Maker	EDC Hand Tools
Model	SHARPDRAW®
Hardness	2 HB
Features	Retractable graphite 'blade'
Price I paid	$1.69

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I am not a carpenter.

But I did search hardware stores for because I knew that carpenter pencils were a thing (I'm not completely naive), but I figured that sometimes people who are in the trades might want something else to write things down. It turns out I was right¹, but it also turns out that at least one company decided to put a spin on the humble carpenter pencil, and they came up with the SHARPDRAW® carpenter penci.

The SHARPDRAW® carpenter pencil looks exactly like a utility knife, except that the body is made of wood and the 'blade' is some kind of graphite carbon-fiber blend or something. It's stamped '2 HB' on the body of the thing, and that feels like it could be right. It felt pretty much like a bog-standard #2 pencil when I was writing with it on paper in my trusty Black N' Red notebook. I had originally thought that the pencil might only be good for writing in one direction, like I was trying to write with a knife or something, but, surprisingly, I was able to go side-to-side with it and even make some decent-looking letters (not pictured because I forgot to get any), but once the 'blade' wore down a little bit and was less of a point, going side-to-side looked like I was turning a pencil on its side and doing some shading. Less than ideal.

But this thing was made to write on wood that has been less processed than the notebook I was testing. I pulled out a piece of scrap wood I had laying around (don't ask) and gave it a try.

First of all, don't judge my writing ability by what you're seeing on this board. I had to press harder than normal to get the pencil to make a decently-visible line, and that meant that I sacrificed some control. I also didn't have a straightedge handy, so a few of the lines went wonky.

This thing made serviceable marks if I was going in straight(ish) lines, but the blade flexed a lot when I went from side-to-side. It didn't break, though, until I tried to break it, so it does have some decent amount of strength to it.

The pencil doesn't doesn't come with an eraser, which makes sense. You probably aren't going to be erasing pencil marks on scrap wood very often anyway, and even if you did, the wood would just wreck the eraser. I did try erasing the marks on paper with a Pink Pearl eraser and it did the job, but there were plenty of dents where the 'blade' practically carved the letters into the paper. I could probably use a different pencil, turn it sideways, and recover anthing I wrote with this thing pretty easily.

Like I said at the beginning, I'm not a carpenter. I've known a few people who are adjacent enough to carpentry that I'm not completely unfamiliar with carpenter pencils and their uses. I think I can see how this might be handy in some extremely limited circumstances, but I'm having trouble understanding what problem this is trying to solve.

I don't think I'm the only one, either. I scoured the internet for any mentions of this tool anywhere, and all the store listings (except the one I bought this from) are sold out and there are no replacement parts. I checked the URL for the company listed on the package and it went defunct years ago, but it does shed some light on this thing. Their website shows them as a knife company. I think someone at the company decided that combining a utility knife and a carpenter pencil was an idea worth developing and bringing to market.

The thing is, though, carpenter pencils feel to me (an uninformed outsider) to have already been perfected. Or, at least standardized. And going to a weird mechanical blade design actually costs you some features of a carpenters pencil that you might actually need. And for what benefit? To have a thinner line when marking where to cut a 2x4?

It's a fun little curiosity, but I don't really think it's very useful.

This article was posted on 2 Sep 2026 and I haven't looked at it since.

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