Review on ✏️ M+R Magnesium Specialty Sharpener: German-Made Excellence at its Finest by Wendy Rodriguez

I use an M+R magnesium sharpener to finely sharpen the Palomino Blackwing pencils. Blackwings are made from hard, aromatic cedar wood, rather than the typical soft sawdust compound that most of today's cheap pencils are made from. Blackwings also use hardened Japanese graphite, which is harder to sharpen than most other pencil leads. On a new pencil, I first make a taper with an old-fashioned rotary-blade wall sharpener. Once the end of the new pencil is tapered but before the lead is sharpened, I switch to the middle section of the manual sharpener M+R. Then I finish off the tip with the final step (lead only) M+R. This way you get a perfectly sharpened pencil every time and the lead never breaks. Interestingly, there are rumors that the M+R sharpeners are made from remanufactured crankcases from 1958-1963 Volkswagen Beetle engines. The strength, finish appearance and acoustic tone of banging these old low voltage magnesium alloy cases with a copper clad hammer cannot be reproduced with today's "modern" metal. M+R goes the "extra mile" (or the extra kilometer so to speak) to source vintage crankcases and extract aged magnesium to ensure the best possible pencil sharpener experience. You can also shave off the magnesium alloy sharpener bits and use them to start a campfire in case of a camping emergency. No other pencil sharpener can boast of this!