Battery Operated Pencil Sharpener By dsnygrl on - Updated Oct 15, 2011
Last year when we were back to school shopping 1 dozen already sharpened pencils were on my son's list. We had one of those small hand held pencil sharpeners at home but I thought since we needed so many done and I have always wanted one for craft projects anyway, I would just go and buy a battery operated one.
I bought the X-Acto battery operated pencil sharpener at Target. X-Acto is a name brand that I have grown up with and I trusted them over a store brand one. The sharpener is a light blue color and has a built in pencil holder and a digital clock. It operates on 4 AA batteries.
The first few times we used it I was not impressed with the quality or the speed at which it sharpened. I figured it was just taking longer than I expected because the pencils were brand new and we were starting from scratch. Well the more we used it, the worse it got. It got to the point where it would only sharpen the pencil to where the lead was just showing and then would not sharpen it any more. We took it apart and cleaned it to make sure nothing was stuck in it. Then it started sharpening all the way to a point but it would break off the lead or sharpen it in a weird way where it looked OK until you tried to write with it and then the lead would break off or fall out. We changed the batteries out and tried it some more but it was never much better and always hit or miss until we finally just gave up.
I don't know if it was because this sharpener was defective or if this is a common problem with battery operated sharpeners but I do know I will not purchase a battery operated one again. Next time I will try an electric one and see if I have better luck with it.
About The Author:
X-Acto Battery Operated Pencil Sharpener Purchased at: Target Price: $12.99
Electric pencil sharpeners are the greatest invention (for writers) since paper. LOL
I found the battery sharpeners to be really lacking and moved on to the electric. A shame it didn't work better for you...I know that the type of pencils being sharpened can have something to do with the problems but find it hard to believe that ALL pencils would cause the same outcome so the only constant would be the poor performing battery sharpener I imagine. Thanks for the info...good to know.
This is pretty funny. Don't be offended, but I think we must all be total wimps to need powered pencil sharpeners. I have an old crank one that gets the pencils nice and sharp!
Why can't they make ones that really work! I have an old crank one too, but have tried the electric ones too.
nice one but i still prefer the manual sharpener.