Original subtitles

[music playing]

Forget the digital wizardry of the keyboard and the tablet.

You can't beat the simplicity of the pencil.

Which explains why we still buy more than 180 million

of them every year.

Not bad for a 400-year-old invention.

[chuckles]

We've come to Germany to find out how they're made.

To the factory of the oldest pencil manufacturer

in the world.

[triumphant music]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Whether you sharpen yours

to the finest of points or to the end,

we've all grown up with this classic writing instrument.

[laughs]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): I'm Gregg Wallace.

Whoa, I feel like Uri Geller.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): And the sharp end

of German engineering--

Those pencils are almost falling over those blades.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): --is rewriting everything I thought

I knew about pencil production.

I'm beginning to understand there is a bottom and a top.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): I'm Cherry Healey.

Wow.

Oh, my goodness, that's so bright.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): I'm taking

a close up look at the mind blowing mineral

at the heart of every pencil.

CHERRY HEALTY: It looks like shards of glass.

OK, is that a good jug?

- GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): - -and creating

my own colorful crayons.

Woo!

You're kidding me.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): And historian Ruth

Goodman sketches out the surprising origins

of this simple tool.

RUTH GOODMAN: Write with a rock.

Yes.

[laughs] That's amazing, isn't it?

GREGG WALLACE: Over the next 24 hours

this factory will produce 600,000 pencils.

And this is the fascinating story of how they get

the lead into every single one.

Welcome to "Inside the Factory."

[theme music]

[music playing]

This is the Faber-Castell Factory

near Nuremberg in Germany.

Pencils have been rolling off the production line

here for more than 250 years.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): This old factory

is unlike any I visited before.

And for once, I get a break from my usual hairnets.

It's packed with bespoke machines

that craft premium pencils in all colors, shapes, and sizes.

But today, we follow the production of

their classic green HP pencil.

The factory straddles the River Rednitz in the South

German town of Stein.

The raw materials arrive on an 18th century

street in the bustling town.

And the company's newest recruit, Lucas Totler,

is here to meet today's delivery.

- Lucas. - Hi.

Gregg.

I've come to find out about pencil making.

This is the place to come.

This is where we make pencils.

GREGG WALLACE: What's on that lorry?

On here, we have the graphite in bags

that go into our pencil lead.

And then you add lead to the graphite?

We don't.

There has never been a metal lead in the pencil lead.

Listen here, my friend.

We know for a fact that pencils are made out of lead.

No?

LUCAS: No, has been graphite since pencil making started.

OK, I trust you.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 20 bags

of graphite powder are taken through this historic factory

intake area.

How many pencils would you make out of that graphite?

Over a million just with this one delivery.

Over a million pencils--

Over a 1,000,000 pencils--

- -from that graphite?

- -from that graphite.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The powder

is walked 50 meters through to the measuring room

for weighing.

And, as the first bag is slashed open,

our pencil production begins.

This is the graphite, right?

Part of it is.

Bottom half, that's the graphite.

But we also need clay for our HB pencil.

And this is what we have here as well.

Clay?

Clay because the graphite is giving

the pencil its color and the clay

is giving the pencil its structure.

So we want clay in there as well.

Lucas, what exactly is graphite, please?

Graphite is basically carbon.

So if you have charcoal when barbecuing at home,

that's basically the same thing in a

different molecular structure.

GREGG WALLACE: This good looking gentleman

over here with the shaved head and the glasses,

what's he doing?

LUCAS TOTLER: He is mixing the graphite and the clay

in the proper ratio to get the pencil which we want.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): They make 16 different grades

of pencil leads here from soft and dark to hard and light,

depending on the ratio of graphite to clay.

LUCAS TOTLER: With more clay, you'd

be moving more towards the 6h--

H standing for hard, in that case.

H means hard?

H means hard.

What does B mean?

Black.

It means black.

Really?

Because the pencil writes blacker.

HB-- B means black, H means hard?

Exactly.

I've seen those letters on a pencil all my life--

For ages.

- -and never knew.

OK.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): We need

a 50/50 mix of clay and graphite for our batch

of hard, black pencils.

