200 rotations of the wheel that's basically it so it just goes near hitch like this it articulates like this so that it can follow the road and it articulates like this so you can take turns that's it you're ready to sharpen pencils all right here we go man you cannot tell at all what's going on this is very nerve-wracking oh no stop stop stop everything is actually screwed in this time I don't want to go too fast you cannot tell what's happening at all think think I saw something fly off I delivery boy I lose my tip oh come on good thing I brought an extra pencil all right got a new pencil looks like it's still there all right we'll check in just a second what do you think I bet it's sharp but about half gone I think it works you think it's half gone what do we got it works it totally works look it's a sharpened pencil I never would have thought sharpening a pencil could be so [Music] cool I can't believe it works everything you dreamed it would be is everything I dreamed it could be and more this may be the greatest thing I've ever made don't make me bring up the kids again how would you rate this bad boy nine nine it's very cool and it's funny and I like that it flew off I me you do need a lot to operate this sharpener you need a car you need to be a enough to drive have your license and you need a hit on your car it's tall order my friend maybe this is the pencil sharpener for driver's Zed H it's come to my attention that these pencils are 27 in in diameter in some parts of the world they might say they're 27 caliber there's something else it's 27 caliber it's almost like they intended for me to do what I'm about to do if you don't know what these are these are little explosive blank cartridges that are used typically to drive Nails into concrete I've used these to do some pretty cool stuff in the past and what I want to know right now is can I sharpen a pencil with explosive force seems like there should be a way to do it but I don't know here's what I'm thinking first make a cone-shaped hole and then smash the pencil into it really hard with explosives that's it this might just shatter the pencil but I want to find out I just keep finding more ways to speed things up with this water jet the construction of this is pretty similar to the other explosive power things I've made a lot of Steel and a lot of strength before I show you how this works I need to tell you do not try this at home I know it looks fun but there's a ton of analysis testing safety precautions checklists and other stuff that I'm doing to make this safe so just don't do it and enjoy the video all right so with that out of the way here's my design at the bottom we have the business end which does the sharpening inside there's a pencil with a charge behind it sealed in with a metal plate to set the shell off we have to hit the edge of it with some kind of pin for safety this design has a pin that's totally removable until you're ready to go and then this entire thing goes into a track which is used to set it off and then up here we have a heavy steel hammer on a cart held by a pin when you pull the pin out it falls hits the firing pin and sets the charge off that will hopefully launch the pencil into the cone hole hard enough to make it pointy let's find out 3 2 [Music] 1 the big question is did it do anything and I am dying to see if there's anything inside of this the pencil appears to have been destroyed I think this may be permanently stuck it looks like the gas jet ripped the pencil apart so I made a little plunger thing to distribute the pressure on the back of the pencil I also made a way smoother cone so I can hopefully get it out all right take two get your bets in two [Music] one we're going to have a perfect pencil or just a mess oh no a pencil this long got completely shoved into this little tiny hole although the pencil is unremovable it may have sharpened the pencil still it's a nice part I hate to do this but I think what we need to do is cut this in half and see what is going on inside it has no tip and there's not even any graphite at the front it looks like when we squeeze the pencil down the wood has to go somewhere and that's pushing the graphite back up into the pencil I tried a couple more times and got the same result I don't know what I was expecting I also made this so we could see what was going on it didn't help although something incredible happened it explosively removed the graphite from the pencil I didn't think that was even possible this has been driving me insane I went completely off the deep end trying to make it work I'm not going to go into the details because it didn't work but I'll give you a little taste cuz it was kind of interesting I convinced myself that what I really needed was more complexity it turns out I did not I was trying to progressively form the pencil tip with a moving form but the pencil just can't take the forces I did a really good job of fitting a round peg into a square hole though I went down a rabbit hole with a paintball marker trying to not destroy the pencil but that didn't work work either I actually gave up and had my wife rate my not so functional sharpener which did not go well but I just realized what I need to do it's so simple I don't know how I didn't think about this before I can keep the graphite from sliding back by changing the geometry of the pencil tip so let's make it all right here it is I think this is going to work 3 2 [Music] 1 did it work yeah I heard a little this one sealed well all right moment of truth oh my God it's got a point let's see if we actually get it out without uh breaking it this will totally run right it has a stick with a point on the end technically this is a sharpened pencil so do I get to write with it you could write my my tiny [Music] score six out of 10 I wanted to write more yeah I thought that was generous look at they're better better pencils out there to be had 6 out of 10 I'm a tough critic it's amazing how Blood Sweat and Tears will turn something this junky into something that you think