When you use hundreds of Prisma Pencils, keeping them sharp is hard work. After a few years, you find yourself collecting pencil sharpeners, hoping to find THE one that makes it easy, that produces a fine point, that holds breakage to a minimum, that feels good in the hand, and other attributes as well. This sharpener meets all the above requirements. Let me describe why I like it: • It is large enough to fit in the hand so that you can hold it steady. A precise angle must be maintained, so a sharpener that is steady in the hand is half-way there before you even put the pencil in. • It has a ⅜ inch neck that grips pencils with close tolerance. This is the other half of getting that precise angle and maintaining it. As you turn the pencil, the neck holds the pencil steady and doesn't allow it to tilt in relation to the sharpener. I just checked a half-dozen pencil sharpeners whose necks were from 1/16 inch to ⅛ inch. They do not hold the pencil straight. • This sharpener produces two points; wide and narrow. If you are a pencil artist, you know when each type is more favorable. Most sharpeners do one or the other. usually it's the fat slope, whose point wears quickly, but otherwise lasts a long time. The fine point will do detail work for a little longer between sharpenings. I'm very glad to have both kinds. • It collects wood and core shavings. They stay inside. If you turn it over, you don't get colored grit on your hands, which then gets on your drawings. The lid keeps everything in, yet flips up instantly when needed. • Empties easily once you figure out how. How to remove the cap: the top ⅜" (or just under a half-inch with the cap snapped down) is the part that comes off. It looks like part of the body, but it is tapered so that you can push up on it with your thumbs, and it will come straight out. Do not twist! Do not pull on the cap. The cap will last a long time if you don't pull or twist it. So, just get your thumbs under that last half-inch (avoid the decorative "wrap" part) and push straight up. • Large enough to hold a lot of shavings, yet small enough to fit in most bags without having to reorganize. • Will not dump shavings in your drawing bag/satchel/pack/case/drawer. • Pencil shavings are not pretty to look at. The smoked color of the Prismacolor sharpener means you don't have to. • Stands easily on its circular base. • While it is round (cylindrical), it is weighted so as to resist rolling. On a flat-rubber surface, I had to tilt it beyond 8 degrees to cause it to roll (empty). That's a greater incline than any railroad grade, and more than all but the steepest of automobile grades. It'll give you a fighting chance to catch it before it rolls down the hill you're sitting on while drawing Mount Rushmore. About broken pencil leads in Prismacolors: A dull pencil sharpener, and/or one that does not hold the pencil at the same exact angle against the blade, can indeed break the lead before you've finished sharpening, but that is not the major cause of broken leads. Prismacolors are very soft. Drop a pencil, and even though the wood appears unbroken, the soft core "crayon" inside will shatter in as many as a dozen places. Trying to sharpen one of these is an exercise in futility, and you often have to wait until you get to the end of one before it stops breaking off inside the sharpener. This is not the fault of the sharpener, though as stated above, dull cutters and loose necks can cause most sharpeners to twist off a shattered core before THIS sharpener would do so. Generally, as long as these cutters are kept sharp, this sharpener will resist breaking the core of the pencil. It must be understood, however, that once a pencil has been dropped onto a hard surface, or bent, its core is shattered and no sharpener can prevent it from breaking. You can only hope to find a piece that's long enough to hold until sharpened, then strong enough to hold while you draw. To sum up: the broken cores inside a pencil get twisted out by a dull sharpener or one that cannot maintain a proper angle. While no sharpener can prevent your pencil cores from being broken internally, this one at least does its best not to exacerbate the problem. In short, don't blame the sharpener... up to a point. Ok, so it's a long review for one of the simplest and ordinary tools in our box. But the thing is, there are differences between pencil sharpeners. I have them all. I love some of my tiny, handy sharpeners that can go in a pocket, a pencil case, an Altoids box (along with several erasers and other tools), but they are all guilty of being messy and not holding a perfect angle. This Prismacolor sharpener may be a bit more bulky, but it is probably the best sharpener I've used on Prismacolor Pencils, for the reasons stated above. If it wears out quickly, then I'll take back my 5-star rating, but so far it deserves what I gave it. Shooshie