We follow it into mixing where the machines look familiar,

even if the messy materials don't.

So what is that?

I'm guessing some sort of mixer.

JUCAS TOTLER: Huge KitchenAid in which

we start putting together the graphite and the clay,

adding some water.

And this is where we compose the mixture

making up the pencil lead.

Is he just gonna hose it in?

LUCAS TOTLER: Pretty much, yeah.

How?

[laughs] Very good.

So is that going to deliver just the exact amount of water?

Yes, it is.

We're not working with guesstimates here.

We're working precise.

GREGG WALLACE: That looks like volcanic ash.

That looks like a volcano about to erupt.

[suspenseful music]

How many pencils is that gonna make?

250 kilos will make about 200,000 different pencils.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The massive mixer

has an equally heavy weight lead to seal

in the powder and water.

It'll take two hours of heating and stirring to combine them.

This traditional method dates back around 200 years.

But pencils themselves go back a little further.

Ruth sketches out the story of their invention.

[music playing]

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): Since the dawn of civilization,

humans have been making marks with all kinds of instruments.

But the pencil is relatively recent.

And it began here in the Lake District.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): I'm in the Borrowdale Valley

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): I'm in the Borrowdale Valley

to meet author and stationery fan James Ward.

[laughs] What a wonderful place you've chosen.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): The story

begins in the 16th century, in a field around here where monks

were looking after some sheep.

At some point, there was a big storm.

And it knocked down one of these trees.

Underneath it, the monks discovered

some strange material.

And it was this stuff, graphite.

Oh, right.

Well, it does initially just look like a rock, doesn't it?

But look, already something odd has happened with my hands.

Well, that's exactly what they realized as well.

[laughs]

And maybe if you want to try--

OK.

- -and make a mark on that paper.

See if I can write with a rock.

Oh, I am.

Well, yes.

JAMES WARD: Take the tippy bit and write.

Yeah.

That's amazing, isn't it, to be

able to just pick a rock out of the ground and write with it?

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): The monks

had stumbled across a deposit of pure graphite,

which they misidentified as a type of lead,

a name that stuck.

By carving the graphite into sticks

and wrapping it in string, it became

a handy new tool, the pencil.

RUTH GOODMAN: It's a very simple and easy

thing to use, isn't it?

No fuss.

No mess.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): The innovation took off,

and the nearby town of Keswick became world

famous for its pencils, developing

a valuable trade with Europe.

No one else had graphite as pure as ours.

So when we went to war with France in 1793,

its sale was strictly embargoed, which

surprisingly was a bit of an annoyance

to the French military.

RUTH GOODMAN: Why were the French so worried

about not having pencils?

Well, if you think about it, if you're in a war,

you've got your maps.

You're planning where your troops are.

They're moving around all the time.

RUTH GOODMAN: Yeah.

But if you're doing that in pen, pretty soon the map

would be unreadable.

But with pencil, you can rub it out.

RUTH GOODMAN: Oh, I see.

But the French didn't have much graphite, did they?

Well, they did have some.

But it wasn't of great quality or quantity.

That's where this guy comes in.

RUTH GOODMAN: Oh, he's an interesting looking chap.

Yeah, Nicolas-Jacques Conté.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): Nicolas-Jacques Conté was

a talented artist and inventor.

He worked out that you didn't need sticks of pure borrowdale

graphite to make pencils.

James and I are going to follow his method.

JAMES WARD: So we've got kaolin, which

is a sort of fine clay powder--

Yeah.

Fuller's earth, which is also clay, and then

graphite here on the end.

I love the way this looks.

It's got a sort of shininess to it.

So we need 20 grams.

20.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): Contre discovered

that by mixing low quality powdery French graphite

with clay, he could make a good pencil

without relying on the treasured graphite

from the Lake District.

OK.

Make sure you don't lick the spoon.

RUTH GOODMAN: [laughs] It definitely

got the color of that one associates

with the lead of a pencil, isn't it?

And it's not black.

It's sort of--

It's that sort of silver gray.

- -silver gray.

