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Pastel pencil sharpener

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Alan Benton

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Posted
What is the best sharpener for the pastel pencil?

Amanda Bates

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Posted
With the caveat that I've never spent much money on any pencil sharpener: a knife.

Michael Robinson

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Posted
If I use a sharpener its for wood removal only (I buy cheap plastic ones and replace when dull) as I tend to find pencil sharpeners break the pastel before a good point is achieved so I favour a small retractable snap off stanley knife. I also use this to scrape an edge on my soft pastels when using them for detail.

Alan Bickley

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Hate the things, I always sharpen all my pencils, whatever they are with a Swann Morton scalpel handle with an 11A blade, you can achieve the exact point that you are looking for.
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, NAPA

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Just a word of endorsement for Tony's point - I have one of Paddy's Dux pencil sharpeners, and it's a very high quality product: sold brass, extra blades, and you can order more at any time although I've not yet had to. In general, pencil sharpeners are useless for pastel pencils because the pastel is fragile, and very often the wood encasing them is horrible cross-grained stuff which splits and cracks in all directions, invariably shearing off the pastel. Even the best sharpener will struggle with those, and a cheap one invites the ruination of your entire collection. But if anything can tackle the pastels and coloured pencils, the Dux sharpeners can. I don't know if Tony's experience would be different, but I did find they struggled with carbon pencils - I'd still use a craft-knife or sharp pen-knife with these, because carbon black can split very easily (and did).
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Linda Wilson

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Posted
Derwent produce a pastel pencil sharpener, which is not as pointy as a normal pencil sharpener. Not expensive - works fine.
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Alan Green

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You can't beat a good ol' Stanley knife :-)
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Alan Green

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I have a hand-axe for chopping firewood. It looks a little cumbersome for delicate work to be homest
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Linda Wilson

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I recently bought a n electric (Chinese) pencil sharpener to use in my portrait class as I loose a lot of precious time sharpening in the class. The hilarious instructions told me to keep my fingers off the balde and out of the hole. My husband was most offended at this. It caused such a racket in the class, that I had to stop using it there. It does make pencils very sharp though, perhaps better for normal pencils, rather than pastel ones.

Sylvia Evans

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I tend to agree with Alan a scalpel is probably the best sharpener then a bit of sandpaper to rup the point against. But like Robert I have discovered Paddys pencil sharpener and they really are excellent. No chance of slicing your fingers off .

Ever Bla

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Posted
Late as always, but the wood encased ones- koh-i-noor metal pencil sharpeners. I buy them in lots of 20 when in Czech Rep., but you can buy them on ebay and amazon. If you are big on pastels, they make great plastic erasers in two levels of softness as well.

Malcolm Brooks

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I generally use a knife but have recently tried a 'Swordfish' pencil sharpener. The sharpness of the point is adjustable and, so far (fingers crossed), it has not broken any of my Koh-i-noor pastel pencils.
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