N

Founded by Colonel James Raford Musgrave in Shelbyville, Tennessee in 1916, the Musgrave Pencil Co. continues to produce pencils much in the same way as it did more than 100 years ago. Manufacturing everything from traditional yellow No. 2 pencils to carpenter pencils and its own line of specialty pencils, the company continues to churn out about 80 million pencils each year in Middle Tennessee.

Company President Scott Johnson said the company founded by his wife’s great grandfather traces its roots back to the days of World War I when Col. James Musgrave began a lumber business.

“We got into the pencil business by trading new metal fencing for old eastern red cedar fence posts that he then milled into the basic building block of a pencil which is a pencil slat,” Johnson said.

Musgrave then began selling those pencil slats to German pencil manufactures before deciding to trade some pencil slats for some pencil making equipment following the close of the war.

“He hired some German engineers to help him learn how to operate and build additional machines,” Johnson said. “The technology is relatively the same after all these years.”

Musgrave then founded Bedford Machine, which built and maintained pencil machinery with oversight of the German engineers.

“That is how Musgrave Pencil Co. came to be,” Johnson said.

Located in a 1930s era factory near Shelbyville’s historic downtown, Musgrave Pencil Co. employs about 112 people between itself and its sister company next door which manufactures two-piece rigid boxes.

In addition to millions of traditional yellow pencils and colorful wrapped pencils in just about every color and theme, the company also features a line of legacy pencils. An example of these is the Tennessee Red.

Packaged in a bright red pencil box, Musgrave’s Tennessee Red pencils are made of Eastern Red Cedar and feature a clearcoat finish to showcase the natural cedar color.

Johnson said the Tennessee Red was launched about seven years ago as a tribute to the earliest pencils manufactured by Col. Musgrave out of Eastern Red Cedar. Over the decades, the wood became less and less available, until pencil slats were outsourced, and the U.S. pencil slat industry eventually made its way overseas during the 1990s.

“We had the idea to bring back a nostalgic product that was based on the local Eastern red cedar,” he said. “It is a locally harvested wood, a locally produced pencil and that is where the idea for the Tennessee Red product came from.”

Other pencils in this line include the 600 News, Songwriter and the 1940s era Pencil King.

While Musgrave Pencil Co. makes a variety of classic pencils, Johnson said its carpenter’s pencil is one of its most popular products.

“We are heavily into the carpenter pencil,” Johnson said. “We have been the beneficiary of a strong, robust home improvement market so we do carpenter pencils for a number of various clients from big box retail, lumber yards to trades contractors and that sort of thing.”

The carpenter pencil accounts for about one half of Musgrave’s business.

With its flat wide sides, Johnson said the carpenter pencil is something he likes to refer to as “the world’s smallest billboard.”

“Folks like to use that space for their company name, logo, artwork and that sort of thing,” he said. “It was a way to obviously help somebody with their own branding initiative.”

When it comes to making pencils, the process begins with a wood pencil slat.

“A wooden slat will go through what is effectively a molding machine,” Johnson said. “It has blades spinning at 8,000 rpm and it cuts a grove in the slat that will accept the lead of the pencil.”

A layer of glue is added to the slat, which makes it way down a conveyor.

“The lead travels down a channel on a wheel and as the slat goes by the wheel lays the lead here in the groove,” Johnson said.

Another layer of glue is added and a top slat is added, forming a sandwich that is vacuum clamped together for 24 hours.

After they have dried, the pencil makes its way to a shaper, which forms the individual pencils and trims them to a specific length.

Now that the pencil has been formed, it is then stored until it is needed for an order.

“When a customer says I want this color pencil with this decoration or this decoration we take them out of the raw stock and we go through the rest of the process,” Johnson said.

The next stop for the pencils is the paint department, where each pencil receives between five and seven coats of paint.

The pencils then make their way to the imprinting department, where company logos and information can be added before they receive their eraser caps.

Some pencils receive an array of colorful wraps for various pencil designs and themes ranging from academic achievement to holidays.

“We can do multiple colors,” Johnson said. “We might take this and wrap it with an underlying foil of one color and then go over top of it with a different colors for multiple layers.”

Each pencil is then inspected for quality before it is packaged up and shipped to the customer.

Johnson said the pencil has become an important part of Shelbyville’s history and identity throughout the decades.

“It is certainly embedded in the history of Shelbyville and Bedford County,” he said. “If you look at the seal for the City of Shelbyville there is a pencil in the seal and sometime in the 1950s the governor named this the Pencil City.”

Johnson said Musgrave Pencil Co. also gave birth to other pencil companies throughout the years, and has provided opportunities through something as simple as a pencil.

“We are proud of that heritage and that history and it is amazing how timeless the pencil is,” Johnson said.

For more information about Musgrave Pencil Co., visit www.musgravepencil.com.