is the greatest thing ever just because something that's really hard to do it doesn't mean that was good true that and the worst thing of all they probably won't allow this one in schools lathes are pretty cool they make round stuff by cutting it while it spins so of course Sharp opening a pencil on a lathe is a very obvious idea it's also boring but there's another device called a Pantagraph it's a very special arrangement of pivoting linkages that does something really cool if I put a marker over here it's going to mimic whatever I do with this pointer over here except scaled down what if instead of a marker we put a cutting blade on this and then we combined it with a lathe then I could trace fancy shapes and cut them into the pencil tip as it spins I took that twinkle in my eye and convert it into something that I can actually make and this is what it looks like if for some reason you want to make this ridiculous pencil sharpener all the design files are available for free I made them in on shape and there's a link in the description where you can sign up and get them I definitely want to make it so let's do [Music] it let me show you how it works so the pencil goes in here and then I made a little cutting pull on the grinder which goes in here and when the pencil spins it'll cut into the wood I'm driving the whole thing directly with an OutRunner to hack my way around having belts or a gearbox and this is the Pantagraph any movement I make over here is mirrored by the cutting blade over here except it's scaled down by a factor of four you make a little pattern with whatever shape you want to cut into the pencil you load that into the pant graph and trace it with this little stylus the pattern can be moved in any direction so that you can get it to cut in the right spot all right let's give it a whirl that's so cool it totally [Music] cut it totally works it's so fancy oh man all right we got to see what the wife thinks of this looks like takes up a lot of space for something you don't do all that much you ever heard of art coffee table thing it's a conversation stutter it's like one of those big books don't just plunge the blade in use use your good judgment I I'll work the throttle all right give a little Rev no let's finish see if you can at least get a con [Music] going I mean the tip is very nice and pointed most pencil sharpeners don't require training but this one might let me show you what this thing can do [Music] oh that's so cute this was a good idea look how good that is it's your crowning tree what else could we do perfect sphere I want a ball ball tip ball tip my contribution I like it already [Music] it's a ball ball oh yeah and it works great and if you were wondering it also works on erasers all right you've seen a ball Point pencil a Christmas tree tip looks like you're getting creative this is better than the whatever one you gave 10 the chainsaw I can only go to 10 I told you you would wish you had more numbers chain sty is still pretty cool so what do you think of it what I think it this thing I think it's pretty [Music] cool what if we sharpened a pencil in reverse the tip would be pointing the wrong way sounds useless from the lady who wanted me to make a ball well we're going to make that in just a second engineering is awesome and if you're amped up to get out there and learn that you can do awesome stuff too you need to check out this video sponsor it's a really useful tool called brilliant so I've been a fan of brilliant for years it's a tool that makes learning technical stuff way easier and it really does it works way better than it should and what they do is they'll take a complex subject like software algorithms and they'll present it in an interactive way that has you solving actual problems combining Theory with problem solving is such an effective way to learn and they have so many courses I mean just look at all these math computer science data science physics you used to have to go to college for this stuff some of the topics can be really complex and intimidating like calculus but they break them down into a series of bite-sized steps that build on top of each other this keeps things from being overwhelming but it also makes it really easy to do a little bit of learning every day which is how I've learned a lot of what I know I try to spend at least 30 minutes a day learning something new and it doesn't feel like I'm doing that much but it's insane how much I've learned over the years I think it's cuz your brain is like a muscle if you work it consistently you get gains so if you want to level up technically and learn a bunch of interesting new stuff check out brilliant you can try it for free 30 days to see if it works for you just go to brilliant.org stuff made here or click the link in the descript description and the first 200 people to do this will get 20% off their annual premium membership finding ways to keep learning new stuff is one of the most important things that you can do so I hope you check out brilliant and that's it thank you brilliant for sponsoring this video and thank you for taking the time to check it out time to sharpen a pencil backwards it's very precarious it really wants to snap finish pass like you shot a pencil with a bow and arrow into the back with another pencil the Robin Hood Modern Art baby the fact that this can just make whatever you want as long as it's round is pretty cool anything you can imagine as it also can't have undercuts at least not the way I've designed it there's there's a lot of limitations there a lot of stuff it can't do but it can do basically anything as long as something that this lathe can do we just need a title for this what if this was a piece of Modern Art what would the Christmas in Australia oh come on we're done why not I didn't say if Reddit named [Music] [Music] it

Channel: Stuff Made Here

Views: 10,421,700

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Id: wh8ij9NnLIQ

Length: 28min 32sec (1712 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 11 2023