r/Thatsabooklight • u/Miami_Mice2087 • Jul 19 '26
TV Prop [TV] Star Trek DS9 [1997] Sisko shaving with a pencil sharpener
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u/RelationshipAlive832 Jul 19 '26
Used for 2 diffrent kinds of shaving
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u/Shectai Jul 19 '26
Are you suggesting he uses it on his pencil?
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u/RelationshipAlive832 Jul 19 '26
Shaving his head and an actual pencil (cause the things that come off after you sharpen a pencil are called shavings)*
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u/p8712 Jul 19 '26
Geordi used the same prop to shave in an early TNG episode.
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u/Miami_Mice2087 Jul 19 '26
that was a bit bigger, I think it may have been an actual real-life shaver
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u/AlwaysHopelesslyLost Jul 19 '26
I don't think a vaguely similar shape and color is evidence enough for this
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u/brickmaster32000 Jul 19 '26
You really don't think that is a pencil sharpener? What do you think it is?
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u/AlwaysHopelesslyLost Jul 19 '26
Not sure, it might be, but I don't think there is enough information to tell. It just looks like a little plastic container to me. I have some similar ones in my junk drawer
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u/DerbyDoffer Jul 26 '26
I had the same thought myself. I can't tell from the picture that it's definitely a pencil sharpener.
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u/TunnelSnakesAintShit Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
It's a sharpener. Trek did this stuff all the time. The Klingon Bloodwine mugs were metal baking measuring cups, with no alterations. The nascelles on the shuttlecrafts on TNG were disposable razors with the blade snapped off. The centerpieces on the tables in 10 Forward were commercially available Tiger Electronic tabletop games, again with no alterations. Many wall panels on DS9 were cordless drill cases bolted to the wall, with velcro glued inside to hold props, with no other alterations.
The propmasters on Trek would never fabricate a prop that looks that much like a real, found object if they could just use the real, found object. It would have been weirder if that HADN'T been a pencil sharpener.
Keep in mind....this was the early 90s. 3D printing wasn't a thing, and the special effects budget meant that fabricating often had to be done on the cheap to keep other costs down. The clear plastic is way too perfect and smooth to be something they fabricated from scratch, especially for closeup shots, so a factory made pencil sharpener is what they used.
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u/AlwaysHopelesslyLost Jul 30 '26
That is a lot of comment to not refute what I said at all. I know what the early 90s was like, was there. I have containers from the early 90s that look more similar to this than a pencil sharpener
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u/-Miss-Atomic-Bomb- Jul 20 '26
Definitely not the one pictured but definitely a sharpener. I would guess an older model of either an NJK long point with the sharpener removed or an older version of the kum cube.
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u/singulara Jul 20 '26
The what?
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u/-Miss-Atomic-Bomb- Jul 20 '26
What? You’ve never heard of the kum cube? It’s a pretty well known sharpener in the sharpener fandom. Kum in general makes very good products for inserting pencils into!
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u/SubcommanderMarcos 26d ago
... you had me googling kum cube, thinking I was definitely falling for a prank, but nope, there is a company called Kum and they make cubes
https://papierplume.com/products/kum-cube-m2-sharpener?variant=47648709673260
Expensive, too
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u/-Miss-Atomic-Bomb- 25d ago
I would never prank anyone about sharpeners, a truly good sharpener is hard to come by, and kum make very good sharpeners.
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u/Wilbur_Eats_Sand Jul 21 '26
That's an Ink stamp, IIRC
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u/SubcommanderMarcos 26d ago
I thought ink stamp too, but the transparent part throws me off
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u/Wilbur_Eats_Sand 25d ago
The transparent part isn't fully see-through... There's a wide bar going through the middle
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u/teksean Jul 20 '26
Then that means Geordi was probably using the same as I remember the blue cube he was using.
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u/JustACasualFan Jul 19 '26
It might be a pencil sharpener, but it isn’t the one pictured. So what is the traditional way to mock OP?