sidss1, are you by chance a member of the Hobby Machinists board? That same video just popped up there.

My home town used to be nicknamed "The Pencil City" and still has a pencil on the city seal. My wife was a pencil painter when we met. The pencils were pushed single file end to end through rubber washers in the sides of a tank full of paint. Because the washers wiped off most of the paint they dried almost instantly but they typically required 10 or 11 coats of lacquer so all day long she picked up dry ones and carried them back to the front of the machine to be run through again. Many of her relatives worked their entire lives in them old mills in crap conditions for crap pay.

in 1991, as president of the local Ham Radio Club I coordinated event communications for the production of the world's longest pencil to make the The Guinness Book of Records. IIRC the pencil was over 1/4 mile long. Volunteers carried it as it came off the production line about a mile to the town square where it was sharpened and an eraser installed to make it complete. It wrapped around the Courthouse about 3 times. After the official measurements were made we broke it into pieces and the volunteers were allowed to keep a piece. I still have a piece about six feet long hanging in the attic.

Fascinating, I know! LOL .

Pretty cool. I thought they just grew that way!

I really had no idea pencils were made that way.