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you discover how to put a stop to your color pencils breaking during sharpening

Originally posted by lovelordtubbington

ALSO, if you own Prismacolors Color Pencils and they keep breaking off no matter how much you sharpen them, they are cracked from the INSIDE. 

This can be fixed by putting them in the microwave for no longer than 3 seconds! A little thing my art teacher taught me and has come in handy like heck!

OOOOOOOOOH~!!!

re-blogging to save a life

I never heard of this! Will test next chance i get

Prismacolor pencils are such crap that I’ve started pre-emptively microwaving them but an important note: LET THEM COOL OFF FOR AT LEAST A MINUTE BEFORE USING OR SHARPENING AFTER MICROWAVING.  The wax that acts as a binder needs a surprisingly long time to set back up again, and you will have slightly melty pencil all over your sharpener/work.*

Another thing you can do to help prevent breakage is to paint a “cap” on the butt of your pencils with nail polish or super-glue.  This helps cushion your pencils if you drop them, and helps the wood and lead stick together.  Most nice art pencils have caps on them already, but not prismacolor.  it takes about 20 seconds to do and will extend the life of your pencils by years.

*If you wanted metly pencil, for some effects, microwave that bad boy for 9 seconds and use immediately, being careful to not get hot wax on your hands.

Note on that specific pencil sharpener:

What you want is the Staedler that has two holes, one labeled graphite and the other for standard writing pencils. It’s available in both the loose form in the photo and in a cylinder casing complete with a chamber for catching shavings and a cover for the holes.

And by ‘available in both’, I mean the actual sharpener in the plastic casing IS the loose one. There’s a screw for popping it in and out. (I own one of each, so I’ve had a chance to compare.) So if you want a good toss-in-a-bag sharpener that keeps its own shavings, that’s an option that doesn’t require you to fiddle with loose sharp things if you ever want to replace the cutting edge.