A normal pencil sharpener

A normal pencil sharpener has one hole. This one has two. It's built to fix something that happens to everyone, and once you know about it, you can't unsee it. KITA-BOSHI is one of the last remaining family-run pencil factories in Tokyo. At some point, they started looking into why their pencils kept breaking. And what they found was that it wasn't the pencils. It was the sharpeners. A conventional sharpener has one blade doing two jobs at once. It shaves the wood away and points the lead in the same motion. As the point forms, the tip gets held tight at the narrow end of the hole. The tip becomes a pivot So every small wobble at the wide end, gets amplified down at the point. Like a seesaw. And right there, the lead is thin, exposed, and barely wrapped in wood anymore. So, it snaps. Just under the surface where you can't see it. You pull the pencil out, it looks fine, but it won't write. You sharpen it again, it snaps again. And you blame the pencil. The 634 pencil sharpener splits the job into two. Hole #1 only shaves It doesn't touch the lead. The pencil comes out looking like a matchstick. A thin, wooden shaft with blunt lead sticking out the end. Hole #2 only points the lead. The wood is already gone so there's nothing left to fight. Each hole is doing half the work so you barely have to push. Less force, less wobble, less snap.