But it's still got that sort of shine and shimmer

from the graphite as well.

Yeah.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): We roll our graphite mix

into pencil leads and then bake them in the oven at 230 degrees

C.

Who knew that's all you needed?

I think we should wash our hands.

I think we should wash our hands.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): 20 minutes later, they're ready.

JAMES WARD: Should we try it?

Should we give it a go?

Ooh, loo at that.

Let me grab-- is it-- yes. All right.

It behaves like a--

I can hold it like a pencil.

Does it write?

[gasps] It does.

Look at that.

RUTH GOODMAN (VOICEOVER): Conté's methods

were quickly adopted.

The old technique of using solid graphite

was consigned to history.

And the modern pencil was born.

This is a very long one.

Wow.

That's pretty good, isn't it?

That is pretty cool.

So simple.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): In Germany,

I'm following Conté's method making what we

all wrongly call lead on a much larger

scale in the mixing room.

Our 250 kilograms of graphite clay and water mix

has been heated and stirred for two hours.

Whoa, I never expected that.

That looks to me like a lunar landscape.

I've still got no idea how you get that into a pencil.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): To find out how they turn

these metallic space rocks into thin pencil leads,

I'm following them through to the extrusion room

where they're shoveled into a giant steel press.

GREGG WALLACE: I mean, that seems like a very big machine

to make a little pencil.

It looks like an enormous piston.

Is that what it's doing, pushing it through?

It really is pushing the mixture through the dye

into the shape of the pencil lead.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): A meter long piston squeezes

the soft graphite and clay mix through a single 2 millimeter

hole, spurting it out like spaghetti then cutting

it every 18.5 centimeters.

GREGG WALLACE: Tons of machinery and an enormous great piston

just to squeeze these tiny thin little tubes out

of little holes.

LUCAS TOTLER: Yup.

It seems a big oversized job for a result that's so tiny.

And that is now the inside of a pencil, right?

LUCAS TOTLER: That is the inside of the pencil.

That's the lead.

Can I pick one up?

Sure, go ahead.

[chuckles]

Whoa, I feel like Uri Geller.

I didn't expect that.

Why is it so soft?

Because there's still water in there, what we put in earlier.

GREGG WALLACE: Can I stay here and play for a little while?

I'm afraid not.

We've got to make pencils.

Good?

Good.

So what's the next step?

You grab one of those, put the leads inside,

and then put it into the dryer.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): We've made

enough leads for 200,000 HBs.

But nobody wants a bendy pencil.

So we're carefully loading our soft strands

into perforated drying tins.

Good?

OK?

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): About 300 leads

go into each one, leaving plenty of room for air to circulate.

So this dryer here, that is just to get

rid of the water content?

That's just to get rid of the water.

How long?

About 2 and 1/2 hours.

[german]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): They're dried gently

at around 100 degrees Celsius.

The water needs to come out because next they're

going into a blast furnace.

And if there's moisture in the pencil leads,

they could explode.

The temperature in here is over 1,000 degrees

C. That's close to the melting point of gold.

GREGG WALLACE: Now you're cooking.

Cooking on gas?

Cooking with gas.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): They're

baked for three hours, which strengthens the clay inside.

Then they're cooled.

And I'm expecting that after all that

mixing, drying, and baking, our leads must

be ready to go into pencils.

But apparently not.

Take one of these, for instance.

Yeah?

That's the pencil lead from the kiln that we've just fired.

And we now have tiny pockets of air

in this piece of pencil lead.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): That intense heat

has a side effect, creating microscopic holes in the pencil

leads, giving them a rough texture.

And if you were to write with this specific piece,

it would scratch, destroy the paper, and not be a lot of fun.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Fortunately, they've

got a solution to this problem.

We have liquid, hot wax to go into the pencil lead.

And we fill those tiny pockets of air with wax.

What?

Wax.

All right, It does sound a little bit odd.

So ready when you are.

Feel free to drop the leads into the wax.

OK, thank you very much.

I feel honored.

[music playing]

Extraordinary.

