God Bless these workers and the Weissenborn family for producing such a simple, wonderful tool. KAGA.
Posted on 01/15/2018 6:23:58 AM PST by Daffynition
[snip]
Such radical simplicity is surprisingly complicated to produce. Since 1889, the General Pencil Company has been converting huge quantities of raw materials (wax, paint, cedar planks, graphite) into products you can find, neatly boxed and labeled, in art and office-supply stores across the nation: watercolor pencils, editing pencils, sticks of charcoal, pastel chalks. Even as other factories have chased higher profit margins overseas, General Pencil has stayed put, cranking out thousands upon thousands of writing instruments in the middle of Jersey City.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
God Bless these workers and the Weissenborn family for producing such a simple, wonderful tool. KAGA.
The pencils we use at work are made in Vietnam, they break easy and have plastic erasers(!?) which only smudge when you try to erase with them.
Wow, that one guy has been working for them for 47 years. Unreal. I was 8 when he first started. And I like this quote “Even as other factories have chased higher profit margins overseas”....Does the left understand what that does and why companies are given tax breaks so the JOBS stay here? Finally we got tax cuts and the economy is on rocket fuel, lowest black unemployment ever and the left completely loses their sht over it. If we had an honest media they would point out how the left has ZERO interest in the well being of the average US citizen. All these millionaire elitist snobs constantly bashing Trump while they sit on their ass all day leeching off the hard work of other people.
Yep, I know the kind you are talking about. They also use to (or still do) make frames for glasses that are made from metal so cheap just taking them off is enough to snap it in two. I found that out when I made the mistake of buying Eddie Bauer frames “made in Vietnam” if those were even real or counterfeit. I paid something like $220 for them WITHOUT the lenses and a few days later *SNAP*. It was like cardboard mixed with flecks of metal. I freakin hate that sht. These are scams, same with Apple products. They purposely put glass on their iphones, ipads that shatter easily and they have a whole department dedicated to replacing the glass providing them no doubt with more billions.
The tools and methods of production at this factory seem very primitive. They have not updated anything in 40 years.
I have seen videos of record-pressing plants where the record presses can be controlled and adjusted from an iPad, so it is certainly possible to modernize old processes.
I work for a manufacturing company. Some of our processes are highly automated, yet others are extremely manual. Sometimes that’s required or the cost to automate cannot be overridden by the sales volume.
In one case, we manufacture a product that is really old school, but still necessary for a small segment of the population. The filling station for it is completely manual.
As a companion piece, I present I, Pencil, an essay by Leonard Reid on how economics really works as told by a humble pencil.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html
And I bet a lot of those employees worked there a long time.
“plastic erasers(!?) which only smudge when you try to erase with them.”
I’ve experienced that, too.
I worked at a pen and pencil factory for 35 yrs. In m
Manhattan and later the Bronx. For the pencils, we bought blanks (wood/lead/painted) and we put the metal ferries on them with erasers just like General shows. Brought back fond memories of our machinery running. We chose to do it that way because we were focused on the pen manufacturing. We manufactured the pencils the way we did because we offered customized selection to customers that was favored at that time. We then imprinted them with Clients customer logos. We’ve even purchased some pencil blanks from General. I thought they had sold out,guess not. We closed the business which had been open since 1945 in 2015 due to the owner’s illness. Just wanted to share my memories of the pencil business. General is, BTW, not the only pencil company still manufacturing pencils in the USA. I am on very good terms with the owners of the other manufacturer. Sad that so many people sold out to China. When we closed down we sold our machine to another company that does not use the pencil machine by here most other machines. We were a unique company that catered to customers desires. We were one of the originals to make custom colored pencils with custom ferries and erasers. Some of you might even have them in your offices even today!
Somehow the weird movie ERASERHEAD popped into mind.
Its all about ROI. Changes in manufacturing processes usually are evolutionary, not revolutionary. The capital cost of a revolutionary change to your manufacturing is way too high.
Exactly. In our case, one of our products is highly popular. If we just made that one product, we’d still be the largest producer of our type of product in the world. In that case, any improvement in production quality or capability is warranted. For many, it’s not and using older yet still functional equipment is wise.
Wow, that was great.
Best pencil...
Having spent 33 years in a classroom. The best pencil, I found is the Dixon Ticonderoga.
I have no idea if they were associated w/ General Pencil at one time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixon_Ticonderoga_Company
Getting a new pencil and stepping up to the wall mounted crank sharpener and putting a new point on a Ticonderoga was kind of a treat in grade school...
Several years ago, I bought a 4-dozen box of Ticonderoga #2 pencils on close out at a big box office supply for something like 99¢. They’ll probably last for the rest of this lifetime.
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