Whole Lot of Lead - 04.17.2008

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a group of men from about 15 countries spent two weeks building the world’s largest pencil. They used over 8,000 board feet of wood and 4,000 pounds of graphite, which ran the length of the 76-foot pencil, and they even manufactured a 250-pound eraser. The exterior of the pencil matches the yellow hue of a classic No. 2.  Guinness World Record maker and breaker Ashrita Furman considered every detail when designing it—except, perhaps, how to sharpen it. “We thought about making the world’s largest pencil sharpener, but we ran out of money,” he said.  It took two carpenters a full day to sharpen the point of the pencil using a saw, axes and a grinding machine. Furman escorted his 22,000-pound, 76-foot-long pencil to its new home at the City Museum in St. Louis on January 28.