Absolutely extraordinary.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The wax

fills the tiny air holes, helping

the leads to write smoothly.

I would never imagined a bar full of hot wax.

In a pencil factory.

Anywhere, to be honest.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Now the lead

is deep fried, or rather hot waxed, to thoroughly fill

every jagged edge.

Every element going into these delicate sticks is vital.

But there's only one real star.

You can't make a pencil without graphite.

But as Cherry is discovering, this mineral has made

its mark in more ways than one.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): I've come to the University

of Manchester, where Dr. Sarah Haag

is studying the magic material inside every pencil.

CHERRY HEALEY: Wow.

What is this place?

Welcome to one of our scanning electron microscopy labs.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): We're using Sarah's electron

microscope to take an extremely close look at a pencil lead

to understand how it works.

That is absolutely mind-blowing.

It kind of looks like a mountain range.

SARAH HAAG: Should we zoom in so we can see the graphite?

Definitely.

Look at that is absolutely incredible.

It looks like shards of glass.

So at this resolution, we can see the individual pieces

of graphite.

CHERRY HEALEY: So these individual shards

are what break off and slide onto the paper

creating the pencil mark?

Yes.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Next, we analyze how

this graphite sticks to paper.

SARAH HAAG: So what we're looking at on the screen now

is a pencil trace across a piece of paper.

The roughness of the paper has almost

captured some of the graphite.

SARAH HAAG: Yep.

So the pieces of graphite will be transferred onto the paper.

If we zoom in now, we can see the individual pieces

of graphite.

CHERRY HEALEY: Oh, my goodness me.

That's absolutely amazing.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): But making marks on paper

is only one of graphite's special powers.

So we're going to make the electricity

pass between these two graphite rods.

CHERRY HEALEY: So those are two tiny sticks of graphite?

Yeah, that's what you get inside a pencil.

CHERRY HEALEY: And now you're passing

electricity through them?

SARAH HAAG: That's right.

And then we bring them close together.

CHERRY HEALEY: Wow, that's so bright.

SARAH HAAG: So the current that we're seeing is like lightning.

The graphite that we use here-- because it's

a fantastic electrical conductivity--

is used in all kinds of applications, like batteries.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): If you have a smartphone,

a laptop, or a hybrid car, its lithium ion battery

probably relies on graphite.

That's absolutely amazing.

That's just the same graphite as you would find inside a pencil?

SARAH HAAG: Yeah, absolutely.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): And that's not all.

SARAH HAAG: This is just an ordinary pencil.

And we've sharpened it at both ends.

You can see that it's heating up because the pencil wood has

a much lower temperature that it will survive than the graphite.

CHERRY HEALEY: That was amazing.

The wood completely gone, incinerated.

And yet the graphite is intact.

The graphite can withstand a huge amount of heat.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Graphite is heat

resistant to over 3,000 degrees Celsius,

which is why it's used to contain the molten

metal in steel mills.

So it's really impressive stuff.

Yes.

Graphite conducts electricity fantastically well.

It's a really good conductor of heat.

And it's great for pencils.

Absolutely.

It's amazing stuff.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): At the pencil factory,

the lead spindles that will go into our classic HBs

have had a nice bath to rinse off the wax.

10 hours and 23 minutes in, they're wrapped in paper

and sent across the river to the larger woodwork factory.

The raw pencil room is their first stop, where I'm

meeting engineer Ziggy Blost.

Ziggy?

Hello.

- Gregg. - Hello.

Nice to meet you.

Good to meet you.

I've got my lead.

This I take it is the wood.

What wood do you use?

Well, you can use different kinds of wood.

This, for example, is linden wood.

More important are the properties of the wood.

They have to be very finely structured.

So when you sharpen the pencil, a flake should come off

instead of pieces breaking out.

And it should be stable in form.

So when the pencil is lying in the sun,

it should not bend like a banana.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Ziggy's wood

comes from sustainable straight grain

trees like Linden and cedar.

The blocks arrive pre-cut in 8 by 18 centimeter slats.

The trees grow over the road.

And they were cut into slats of the length of a pencil

and half the thickness of a pencil.

