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ToolGuyd: Woodpeckers, one of my favorite woodworking brands, sent out an email blast this morning advertising the Accutrax Pencil Blade that they recently began carrying. I clicked through to the product page and couldn’t believe what I saw.
While it is a very cool idea that i pencil blade could be substituted into a utility knife, if one does not have a duel bladed knife or a flipping multi-knife, I don't see how this tool is any more useful than a normal wood working pencil and a regular utility knife to sharpen it. That being said, if I came across a package of these, i would buy them in an instant just for the satisfaction of being able to flip a pencil out of a knife handle.
This is cool, but why can't you just use a pencil? a utility knife seems much more bulky and difficult to carry around, not to mention that according to amazon each "blade" is $3 each ($12 for a pack of 4), with 1-2 months for shipping. The only actual benefit seems to be that it would make the same (very thin) width line even if it breaks, but it seems like it would break very easily anyway, especially if it was extended all the way. They even say not to put too much lateral pressure on it- the reason pencils are covered in wood is that bare graphite will break very easily if. These are cool, but not worth the money.
Cool idea, but kinda silly. I just don't see how this could be very helpful to anyone. Before this product you would carry around a pencil and a utility knife. With this product you will carry around the pencil/knife and a knife. So your not really saving your self any time or effort. I suppose that the marks it makes can be very thin and I see that being helpful when building things. I'm not sure that I would buy one of these, but I am interested in learning more about how they make these. Graphite isn't a very strong material in my experience and I'm wondering how they made it strong enough to not break when you put it in to your knife.
Being a Craftsman myself, I think that a tool like this would come in great handy every now and again. But honestly I have never had a problem with putting the knife down and switching to a pencil to make a mark. That being said I can easily see where it could come in handy when making a rapid transition between the marking and the cut, especially when trying to make precision cuts on a precise line. How ever I am still learning much about the crafts world and can say definitely this tool would or would not be useful for practical working.
These graphite blades kind of allow you to bridge the gap/find a happy medium between a pencil and a marking knife. Each has it's downside: Pencils - 1) they have thickness, making it difficult to perfectly follow the perpendicular face of a material when tracing it or marking something out, especially if it's more than and 1/8" tall - 2)if you're lead is thin enough to assist you in being more accurate with tracing or marking it is incredibly fragile. Marking knives - don't generally pose an issue due to thickness when using them, however them can be bulky to carry and they're sharp, and the line they make when scoring something is sometimes hard to see. Like I said, this graphite blade seems to provide a happy medium - more surface area than a typical pencil can provide, especially a mechanical pencil, so its more durable and reliable than its round counterpart, and graphite line is more visible than just a score mark from a knife. So there's that. And honestly, it would probably be just another tool I kept in my gig box for specific situations, rather than using it constantly, but that's mostly because I prefer having a pencil tucked in my ear over an extra knife in my pocket.
Any dual purpose invention can fairly easily make its way onto the cool list. This one is no exception. However, upon taking a step back, many of those items become less practical than their original cool factor would have suggested. Switching the tip here seems like it would be more of a hassle than simply having two separate tools. It is also a bit large and awkward to be carried around for everyday use as just a pencil. I believe most people will end up using it for a knife alone and disregard the pencil feature, making the invention a bit of a waste. I always applaud the effort in attempts at simplicity, but we shouldn't fix things that weren't really a hassle in the first place.
This seems like a cool idea. My issue with it is more over the fact that you would have to carry another fairly bulky unit to do the job that a simple pencil can do. But it might keep someone from losing it since if people invest significant money on an item they don't often lose it. It would be nice to have around but I don't think I would ever come to rely on it completely.
7 comments:
While it is a very cool idea that i pencil blade could be substituted into a utility knife, if one does not have a duel bladed knife or a flipping multi-knife, I don't see how this tool is any more useful than a normal wood working pencil and a regular utility knife to sharpen it. That being said, if I came across a package of these, i would buy them in an instant just for the satisfaction of being able to flip a pencil out of a knife handle.
This is cool, but why can't you just use a pencil? a utility knife seems much more bulky and difficult to carry around, not to mention that according to amazon each "blade" is $3 each ($12 for a pack of 4), with 1-2 months for shipping. The only actual benefit seems to be that it would make the same (very thin) width line even if it breaks, but it seems like it would break very easily anyway, especially if it was extended all the way. They even say not to put too much lateral pressure on it- the reason pencils are covered in wood is that bare graphite will break very easily if. These are cool, but not worth the money.
Cool idea, but kinda silly. I just don't see how this could be very helpful to anyone. Before this product you would carry around a pencil and a utility knife. With this product you will carry around the pencil/knife and a knife. So your not really saving your self any time or effort. I suppose that the marks it makes can be very thin and I see that being helpful when building things. I'm not sure that I would buy one of these, but I am interested in learning more about how they make these. Graphite isn't a very strong material in my experience and I'm wondering how they made it strong enough to not break when you put it in to your knife.
Being a Craftsman myself, I think that a tool like this would come in great handy every now and again. But honestly I have never had a problem with putting the knife down and switching to a pencil to make a mark. That being said I can easily see where it could come in handy when making a rapid transition between the marking and the cut, especially when trying to make precision cuts on a precise line. How ever I am still learning much about the crafts world and can say definitely this tool would or would not be useful for practical working.
These graphite blades kind of allow you to bridge the gap/find a happy medium between a pencil and a marking knife. Each has it's downside: Pencils - 1) they have thickness, making it difficult to perfectly follow the perpendicular face of a material when tracing it or marking something out, especially if it's more than and 1/8" tall - 2)if you're lead is thin enough to assist you in being more accurate with tracing or marking it is incredibly fragile. Marking knives - don't generally pose an issue due to thickness when using them, however them can be bulky to carry and they're sharp, and the line they make when scoring something is sometimes hard to see. Like I said, this graphite blade seems to provide a happy medium - more surface area than a typical pencil can provide, especially a mechanical pencil, so its more durable and reliable than its round counterpart, and graphite line is more visible than just a score mark from a knife. So there's that. And honestly, it would probably be just another tool I kept in my gig box for specific situations, rather than using it constantly, but that's mostly because I prefer having a pencil tucked in my ear over an extra knife in my pocket.
Any dual purpose invention can fairly easily make its way onto the cool list. This one is no exception. However, upon taking a step back, many of those items become less practical than their original cool factor would have suggested. Switching the tip here seems like it would be more of a hassle than simply having two separate tools. It is also a bit large and awkward to be carried around for everyday use as just a pencil. I believe most people will end up using it for a knife alone and disregard the pencil feature, making the invention a bit of a waste. I always applaud the effort in attempts at simplicity, but we shouldn't fix things that weren't really a hassle in the first place.
This seems like a cool idea. My issue with it is more over the fact that you would have to carry another fairly bulky unit to do the job that a simple pencil can do. But it might keep someone from losing it since if people invest significant money on an item they don't often lose it. It would be nice to have around but I don't think I would ever come to rely on it completely.
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