Sharpening a pencil can be a meditative process. It temporarily takes you away from your task to spend a few moments in a simple, largely mindless process so that you can return with newly-sharpened vigour. Or at least with a sharp pencil. The problem with sharpening a Staedtler WOPEX pencil is that it might just distract you for some time. Not that they’re difficult to sharpen – quite the opposite in fact. They’re so extraordinarily satisfying to sharpen that you might just continue thoughtfully turning your pencil long past the point at which it’s back to optimal precision. You might even be tempted to sharpen one until it disappears, just to see if you can turn one pencil into one continuous and sublimely decorative shaving. A bit like peeling an apple in one continuous cut. Only better.
Which would be a shame, as the Staedtler WOPEX is possibly the most environmentally-conscious pencil around. Efficient For Ecology is Staedtler’s environmental philosophy – sure, we can recycle, but why not put some thought into minimising resource use in the first place?
Traditional wood-cased pencils are manufactured by milling slabs of natural timber. OK, so the trees are sustainably managed, and harvested in a way that’s friendly to fairies and other woodland folk*, but the process results in a lot of sawdust and offcuts, and only the larger slabs of timber can be used for pencils due to the bulk manufacturing process.
Although Staedtler is one Germany’s oldest industrial companies and has been at the heart of the great tradition of Nuremberg pencil makers since 1662, they can still innovate. They set themselves the task of optimising wood use for a new generation of pencil and came up with WOPEX. Catchy. It stands for Wood Pencil Extrusion, and extrusion, dear readers, is the clever bit. Simply take a tree (PEFC-certified, natch), with trunks, branches and twigs of any size and with less than the perfect grain required by normal pencils, reduce to fine granules and mix with a polymer resin. Produce a lead compound based around graphite, polymer and additives; and mix up a soft coating compound. Now extrude all three at the same time – lead centre, wrapped with wood fibre mix, wrapped in turn with a soft outer shell. Ta-da! The WOPEX pencil lives.
WOPEX pencils are outwardly little different to any other pencil, but they have some interesting features. The outer finish is thicker than usual, and soft to the touch. The lead is not only smoother-writing, but also harder-wearing and more break-resistant than ordinary pencils, helping them write for longer. But the cool bit for us stationery geeks is the ‘wood’ case. It‘s less obviously ‘woody-looking’ than a regular pencil – smoother and more pale. The key bit is the ‘smooth’ – it’s a much more homogeneous material than natural wood, and it’s held together quite strongly by some kind of binding agent (we think). Which means it sharpens very easily, very smoothly and has a delightfully mesmerising tendency to sharpen in one continuous shaving. We’re hooked. The office record is currently just over half a pencil.
Downsides? WOPEX is currently only available in HB, 2B and 2H, and there’s not as marked a difference between those grades as you’d see with a normal Staedtler Tradition. There’s also a slightly artificial look compared to a good old-fashioned cedarwood pencil. Otherwise we can’t see any problem.