I understand the wood for the pencil.

I've just got no idea how that becomes a pencil.

Well, that I can show you in the next room.

Please.

[music playing]

Right.

Now what happens to our pieces of wood?

Now these leads go into the machine

to be smoothed to the surface and insert small grooves.

GREGG WALLACE: So that is just cutting grooves in the wood?

That's right.

But that's very important because that's where we

fill in the leads afterwards.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The slats rush along nose

to tail through sanding.

Then, under rotating blades, which carve out channels,

one millimeter deep.

ZIGGY BLOST: Now you can see the grooves.

GREGG WALLACE: So there are 1, 2, 3, 4--

9 grooves in here.

Does that mean nine pencils?

Exactly, that's what you-- what we get.

Now here you can see these leads coming

out with the grooves inserted.

And here, next very important step, a thin line of glue

is filled into the grooves.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): A strong but elastic glue

is applied to the entire length of each slat, which will

hold the leads firmly in place.

Now here the sleds are split up into two parts.

Yeah, that's like a paddle. ZIGGY BLOST: Right.

Right.

GREGG WALLACE: It's taking every second slat

and knocking it over to the outside lane.

ZIGGY BLOST: Exactly.

I'm beginning to understand there is a bottom

and a top to this pencil.

- Exactly. - It's basically--

The same.

- -split in half.

Right, right.

It's made of two halves.

But it's done so precisely, when you sharpen

the pencil at the end you wouldn't see

that it consists of two parts.

Ziggy, is it not possible to get blocks of wood,

drill a hole in the middle, and just put lead in there?

You can't drill a hole so straight

that the lead would fit in.

It would be sort of wavy.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The top and bottom of our wood

and glue sandwiches are sent round

for their special graphite and clay filling.

That's my lead.

Right.

That's my lead that's been in the wax.

Right, OK.

So these leads are coming down here onto this big wheel.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The wheel picks up the lead sticks.

And as the slats travel along the conveyor,

it drops them neatly into the gluey grooves.

GREGG WALLACE: Well, there you have it--

your nine grooves, right, and your nine bits of lead

perfectly glued in.

Right.

All right.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Now the top slices,

with their empty grooves, are moved into position

so they line up precisely with the bottoms

and are glued together.

And here the tops lead comes over

to form sort of a sandwich.

Right?

The problem is there's, like, a clear separation here.

There's a clear gap between these two bits of wood.

We get rid of this separation in the next part

of the machine.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): 100 multi-pencil sandwiches

are stacked up in the drying chamber at around 60 degrees

C. A vise squeezes them together.

Then they're slowly rotated so the glue dries evenly.

How many pencils have we got in there?

About 40,000 pencils, approximately 40,000 pencils.

40,000 pencils.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Soon thousands of people of all ages

and from all walks of life could be using

these pencils for drawing and writing

in their own unique style.

In the raw pencil room, my wooden sandwiches

have been drawing in a rotating vise for an hour.

Once released from the clamp, the sandwiches

waltz away on conveyor belts.

Each one is trimmed to exactly 175 millimeters.

The standard length of a pencil is exactly seven inches.

Why?

Well, that's convenient.

It's long enough to be able to sharpen a couple of times.

But it's not so long that it bends your hand back

when you're writing.

Seven inches, but it will get shorter as it gets older.

Right.

That is smooth like a green grocer's head.

Right, right.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The trimmed slats

head into the shaping machine.

And 10 seconds later, individual pencils emerge nine at a time.

Hey!

Hey!

Ziggy, we got pencils!

Right.

We have got pencils.

May I?

They are perfect hexagonals.

The last time I saw them, they were--

they were an oblong block.

ZIGGY BLOST: Right.

How have they become that shape?

I can show you inside the machine,

we have a rotating wheels, knives

that rotated a very high speed.

And you can see the knives at the cross-section of a pencil.

I can clearly see the groove, the hexagonal shape.

Why hexagonal shape?

They avoid the disadvantage of a round pencil

to roll off the table and fall down.

Round ones roll off the table?

Right.

Is that honestly why?

