CARL Angel 5 Manual Pencil Sharpener Heavy Duty but Quiet for Office and Home Desks School Classroom,Green

The best pencil sharpener you can buy for $25. There is a slight learning curve, but at our school even our kindergarten students know how to use them. They sharpen any kind of pencil, even junk colored pencils.

Certainly sharpens well...I'll give it that, but difficult time anchoring anywhere, as motion of sharpening moves it all around. I cranked attachment to the tightest possible setting, still moves. So, it's difficult to use if not permanently secured, which I've not done.

My son is using regular sized pencils this year at school and two weeks ago, while doing homework, we needed to sharpen a few of his pencils. I have a Boston pencil sharpener out in the garage on my workbench that I use to put a point on pencils for marking wood and measurements. For some reason, this sharpener wanted to give me a hard time and only sharpen one side of each pencil. It would have wood on one side and sharpened graphite on the other. I took the thing apart, cleaned it out (brushed debris from the blades) and it still wouldn't produce a good point. I spent another few aggravating minutes/attempts and finally just got my pocket knife out and carved a point for the pencils. I'm sure there are some pencil sharpener gurus out there that could better diagnose the problem or maybe the blades have finally just worn down...I'm just a parent trying to sharpen a pencil so I can coax my son through homework.I ended up looking around in our "junk drawer" in the kitchen and found one of those small plastic sharpeners with the single blade and just settled on that as being his official point provider at home. A few weeks later, I was offered the opportunity to look over this CARL Angel 5 sharpener and decided to try it out. While it looks like a regular pencil sharpener, there were some noticeable differences when compared to what I am more familiar with. This particular sharpener has an extension mechanism that slides out from the main housing. There were no instructions included and I assumed that this was just something to help stabilize the pencil while sharpening...or maybe to keep it straight. I'm a bit "old school" and have only used sharpeners designed like my Boston in the garage. I decided that this was just a unnecessary design feature and began trying to sharpen the pencils without extending this piece out. It didn't work. I then tried extending it out and holding onto the eraser end of the pencil, like you do with older styled sharpeners and discovered that this was very cumbersome and still didn't produce any results. Tinkering around with it and trying to figure out if something was out of alignment, I began turning the handle while the pencil was still extended and locked in. I had one hand on top of the housing and the other turning the handle. This, of course, was the magic moment that I noticed the extension piece began drawing the pencil into the sharpener. I felt pretty dumb but in my defense...this thing had no instructions and I've never used one like this before.After figuring out that the assumed design actually serves a very important function, I began sharpening pencils like crazy. The unit comes with a clamp that is supposed to help stabilize it to the edge of a table top...but I found that it limited the placement of the device and it didn't really work all that well anyway. I had no problem just leaving it on a table with one hand on top of the sharpener and one hand turning the handle. It has rubber feet on the bottom and this also helped to keep it in place. I began looking for every pencil we have here in the house to test this thing out. Old ones, half sharpened ones, round pencils, those that have decorations (Christmas) on them, colored pencils, and the traditional 6 sided pencils. Doing so conjured up a memory of being punished in elementary school when the teacher made me sharpen all of her pencils. Anyway, the one thing that I noticed was the extreme points that this thing will put in a pencil. Some of the points were a bit too extreme really and obviously they are so fine that the tips will break easily. I discovered how to solve that problem too. Instead of waiting for the pencil to be fully drawn into the sharpener, I would stop sharpening about halfway through. This tended to produce a nice point but not one that was prone to be so fine that the tip would break upon touching a piece of paper.The housing, extension, rotary sharpening blade and handle are made out of steel. The tabs use to release and lock the pencil, the debris tray, and the rotating cylinder on the handle are made out of plastic. There is also a plastic locking ring that is used to remove the sharpening blade from the housing as well. Turning this counter-clockwise will remove the blade for cleaning. The handle can be removed from the blade unit itself by holding the blades (wear gloves) and twisting counter-clockwise as well. Sharpening the blades by turning the handle counter-clockwise could result in the handle falling off. The act of turning the handle clockwise with a pencil in it should keep the handle secure. Upon writing about my experience with the device, I noticed that in the product's description, it mentions important details that I "discovered" on my own...but it also states that handle and blade replacements are available. Well, I can't find them here on Amazon and searching around for them on the internet proved to be confusing and difficult as well. There are a lot of pencil sharpeners out there with many sharing particular design features but also slight variations that make finding the right blade/handle difficult.The green color on this particular one gives it a somewhat retro office look that is pretty cool. A small green eraser was also included with the pencil sharpener as well. I did notice too that when you lock the pencil into the device, the "teeth" do leave small indentions into the wood on the pencil. For me personally, this didn't bother me nor did it leave any discomforting raised area on the surface when actually writing with the pencil. While the included clamp does help to secure the device to a table, it doesn't give you many placement options. I found that sharpening the pencils worked just fine with out it by holding it down with one hand while turning the handle with the other. The rubber feet really help to accomplish this as well. Some included instructions would of been nice for folks like me who have never used one designed like this. I feel like I've sharpened enough pencils to get my son through elementary school with this and I'm pleased with it's performance thus far.I received this for evaluation at no cost to me. My opinions are my own and reflect my initial impressions and testing of the product.

I have tried over 10 pencil sharpeners on the market as a classroom teacher and this is by far the best pencil sharpener I have ever used.Students come from other classes just to use the sharpener!

Amazing sharpener for a classroom- only one that leaves a sharp point and has held up.

I love it

Perfect!

A+