Clifford Wagner Science Interactives Inc.

An Easy Way To Sharpen Your Pencil coming together.

The pencil sharpening bird. Still not the final eyeballs.

The bird isn’t in its final paint job and its getting better eyeballs but here it is working. The pencil tube will go through a plexiglass wall. It will also be prettier than it is now with a cap on its vertical tube.

The actual pencil sharpener without the bird body.

This is the first proof of reliable kite flying for our pencil sharpener. The barrel here sits outside the window that the visitors open to start the whole sequence. The barrel has in it two layers of aluminum honeycomb air straightener for a smooth airstream. Box kites are more stable that traditional kites. This combination give us the reliability we need for what is going to be a very popular device.

Laying out the ceiling.

Initial kite experiments.

The platform forAn Easy Way To Sharpen Your Pencil, with the elements starting to be located.

Making the bird that will sharpen your pencil.

For The Rube Goldberg exhibit we made our own tree.

The bird and its cage, well on its way to completion.

This was the first prototype for the bird that will actually sharpen your pencil. It's mostly just an engineering test even though I bandsawed out a bird body. It gave me the info I needed to proceed with making the actual bird. The beak is going to be an X-acto knife that whittles you pencil as the bird pecks at it.