There are so many things I didn't

know about the ridiculously simple pencil, but it's genius.

It is.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The helpfully hexagonal pencils are

carried into the painting room where

they're stacked onto conveyors.

I like that.

I think that's a really good sight.

That to me, because of the shape, looks like honeycomb.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): These raw pencils

are about to receive their coats of honor--

a dark green shade of paint chosen back in 1905

when this pencil was designed.

Do you know why it's green?

I mean, it's a classic.

But why is it green?

Well, that's an old story.

Alexander from Faber-Castell, he was originally a military man.

And he remembered that the color of the uniforms of his regiment

was what he called military green.

And he thought it might be a good idea

to apply it to his pencils.

If you paint them, where do you hold it?

It must be on a clamp somewhere.

No, it doesn't have to.

Let's go around the corner.

I'll show you.

[music playing]

You can see here, the color is inside these boxes.

And the pencils are pushed through and pick up colors.

You are just pushing those pencils through a tin of paint?

So that's not green.

ZIGGY BLOST: That's the primer.

GREGG WALLACE: You're puttin a primer on exactly the same

as we will paint a door at home?

Right.

Exactly the same.

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Two layers of primer go on.

And then, one by one, our pencils

receive their traditional military top coats.

GREGG WALLACE: That's a lovely, rich green color, isn't it?

ZIGGY BLOST: Right.

GREGG WALLACE: How many coats did it get?

Four coats of green.

Four?

Four.

So altogether six layers of color.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): My little green soldiers

march into a heated tunnel, which helps their coats dry.

Finally, a shiny lacquer is added that will act as armor

against any chips or scratches.

The ends of the pencils are sanded to remove excess paint.

Then there's some ceremonial polishing to be done.

What are you doing, Ziggy?

Are you decorating your pencils?

No.

We are printing or embossing the pencils.

It's a stamp, you know?

And whatever you want to have on your pencil,

it's written on the stamp.

And it pushes on the foil, warms it up a little bit,

and leaves the mark on the pencil.

Here we print the barcode on the pencil.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The heat

sticks the white plastic barcode along one edge.

The next two machines are loaded with plastic, backed

with gold colored aluminum.

The pencils are swiveled 120 degrees

to print the name in gold.

Then they're turned again for Made in Germany.

We print it on one end.

And you start sharpening the pencil on the other end.

Is that why all the information

is down the blunt end?

Of course, of course.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The pencils have been decorated.

And Ziggy can't wait to tell me about the crowning glory

that awaits our classic HBs.

But Cherry is waxing lyrical about another writing

implement.

[music playing]

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Making a colorful mark

is one of the first things children learn to do.

My weapon of choice for coloring when I was a toddler and now

actually if I'm honest was one of these, a wax crayon.

As a parent, these vibrant colors brighten up my world.

But how are they made?

I'm in South Hampton visiting the UK's

best selling children's crayon manufacturer, Stadium Crayons.

Last year, this small factory turned out 25

million little sticks of joy.

General Manager Dave Ayling is here to explain the magic.

So are you gonna show me how it's done then?

I'm not gonna show you how it's done.

I'm gonna let you make them yourself.

Oh, that's how it goes.

Oh, yes.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): The life of the wax crayon begins

as you might expect, with wax.

DAVE AYLING: This is paraffin wax, which is derived from oil.

And it also can be used in candles.

So paraffin pellets.

Is that it?

The wax is only about 50% of the crayon.

We have this stearic acid, a fatty acid

that is derived from plants similar to vegetable oil.

This actually softens the wax enough to help

it to draw on paper better.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): The first step

is to blend these two ingredients together

in a huge 1,200 liter heater.

It's maintained at a constant temperature of 120 degrees,

which ensures that once the mixture is melted,

it stays melted.

There's just one more ingredient

to go in at this stage, and that is called PEG.

What is PEG?

PEG is actually a polymer, which has a low melting point.

And it helps the color take to the wax.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): PEG, or polyethylene glycol,

also makes the crayons water soluble,

a big help when it comes to washing

them off the walls at home.

CHERRY HEALEY: Into our big crayony mix.

And there we have it.

[music playing]

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): With the big melt in progress

I head to the paint shed, where Jim Belbin

can create any color from just a small number of powdered dyes.

So what color crayon are we making today?

We're making red today, Cherry.

And I imagine if you're making a red crayon, you need red dye.

But we have to make two shades of red

in order to get the red that we make here.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): We wear masks

to keep the non-toxic but superfine pigments out

of our lungs and start scooping 600 grams of bright scarlet

and 200 grams of a darker base red.

It'll give us that perfect tone for coloring in tomatoes.

All I need now is that hot wax.

Oh, my goodness.

It looks like water.

JIM BELBIN: This hot wax has got to go into the mold.

I'll take the light one.

Lucky I work out.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): They've certainly

got me pulling my weight.

First, I pour the liquid wax into a kind of heavy cauldron.

CHERRY HEALEY: Just like this?

JIM BELBIN: Yeah.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): It holds 40 liters.

And then I pour in our red powder blend--

CHERRY HEALEY: That is so beautiful.

- CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): - -enough for 10,000 crayons.

And then I give it a good whisk.

This tank actually keeps the wax up 110 degrees centigrade.

It's really molten the whole way through.

Now there's one final ingredient.

What is this stuff?

Well, it's essentially chalk powder.

CHERRY HEALEY: So first you add something to soften it.

And then you add something to make it harder.

JIM BELBIN: Yes.

Well, if we don't add this when they're set,

they can become quite brittle. CHERRY HEALEY: Here we go.

Hey! Woo! Hey! Woo!

Do I get the job?

JIM BELBIN: No, no.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): I'm ready to turn

my concoction into crayons using this metal

mold, which has 960 holes.

CHERRY HEALEY: How do you get this boiling hot wax

into those molds?

Well, it's really technical.

We use a jug.

CHERRY HEALEY: OK, is that a good jug?

Oh, it's very splashy.

Am I doing it right?

JIM BELBIN: Yeah, they all need to be filled up.

So we can now start to move the wax around as it cools down.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Cold water circulating around

the back of the mold helps bring the heat

down from over 100 degrees to around room temperature.

It's a tricky balance, making sure all

the crayons are solid with no air holes

before the wax hardens.

We can normally do about 60 batches here.

So we make about 60,000 crayons a day on this one machine.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Now the moment

I've been waiting for.

Have I filled the molds correctly?

Oh, that is ridiculously satisfying.

And 960 crayons are about to be born.

They are as soon as you pull this lever here.

CHERRY HEALEY: If only childbirth was this easy.

Woo!

You're kidding me.

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Almost perfect.

There's just one rogue crayon.

Look what I found, a wafer thin crayon.

Ah.

That's an inside-the-factory crayon.

How about that?

CHERRY HEALEY (VOICEOVER): Not bad for a first attempt.

The remaining 959 are labeled, ready for boxing.

CHERRY HEALEY: There's just one thing now that my red crayon

needs, and that is a yellow, a blue,

and a green, ready to entertain my child and perhaps yours.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): In the German pencil factory,

it's been nearly 13 hours.

And my HBs are looking for business.

They've been painted and embossed.

But there's still a final flourish to come,

and that happens in rounding.

GREGG WALLACE: What's this?

OK, now, this is our rounding machine.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): It smooths off the hexagonal edges

from the very top of the pencil.

So that's the result of this rounding process.

You can see it's clean, and it's lightly rounded.

Every single step of the way it's

another tiny little detail.

Exactly.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Now we

need to paint the rounded end, which is harder than it sounds.

The pencils are gathered up and pushed into trays that

hold 138 individual shafts.

Now, when the plate is filled, the plate

moves on here to the first position of dipping.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The tray

of pencils is spun upside down and dipped into metallic paint.

How do you know how far to dip the pencils in?

We measure the depth of the paint in the bowl

as you can see with this red dot, which is

a laser to measure the depth.

And then we tell the machine that it should come up

a millimeter more than before.

As the pencils dip and the level of the paint goes down,

so the machine pushes the tray of paint.

Right, exactly.

You guys are clever.

OK, thank you.

Very clever.

That's a nice process.

There's a certain elegance about that, isn't there?

It's a nice slow process.

You could set that to music.

[MUSIC - ON THE BEAUTIFUL BLUE DANUBE]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): A new regiment of pencils joins

the dance every 30 seconds.

Then 690 of them take a synchronized dip.

[music playing]

Once their crowning glory has been applied,

the switching machine twirls them

back the right way around--

[music playing]

- -before they trip the light fantastic to drying.

[music playing]

Over here we have a box of almost finished pencils.

What do you mean, almost finished?

It's not sharpened yet.

Right.

How do you sharpen the pencil?

Well, that's a process that takes place here in this box.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): A belt mechanism

pulls each pencil over a series of rotating razor blades,

angled to create the perfect point at the tip.

Well, that is an incredible sight.

Those pencils are almost falling over those blades.

And those blades are spinning really quickly.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Finally,

our HB pencils are born.

[music playing]

In theory, each of these pencils is capable of drawing a line

about 35 miles long or writing around 45,000 words,

if they pass quality control.

Our pencils are finished and given a visual check to ensure

that the paint is perfect and that the leads are sharp.

[gentle music]

But Lucas has invited me to do an additional test

at the castle, which houses the company museum.

What a place.

What a place. How have you been?

What a fantastic place.

Listen, I've got some finished pencils.

So I've heard there's one final quality test.

There's one final quality test.

And it's going to happen right here in the castle.

You see that window up there?

GREGG WALLACE: Yeah, what?

LUCAS TOTLER: We're gonna drop the pencil out of the window

into the castle yard.

Why would you want to do that?

It's a quality test to test if the pencil, the lead,

is rigid enough to withstand a drop from up

there all the way to down here.

But have they got a lift?

We're gonna walk up there.

Come on.

Come on.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): The factory castle

was built in 1906, when production had just started

on the Series 9,000 pencil we're about to chuck out

of the 25 meter high window.

[chuckles]

That's high, isn't it?

You're gonna throw the pencils out the window?

You're gonna do it.

Just like that.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): They invented

this test to demonstrate the strength of the pencil lead.

So what do you think?

Well, they look all right. They are the--

Not too bad.

You haven't swapped them, have you?

I have not.

Right.

OK, well, they look OK.

But how are you going to tell whether the lead is OK?

Because we got this guy.

So got the knife, got the pencil.

And see, the lead is still intact.

Yeah, OK, very impressive.

Proof enough?

Very, very impressive.

I've got one more test.

It's a British test of quality to make sure your pencil is OK.

What is it?

Yep, that works.

That's awesome.

[laughs]

[music playing]

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Test passed.

12 pencils are popped in a packet

and 24 packets squeezed into a box ready for distribution.

Where they're dealing with the company's busiest period,

supplying pencils for the start of the school year.

Hello, Florian?

Ah, hello.

Truck being loaded.

Yes.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): Florian Swartz

used his hand-operated electric forklifts

to pack the company lorry with wrapped pallets of pencils.

So, on that truck, is that a day's

worth of pencil production?

Yeah.

Half a million pencils are on the truck.

Do you know how many pencils you produce in a year?

200 million.

If you lay all the pencils we produce here,

it'll go once around the equator.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): After 14 hours and 46 minutes

of production time, my HB pencils are loaded up

and sent on their way.

That's it.

There's a lot of sketches and letters on that truck,

- isn't there? - Yep.

Thank you, Florian.

Thank you very much.

GREGG WALLACE (VOICEOVER): From Nuremberg, these pencils

are exported to Britain and 80 other countries

across six continents.

I've enjoyed my time in Germany.

It's most certainly one of the better looking factories

I've been in-- lots of natural light and fresh air.

And I've learnt three things about our HB pencil.

One, it's made from two separate halves.

Two, it's hexagonal, so it doesn't roll off the table.

And three, there's no lead in it.

There never was.

In fact, there was never any lead in any pencil ever.

Well, who knew?